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Posted January 2012My how time flies when you are having fun; it was almost four years ago that I offered members of the Capital Area Bar Association, then known as the Hinds County Bar Association, my Christmas gift list based on just exactly what Santa should give various high profile “leaders” based on what these recipients deserved and surely not what they wanted. Given my chronic lack of imagination and penchant for saying the same things over and over, I have decided to update the list while sharing some then and now moments for those who are still politically relevant as we face yet another national election. But first, let’s take a quick look back at 2007.
To put four years ago in context, recall that the 2008 Presidential election was still a year away. The Great Recession began in December 2007 while the sub-prime mortgage disaster had yet to fully manifest itself. Regrettably, the same economic mess still plagues the world economy even today. The United States was tiring of the Bush Administration’s unilateral and unpaid for military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, but could not have known that they would still be prosecuted unabated with even more borrowed money four years later. We were just beginning to hear about “Change We Can Believe In” from a little known Illinois state senator. John McCain was viewed as all but politically dead and almost nobody had ever heard of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, et al. Of course, we now all know how the election turned out along with a whole lot more.
My 2011 gift list is based on the events of the past four years and is offered with the fervent hope that we will even last another four years …
My 2011 gift list is based on the events of the past four years and is offered with the fervent hope that we will even last another four years given the current toxic political and economic climate. I hope the Mayan calendar, which is due to expire on December 21, 2012 is just an ancient version of religious seer Harold Camping’s missed end of the world predictions, but given the nutty world in which we live, it is just impossible to predict where we will be even a year from now.
Oh, and for those who pay undue attention (an ever diminishing minority) and ask why I would offer a Christmas list in early 2012 after the holidays have long passed, I would simply counter that in today’s America, January is the new December. For a country that failed to anticipate by a couple of decades the demographic disaster of retiring Baby Boomers as they began collecting their unfunded Social Security and Medicare benefits not to mention a federal government who turned a blind eye to Wall Street’s financial irresponsibility and were apparently convinced trillion dollar deficits were a perpetual solution to the country’s financial ills, I would say that I am right on target. And if that doesn’t float your boat, there is always the ubiquitous anthem of responsibility-free American young people, to wit: “My Bad.”
With that said, let’s review my 2007 list of “leaders” still relevant today with updated presents that Santa should bring them once the jolly old man scrambles his reindeer sometime around Valentine’s Day, which in today’s America represents yesteryear’s Christmas Day. (Note, most of these presents will be manufactured in Asia because the only thing we produce here are advertising circulars stuffed into the Clarion Ledger and other local papers aka America’s new Postal Service). These Christmas gifts will be imported to the Arctic Circle on Chinese Container Ships which may push the delivery date back to sometime in March. If so, I simply offer another insincere “My Bad’ mixed with a hearty Ho Ho Ho.
Maybe my Christmas Gift to the American People is one that should have been opened a long time ago. 2011 Same present. Sadly, some things don’t change
Oh yeah, I almost forgot — Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and My Bad!