Summary: It’s too easy to let the years blur by. To help us remember and cherish 2012, post in the comments your favorite quotes from the 2012 news — and what 2012 event had the greatest long-term importance.
It’s a challenge to our readers! This could be interesting, but isn’t something I do well. Here are some suggestions to start the game.
(1) Two great quotes from today’s news
From the New York Post, 22 December 2012 — lots of quotes like this in 2012:
Legendary advertising guru Jerry Della Femina is the latest Hamptons fat cat to unload his East End spread at the precipice of the dreaded fiscal cliff. The flamboyant Madison Avenue guru has sold his 8,500-square-foot estate — the host of many legendary bashes — for $25 million, and blames his flight squarely on President Obama’s fiscal policies.
“I’m basically the loser in Obama’s class warfare. That’s what this boils down to. If Romney was elected, we would have had our parties in East Hampton this year. … I want the proceeds of this sale to go to my kids and my grandkids. I don’t want my money going to Obama, and that’s what’s going to happen in the New Year. That’s why I sold right now, that’s why I wanted to get this done.”
He purchased the home 35 years ago for a $3 million, and estimated that he invested roughly $6 million in bringing it to its current glory. “I still did pretty well,” Della Femina chuckled.
From Jon Hussman’s “Aspirin for a Broken Femur“, 24 December 2012 (He was Prof Economics at U MI, now runs the Hussman Funds):
Since 2009 … the broad U.S. economy has been dependent on perpetual support from massive federal deficits and unprecedented money creation. Meanwhile, Wall Street is content to ignore the extent of this support, and looks on every movement of the economy as a sign of intrinsic health – which is a lot like admiring the graceful flight of a dead parrot swinging by a string from the ceiling fan.
(2) My nominee for the most important story
2012 was just more of the same old same old. Trends in motion, stayed in motion.
Here’s a idea for the big one of 2012: the year the Republicans went mad. Or, perhaps, it was the year it became obvious to the rest of us. Or perhaps clear to the slow class among us (eg, moi). For an example see “Blues Cruise: Steaming past Guantánamo, en route to the Cayman Islands, a boatload of Republicans ponder the plight of a party at sea.”, Joe Hagan, NY Magazine.
(3) Off-topic: history on this day in 1972 that should not be forgotten
From Jared Bernstein’s blog:
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… after the arrests at the Watergate, Howard Hunt went back to his office in the White House — he still had access — and deposited a variety of Watergate and Plumbers materials into it. The safe was then opened by John Dean, who turned over what he thought was safe to the FBI investigators — and then put some of the materials into a sealed envelope and gave it to acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray.
Gray took the materials to his home in Connecticut, and around this time he decided to destroy it all.
Meanwhile, Dean had held on to Hunt’s incriminating notebooks, and Dean destroyed them, too, at about this time — after Hunt’s lawyers had let prosecutors know about them, at which point the prosecutors realized that they hadn’t been given all the evidence. Dean told the prosecutors that national security materials had been given to Gray, who denied receiving any of it.
The other event during this general time period happens because Nixon decides to replace Richard Helms at the CIA (he became ambassador to Iran). Helms, clearing out his files, took the photo of the Plumbers break-in at Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office and gave them to the Watergate prosecutors, who had no idea what they were — but did identify Gordon Liddy in one of them.
The cover-up, which had held so well through the election, was starting to cave in on multiple fronts. With the first criminal trial scheduled for the new year, the pressure was only increasing on everyone. And there was still no backup plan in case any part of their story collapsed.
For More Information — other posts about History
See the full listing at the FM Reference Page about History – economic, military and geopolitical.
Some lessons from history:
- From the 3rd century BC, Polybius warns us about demographic collapse, 11 June 2008
- President Grant warns us about the dangers of national hubris, 1 July 2008
- A lesson from the Weimar Republic about balancing the budget, 10 February 2010
- A great philosopher and statesman comments on the Bush-Obama tweaks to the Constitution, 10 October 2010 — by Edmond Burke
- We have trouble coping with our present because we’ve lost our past, 23 October 2010
- A top businessman and banker explains our political and economic challenges, 30 April 2011
- A warning from the past. Might the American Empire drag down America?, 4 August 2011
- Advice from one of the British Empire’s greatest Foreign Ministers, 18 November 2011 — by Lord Palmerston
- George Orwell sends us a note, giving some perspective on our situation, 22 January 2012
- Lessons for America from the Russo-Japanese War, 4 February 2012
- Rome speaks to us. Their example can inspire us to avoid their fate., 22 April 2012
- We’re drifting towards tyranny, again. Jefferson describes our first brush with tyranny., 28 April 2012
- Are we following in the footsteps of Athens? Let’s leave the path before we come to the same end., 3 May 2012
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