Happy New Year!
(Courtesy Facebook/Words to heal the soul)
#####
Category Archives: commentary
Holiday in Haifa
This is what coexistence looks like ☮️☪️✡️✝️
This is the town square in Haifa. Haifa is a city where Muslims, Jews, Christians, and Baha’i’s live together in harmony, creating a unique spirit of unity. Celebrating Hanukkah and Christmas, the city’s “Holiday of Holidays” festival celebrates this beautiful coexistence, lighting up Haifa with joy, peace, and shared traditions. Religious symbols of all four religions appear side by side in the square.
Haifa is the third largest city in Israel. No other country in the middle east has a scene like this.
####
Two Views of the Holiday
####
Worry, But Be Happy
It is not unusual. But it is interesting. This year we celebrate Christmas, as usual, on December 25th. Kwanzaa, the African-American cultural holiday is always celebrated from December 26th to January 1st. Hanukkah, the Jewish holiday, is the wild card falling from late November to December. This year it begins at sunset, December 25th. So we have a triple header in the space of forty-eight hours.
I am tempted to note that confluence with a sense of hope, urging everyone to look to the season as a reason to be optimistic about the year about to start. To steal a line from singer-composer Bobby McFerrin, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy“. I can’t do it. I can’t do it because I am very worried and very concerned about the year ahead.
But I do wish you the very best for the holiday. Let’s make the most of it.
#####
President Musk
What do you get the guy who has everything? Better still, what does the guy who has everything buy for himself? Elon Musk bought himself a president.
Musk spent about $277 million to back Donald Trump in his successful campaign to win a second term. In return, Trump apppointed Musk, along with Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur and former candidate turned rabid Trump supporter, to run the grandiosely named “Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)“. This sounds official but in fact is a sort of advisory panel with no legal authority, charged by Trump to focus on regulating government spending and to cut regulations. How much influence Musk has is a function of how much attention Trump pays to him. It appears $277 million buys you a lot of attention.
Read morePardonnez-moi
Yes, he’s a liar. Yes, he’s a hypocrite. Let’s drive him out of office. Let’s forget that he brought us through the Covid crisis, stabilized the economy, passed laws designed to fund future growth and development, expanded healthcare and restored America’s standing among its allies. Let’s call him an old fool, a disgrace, and never vote for him again.
Wait a minute.
Excuse me if I don’t get on the bandwagon in the media and on both sides of the political divide in condemning President Joe Biden for pardoning his son Hunter. To steal a phrase (“Gone with the Wind”), frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.
Read moreHere We Go Again
It was about 3:00am the day after the election in 2016 when I came to the conclusion that Donald Trump would win, beating Hillary Clinton. This time, I knew it at midnight.
Read more
Scott Gurvey's Public Offerings 