Gay marriage scored a victory Wednesday in Connecticut. A Superior Court judge issued its final ruling to uphold the earlier 4 to 3 Connecticut State Supreme Court ruling that said same-sex couples have the right to wed. This recent news stands in sharp contrast to California’s Prop. 8 referendum that banned same-sex unions in that state.

Where in the world is Osama bin Laden? That is exactly what President-elect Barack Obama wants to know according to his national security advisers. Obama plans to renew the United States’ commitment to finding the al Qaeda leader. During the Oct. 7 presidential debate, Obama said, “We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority.”

And Obama appears to be sticking to his principles and promises… President-elect Barack Obama will not allow lobbyists to help pay for any costs related to his transition to power said his transition team yesterday. As he promised to keep big-time money interests and lobbyists out of his campaign, Obama remains firm that lobbyists will not foot his transition and inauguration bills.

Mo’ money, mo’ money, mo’ money for more finance companies? U.S. Treasury Secretary Paulson is seeking to include non-bank financial institutions, such as credit card, car loan and student loan companies into the government’s $700 billion bailout. Paulson said Wednesday that he wants to help American households and businesses have access to various credit and borrowing options. Apparently, there is still $350 billion that is uncommitted after putting the first half into direct capital investments into banks.

And for troubled homeowners, the verdict is still out on government help. The House Committee on Financial Services is looking at what the banking industry can do to help distressed homeowners. Chairman of the committee, Rep. Barney Frank, told CNN “not all borrowers should necessarily be rescued.” Some banks like Citigroup and IndyMac have taken matters into their own hands and launched homeowner programs. Yet “Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Economy.com, estimates that 1.6 million Americans will lose their homes this year through foreclosure or distressed sale, and that another 1.9 million families will lose their homes in 2009.”

On the tech front…. Hoping for a boost in e-mail users, Google adds video and audio chatting to Gmail with new service called Google Talk. Although video and audio chatting aren’t new technologies, Google’s the first major email provider to add the new technology directly to its email system. Google wants to gain the lead on Yahoo and Microsoft, which still have more users.

Perhaps there is one silver lining on the Wall Street financial crisis. According to a recent Associated Press story, books about America’s big money troubles are making the big bucks.

Nancy Sheppard, the vice president of marketing at Viking publishing told AP: ”When the world seems to be ending, people still turn to books for help.”

Viking published the Amazon best selling Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism by Kevin Phillips. Like the title implies, the book discusses a new phenomenon called “bad money” in which the U.S. is dependent on the global economy and makes a series of risk miscalculations with financial products. Does this sound familiar?

Another Amazon best-seller is Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Her book talks about the economic policy decisions that politicians were able to pull off because of natural disasters, wars or other catastrophic events. Hmmm….

I also took a quick glance at BusinessWeek.com’s recent book review list. At the moment, there were several titles that directly relate to our financial fiasco.

Would you like to know more on the international financial problems, check out:
The Subprime Solution: How Today’s Global Financial Crisis Happened, and What to Do about It by Robert J. Shiller

Or are you seeking more information on Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the U.S. mortgage problems? Take a look at:
Chain of Blame: How Wall Street Caused the Mortgage and Credit Crisis by Paul Muolo and Mathew Padilla

Or perhaps, you are interested in how the macroeconomic picture is affecting the little guy? Or how Wall Street has affected Main Street? You might want to read either of these next two books:
High Wire: The Precarious Financial Lives of American Families By Peter Gosselin
The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker By Steven Greenhouse

Although I am not endorsing any of these books, I must say that hindsight is always 20/20. Meaning, where were all of these books before the financial crisis occurred (maybe being written)? So, even when you think people aren’t making money or the economy is shot, there’s always someone that’s figured out how to make a buck. And in this case, you can read all about it.

-Last lines of Pink Floyd’s “Money”

Richard Wright, David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Roger Waters, circa 1974. Photo courtesy of AP.

There are some people who measure their lives through small achievements. There are those whose lives are marked by big goalposts. And then there’s the group who divide their existences into epochs defined by which songs they were listening to at which time.

I, like Cameron Crowe, Quentin Tarantino, and Nick Hornby, belong to that last camp. Certain songs can play for only an instant and I’m immediately shuttled to another moment. It’s the easiest form of time travel, really…just press play, and you’re gone. What would H.G. Wells have to say about that?

Pink Floyd, more than any other band, invariably parses my life into discrete segments.So I was affected by the death of band keyboardist Richard Wright, who passed away from cancer Monday.

I can’t listen to Pink Floyd’s “Time” without being overwhelmed by a series of images from my past. The first takes place in 1996, when I was introduced to the band for the very first time. I was in 7th grade, and my parents had just picked me up from some Bat-Mitzvah. I can’t, for the life of me, remember whose it was or whether I even had that much fun, but what stands out so vividly in my memory is the Tower Records bag sitting next to me in the back seat. “Open it,” My dad said, barely containing his glee. He had just come back from the store, having gone there with the express purpose of introducing his kids to what he felt was some of the most sublime music of all time. In the bag were three CDs I was very soon to understand were priceless: a two-disc set of Jethro Tull’s Greatest Hits, Blood, Sweat & Tears’ Greatest Hits, and Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon. I wish I could hear those CDs for the first time again; my life was never to be the same afterwards.

“Time” takes me back to another set of nonlinear scenes, one in 7th grade, one in Spring 2003 and another back in July 2001. In the first, my friends and I sat around the Middle School’s garden arguing over whether or not it was the best song on the album. In the second instance, I had turned in a paper at Berkeley on the section of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse titled, “Time Passes.” I had stapled a lengthy missive to my Professor explaining that I wrote the essay while listening to “Time” on repeat. Turns out she was also a fan. And the third memory transported me into summer music camp at CalArts. The program ended with a showing of The Wizard of Oz set to The Dark Side of the Moon. As Dorothy ran across the yellow brick road, all I could think was that Wright and his cronies were geniuses, not only for somehow managing such magical synergy with one of the better films in history, but also for creating a piece of music that could, true to its name, lift three very distant fragments of time and superimpose them onto one another.

I can easily assign Floyd albums to ages I’ve been or grades I’ve been in…9th grade belongs to “Wish You Were Here”; 10th grade is carried by “The Wall” 11th grade conjures memory of “The Wall II” and “The Division Bell”; 12th grade evokes “Meddle”—and so on. When my 11th grade crush stood up before English and announced he hated Floyd, that was it, the deal-breaker, the other side of the romantic Rubicon; I was over him. “Echoes” became the anthem to my daily ride to school, not purely because its 23:29 minutes conformed perfectly to the duration of trip which took me down Mulholland Drive, but also because its exultant crescendos, poetic verses, varied sections and instrumental solos were simply mind-blowing. And Wright had a hand in writing and playing those songs.

1971 Meddle album cover.

One of the founding members of the band, Pink Floyd could not have been the same without Wright’s keyboard-playing, his singing and song-writing. Fellow-band member David Gilmour said “in my view, all the greatest Pink Floyd moments are the ones where he is in full flow. No-one can replace Richard Wright—he was my musical partner and my friend.”

I’d like to thank Richard Wright, a talented man who has given me so much. I sure hope he enjoys “The Great Big Gig in the Sky.”

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As I was paying for my coffee this morning, the cashier pulled out two bills that had writing on them to show to the barista.

It was five dollar bill. On one side it said: “Obama is all rhetoric.”

On the other it said: “The silent will be the majority.”

They set about scribbling their rebuttal.