Monthly Archives: November 2009

Monday, November 30, 2009

But It’s Not A Litmus Test

Dick Armey, former House Majority Leader for the Republicans, says the GOP purity test is not a litmus test.

It’s a very reasonable thing to say if you want the support of the Republican Party, demonstrate some allegiance to the primary positions taken by the party. That’s not a litmus test. That’s just saying if you want us to give you our money, our support, our troops in the field, our endorsements, then demonstrate that you’re someone like us.

Thanks for clearing that up, Dick.

The First Year

If you accept the conventional wisdom — as measured by people like Maureen Dowd and Saturday Night Live — Barack Obama hasn’t done bupkus since he was sworn in as president. We’re still in Iraq, we’re about to escalate in Afghanistan, Gitmo is still in business, gays are still being kicked out of the military, unemployment is over 10%, the auto industry is running on fumes, healthcare reform hangs on the razor-thin balance of falling off the rails because of one vote in the Senate, and reality TV shows and their wannabe stars are still trying to get attention. We might as well have elected John McCain, right?

Jacob Weisberg at Slate begs to differ.

This conventional wisdom about Obama’s first year isn’t just premature—it’s sure to be flipped on its head by the anniversary of his inauguration on Jan. 20. If, as seems increasingly likely, Obama wins passage of a health care reform a bill by that date, he will deliver his first State of the Union address having accomplished more than any other postwar American president at a comparable point in his presidency. This isn’t an ideological point or one that depends on agreement with his policies. It’s a neutral assessment of his emerging record—how many big, transformational things Obama is likely to have made happen in his first 12 months in office.

[…]

We are so submerged in the details of this debate—whether the bill will include a “public option,” limit coverage for abortion, or tax Botox—that it’s easy to lose sight of the magnitude of the impending change. For the federal government to take responsibility for health coverage will be a transformation of the American social contract and the single biggest change in government’s role since the New Deal. If Obama governs for four or eight years and accomplishes nothing else, he may be judged the most consequential domestic president since LBJ. He will also undermine the view that Ronald Reagan permanently reversed a 50-year tide of American liberalism.

Obama’s claim to a fertile first year doesn’t rest on health care alone. There’s mounting evidence that the $787 billion economic stimulus he signed in February—combined with the bank bailout package—prevented an economic depression. Should the stimulus have been larger? Should it have been more weighted to short-term spending, as opposed to long-term tax cuts? Would a second round be a good idea? Pundits and policymakers will argue these questions for years to come. But few mainstream economists seriously dispute that Obama’s decisive action prevented a much deeper downturn and restored economic growth in the third quarter. The New York Times recently quoted Mark Zandi, who was one of candidate John McCain’s economic advisers, on this point: “The stimulus is doing what it was supposed to do—it is contributing to ending the recession,” he said. “In my view, without the stimulus, G.D.P would still be negative and unemployment would be firmly over 11 percent.”

You can’t run a country solely on saying how terrible things might have been, especially when things aren’t as well as you’d like them to be. It’s like a doctor in the E.R. saying, after reviving a patient with a defibrillator, “Hey, at least they’re not dead.” Yes, it beats the alternative, but we still have problems.

It is in the best interest of the Republicans to say that President Obama has accomplished very little. After all, any concession to his stewardship would mean they have to acknowledge how rotten things were to begin with. So they are trotting out all the canards about spending us into abysmal debt and government take-over along with the usual finger-pointing about finger-pointing: you Democrats stop blaming everything on Bush! (As if they never did that with previous administrations, all which happen to be Democrats; it’s as if Ronald Reagan’s administration was in a parallel universe.) So it’s no surprise that when Ross Douthat talks about the ineffective stimulus and flailing Democrats, let’s remember a couple of things: for one thing, Democrats are not known for being lock-step and doctrinaire. That’s the GOP shtick, or at least it used to be; given the tea-bagger lunacy and vacuum of leadership from the RNC, hearing a conservative complain about “flailing” is a study in irony, if not hypocrisy. (Besides, the last Democratic president flailed his way into a budget surplus.) So when you hear a conservative dismiss the success of President Obama — or any Democrat — they’re mustering damage control: the last thing they want is someone else to succeed. On the up side, President Obama hasn’t taken away all our guns, he hasn’t reinstated the Fairness Doctrine, he hasn’t turned the West Wing into a mosque, Rev. Jeremiah Wright is not sitting on the Supreme Court, William Ayers is not running the Department of Peace, and Kum By Yah hasn’t replaced the Star-Spangled Banner.

I think it’s way too early to pronounce anything about the Obama administration’s first year. The economy is still wheezing, but at least it’s sitting up and taking nourishment. The healthcare bill could still crater; close to passing does not count. Afghanistan is giving me flashbacks to 1967, and not in a Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band kind of way. It is still possible that the Democrats could lose what’s left of their nerve and thereby their majority next fall, which would be an unvarnished disaster for the president. Unlike the GOP, who have the ability to market chicken shit as chicken salad, a loss for the Democrats is truly a loss.

More Cheney 2012

Newsweek‘s Jon Meacham posits that Dick Cheney should run in 2012.

Gallup is not asking about him in its prospective polling, and his daughter Liz’s recent Fox News Sunday allusion to a presidential run provoked good-natured laughter, as though the suggestion were just a one-liner. Float the hypothetical in political conversation, and people roll their eyes dismissively.

But I think we should be taking the possibility of a Dick Cheney bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 more seriously, for a run would be good for the Republicans and good for the country. (The sound you just heard in the background was liberal readers spitting out their lattes.)

Why? Because Cheney is a man of conviction, has a record on which he can be judged, and whatever the result, there could be no ambiguity about the will of the people. The best way to settle arguments is by having what we used to call full and frank exchanges about the issues, and then voting. A contest between Dick Cheney and Barack Obama would offer us a bracing referendum on competing visions. One of the problems with governance since the election of Bill Clinton has been the resolute refusal of the opposition party (the GOP from 1993 to 2001, the Democrats from 2001 to 2009, and now the GOP again in the Obama years) to concede that the president, by virtue of his victory, has a mandate to take the country in a given direction. A Cheney victory would mean that America preferred a vigorous unilateralism to President Obama’s unapologetic multilateralism, and vice versa.

[…]

A campaign would also give us an occasion that history denied us in 2008: an opportunity to adjudicate the George W. Bush years in a direct way. As John McCain pointed out in the fall of 2008, he is not Bush. Nor is Cheney, but the former vice president would make the case for the harder-line elements of the Bush world view. Far from fading away, Cheney has been the voice of the opposition since the inauguration. Wouldn’t it be more productive and even illuminating if he took his arguments out of the realm of punditry and into the arena of electoral politics? Are we more or less secure because of the conduct of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? Does the former vice president still believe in a connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda? Did the counterterror measures adopted in the aftermath of the attacks go too far? Let’s have the fight and see what the country thinks.

I can buy some of his arguments; Dick Cheney would be the most unambiguous right-winger the GOP could trot out, but as for the rest of his reasons — judging the Bush administration and letting Cheney have a clear deck for his potshots against Barack Obama — those are nothing but masturbatory fantasies on crack for pundits like Mr. Meacham. (By the way, I know a lot of liberals, and none of them would touch a latte.) Elections are, as we are constantly reminded by candidates and history, about the future of the country, not about reminiscing about what a past administration did. Putting the former vice president on the spot about what he knew and when he knew it about WMD’s, Saddam and al-Qaeda, torture and terrorists, warrantless wiretapping, and his role in the outing of Valerie Plame may be of interest to historians and pundits looking for a gig, but with all of the problems that we are facing — many of which Mr. Cheney had a hand in — the last thing we need to worry about is what he was thinking in 2002. It’s not like he would tell us, anyway.

Why should he invest his energy, time, and what remains of his dignity in putting his name on a ballot? Given the fact that no cardiologist worth his EKG machine would give Mr. Cheney a clean bill of health and the fact that he would have to define a vision of America in the future instead of what he did during the Ford administration, the chance of Mr. Meacham’s fantasy coming true are about as likely as a chicken needing Chap-Stick. It’s a lot easier just to crank out a book — or pay a ghostwriter — do the book tours to all the malls of America, go on TV, and take all the shots he wants to without breaking a sweat. He hasn’t been on the ballot by himself since he ran for Congress in the 1970’s, and the view is pretty good from the cheap seats.

But since the Republicans are so devoid of leadership it’s not outside the realm of possibility that the idea could gain some traction. The question then isn’t will Dick Cheney run, but is the GOP that desperate?

Short Takes

A man with a history of mental illness is being sought in the killing of four police officers in Tacoma, Washington.

In his speech Tuesday night, President Obama will lay out a plan to get us out of Afghanistan.

Iran plans to go ahead with nuclear plants.

Swiss voters have approved a ban on new minarets.

Honduras has elected Pepe Lobo, a former congressman — and UM grad — as their next president.

The Secret Service interviewed the party crashers this weekend.

Florida top lawmakers, including the governor, get medical insurance subsidies to the tune of $45 million.

Tiger Woods says the car accident he had last week was his fault, wants to keep it private, and refuses to talk to the police.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Sunday Reading

After Cheney — The role of the vice president changed — for good or for ill, depending on your point of view — with Dick Cheney. Now that Joe Biden is in the office, James Traub of the New York Times looks at the man and the job and the role he plays in the Obama administration.

As senators, Barack Obama and Joe Biden were far from close. Obama served on the Foreign Relations Committee, which Biden led; and Biden, who felt that he had earned his stars the old-fashioned way, bristled at Obama’s status as instant superstar. “They started out pretty far apart,” a Biden aide says. They went on to run against each other for the Democratic nomination for the presidency; before Biden dropped out of the race he criticized Obama as a foreign-policy neophyte who was copying his ideas. Brian Katulis, a national-security expert at the Center for American Progress, recalls encountering Biden wandering around the executive-suite floor in the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad late one night in February 2008, looking for someone to talk to. Biden invited Katulis and a visiting former congressman down to the hotel restaurant for a milkshake, and then delivered a 90-minute monologue, the essence of which was: “I know more about foreign policy than any of the other candidates in the race, and I’m going to devote the next six months to rewriting Democratic foreign policy.”

Biden said he believed — and still believes — that he would make a very good president. He was nervous about accepting Obama’s offer of the vice presidency, fearing that he would suffer a loss in status, and in voice, from his role as a Senate baron. According to John Podesta, a former official in the Clinton White House who ran Obama’s transition, Biden “had a fairly clear sense in his own mind, which probably existed even before he was selected by Obama but definitely in the weeks in advance of and right after the election, that he didn’t want to be the guy in charge of x portfolio.” Instead, Biden wanted the role every vice president wants, but which perhaps only his predecessor, Dick Cheney, had enjoyed: to be the last voice in the room.

The president and the vice president are very different men both temperamentally and generationally, and they move in different social circles. “Everyone wants this to be some kind of buddy movie — ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,’ ” as one senior White House official, who asked not to be named so he could speak freely, put it. “Presidents and vice presidents are never close friends. It’s a working relationship; it’s more like the C.E.O. and the chairman of the board.”

Continued below the fold.

“War” on Trial — Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at the Fox News Channel. In an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, he makes the case for trying terror suspects in civilian courts rather than military tribunals. For one thing, the Constitution requires it.

In the uproar caused by Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr.’s announcement that the alleged planners of the 9/11 attacks are to be tried in U.S. District Court in New York City, and the suspects in the attack on the U.S. destroyer Cole will go on trial before military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the public discourse has lost sight of the fundamental principles that guide the government when it makes such decisions. Unfortunately, the government has lost sight of the principles as well.

When President George W. Bush spoke to Congress shortly after 9/11, he did not ask for a declaration of war. Instead, Republican leaders offered and Congress enacted an Authorization for the Use of Military Force. The authorization was open-ended as to its targets and its conclusion, and basically told the president and his successors that they could pursue whomever they wanted, wherever their pursuits took them, so long as they believed that the people they pursued had engaged in acts of terrorism against the United States. Thus was born the “war” on terror.

Tellingly, and perhaps because we did not know at the time precisely who had planned the 9/11 attacks, Congress did not declare war. But the use of the word “war” persisted nonetheless. Even after he learned what countries had sponsored terrorism against us and our allies with governmental assistance, Bush did not seek a declaration of war against them. Since 9/11, American agents have captured and seized nearly 800 people from all over the globe in connection with the attacks, and now five have been charged with planning them.

[…]

The framers of the Constitution feared letting the president alone decide with whom we are at war, and thus permitting him to trigger for his own purposes the military tools reserved for wartime. They also feared allowing the government to take life, liberty or property from any person without the intercession of a civilian jury to check the government’s appetite and to compel transparency and fairness by forcing the government to prove its case to 12 ordinary citizens. Thus, the 5th Amendment to the Constitution, which requires due process, includes the essential component of a jury trial. And the 6th Amendment requires that when the government pursues any person in court, it must do so in the venue where the person is alleged to have caused harm.

Numerous Supreme Court cases have ruled that any person in conflict with the government can invoke due process — be that person a citizen or an immigrant, someone born here, legally here, illegally here or whose suspect behavior did not even occur here.

Think about it: If the president could declare war on any person or entity or group simply by calling his pursuit of them a “war,” there would be no limit to the government’s ability to use the tools of war to achieve its ends. We have a “war” on drugs; can drug dealers be tried before military tribunals? We have a “war” on the Mafia; can mobsters be sent to Gitmo and tried there? The Obama administration has arguably declared “war” on Fox News. Are Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and I and my other colleagues in danger of losing our constitutional rights to a government hostile to our opinions?

I trust not. And my trust is based on the oath that everyone who works in the government takes to uphold the Constitution. But I am not naive. Only unflinching public fidelity to the Constitution will preserve the freedoms of us all.

Snowe Games — Steve Coll at The New Yorker has a suggestion on how to get to 60 votes for the healthcare bill.

Phase One: Reflect deeply on what Maine needs. A particle accelerator? A jobs-creating air-defense headquarters for Northern Command, to guard against possible Icelandic air force depredations? New Coast Guard facilities, to protect our shores from unscrupulous Malaysian fishing trawlers? Simultaneously, inventory and review all of the Connecticut earmarks for Homeland Security spending put through by Senator Lieberman during the time the Democratic Party has indulged his tenure as chairman of the Homeland Security Committee. Consider in particular how spending now located in Connecticut by Lieberman’s patronage might be relocated to Maine, and redoubled in scale—all for the good of the citizenry and the improved defense of the nation, of course.

Phase Two (overlapping): Negotiate simultaneously but separately with Lieberman and Snowe about how far they will go to accommodate the Obama Administration’s vision of the final health-reform bill, particularly on the public option. Skillfully but carefully introduce to Snowe a conditional vision of Maine’s rewards. Suggest more explicitly than ever that she leave the Republican Party, become an Independent, caucus with the Democrats, and reap during 2010, at least, something on the order of thirty per cent more political and patronage reward than has been available to Lieberman.

Phase Three: If Snowe agrees to an acceptable public-option provision, immediately stop negotiating with Lieberman and go to the Senate floor with a bill. Let him vote no. Afterward, return to him humbly, soliciting his wish list. Flatter and negotiate with him during the treacherous conference phase that follows. Take care to hold Snowe close; reach out to Collins.

When the final bill is passed, with some public option intact, graciously invite Lieberman to the White House signing ceremony. All the while, think about when and at what restaurant, over what vintage, Harry Reid wishes to deliver the news to Lieberman that, with the challenges ahead in 2010, the Senate’s Democratic caucus has decided to move on; Lieberman’s service as a committee chairman (for which his colleagues all remain grateful and admiring, etc.) will no longer be required.

Doonesbury — Speaking of bookstores….

Short Takes

The train wreck in Russia that killed a number of people is blamed on a bomb.

Iran’s parliament is digging in for less cooperation on nuclear issues.

One of the first goals of the Marines in Afghanistan will be a Taliban bastion.

A report from the Senate says Osama bin Laden was “within our grasp.”

Switzerland votes on banning more minarets.

Honduras goes ahead with the presidential election.

Tiger Woods is keeping quiet about his car wreck.

They’re not cheap: the party crashers will talk… for a price.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Rove: Deficits Matter… Now

Karl Rove has suddenly seen the light about deficit spending… or at least he does now that he’s got his gig at the Wall Street Journal and can tut-tut about how bad it is that the government is in debt and is likely to incur some more.

Last year, Mr. Obama made fiscal restraint a constant theme of his presidential campaign. “Washington will have to tighten its belt and put off spending,” he said back then, while pledging to “go through the federal budget, line by line, ending programs that we don’t need.” Voters found this fiscal conservatism reassuring.

However, since taking office Mr. Obama pushed through a $787 billion stimulus, a $33 billion expansion of the child health program known as S-chip, a $410 billion omnibus appropriations spending bill, and an $80 billion car company bailout. He also pushed a $821 billion cap-and-trade bill through the House and is now urging Congress to pass a nearly $1 trillion health-care bill.

Oddly enough, deficits didn’t really matter to Mr. Rove and his bosses during the Bush administration. It didn’t matter that we went into two wars and added prescription benefits to Medicare without paying for any of them. As Steve Benen points out, we are now adding to the deficit because of the damage left behind.

The stimulus was necessary because Rove’s old boss left the president an economy on the verge of wholesale collapse. S-CHIP expansion was necessary because Rove’s old boss rejected a bipartisan measure to help low-income children go to the doctor. Rescuing the auto industry was necessary because it was a continuation of Rove’s old boss’ policy and the nation couldn’t afford to cut off American manufacturing at the knees at the height of the recession. Cap and trade, Rove neglected to mention, wouldn’t add to the deficit, and is necessary because Rove’s old boss ignored the climate crisis for eight years. The health care reform bill would cut the deficit significantly, and is necessary because Rove’s old boss fiddled while the dysfunctional health care system got worse.

The vast majority of the deficit can be laid directly at the feet of the Bush administration. That’s not political rhetoric or finger pointing; that’s a fact.

What it comes down to is that, to Karl Rove, deficits under Republican presidents are necessary to do the really important things, like give tax breaks to the people who least need them and start wars against countries who didn’t attack us, but deficits under Democratic presidents are evil, profligate, and will burden future generations. Got it.

They didn’t call Karl Rove “Turd Blossom” for nothing.

Short Takes

Money talks to the the Taliban.

At least 35 people have been killed in a train derailment in Russia.

The IAEA has rebuked Iran for their stand against nuclear inspection, and Russia and China are on board with that.

Tiger Woods is apparently okay after a scary car accident near his home in Orlando.

Thanksgiving was really turkey day — as in Turkey Point — for a boatload of Cubans.

Photo Op — the party-crashers could get some legal bills.

Friday, November 27, 2009

Draft Deferment

Via Shakesville, some folks are trying to get former Vice President Dick Cheney to run for president in 2012.

The organization – “Draft Dick Cheney 2012” – launched on Friday, and unveiled their new Web site. Their aim: To convince the former vice president to seek the Republican presidential nomination in the next race for the White House.

“The 2012 race for the Republican nomination for President will be about much more then who will be the party’s standard bearer against Barack Obama, the race is about the heart and soul of the GOP,” said Christopher Barron, one of the organizers of the Draft Cheney movement. “There is only one person in our party with the experience, political courage and unwavering commitment to the values that made our party strong – and that person is Dick Cheney.”

As Space Cowboy noted in the comments at Shakesville, “You do realize that if Cheney turns this down, he’ll continue to be a draft dodger.”

I think this, along with all the chatter about Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and Lou Dobbs running for president, really does prove that when a group of people is without a leader, they will listen to anyone with a microphone.

I Write Letters

After I posted about the irony of Blade columnist Jack Kelley calling the Obama administration “the most political administration in modern times,” I boiled it down to a letter to the editor of The Blade. They ran it this morning.

Black Friday

After a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner last night, replete with some of the best turkey I’ve ever had and tasty side dishes (and, of course, the requisite political argument between a couple of brothers-in-law for the entertainment portion of the evening), it’s hard to imagine that I’m going to get up and go shopping the next day. So I’m not going to. I’m going to maintain my tradition of avoiding the shopping malls for holiday and Christmas shopping and instead do what I’ve done for the last ten years or so, and that’s do a lot of it over the internet or wait until the last minute and pick up some trinkets at Circle-K. Everyone can use a super-sized pack of AA batteries, right?

My favorite kind of shopping, though, is done in a bookstore. I can spend hours in one, especially one of those old-fashioned independent shops like Books and Books in Coral Gables that isn’t in the mall next to the Candle Factory, but a quiet place with row upon row of tables and shelves crammed with every sort of book covering every sort of topic from great literature to the last political tell-all to a field guide to the wild flowers of the Uintah Mountains. Some stores even provide comfortable chairs where you can sit and read the first chapter or two … or more … before making your purchase, and I remember places like The Tattered Cover in Denver where it was more like being in someone’s home. I marvel at the stunning variety of topics, the glorious colors of the large picture books, the hundreds of titles of new and old books, the names of authors I remember from years ago and those I’ve never heard of. As an aspiring author it gives me great hope to see that even in our age of virtual books on Kindle, there is still a vast number of books that are printed on paper. (It also tells me that if I should ever get something of mine published, who would ever find it in the vast ocean of print? Sometimes I wonder why a publisher will print crap like The Da Vinci Code while my Great American Novel can’t get beyond the hard drive. Sigh.)

For the sake of the economy and our eventual recovery from the Great Recession, I hope that the retailers and the shopping malls do a lot of business this year, and I hope that everyone finds the perfect gift(s) for the people they’re buying them for…and themselves. As for me, I’ll be at the bookstore. Alert Capital One.

Short Takes

China says it will try to cut back on carbon emissions.

“Dead End” — The IAEA probe into Iran’s nuclear plans has hit an impasse.

According to a report, the Irish Catholic Church hid reports of abuse for years.

There was a magnitude 5.5 earthquake in Venezuela.

Queen Elizabeth II is in Trinidad for talks on climate change. (Plus, it’s a nice time to visit the tropics.)

Someone at the Secret Service has a lot of explaining to do.

This time it will be Cash for Kelvinators.

Want to buy some fish?

Friday Blogaround

If you’re not running out to go shopping, check out the writing of the LC for the week.

– A Blog Around The Clock: it’s not too late to submit to OpenLab 2009.
– archy: how to avoid 2012.
– Bark Bark Woof Woof: Charlie Crist’s choices.
– Bloggg: crashing the party.
– Dohiyi Mir: bolt the door, Mercy.
– Echidne Of The Snakes: crude humor.
– Florida Progressive Coalition Blog: that purity test.
– Left Is Right: Palin’s America.
– Pen-Elayne on the Web: A Thanksgiving tradition… and a Thanksgiving blogaround to beat them all!
– Rook’s Rant: a swing of the pendulum.
– rubber hose: reality (tv) is the real threat.
– Scrutiny Hooligans: the fear of voters.
– Steve Bates: Newt and the First Amendment.
– Stupid Enough Unexplanation: did the Mormons cave in to the Radical Homosexual Agenda?
– WTF Is It Now?? – thanks, guize.

A little mayo and cold sliced turkey on whole wheat make a great sandwich.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Happy Thanksgiving

There are many ways of saying thanks; a smile, a kind word, helping an elderly lady tote her groceries out to the car, and so on. And there’s also the thanks in an inward way – of appreciating what you have and have achieved in spite of the hurdles. My friend Brian reminded me that it’s been six years since he bought his house in a historic neighborhood in Albuquerque, and I remembered that back on Thanksgiving 2004 he had shared with me the journey that got him there.

A year ago today at two in the afternoon, I met Laura, the realtor, at the title company, and we closed on the house. Laura had forgotten the key, so after the closing she drove back to her office to pick it up, and I headed down to the house. I remember standing on the porch waiting for her thinking “I can’t believe it’s mine.” When she showed up she opened the door, said “Here you go!” and handed me the key. “Go in, walk around, get used to the idea,” she said, and after adding if I had any questions or needed anything, etc, she drove off. I remember wandering through there in the late afternoon light, opening closet doors and cabinets, getting out the tape measure and trying to figure what would go where and how it would look. And I remember thinking “I can’t believe I pulled this off.” Three years earlier I was unemployed and down to my last couple of hundred dollars. When I did get a job it was for a whopping ten bucks an hour, and I spent the next year playing catch up on the bills, floating checks and robbing Peter to pay Paul.

As I stood there in the living room, looking out across the porch to the street, I realized once again the power of determination. Twenty plus years before when I decided to become a paramedic, everyone said “You’ll never do it.” Everyone except my mom, and I think she was just programmed to be encouraging…I don’t think she really believed it either. For two years I worked like a dog, 56-hour weeks at the ambulance company, 16 hours a week in the classroom, and 24 in clinical settings, and I did it. I aced the final and the state exam, and I got the job I wanted with what was then Broward EMS. Twelve years later, stuck in the depths of depression, I decided I was sick of living that way and was going to change it…and I did. I found the right guy, followed his advice, stuck with it, and came out of the experience a completely different person, and better for it. And then in the last few years I went from unemployed, broke, and discouraged to having a decent job and owning a house – admittedly a small house – but a place I can call my own, and do with as I please. Everyone said “On your salary? Get real!” but I looked around, read up on what was out there, researched the market, went into it with realistic expectations, and found the best deal for me.

So the question now is…where do I focus that energy next? And what will come of it when I do? I’m not sure, but I do know I’m going to enjoy discovering the answers!

Happy Thanksgiving!

— Brian

This is a holiday that is different. It’s not a commemoration of an event, like the Fourth of July, nor does it honor a specific group, like Memorial Day, nor does it honor a person. We’ve come up with the Pilgrims and the big dinner, I think, in order to attach a foundation to it (and sell a lot of food…again with the food), but in reality it’s a time of reflection to look back over the year and realize that for all the worries and struggles we have, that it’s important, like Brian says, to look at how blessed – in all senses of the word – we are and pause long enough to appreciate it.

If I started making a list of the things I am grateful for, it would get long and probably a touch maudlin. So let me just say thanks out loud here…and I hope you, Dear Reader, share my thoughts and best wishes.

Short Takes

How many troops will NATO send to Afghanistan?

President Obama will stop off in Copenhagen to talk about controlling emissions.

The Philippines massacre suspect has surrendered.

There was good economic news yesterday: jobless claims were down in October, and consumer spending was up.

Out on bail — Roman Polanski gets house arrest in his chalet.

Who asked you? — The Secret Service is investigating how a reality-show couple managed to crash the state dinner at the White House.