In the absence of magic, I'll just do my part for all the children in my life.

Still haven't decided if I'm driving across town to join a party with friends. Don't like driving on New Year's Eve.

Thanks to you, Jeralyn and BTD, for creating a bloggy space where people engage in respectful discourse. I may not always agree, but I always learn an extraordinary amount of meaningful things about people and issues. And I thank the commenters here for being among the smartest and funniest in the toobz.

What would I do with a one-use magic wand? I'll have to sleep on that.

There's so much to be fixed, and it's hard to start listing them without sounding like a Miss America contestant...

I think I have to start with making sure each person had a safe place to call home, food in the pantry, and the love and support of family and friends.  It would be a start, anyway.

Writing that makes me realize that whatever minor glitches pop up in my life, I have all of those things, which makes me feel very lucky and blessed at a time when so many are doing without.

I wish all of you a new year filled with peace, prosperity, health and happiness, love and lots of laughter.

I got it - I'll steal Warren Zevon's work instead:

Don't let us get sick
Don't let us get old
Don't let us get stupid, all right?
Just make us be brave
And make us play nice
And let us be together tonight

I agree with andgarden that we may do better in the coming years, but we could hardly do worse.

And I agree with caseyOR that TalkLeft is a very valuable place which makes the sad state of the country a little easier to swallow.

I wonder how much those of us that have (HAVEs)what we need would have to give up to feed the HAVE NOTs...

I would also wish that the FCC would require that all licensees have one hour of news-programming that would be commercial free.
It would have to be autonomous. We would be rid of these millionaire carnival-barker "anchors". And the content would at least have a chance of not being corrupted by the commercial interests of sponsors and management.

My magic wand would first and foremost wipe away the corporate ownership and control of the press.

"Our republic and its press will rise or fall together.

An able, disinterested, public-spirited press,
with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery.

A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself.

The power to mould the future of the republic will be in the hands of the journalists of future generations."

-- From North American Review, Written by Joseph Pulitzer in 1904

People obsessed with the idea that some of these things have "survival value, deeply rooted in the genes" need to reexamine whether, in the long view, this still holds true in the 21st century. I say no.

As Rumi says, dont move the way fear makes you move.

Just for fun, I'd also wave my wand and make federal representatives' salaries (and those of staff) tied to, and limited to no more that 3 times, the average per capita income of his or her district, or, for senators, state. When their constituents get a raise, they get a raise.