Closing the decade and putting to sleep 2009

Reflections on 2009 and the decade we are closing

As we put the year 2009 into a permanent slumber and the decade as well; I can’t avoid assessing in retrospect some of the more salient incidents and how they changed our lives.

Of course, 9/11 2001 would have to be the top event that changed our lives forever. If there ever was a reason to qualify the terrorist attack on our nation as successful this is it. The extremist Islamist terrorists succeeded in changing the way Americans fear and coil when thinking about their insulated security. We can no longer get on an airplane with the ease and abandon we once used to. We can’t count on not ever being attacked again and live with that cloud hanging over our heads. So, in that sense the terrorists did win one.

On the other arena, the political one, we see a President that was elected under the most questionable circumstances, putting the legitimacy of his tenure in serious doubt. The elections of 2000 were at best a fiasco. On the one hand, one candidate won the popular vote and on the other, the opposing candidate won the electoral vote. That in itself is significant because it casts serious doubts on our political system and the archaic Electoral College as a mean of assuring legitimacy.

President Bush came to the office under these conditions which in my opinions placed serious doubts on a clear mandate from constituents. The attacks on 9/11 somewhat propelled his Presidency into an enviable position of power and almost dictatorial status. If there was anything the President did wrong or anything you disagreed with; you were accused of being unpatriotic, a traitor, and a coward. President Bush and the Republicans milked this until the cow ran dry.

The issue of national security took on a priority that was unprecedented and any politician running for office had to contend with projecting a concern if not a clear advocacy for national security. That sort of thing is still with us today as we hear the war cries from Republicans that President Obama is not doing enough, that he is soft on terrorists, that he shouldn’t close Guantanamo, etc.

When President Bush took office; it seems now clear that a war with Iraq was one of his priorities and on his “to do” items in his agenda. (Oil being the motivator) The attacks on 9/11 to a great degree helped him and the hawk-war mongers he surrounded himself with, to carry out a war in Afghanistan and eventually one in Iraq. To get into this war, they did everything in the book to find justification, including lying to the American people and to the world.

“Weapons of Mass Destruction” became the mantra and the excuse for war and these were never found. That has to be perhaps one of the most important non-events of the decade.

Then there were natural disasters; hurricane Katrina tops the list, not because of the catastrophic severity but because it exposed the President and his administration as the incompetent boobs they were.

Also, when President Bush took office, we were enjoying a period of relative prosperity, his predecessor had managed to turn around the deficit and the economy was just humming. This too was one of President Bush’s dubious accomplishments: to turn the country from prosperity and a sound fiscal position into one of debt, big spending and irresponsibility, the pervasive elimination of regulations and the deliberate elimination of taxes and concessions, even subsidies to the rich and corporations, sent the whole country into a suicidal spin of ruin and economic chaos.

The Bush administration successfully drove the economy into the ground and was able to do a de facto redistribution of the wealth, going from the poor and the middle class to the very rich and the corporations.

No other decade in the history of our country has been more detrimental to the poor and the middle class. The poor became poorer and the embattled middle class almost decimated.

The decade brought us some FIRSTS. Certainly historical and unprecedented was the election of an African American to the office of President. We also had the first woman as Speaker of the House of Representatives; we had a very viable and robust contender for the Presidency in the likes of a woman: Hillary Clinton certainly made an impact in breaking that glass ceiling. We also saw Sonia Sotomayor as the first Latina woman to be nominated and appointed to the Supreme Court, not without the almost expected recalcitrant opposition from the “good old boys” and the WASPH factions of our society. (White, Anglo Saxon, Protestant Hetero).

2009 brought us many sex scandals, from Democrat Edwards to Appalachian Trail Sanford and to top it all towards the end of the year with Tiger Woods and his prolific indiscretions. I guess he figures if he can’t get a hole in one, he can get one in many holes.

Carry Prajean will probably carry off the dubious award of being the biggest loser of the decade as the little dumb-witted bitch denounced same sex marriage while she was getting boob jobs and making obscene porn videos as she “meeted” with Donald Trump.

The year’s most pressing preoccupation was Health Care and we ended up with a very watered down legislation that I am afraid will have little or no effect on the cost and efficacy of how we receive health care in this country and will provide further profits and millions of new customers to the Insurance Companies. And Health Care most ardent proponent, Senator Ted Kennedy was taken away from us, in presage to the defeat that something he fought for all of his life was turned into a mockery.

We saw the fruition of an effort to give gays equality and same rights as the rest of Americans with the legalization of same sex marriage in several states, Massachusetts leading these and having it now for a few years while the sky remains up there over Boston, I am happy to report it has not fallen and hell has indeed frozen over.

We also saw the most disturbing anomalies in public discourse as groups of protestors invaded town halls across America with the purpose of interrupting and sabotaging any efforts from elected officials to have meaningful dialogues with their constituents. These were dubbed as “Tea Baggers”, “Birthers” “Right Wingnuts” and some Americans displayed a horrific proclivity for ignorance and displaying their lack of education. To these uninformed, uneducated and gullible morons President Bush must look like a high caliber intellectual since most of them did not finish the 7^th grade as their misspelled protest signs will attest.

Who can forget Barney Frank saying to one of the wingnuts: "I don't know what planet you have been spending your time in". Classic Barney Frank.

YOU MORON BIRTHERS HAVE ASKED FOR IT SO MANY TIMES, HERE IT IS

PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.donkeydish.com/gallery/barack-obama-birth-certificate/

With the truth in your hands and the facts in your pocket you are then entitled to an opinion and even validate your point of view. -Raulito

Top Ten Republican Wingnut Lies Of 2009

The wingnuts came up with some doozies this year. Huffington Post counts down the ten biggest lies.

1. The census will result in internment camps.
2. Health care reform = death panels.
3. Obama was born in Kenya. (I know an idiot that actually believes this!)
4. Obama cedes U.S. sovereignty by bowing.
5. Obama indoctrinates school kids with speech.
6. Bill Ayers really wrote Obama's autobiography.
7. Dems are turning the country to socialism.
8. Obama is a Muslim.
9. Terrorist plan electromagnetic pulse attack.
10. The 9/11 planner will be set free in NYC.

SOURCE: http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2009/12/top-ten-wingnut-lies-of-2009.html