The Happiest Season!

 

 

"At Christmastime, we seemed to be concerned about everything holiday - that is, except for the real reason of Christmas..."

As we enter the Yuletide season, everyone is either in a shopping frenzy or still indigested from this year's very late Thanksgiving. It is going to be tough, but many are committed to getting the outside lights up, decorating the inside of the house, shopping, baking, more shopping and ...Whew! It is chaos, but we seem to love getting into it every year.

So in this time of consumerism and busyness, I guess that once again I will be "Mr. Dark Cloud". For the purpose of this posting, I will address only the secular nature of what we have done to Christmas. In the hustle and bustle of Thanksgiving morphing into December, we seem to have forgotten some of our huge, festering sores that have not been dealt with.

• China - What the what? Is this any way for our favorite banker to behave? A territory dispute in the furthest reaches of the Western Pacific? We have taken this threat so seriously, we have told our airliners to vector away from the disputed area. This one is worth watching.
• Debt - Through the magic of Jack Lew, our Debt Clock was stuck on five minutes to midnight for weeks and weeks. Then all of a sudden, it came back to life! It is now over $17.2T and growing. The debt ceiling and the expiration of the CR will again be reached shortly after the new year. Unfunded liabilities are over $100T and growing. Where are we on this most critical item? Nobody seems to know. Worse than that, few seem to care.
• Snowden - Rumors have been circulating that our modern day Benedict Arnold has a "Armageddon" disclosure ready to be released. I don't know how he could do more damage than what has already been done. It is too bad our relationship with the Russians is so tepid. It would have been nice to have SOMEONE with credibility ask the Russians to pressure Mr. Snowden to behave.
• Scandal Palooza - To paraphrase a famous Star Wars line, "Move along. These are not the droids you are looking for." I guess closure has become a dirty word these days. Heck, we still can't get straight answers on Fast and Furious, and most of us KNOW who was responsible for that mess. The American people are the stake holders, the customers, the ones paying the bills. Lets see some action on all the open items before we get into 2014.

Again, I am sorry I had to break into our holiday hustle and bustle with an update on the sorry state of our nation. In the world of reality, old business is always discussed and dispensed with prior to entertaining new business discussions or initiatives. However, in the world of community organizing, I guess that is not the case.