Author: David S. White

Just when Republicans thought it
was safe and that no more Governors would be imploding for a while, Sarah Palin
literally brought the house down on the 233^rd anniversary of the
Declaration of Independence.  If
you still haven’t gotten your arms around her Resignation Speech, you can read
it in the quiet of your own home by clicking here.

If you can figure out what Palin said
and, more importantly, why she actually resigned, based on the words that she
used in her speech, you are far better at the interpretation of seemingly
absurd thoughts vocalized all at once than I. 

Is there another shoe to fall in
Palin’s world?  Does she know
something that the rest of us don’t? 
Is there an indictment, scandal, something else imminently horrible,
waiting in the wings to surprise us all and justify her abdication?  I sincerely doubt it.

While all eyes were firmly focused on Iran’s heavy-handed, internal crackdown; North Korea’s increasingly belligerent, attention-seeking, sabre-rattling; deaths of celebrities galore, and; the continued squirming of the Governor whose heart was broken in Argentina, something new in somewhere new reared its head again. But this time, with a twist. Sunday morning Talking Heads TV was interrupted abruptly by breaking news of a coup in Honduras.

It seems the sitting President of Honduras was kidnapped and spirited out of the country overnight – by the Honduran military. The same Honduran military which some 500 US troops that we have stationed in Honduras are there to teach and instruct on civil ways to handle political issues, crowd control and other useful tactics.

They are dropping like flies lately – promising Republicans from the national scene, that is. As one after another falls victim to the vicissitudes of marital infidelity, bathroom encounters and other tawdry gossip column details, the reference to the Circular Firing Squad, which Democrats used to have a lock on, must now officially be expanded to include both of America’s political parties. It is clear that neither has the monopoly on hypocrisy, smugness, arrogance, or stupidity now.

Before I continue in this vein, let me make clear that I am a political agnostic – I believe in political parties, I just haven’t found one that covers all my bases – some might say that I am socially liberal and fiscally conservative, but, this is not about me. I have written before for F&HD on the subject of America’s dire need for a viable third party for the 21st Century. The thought popped into my head again after watching Gov. Sanford set new records for the meaning of “off the reservation,” and how not to handle one’s extracurricular love life in that televised press conference of dizzying insanity and abject stupidity that we were all treated to this week.

As we watched the 12th Century battle the 21st Century in Iran over last weekend, one thing became startlingly clear. The revolutionary struggle going on in Iran right now is like none other than has ever been waged in the history of the human race, thanks to Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and all the other ways that people can communicate and share their ideas in Cyberspace. Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore.

As a person who is more tech savvy than many of my generation who cut their teeth while growing up watching ‘Howdy Doody’ on small, black and white TV’s in the 50’s, I honestly could not figure out what Twitter was for, in all its ‘140 characters or less’ glory, until Iran erupted following their clumsily rigged elections over the last couple of weeks. Now I get it. YouTube and Facebook make more sense to me now too.

As one wag put it, the Obama Administration’s new regulatory scheme to avoid future threats of financial system meltdowns which will be overseen by the Fed is like giving your teenaged son a new Corvette to drive right after he wrecked the family station wagon. Yes, the same Fed who presided over the early 2000’s era of easy NINJA (no income; no job; no assets) loan money and super-low interest rates, which helped bring about the near destruction of the US and indeed the World’s financial system last Fall, will now protect us against – what else? – future destruction of the US and World financial system.

What’s wrong with this picture? Well, there will be some kind of Consumer Protection oversight agency and/or Czar. Also, the sham of letting the woefully understaffed, underfunded, and grossly out-gunned Office of Thrift Supervision pretend to oversee global giants like AIG while they merrily traded absurdly risky incredibly overly-leverage, exotic financial instruments (yes, the ones that nobody understands but that sold like hotcakes in the mad frenzy of just a few years ago) will be no more. But, is this the kind of regulation that we need to stop the nonsense of the last 18 months from ever happening again?

We know only one thing for certain about history – that historians will write it. What they will write about periods of turbulence in American and World history (some would say it is the same subject over the last century), that’s another matter entirely. Nobody knows how historians will view 2008-2009 and the great economic upheaval, which is not done upheaving yet, not by a longshot.

I grew up staring at a bookshelf filled all the way across with my Uncle Teddy’s books, each personally autographed to me, starting back before I could read, but, they were one of the first things where I worked out the letters to read words that I could pronounce. Teddy did that for my Dad and his other brother and sister, and for me and all the other nieces and nephews.

(Theodore H. White, wrote The Making of the President series, tracking nearly 20 years of American Presidential campaigns, after beginning his career as the Time/Life correspondent in World War II-torn China, which produced his early landmark book: Thunder Out of China)

What would Teddy White, whom many say invented modern political journalism, say about what we have been living through these past 17 months?

Just when Chrysler was on its way into the loving arms of Italian automaker, Fiat, a funny thing happened in the Bankruptcy Court’s handling of the bullet train, breathtakingly fast bankruptcy that we had been promised. US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, in her role as 21st century circuit-rider, issued a stay, all on her very own, that brought it all to a crashing halt. Perhaps for a few days anyway.

Justice Ginsberg’s Order, issued minutes before a 4pm deadline, is breathtaking in its simplicity:

“ORDER
UPON CONSIDERATION of the application of counsel for the
applicants, and the responses filed thereto,
IT IS ORDERED that the orders of the Bankruptcy Court for the
Southern District of New York, case No. 09-50002, dated May 31 and June 1, 2009, are stayed pending further order of the undersigned or of the Court.”

Yes, one single Justice of the highest court in America has that kind of power.

Now that the previously “unthinkable” has happened and two of America’s Big Three Automakers are in Bankruptcy, with GM’s behemoth filing now dwarfing the relatively simple Chrysler “shotgun marriage” with Fiat, or whomever, a thought dawned on me, and, I suspect, on many others as well. Is the history and fate of GM a metaphor for the history and fate of California?

The parallels are striking. I moved to the Golden State in the early 70’s from New England, as so many before and after me from all over the world, because I grew up believing California was the Promised Land. The Beach Boys, surfing (and ‘surfer girls’!), much of 60’s music, revolutions in culture, dress, lifestyle, and let’s not forget the weather – compared to New England, it was like dying and being re-born to actually be able to go to the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day in a T-Shirt, while my compatriots were back home were out shoveling snow and cursing their frozen windshields; something I had only dreamed about while growing up.

We were told last week that, by early next week possibly Monday, General Motors would join Chrysler in filing for the protection of the Bankruptcy Court. This could result in the US Government owning some 60% of GM – hence, it could then be called “Government Motors,” as some wags are now saying.

That was before the current feeding frenzy. Then last Friday, we learned that, like buzzards following the dying animal in the desert waiting for it to collapse for dinner, late NY Times breaking news had it that: “Negotiators from General Motors, Magna International and the German government reached a tentative agreement on Friday that would have Magna take a major stake in G.M.’s European operations alongside a Russian bank, a person briefed on the talks said.”

How the Mighty Have Fallen.