With the end of the year soon upon us, the economy is in the toilet, everyone from Banks to Automotive companies are asking for bailouts, and American's are loosing their jobs at a record pace, it's time to look back at 2008 one more time.
This year has been an interesting one. It is the last year in the eight years of the Bush Administration (depending on your political leanings, one can look at that in one of two ways). Election 2008 lead to the election of Barack Obama and Joe Biden to be the President and Vice-President of the United States. For the first time since Clinton/Gore I finally picked the winner in a presidential race. (I'm going to forget about what happened to Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry.) We may soon be able to call Al Franken, "Senator Al Franken." Gee, that now sounds really funny, and it is not a joke. Now might be a good time for me to read Al Franken's book, the one that I have had sitting on my bookshelf since last year. As for the Obama/Biden presidency, I'm glad to see a guy like Biden as the VP, the man has been through so much in his life and his career in the senate that he deserves it.
The Holiday season has been tough on almost all Americans this year. Every week we read more and more about the bad economy. Some of our friends and family have become part of the unemployment statistics and companies are cutting back on benefits. Every time we as Americans go through a tough economic time in our lives we come back with a stronger economy, we need to innovate our way out of this economic muck, we need to do what we do best, invent, create, and build the technologies that will lift us out of our troubled times. We need employers to value education, we need them to stop outsourcing American jobs, we need to provide incentives to the American workforce. Only then will we climb out of the deep hole that we are in.
Just as we finish the presidential election, Californians will soon be preparing to return to the polls for statewide races. With the election in 2010 and the state party conventions just around the corner, names are being thrown about for Governor and Attorney General. In the Governor's race the names of Brown, Poizner, Newsome, and Feinstein are being tossed around. While in the Attorney General's race the names of Harris, Liu, and Kelly are starting to crop up. Harris, the San Francisco DA would be an interesting choice, but would she play well in Conservative areas and the relative newcomer of Kelly, the Cheif Privacy Officer for Facebook, might make this race interesting. Kelly could leverage his experience with the social networking site to build a social network for his campaign that might be similar to the one established for the Obama Campaign. And we all know what happened with Obama...just saying.
So I bid 2008 a fond farewell and don't let the door hit you on the way out. I've got Jan. 20, 2009 circled on my calender, I'm putting the peddle to the floor after the holidays, and I can't wait to see where life takes me in 2009.
So to all my readers: Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year from the MDLU!