2008 in Review - 2009 Predictions

Well friends, neighbors, and fan, it’s time to honor long-established tradition of the Trailing Edge and post my second annual summary of the past year and predictions for the coming year.

2008 – The Year In Review
As years go, 2008 really didn’t come up to expectations in many areas; on the other hand, it exceeded expectations in a few key areas. We probably shouldn’t go with averaging here. Despite the USA’s electoral trends (oh, happy day), I think we’ll have to give 2008 a split vote, grade-wise.

Low Scoring Events:
Gag orders continued to encourage countries receiving funds from the USA to modify their health education and healthcare to suit USA officials who are remarkably free of any need for that health education or healthcare.
Gag orders abounded requiring government agencies in the USA to edit scientific reports to remove any undesirable elements, such as research findings.
Gags and other public-spirited messages and candidates assured us all that the only thing to fear is anything that would cause us to vote for a Democrat.
Gag-reflex-inducing antics of confused Robins-definitely-not-of-the-Hood continued to include robbing from “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” (I read that somewhere) to feed the rich.
And so on.

High Scoring Events:
The electorate in the good old US of A finally got the idea that we could actually nominate a candidate and vote for him or her based on ridiculous criteria like merit, stated policies and plans, intelligence, and honesty, thus abandoning time-honored Christian values such as mud-slinging skill, folksy brazenness, homey ethnic humor, and word-twisting ability.
Three or more people in the national picture-window started talking about the nation’s health without focusing exclusively on our healthcare industry. I can’t remember who the third one was, but the then Health and Human Services Secretary Designate and then President-Elect spoke about improving our health without any sign of embarrassment, shame, or need to speak only in compound nouns. And some other public figure talked about health and forgot to add “care.” At least, I’m pretty sure someone else did.
In spite of – or perhaps in order to cope with – serious problems that seemed to compound faster than variable mortgage interest, people retained their sense of humor. For example, while President Elect Obama was saying that there should be only one president at a time, a frank member of the USA’s House of Representatives seemed to think “one” was an underestimate.
And so forth.

Looking Ahead
Now we get to the real issue. What’s going to happen from here to 2010? Well, friends and neighbors, the Trailing Edge is prepared to boldly go where anybody with a lick of sense would avoid like a banker’s solution to the housing bubble. Let the infinitives split where they may!

No, we’re not going to predict the choice of First Dog. This old Trailer isn’t that foolish.

Predictions for 2009 (trumpet fanfare, please)

Somebody will get the idea that if the President can speak in whole paragraphs, other politicians might try a diet of something other than empty sound bites. This new thought will give some politicians headaches, but others will try it anyway.

One or two more people in the USA – who are not public health professionals like me, with an ax to grind – will start talking about the nation’s health without a “care” in the word. Being extremists, they will want things like an infant death rate that’s as low as, say, Cuba’s. They may even think helping people find a job so they can afford safe housing and information so they eat healthy food might be a good approach to avoiding unnecessary healthcare costs. Of course, if this health promotion and disease prevention stuff catches on, there might be a run on our health information banks. Now that bailout would be interesting.

The Congress of the United States of America will avoid for as long as it possibly can making any decision about economic stimulus, bailout, or help for somebody other than the rich. Finally, the Republicans will suddenly realize that in trying to keep President Obama from looking good they’ve made themselves look so bad that they may have already lost the re-election they were so worried about. At that point, they will salvage the situation by taking credit for having forced those spend-thrift Democrats to come up with a really good law. Now, in the past, one party defined a really good law as one that makes the other party look bad. But this is one of those things President Obama wanted us to change as I recall. So let’s keep our fingers crossed about that. Better yet, let’s keep our fingers flexed so we can email our legislators, ask them to play nice, and remind them about who acutally does the voting.

The guy who’s wandering around the country talking to inner city youth about making money by going green – not Al Gore, the other one – will start to build a following of urban entrepreneurs who think there’s a chance that when he talks to them about green, it isn’t because he is interested in money laundering or got lost and wandered into the wrong room.

President Obama will continue to work steadily to undo the damage done in any prior administration that might have immediately preceded this one.

Sadly, it won’t all be beer and skittles. The economy will take more than this year to heal, and so, of course will war-torn regions around the world. The housing market and the banking systems will take longer than one year to revive, and so will our healthcare system. And we do have to talk about health with a care in the word, too, so we can fix it.

On the other hand, if the legislative branch of government in the US of A wakes up to its responsibility to all the voters, some of these ills may heal faster.

And if Rip Van Winkle kisses Sleeping Beauty awake and she and Snow White lead the Seven Mine Workers in forming a collective bargaining association, then Prince Charming can give up his flagrant lifestyle and ride off into the sunset with Little Red Riding Hood.

Or something like that.
Oops, please excuse that inadvertant eruption of cynicism.

Let’s keep working on the good hope. Baby steps, maybe, but with your help and mine 2009 will be a year of small improvements on all fronts.

And that’s really pretty good, as happy endings go.

Inauguration Day

Thank you, Mr. President
For having become you, Mr. President.
Our president.
It couldn’t have been easy,
Those many steps you took
Before the short, long walks you took today.

Thank you for understanding that our crisis isn’t
Simply in the interests of The Economy,
Solely about global warming,
Just about healthcare,
Merely about education,
Entirely about US.

Thank you for turning defeat into victory,
For turning victory into success,
For requrining success with honor.

Thank you, Mr. President
For an inaugural address that was everything I have come to expect from you
And more.
Thank you for your writing skill that gave us all those sentences
Full of meaning and promise,
For the meaning and promise you use that skill so well to express,
For giving us more than the sound-bite-sentence
Our broadcasters were waiting for.

I could cry today, Mr. President.
I didn’t cry when you were nominated, although many did.
We had not come far enough.
I didn’t cry when you were elected, although many more did.
Not far enough, still.
Today we have not yet come far enough.
But we will.
Today I cried for happy.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Sherry Spence
January 20, 2009