Merry Christmas Open Thread

 

"Father Christmas" - The Kinks

(Seems to be the Christmas song that best captures the zeitgeist.)

Happy holidays to one and all.  As the year winds down I wanted to thank all of you for reading and especially those of you who have commented -- you are frequently the best reason to stop by here.  I was going to name names, but then feared leaving someone out and causing inadvertent offense -- but you know who you are.  It's nice to be part of a community that ranges as far as the jungles of Brazil and the cities of Australia.  I've also greatly enjoyed having had the opportunity to meet and break bread (or clink glasses) with a number of you -- big bad wolf, kathy a. Jeanne Marie, Mandos, T.R. Donohue -- during the year.  As pleasant as virtual community can be, there is really nothing quite like seeing people face to face.  I hope I get the chance to meet more of you during 2012.

As for 2011, it had a lot of bleak moments, but I am hopeful that we are seeing a little bit of a turning tide both politically and economically.  If things continue to perk up in the economy (let's hope Europe muddles through), then I think the 2012 election could have a respectable outcome -- one that will keep the White House and Senate in Democratic control and stymie the worst impulses of the right.  And hopefully we will take back the House and send Scott Walker packing as well.  It's uphill on several of these fronts, but doable.  We all need to be clear that whatever our frustrations, it remains vitally important to win these electoral battles.

Whatever happens, I am looking forward to sharing it with you.  In the meantime, I hope you all have great holidays and a safe, healthy, and happy New Year.   

Comments

[beckya57]

Right back atcha, Sir C, & I hope to meet you sometime.

[Gene O'Grady]

2011 was not a good year, barring my wife and I driving across country (liberated by a walker and a handicapped parking permit), but for whatever reason I have it in mind that 2012 will be better.

Kale Kyristougenou, or whatever.

[kathy a.]

wonderful holidays to you all.

[nancy]

Sir C , and the rest of you -- thank you for your gift of an oasis of intelligence, decency, care and wit. it's a lovely rarity these days. cheers.

[kn]

This blog space has been a kind of refuge to me, it can get a bit oppressive living entirely within a culture that you don't quite understand and that can't even imagine your own background. So the vestiges of familiarity that I can pick up here through the insights and erudition of others is a welcome kind of relief or reprieve.

Thanks for the nod Sir C. about the jungles. One of the things I have come to appreciate about this blog is that it is a small window on what Washington is really like. That is a valuable insight. I hope the contrast I have been able to provide has also been of some value.

Best wishes to all and to all a good night.

[Emma]

Christmas is all over here, with the kids asleep and the adults tipsy, and about to retire. Thanks Sir Charles for keeping the blog going -- I enjoy stopping by. Tomorrow the summer begins in earnest, and Friday we head off to the north coast for three weeks. My zucchinis and pumpkins are thriving, and the rain has made everything shine. Look after yourselves in all that snow and ice.

[low-tech cyclist]

Merry Christmas, freaks!

[paula]

All good wishes to such good people. An oasis, indeed! We're in DC right now but will let you know in advance, Sir C, in case you have time for a beer. Joyeux,j
Joyeux...

[paula b]

In advance the next time we're in town,that is.
Like you, I have hopes 2012 is good for everyone but the wingers. May they stew in their own juice. Can I say that on Christmas? Cheers everyone, paula

[Davis X. Machina]

Benedictus nos benedicat.

[Emma]

If you have absent loved ones, like I do (my 21year old twin sons are together in Europe this year) this song will make you tear up, in a good way. An antipodean Christmas song.
Damn. I can't copy the URL on this device. Well, google Tim Minchin, White wine in the sun. It's a masterpiece, all six minutes of it.
Be well everyone.

[Corvus9]

Merry Christmas, everybody!

[Sir Charles]

becky,

I hope to get a chance to meet you as well. I hope my travels take me out that way at some point. Obviously if you come to DC let me know.

Gene,

Hope you have a better 2012 too. And good health. The older I get the less cliches about the blessings of good health seem tired.

kathy,

Happy holidays to you and your family.

nancy,

Thanks. I am glad you found the place and joined in.

KN,

I am glad to have you on board as well. You provide a pretty unique perspective on things that I quite enjoy. Hope you are feeling better and that your new year is a good one.

Emma,

I'm sorry you couldn't have the whole clan gathered, but I guess that is the nature of things as they get older. I feel a little bad about not having been a my folks for a while.

Enjoy your summer. I'm a bit envious as I think about bundling up to walk Stanley. Although so far it's been a pretty mild winter here.

paula,

Definitely let me know if you are coming to town some day. I'd love to grab a beer.

DXM,

Merry Christmas. And thanks for the Latin. It classes the joint up.

Corvus,

Merry Christmas to you buddy.

[kathy a.]

here is the link that nancy meant to send. very sweet!

my daughter, she has missed some holidays away at school, and even christmas when she was in japan. my rebel son -- who once promised never to speak to us ever again -- he has not spent a thanksgiving or christmas away from us ever, and he delights in seeing as much family as possible at all plausible holidays.

yesterday and today both were there for gatherings with cousins, aunts and uncle, even my fabulous aunt. sweet sweet sweet.

[KN]

SC - pleased to hear it. Counter intuitive as it may be for things such as dengue you can actually get better treatment from a jungle clinic that sees this stuff all the time. I am a lot better.

I am severely conflicted over this project coming to an end. I am quite sure for example that all funding for further analysis of our significant collection of samples will end. That is a big let down, I could go on working on this trove for another decade. On the other hand now is just about the worst possible time to stop working on this thing. I don't know if we have defined it or not. Then again, I am ready to get out of here. I have adapted to it, but that was compulsory. I'd like to sample what used to be normal life again for a few months and see if I come to miss the jungle. And ten finally, I come up against the piecemeal picture I have of the overall society there, and I wonder if I will be able to adjust to it.

Within memory of many here Brasil was a military dictatorship. As a rule people do not pay any attention to what is happening in the US with the exception of sports. But I can say with certitude that they have paid more attention since Obama was elected than they did before.

So I am looking to the future, I think I would like to extend my stay another month or two to tidy up some loose ends and make sure I have shipped myself a few core boxes to work on in the future. Not to mention that I would prefer to hit the temperate climes when the days are getting longer and warmer instead of in the depths of winter.

[low-tech cyclist]

We fly back to Maryland from Florida today. Been nice to see the in-laws, but ready to be in my own bed.

My wife put together an absolutely excellent Christmas dinner. Her aunt, who has traditionally handled the bulk of the cooking, was impressed enough to say she was passing the torch.

(The aunt had been in the hospital, got released on Christmas Eve, showed up for Christmas dinner, needed the paramedics to be called for her about the time we were serving dessert, and was taken back to the hospital, where she is as I type this. She *ought* to be ready to hand off responsibility for the holiday meals, but stubbornness runs in my wife's family, very much including her aunt.)

Other than shipping the aunt back to the hospital, it was a successful Christmas. The 4 year old is having a good time with his toys, and asked a lot of questions about Santa. I have a feeling he'll be poking holes in the logic of Santa by the time he's 6.

[kathy a.]

KN, glad you are feeling better. sounds like you are working through a huge transition.

ltc -- wonderful holiday, except the part about the paramedics. my own kids figured out santa very young, but pretended to believe until well into their teens -- they didn't want to mess up a good thing. ;)

whoops -- in my last comment, i linked a video that emma meant to send, not nancy. sorry!

[oddjob]

Food for thought.

[Paula B]

OJ--If you consider the alternative, the use of drones may be spooky but also may save more civilian lives than conventional or even urban warfare. What style of killing is acceptable? To me, none, but I guess some people see good killing in the name of [whatever], and bad.

[oddjob]

I agree, but there's a cost in corrosion to our laws & constitution when the executive reaches out in a way that blurs formerly clear distinctions between what is legal and what is not.

[Sir Charles]

oddjob and Paula,

I think that the article presumes that absent drones there would be no military strikes against al Qaeda targets. I think this is incorrect -- see e.g. Clinton's cruise missile attacks on sites in Afghanistan and Sudan in the late 1990s. (The one in Afghanistan apparently came close to killing bin Laden by tracking his cell phone location.)

I think drones pose some strange issues, but I think the claims that they are uniquely capable of causing possible death or injury to civilians is incorrect. Cruise missiles and conventional air strikes are cruder means that were employed before, often with worse results.

I do not think that you would see any American president at this point declare al Qaeda targets as off limits regardless of the means at his/her disposal. And I think the contention that such strikes are illegal is not necessarily correct.

[oddjob]

But your stance blurs a former clear distinction when it comes to American citizens and you know that. When the president can take someone's life at the blink of an eye despite the target possibly having constitutional rights that prevent the president from taking such action you can't right the wrong after the fact.

I'm not saying there's no value to using drones or that doing so is necessarily wrong (I would never say that because I think it's a demonstrably false assertion), but I also don't think we've done enough thinking about where such practices can take us as a country. During our lifetimes if we've learned nothing else at all we've learned repeatedly that it's not wise to trust any one president to do the right thing as we don't pay attention to what he's doing.

[Sir Charles]

oddjob,

I wasn't addressing the al-Awlaki situation specifically as I thought the post was more about the drone war generally and the Obama Administration's aggressive use of the technology.

For reasons I have expressed here before I thought that al-Awlaki was a legitimate target although I understand that this is not a postion with which many people on the left are comfortable. And yes, it is a potnetially slippery slope, although the circumstances were such in his case that I think they are unlikely to be a common occurrence.

I think it is indisputable that an American citizen who took the field of battle for a foreign power in a war setting would be a legal target for lethal force. American citizens who are present in al Qaeda training or operational areas do not strike me as in a meaningfully different position even if AQ is not a classic state actor.

[oddjob]

yes, it is a potnetially slippery slope

Thanks. That's why this is food for thought (regardless of the details of al-Awlaki's death).

[KN]

Far more troubling for me are the actions of government officials at much lower levels that trample obviously constitutional behavior using methods that are plainly intended to intimidate. AQ does not pose an existential threat to the United States. Nor does a groundswell of a few tens of thousands of individuals who by virtue of their persistence and mistreatment manage to change the narrative from the red herring of deficits to the very real and ominous problem of oligarchic hegemony.

Does the electorate have a long enough attention span to actually carry the groundswell until the next election? I don't know, but I do think that election will be historic in terms of how the next decade or more is played out. Regretably, though there should be no uncertainty about next year's outcome, there is, due to the fact that the whole electoral system has become a target of that tiny minority that owns damn near everything.

But most worrying of all is the apparent erosion of the populace's ability to recognize and react to what is going on around them. And to some extent the reversal of roles. The populace appears now to demand that the foremost requirement of leadership is a kind of celebrity. The onus is on the candidate to be the brightest and shiniest object, when it should be upon the electorate to choose wisely between candidates of reasonably equal merit, instead of between competence demonstrated and a collection of nutjobs.

There is another point of view that I think merits some attention, what does the rest of the world think? Talk of "globalization" has been overwhelmed by the background noise while it continues to play out. My impression, imperfect though it most surely is, is that if the U.S. does something blindingly stupid, like elect a republican Senate but re-elect Obama, there will be a shift in attention away from the US and towards the EU or in some cases, China. Brasil is a good example of this teeter-totter. It could easily go either way. If republicans were to win the trifecta ... or rather steal it, I am not sure what would happen here in Brasil, but it would be something consequent to a sense of general consternation.

BTW I only just noticed the Father Chirstmas heading, duh! Here they call me Papa Noel because I have white hair and a white beard, but I am not very fat. And not exactly jolly.

Fiesta -