Ten Lessons Learned in 2008
With every year comes rich new lessons from life. 1996, for example, was the year that I learned not to attempt dancing to Nine Inch Nails in platforms after drinking Midori and 151, lest one’s derriere hit the dance floor. The following year I became a journalist, and the life lessons have (thankfully) become a bit more profound each year. Here’s reflecting on 10 things we learned in 2008:
1. You don’t need a lot of experience to be president. You just need a Teflon exterior, some good speeches, a pack of devoted followers, the ability to be photographed without your shirt, an opponent who has issues, and the ability to make people forget that you picked Joe Biden for vice president.
2. Pundits are still expected to toe party lines. Unless, of course, the Republican electorate picks someone too moderate for your tastes, then — as Limbaugh and the pack did post-primaries — you can declare conservanarchy and have fun pushing poll boycotts. But suggest that the conservative vice presidential choice is dragging down the ticket, and duck and cover as you’re derided as a traitor. (2008, coincidentally, was the year that I officially became an independent.)
3. Hugo Chavez is not untouchable. Despite an election process that can hardly be called fair, the opposition coalition won enough states — those representing about 70 percent of the nation’s economic activity — in local elections to govern about 45 percent of Venezuela’s population. This included the mayor’s office in Caracas. Democracy be damned, Hugo is roaring into 2009 determined to pass the referendum — you know, the one that voters previously shot down — giving him endless presidential terms. “The referendum will be held and the amendment will be approved. Nobody will be able to avoid it,” Chavez, heading further down the path of mad authoritarian, vowed.
4. Nobody still cares enough about Darfur. Except some celebrities who still believe that the United Nations will ride in and save the day if they do enough photo ops. Then Ahmad Muhammad Harun, Sudan’s minister of state for humanitarian affairs, adds insult to injury by telling the Guardian that “I am at peace with myself” over some 200,000 Sudanese whose deaths he’s accused of orchestrating. The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court is trying to charge Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir with genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes related to Darfur, but good luck with that.
5. Just when you think the economy couldn’t get any worse, the Grinch himself rides in. The pre-Christmas bust of former Nasdaq chairman Bernard Madoff, whose shady side business at his investment securities firm was “basically a giant Ponzi scheme,” took bad to worse when it was revealed that he had soaked the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity of more than $15 million, nearly its entire funding. It’s bad when anyone gets ripped off, but can’t Madoff get extra slammer time for that?
“Since history tends to repeat its lessons, whether or not those in the corridors of power pay attention, this year reminded us, yet again, that the United Nations is pretty much useless”.
Guess what. The UN isn’t much more than what the member countries makes of it. When the most important countries in this world, including the US, do not care much about the Congolese, neither will the UN care.
“tow party lines” should read “toe party lines”
USA should get out of UN
and kick them out of this country
with all the hundreds thousands of enemy agents they keep in New York
There is even CUBAN intelligence headquarters present under the cover of UN mission
The losses in my modest stock market investments are paltry when compared to the percentage of loss incurred by forced through taxation losses in the United Nations investments.
Linden Swift
Plainfield, IN
To “Your mother”
Typical knee-jerk response. It’s always the U.S.’s fault.
The U.S. under Bush has given more aid to Africa, to fighting AIDS and malaria in Africa, and through targeted precision military efforts to fight terror on the continent than any U.S. administration, or any other world power. We can’t do it all.
The real problem with the United Nations is that it is comprised largely of non-democratic, corrupt, dictatorial regimes who couldn’t care less about human suffering. In many cases, they benefit from the chaos.
Any attempts to reform the UN have largely failed. I don’t think anyone paid a price for the Iraq Oli for Food scandal, the largest financial scandal in UN history which contributed to the Iraq war by weakening the sanctions on Iraq. The Iraqi people suffered while Sadaam and sons got richer with the help of their UN cronies.
Even Europe has lost it’s will to fight our enemies. Pledges from other countries to assist in Afghanistan (the “good” war) have largely gone unfulfilled. It seems that the U.S. has to do all the heavy lifting while others just criticize.
Mostly, the UN members would rather talk than act as evidenced by the years of talks with Iran on nuclear proliferation. Useless doesn’t begin to describe the UN.
bgc – Corrected, thanks (ed.)
I think you must have fallen on your head not your behind. Say hello to Kathleen.
I can agree wholeheartedly that the Un is the costliest and most irrelevant organization ever assembled by man.
Its demise needs to be the main plank in any resurgent effort by the Conservative movement.
Allowing waste ,graft and corruption to exist just because it pleases a handful of privileged politicians is madness.
In answer to the article title; Any minority status with ability to pander to the main stream media. Our next president could be a deaf, dumb, blind, paraplegic Tibetan monk with an inspirational interpreter. (say that fast three times.)
After the Obamanation starts rolling, third world legislation and politics will become the norm. The main stream media will love this tabloid news generator.
And, since he wants to hit the ground running, Obama has already started working on his Presidential Pardons list.
PALIN/JINDAL 2012
When a pseudo journalist takes pot shots at my world view with the boast of she just became an independent, opening her commentary with something like:
was the year that I learned not to attempt dancing to Nine Inch Nails in platforms after drinking Midori and 151, lest one’s derriere hit the dance floor. The following year I became a journalist,
I think to myself, “One more nitwit and useless lush masquerading as some informed intellect down – thousands still to go.”
Hasta luego…and good riddance. You won’t be missed.
Also observed is that those who are being employed(by forcing recognition) in the offices of powerbrokering and administration are not qualified for their posts and are extorting the American public through its cultural mediums to patronize substandard products, criteria and national agenda. (i.e. Sponge Bob is the voice of a generation because those who think Bob Dylan was more then just a shylock cartoon can be convinced fanatical in their dispositions…People like Paris Hilton are being pampered and praised to make America look like whores and idiots(it is a subversive form of Hatred..”I’ll make you a whore too!”…The protestant work ethic is being destroyed by those people who who decry morality as a “religious evil” rather then natural law..and those who gained from Dylan’s preeminence in the weakened America of the 1950′s and 60′s are the ones who are exploiting this precedent of lowering the bar…As far as civil servants go…the whole point of Obama is now you have to take a bullet for the guy who aims his rifle at you…The “Magic Negro”..that’s a SNL skit…this coward used to sing along to “Cop Killer”..)
“1. You don’t need a lot of experience to be president.”
Anyone who watches more than 20 hours of NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN and/or MSNBC programming per year should be outlawed from voting in American elections, based upon such a person’s obviously limited intellect. The same soap opera retards who brought us Bill Clinton have now dumped an even bigger loser on us. For shame.
“2. Pundits are still expected to toe party lines. Unless, of course, the Republican electorate picks someone too moderate for your tastes, then — as Limbaugh and the pack did post-primaries — you can declare conservanarchy and have fun pushing poll boycotts. But suggest that the conservative vice presidential choice is dragging down the ticket, and duck and cover as you’re derided as a traitor. (2008, coincidentally, was the year that I officially became an independent.)”
Self pity much?
HERMAN CAIN is starting a grass roots movement called HITM, http://www.hermancain.com/hitm.asp ,aimed at bringing pressure to bare on our elected federal representatives. The strategy: Create a technologically empowered citizen’s activist movement to put “heat” on Congress and the President on “KEY” actions. If interested, check it out.
Like what it really takes to be elected president…
1. A largely un- and under-educated electorate, who looks to the President Elect to make the mortgage and the car payments…
2. Decades of failure in the public schools to teach the founding principles of the Representative Republic, thus training up whole generations looking these days to the federal government for free lunches…
3. A near complete breakdown in the culture’s values and principles, a view of “morality” that (thanks to “postmodern” ideas) turns right and wrong into how any single individual might want to define them…
4. Paris Hilton, Madonna, Britney Spears et al and etc. Hollow-wood folks, who think their acting skills somehow lend credibility and weight to their political views…
5. A shallow culture, based on purchasing and acquiring, a culture where a Bernie Madoff can shape your own view of your value and prestige…
6. Entrenched media demonstrating a complete loss of objectivity & overlooking any of the difficult questions in your background for a way overly long 2 year+ political campaign…
7. Smooth and schmooze replacing substance…
(geez…I’ll get typer’s cramp if I keep this up…)
Happy New Year, everybody !
(at least reading so many of you at PJM this year has helped preserve my sanity
)
How to become president? Get in good with the American Oligarchs, Geffen, Lewis and Soros. If Obama never raised 750 million, 2 times the amount of McCain, and more than the amount of Bush and Kerry raised combined, he would not have been President. Soros and his buddies added in insurance by short selling Lehman Brothers stock and causing the September Stock plunge.
Americans reflect about the country we live in. Are we truly free? Or are we being manipulated by Billionaire Oligarchs? We truly are on the road to Serfdom.
Happy New Year.
Oh, yes, how could I leave George Porgie Soros off the list…(“destabilizing curriencies faster than a speeding bullet”…”so far, have escaped my family history of dementia and paranoia” (sure you have, George)…”setting up dummy front organizations and gleefully funneling boatloads of cash to my favorite socialist candidate, The One™, with much help from campaign finance ‘reform’…”)
I just can’t let this go without a second post and more appropo than my first comment which was sorta a rant.
The subtitle from Bridgets piece intrigued me. …what it really takes to be elected.
The inference in that statement is so offensive it makes my blood boil. As though the only requirement is a desire and nothing more. And there is the offending thought , that indeed, this is exactly what happened this year.
I know this was supposed to be a light hearted fun provoking essay , but the author has accidentally pushed my button.
Damn it.
I hope I am not the last person who reveres honor , courage , sacrifice , fidelity and truth.
Those used to be the minimum requirements for people seeking high office . They have become archaic and quaint in this century.
You forgot the most important elements when it comes to being elected President.
1. Huge sums of money, no matter how it’s gotten or from where.
2. Coordinated main stream media that refuses to report information and facts fairly about the candidates to the point of being a propaganda machine for the preferred candidate.
3. A rabid “entertainment industry” that practices character assination under the banner of satire or humor.
There you have it. Very simple, and oh yeah, ACORN exercising voter fraud where ever and when ever possible.
POLITICS & ETHICS ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE:
The longer a politician is in office, the more the chance that ethics are ignored.
http://greensrealworld.blogspot.com/2008/12/pox-on-both-political-parties.html
I learned people will pay and be played for empty Hope and Change, even when peddled by an Illinois, a Chicago-based, politician. The speed with which Hope and Change are fading is, however, impressive. Witness (http://www.cafepress.com/Disillusioned_O).
“Typical knee-jerk response. It’s always the U.S.’s fault. ”
Well, typical does not equal wrong. If you add up two and two, the typical answer would be 4. Knee jerk? Be that as it may.
I did not denounce Bush and his efforts in Africa. To the contrary, I think very highly of the work he has done on the continent.
But the fact remains: The UN is not much more than what the member countries make of it. The US is the most important country in the world. Their initiative (or lack of it) matters a whole lot on issues such as Congo. I think blaming the UN for inaction is a way to delegate responsibilities away. When the UN does not act, it is because its members doesn´t want it to.
“The UN” has evolved into another tool for Arab states to conduct stealth jihad against Israel and “the west”.
Particularly under the very weak (and probably corrupt) leadership of its former Secretary General, Kofi Annan.
There isn’t much improvement under the current SG, Ban Ki Moon. (Ban Ki at one point attributed carnage in Darfur to “global warming”.) These guys hold the office of SG for 7 (long) years.
Doesn’t Syria or Lybia or someone chair the “human rights” commission ? Don’t Russia and China use their votes on the Security Council to tweak “The UN” along lines preferable to their ideological agendas ?
“The UN” has shown itself capable of little beyond producing endless volumes of reports and holding (very expensive and resource consuming) meetings and conferences at various locations throughout the world. The Vienna based IAEA and its years’ long examination of Iran’s nuclear program have been especially impotent.
Calling the US the most important country in the world and blaming the US for lack of UN “initiative” is absurd. The United States provides almost 25% of the total UN budget for that crowd of ideological freeloaders.
John Bolton tried for “initiative” as interim US representative to the UN and he had just a little too much (intelligent) initiative for the tastes of the US Congress, who refused to confirm him for a permanent appointment.
Shall we go on to talk about the actions of the Blue Helmets (peacekeepers) in Africa ? Their ideological sympathies in southern Lebanon ? The utter failure to “address” Darfur ? (of course, Omar al Bashir, Sudan’s President, insisted for a very long time that no UN types could even set foot in his benighted country.)
Oh wait, hasn’t the World Court indicted al-Bashir in absentia ? That’ll work…not.
The UN=impotence & ideology. And it is not the fault of the United States.
Oh yes, with the bleeding heart, rambling ideologue Susan Rice named as the incoming administration’s choice for US representative to “The UN” and the President Elect wanting to elevate the position to Cabinet level, I’m not holding my breath for much in the way of “change” at The UN.
From what I’ve seen & heard so far of (the other) Dr. Rice, she’ll fit right in with the crowd of America bashers over at her new hangout.
This was one of the most poorly written pieces of drivel that PJM has ever published. Get Bridget Johnson off of here and keep her off of here. The Rocky Mountain News is now in receivership and the Denver Post is trying to divest itself of this albatros of their own creation. She is just looking for a new gig. This isn’t the place for her. All of this is just my opinion, of course.
All it takes to be president: don’t front for the people who turned a peaceful, prosperous America circa 2000 into a bitter, cheated, dead-broke laughingstock in 2008.
It’s 2009 now! The most important lesson for Obama for this year is GET RID OF FITZGERALD!!
Obma greatest risks for the year are the material related to the sale of the Senate seat and Emanuel’s House seat AND the evidence that Rezko is providing in exchange for a lesser sentence.
Obama has to remove Fitzgerald before anything gets out.
Hussein can ask for the resignations of ALL federal attorneys, fire just some of them or promote Fitzgerald to some bigger job and assure that his replacement is a Blago/Bama friend who will take is slow on Blago and send Rezko to the same prison where Jim McDougal died.
But suggest that the conservative vice presidential choice is dragging down the ticket, and duck and cover as you’re derided as a traitor.
Well … anyone who suggested that Sarah Palin could have possibly hurt the historically pathetic campaign of McCain (who did more to sink himself than anyone else) is just a moron. McCain was always the first one out of the box to denounce any conservative who raised legitimate issues during this campaign, and the McCain sycophants and idiots who tried to lay the blame on Palin were just addle-brained fools who have, quite unfortunately, gotten public voices far above what their IQ’s would have dictated were reasonable.
12. Saltherring:
Anyone who watches more than 1 hour of FOX programming per year should be outlawed from voting in American elections, based upon such a person’s obviously limited intellect.
Big business and the main stream media have tuned in to Obamas pledge to redistribute the wealth and are actively in the process of accommodating this promise with the help of Congress.
Looks like “We The People” are going to own a part of every business in America before long, and we are going to have the UAW to thank for getting the ball rolling for us. The Republican Party is on its death bed, because the Dumocrats are going to own a piece of every business in America, when this Congress and Obama are finished.
The Obamanation is sneaking in with the finesse of a bull in a china shop.
#15 tanstaafl….Amen! Hopefully the powers that be at the GOP headquarters will know the same info! In a nutshell….whomever the Hollywood “elite” are voting for in 2012…run the other way!
Vivo….Please stop watching The View! Joy Behar is seeping into your brain cavity!
Like what it really takes to be elected president…
Simple answer really… it takes or rather it REQUIRES a natural born citizen, which Barry is not and is unwilling to prove that he is