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A good read – Gloating?? Maybe!!
By fred | December 2, 2008
I am inserting this in a little used catagory I set up many months ago called ‘ARE WE IN RECESSION?’ Why I have no idea! Maybe to gloat a bit that I figured we were when a lot of folks did not seem to think we were. Actually it has little to do with that subject, except that Obama is getting his troops ready to battle the darn thing.
Well–the election is over. Was there blood in the streets? – as far as I am concerned the answer is yes. I got so pissed at several of my buddies, one a lady and a guy, both I have known since the mid 1940′s
– my high school days, that I told them off in no uncertain terms then eliminated them from my e-mail list. I kept getting stuff from the lady a right wing racist if there ever was one, so I told her I never again wanted to hear from her, know of her, remember her, and other words of anger that to tell you the truth– I do NOT regret.
Funny after almost sixty years I had no indication that she had such strong racist views, willing to believe any lie that seemed to fit her small world, This after constantly telling her where to go to find the truth at FACTCHECK.ORG. Must be awful to have such hate in you, I even told her she should go to church and ask God if it was alright to hate so much. She had always professed being such a good Christian.
It has been weeks and weeks since then and I am still upset with her and my other former buddy – believing all the lies and garbage that was dumped on Obama by the right wing filth machine. Amazing, it did not work this time like it did when they spread filth about Kerry in the prior election, just goes to show that you can fool some of us Americans some of the time but not all of us Americans – all of the time. Folks got smart and did not listen to the filth.
I made an effort to be nice after the election, in fact I never once sent out a “I told you so!” to my bunch of Republican friends, an effort of will power that most of them still can’t believe.
I gotta say that most of them were not talking much before the election, several even voted for Obama that never voted Democratic before.
I have been kind of proud about not gloating, even if I wanted to really ‘stick it in’ a few old friends. In fact one of my old football buddies of 60 years ago sent me an e-mail wondering if I was still alive. He could not believe I wasn’t crowing like a rooster about Obama getting in.
Maybe I am trying to take a page from Obama’s book about trying to stay above it all! Highly unusual for thier old buddy Fred, I seem to have a reputation for telling it like it is, at least the way I see it.
So it’s over – so far it looks like our highly educated, massive IQ, brilliant new president in waiting is doing everything right. I note he is taking in a few of Clinton’s staff, hey, you may not like Clinton opening his zipper once too often (even if it was with a consenting lady) BUT he damn near balanced the budget, something no Republican has done in the last 60 or so years. Since I am no historian, that is as far back as my memory goes.
I hope to hell we give Obama time before getting on his back, it took the Republicans 8 years of spending like drunkin sailors to get us where we are– it may take more than that to get us out of the mess left for him to clean up. So let’s give the guy some leeway.
A good buddy sent the following, written by a far more astute writer than I am, I hope you will read it, a lighter bit of writing a fun read about this amazing man we have elected.
Your Uncle Fred
Wow! America is cool !
By Garrison Keillor
Nov. 12, 2008 |
Be happy, dear hearts, and allow yourselves a few more weeks of quiet exultation. It isn’t gloating, it’s satisfaction at a job well done. He was a superb candidate, serious, professorial but with a =2 0 flashing grin and a buoyancy that comes from working out in the gym every morning. He spoke in a genuine voice, not senatorial at all. He relished campaigning. He accepted adulation gracefully. He brandished his sword against his opponents without mocking or belittling them. He was elegant, unaffected, utterly American, and now (Wow) suddenly America is cool. Chicago is cool. Chicago!!!
We threw the dice and we won the jackpot and elected a black guy with a Harvard degree, the middle name Hussein and a sense of humor — he said, “I’ve got relatives who look like Bernie Mac, and I’ve got relatives who look like Margaret Thatcher.”
The French junior minister for human rights said, “On this morning, we all want to be American so we can take a bite of this dream unfolding before our eyes.” When was the last time you heard someone from France say they wanted to be American and take a bite of something of ours? Ponder that for a moment.
The world expects us to elect pompous yahoos and instead we have us a 47-year-old prince from the prairie who cheerfully ran the race, and when his opponents threw sand at him, he just smiled back. He’ll be the first president in history to look really good making a jump shot. He loves his classy wife and his sweet little daughters. He looks good in the kitchen. He can cook Indian or Chinese but for his girls he will do mac and cheese. At the same time, he knows pop music, American lit and constitutional law. I just can’t imagine anybody cooler. Look at a photo of the latest pooh-bah conference — the hausfrau Merkel, the big glum Scotsman, that goofball Berlusconi, Putin with his B-movie bad-boy scowl, and Sarkozy, who looks like a district manager for Avis — you put Barack in that bunch and he will shine.
It feels good to be cool and all of us can share in that, even sour old right-wingers and embittered blottoheads. Next time you fly to Heathrow and hand your passport to the man with the badge, he’s going to see “United States of America” and look up and grin. Even if you worship in the church of Fox, everyone you meet overseas is going to ask you about Obama and you may as well say you voted for him because, my friends, he is your line of credit over there. No need anymore to try to look Canadian.
And the coolest thing about him is the fact that back in the early ’90s, given a book contract after the hoo-ha about his becoming the First Black Editor of the Harvard Law Review (FBEHLR), instead of writing the basic exploitation book he could’ve written, he put his head down and worked hard for a few years and wrote a good book, an honest one, which, since his rise in politics, has earned the Obamas enough to buy a very nice house and put money in the bank. A successful American entrepreneur.
The last American president to write a book all by his lonesome self, I believe, was Theodore Roosevelt, who, on graduation from Harvard, wrote “The Naval War of 1812,” and in my humble opinion, Obama’s is the better book for the general reader, but you be the judge.
Our hero who galloped to victory has inherited a gigantic mess. The country is sunk in debt. The Treasury announced it must borrow $550 billion to get the government through the fourth quarter, more than the entire deficit for 2008, so he will have to raise taxes and not only on bankers and lumber barons. His promise never to raise the retirement age is not a good idea. Whatever he promised the Iowa farmers about subsidizing ethanol is best forgotten at this point. We may not be getting our National Health Service cards anytime soon. And so on and so on.
So enjoy the afterglow of the election a while longer. We all walk taller this fall. People20in Copenhagen and Stockholm are sending congratulatory e-mails — imagine! We are being admired by Danes and Swedes! And Chicago becomes the First City. Step aside, San Francisco. Shut up, New York. The Midwest is cool now. The mind reels. Have a good day.
(Garrison Keillor is the author of a new Lake Wobegon novel, “Liberty,” published by Viking.)
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