The party's over

Literally. My friends’ The Count and Countess of Atlanta and Myrtle Beach went home on Friday. It takes a full weekend to recover. They’re pure fun. Bring their own food to cook. Go a mile a minute–that’s either talking, walking or doing. Mr. and Ms Hyper found each other on Match.com. Their other role in my life is landlord in Myrtle Beach. Yes, it was them who introduced to my, I hope, future home.

When the Countess and I were younger we had some wild good times. Most will never be written about here. Especially the night we never made it to Paul Simon and Carrie Fisher’s New Years party–the Countess had a way famous boyfriend. Now we have PG fun. Instead of stilettos on New Years Eve we wear sneakers for walking to Central Park to see amazing fireworks. I was a laugh a minute in the old days. I can still be now, just not embarrassed in the morning.

I endorsed Barack Obama yesterday for many reasons. The most important being that he thinks for himself and will bring a much needed energy to The White House. I think of him as a Carter who understands and reacts with people.

Bill brought much to The White House. His wife won’t. I want a woman president very much. But Hilary is supposed to be my Senator and she’s been running for president since day one. I saw what she was doing in the beginning and approved. Once 9/11 happened she was supposed to represent my interests also

I’m not going to look up old facts. They’re here somewhere and easily found on the Internet. New York was in bad shape those first few years. Our promised 60 billion in federal aid didn’t arrive for three years. Hillary had clout. She could have made it happen.

Maybe prices wouldn’t have risen so fast. Maybe my maintenance which was $535 ten years ago wouldn’t be $1234.56 today. I kid you not. That’s slightly over two dollars a square foot and unacceptable to me. People are beginning to talk about the downturn in the housing market starting to affect Manhattan. Please let me get this renovation over with and sell. Today begins week ten.

OK, that’s how Hillary might have personally affected me–and when you’re spending your so called disposable income on maintenance, health insurance and food at Fairway, the cheap store for here, it frigging hurts. It’s stupid for me not to cash out even if I can’t make as much as I could last year.

Prices began rising very rapidly after 9/11. Most city residents incomes didn’t. That’s a sad fact. Manhattan might be an Island for the very rich now, but it has poor people, “middle class” and people who would feel affluent most other places in this country.

Hillary was our biggest hope. She had clout. Supposedly she had much experience from Bill’s years. Didn’t act as if she did. I will vote for her if I have to but it won’t be with enthusiasm.

There are more reasons I don’t like Hillary. She talked big talk when Bill was first president about health care but what has she been saying recently? It went from a crisis to an inferno.

I’m not as smart as Hillary. But I knew in 2002 she wasn’t really voting for a possibility of Bush maybe declaring war if needed. She was voting for war and going against the majority of her constituents in the process.

This sounds so old to me but…New York was attacked. New Yorkers wanted Bin Laden burned at a cross. New Yorkers didn’t want Iraq. It serves no purposed except to deploy too many people who should be home.

If a Senator doesn’t listen to her constituents in the biggest noisiest city in the country who is she going to listen to?

I want a leader who is going to listen to the people and I’m pretty sure that Obama will. I wish I were a resident of South Carolina now so I could vote in the primary. I might not be able to vote in any primary as New York has its late and that feels so wrong.

This is a new Millennium. Al Gore was cheated out of the opportunity to be the leader of the Millennium. That has personally hurt me for seven years. I can’t think of the “if onlys.”

I can and do think that Obama can begin to right the wrongs that have happened in this country.

I really was going to stay out of politics. How can any of us when intelligent teenagers won’t get involved in the political process because they see no hope?

Hope is what sustains us. Hope makes us get out of bed in the morning. Hope is the possibility of better times. That can’t be taken away from our teenagers. For they will retreat into virtual worlds and as much fun as they can be, they’re not half as much fun as the real world is to me.

Despite living in a construction site I had a great time this Thanksgiving through now as it was filled with people. Real people, real laughter, real food. We’re driving our teenagers into virtual worlds as we’re giving them no incentive to want to be part of the real world.

They see desolation. They see a President who wasn’t elected by the people the first time and possibly the second time. What are we supposed to say? That’s an anomaly? The next election will be honest? We don’t know that.

I’m proud to be an American and always have been. That pride doesn’t change because we have a government that’s the joke of the world. It does get diminished a bit.