Handwriting on the Wall

There was so much handwriting on the wall that even the wall fell down.

Christopher Morley’s words in 1943 have relevance today for the “regulators” watching Bernie Madoff or Wall Street. So much for government watchdogs.

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Bail Not Bailouts

I think we should be talking about “bail,” not “bailouts,” regarding the people running the Big Three car companies and the lawmakers who mindlessly protected them for so long.

 

Thomas Friedman

New York Times

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Obama’s Character

After months of little insight into president-elect Obama, we are inundated with minor details of his life—how he shops, what he likes to eat, read, etc. This is all refreshing and welcome, but I wanted to hear more about his character traits. Inadvertently, I may have.

 

 

Today’s Orlando Sentinel ran a story (source: Chicago Tribune)  about Obama’s new press secretary Robert Gibbs which dropped clues to a side of the future president heretofore unreported—at least to my eyes. These two incidents tell me a bit about his character.

 

 

·        On one of his last nights on the campaign trail, Barack Obama was agitated.

 

He was backstage and face to face with a traveling aide after giving a speech to an overflow crowd at a football field.

 

 

Like a referee inserting his body between two fighting players, Robert Gibbs quickly stepped in and ushered Obama away from the ashen aide. Later Gibbs said the flare-up was over a teleprompter malfunction.

 

 

·        Because of his long history with Obama, Gibbs is one of the few people viewed as being able to “speak the truth” to the president-elect.

 

 

To the first incident, you might surmise that Obama has a short fuse and intimidates his aides. This was about a teleprompter malfunction. Did Obama know why it malfunctioned? Did he jump to the conclusion without evidence that the aide was the cause? At any rate, I don’t like to work for people who react like that.

 

 

The second incident tells me that Obama is not open to hearing “the truth” from everyone. Are aides to sugarcoat every issue for him, or simply not bring the issue up?

 

 

I don’t know about you, but these two insights into character do not pass my smell test. 

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The Week That Was

 

How many highs and lows can you cram in one week? I don’t know, but last week fate did its best to break a record.

 

 

 

Riverwalk, Sanford, FL

 

 

Hannah in Antique Shop

 

Haley & The Dragon

Saturday, I prowled the nooks and crannies of antique shops in Sanford, FL with my granddaughters and daughter-in-law and let the cool breezes blow on us on the Riverwalk on Lake Monroe. Downtown Sanford is right on the water. Its beautiful old main street has been gussied up with charming restaurants and shops and is a great place to spend the day. What history lessons the “antiques” provide! Try it sometime with your grands. They’ll meet the first I Pod (78 rpm record player), manual cash register with pop-up numbers, embroidered tea towels grandmas made and put in a hope chest for their trousseau, and school desks with ink wells. You picture them in fifty or sixty years showing their grands antique stores with unrecognizable items such as flat screen TV’s, I Pods, I Phones, ear buds, and select furniture from Rooms to Go.

 

Two mornings later I’m on the phone to 911 before 7 a.m. Why do they try to keep you hanging on the line until six strapling EMTs are in the middle of your bedroom? Does anybody know? I finally told the lady I had to hang up and get some clothes on, and I did – just in time. I guess they are used to staying in contact when the caller is in the closet and Freddie Kruger is gassing up his chainsaw. But I had more important things to do than chat. The guys and girls got my husband breathing in seconds. We were totally impressed with them. We spent the better part of the day in ER, but were allowed to go home with promises to return immediately if the pneumonia worsened. I’ve been afraid to take my clothes off all week, but Jerry is better. My friend Abbe says the blonde medicine is working. 🙂

 

Highs and lows pretty much pinged around like a piston election night. Without anyone to really support, you would think some of the thrill would go out of the election, but no. It’s in our blood. I would like to nominate John McCain for best concession speech EVER. I had forgotten how gracious politics could be in the old days. Thanks for bringing that back, John, if only for a few minutes.

 

 

Mountain to Mole Hill --Someday

Cooler weather today was my cue to begin making a mole hill out of the mountain of wood chips the tree people dumped in our side yard for free. So I started this morning. I soon began to glisten and my muscles hinted at how they will feel tomorrow. I stepped back to see what must be a greatly reduced pile, and hoped I had enough. Take a look at the picture. Perspective. It’s all in the perspective. Up close it seemed I had chiseled away the size of the Grand Canyon.  At least I don’t have to do my yoga today for exercise.

 

To cap the week off, I checked our 401K. Am I ready for next week? I don’t know. Perhaps I’ll adopt the phlosophy of my friend Bob Buckman: The lower our accounts go, the less we have to lose. 

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In Obama’s Words

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Flawed Constitution?

The following is from an Obama interview in 2001. Now I think I know what he considers flawed in our government — the Constitution. If you feel the same, vote for him. If you trust the founding fathers more — DON’T. Whomever is elected must put his hand on the Bible and swear to protect the Constitution. Can Obama do that? Will he? His own words lead you to believe not.  

His quote is below. Italics are mine.

 

In the 2001 interview, Obama said:

If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it I’d be OKBut, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted, and the Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf.

And that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court-focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.

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Evil of Two Lessers

A wasted vote is a vote for someone you know does not represent your own beliefs and principles. A wasted vote is a vote for someone you know will not lead the country in the way it should go. A wasted vote is a vote for the “lesser of two evils.” Or, in the case of John McCain and Barack Obama, what we have is a choice between the “evil of two lessers.”

 

Chuck Baldwin

Candidate for President

Constitution Party

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VOTE

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The Winner Is—-

Pundits are declaring Sarah Palin the debate winner based on what she didn’t do — screw up. May I proclaim Biden victorious?  I base that on the fact that he didn’t ask Gwen Ifil to stand up. Yeah, that’s about right.

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McCain’s VP Announcement

So Obama is using text messaging to announce his VP in order to showcase his technological superiority over his opponent. Clever. Now if I were running McCain’s campaign, this is what I would tell him. “Listen, you Luddite, you have lost the technological battle. That’s a remote, not a Blackberry. Put it down. We are going with your strongest quality, your wicked sense of humor.”

 

Then the day before the Republican Convention McCain would announce his vice president via CB radio. “Hello, my friends. I mean good buddies. Riding shotgun with me on this journey will be **squawk squawk**. See you at the polls. 10-4, over and out.”

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