2008 World View

Being a politics person I also wanted to make a post about important news stories of 2008. Here is what I came up with.

I think, by far, the biggest American news story of the year is the Presidential Race. It dominated the media for the first 10 months of the year - first the amazing comeback of McCain against his republican foes, then the highly contested battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, both with strong supporters, both historical candidates, and then of course the race itself - positive and negative adds, the ridiculous introduction of Sarah Palin, Joe the Plumber "real America" fear mongering... I watched all but one of the debates. Looking back, most the things I remember about the campaign were nasty or stupid things that the McCain campaign did. I hardly remember any of the Obama ads or strategic moves.. I just remember the out pouring of hatred, fear, and ignorance from McCain's campaign. I guess slow and steady won the race! I worried and stressed, got mad at the media, got mad at the candidates, did my research, and went out and voted, then sat back with my friends drinking Ouzo and watched the results role in. Amazing. Breathtaking. America has elected the first African American president. America has voted to stop supporting a party that is falling apart at the seems, unable to uphold its own everly increasingly conflictual values.

Of course, tangential to the election was the incredibly massive collapse of first the housing market, then the lending sector, then the entire economy. The only good side to all of this? Oil prices dropped. At least we don't have stagflation people!! We managed to buy our house just before the mortgage industry really went berserk - meaning we got the low prices of the housing declines but were still able to get a great mortgage rate before they clamped down on lending. Good timing us! The economy cycles, that is just the way of it. We have had unprecedented streaks of growth, so this was bound to happen. I hope though that society has come far enough that despite the similarities of this to the Great Depression, things will not be the same.

Perhaps the most depressing story of the year was the terrorist attacks on Bombay. I don't think most people in America realize how big this attack was, how many people were involved, how many people were killed, how many landmarks of day to day life for the people of Bombay were destroyed, and how much tension and fear it has caused. I have a professor from India who sent us an email saying that a week before the attack he had been in India visiting family - he chatted over coffee at a cafe where many people were killed, strolled casually down the street past two hotels that were destroyed, to lounge on a beach where people were massacred. The death toll was not as high as the World Trade Center, but the psychological effect is similar. And, the terrorists there are probably getting what they want as tensions between Pakistan and India escalate.

Some other majorly depressing news stories from last year involve mother nature - the earthquake in China that claimed so many homes and lives, the typhoon and following starvation in Myanmar, hurricane Ike, and more. According to the German company Re, 220,000 people died in natural disasters this year, well above previous years. It seems like there are more and more natural disasters every year.

And of course, the wars. Iraq continues to boil, Afghanistan flares, Russia and Georgia squabble, Kenya falls into disarray, millions flee the fighting in the Congo. Humans never ending quest to kill each other continues. South African natives violently attack immigrant encampments. Israeli and Palestinians go at it again. Men fight with bow and arrows in a land dispute in Kenya. Zimbabwe's leader won't step down and violence their increases. Tibetans clash with the Chinese. And these are just the conflicts I can list off the top of my head.

On a more positive note, there were lots of good sports stories, my favorite being the Olympics. What a great Olympics it was! Amazing opening ceremony, 8 medals for Phelps, everything was just really fun to watch. In other exciting sporting stories, Eli Manning beat the patriots in the Super Bowl! That was an amazing game, it seems so long ago. The Devil Rays created excitement even for me in MLB, and the Columbus Crew won the championship this year in MLS! A man tried to cross the Pacific ocean in a row boat and made it most of the way (he was 60km from Australia when they picked him up). People can be amazing.

Thats all I got right now. I am sure there is some huge story I am missing, but I decided to do this mostly from memory rather than go research and link to other sites etc.

It was an eventful year people! Hope this coming year brings more good stories and less bad stories, but somehow I doubt that.