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"It was the best of times...it was the worst of times."
It was a year of ups and downs...a lot of downs, looking back on it right now, anyway. The year began with many changes, some of which would turn out to have consequences far beyond what were envisioned at the time. Tom DeLay was finally sentenced for misconduct in 2002.
NBC merged with Comcast, the first of many big big merger attempts for the year.
The recently-elected Republican majority in the House of Representatives arrived, with claims of reform, transparency, and Constitutional Authority... and then they botched a swearing-in, the reading of the Constitution, and they violated their won rules about transparency almost immediately. Ah, and the grand agenda started faling apart almost immediately at the natinoal level. Mr. Steele gave way to Mr. Priebus (and Mr. Steele went to MSNBC, where he beecame a much better person when not having to spout official Party Line) Those seeing omens at the time are to be congratulated for their foresight.
Huck Finn got a new release where all instances of the word "nigger" were replaced by "slave", in an attempt to get the book back into classrooms. Problem is, in doing so, one loses a very good vehicle for discussing "n-word privileges" and the history behind the word.
Anti-union sentiments finally found themselves outlets in the new legislatures and the new House of Representatives. Their specifics were yet to be determined, but would be explosive. Libraries were on the public's chopping block repeatedly, along with other city services, all in the name of austerity and budget balancing. As more people needed unemployment insurance, food assistance, and other government help, states and local governments continued to cut back because they did not have the funding.
And just about everyone with an R after their name went after women's rights with a relentless vengeance.
Southern Sudan was born. Lebanon's government collapsed. Tunisia evicted their leader through popular uprising. Egypt began what would be a months-long struggle against their strongman.
A sitting Representative of the United States House of Representatives was shot by a conservative fanatic full up on inflammatory rhetoric. If not for the swift action of a staffer, the Representative would have died. As it is, the Representative began a long journey of healing and rehabilitation, and the United States cheered the fact that she opened her eyes on her own only a few days after being shot.
Another fanatic planned on detonating explosives along a parade route intended to honor Dr. Martin Luther King. Through the good work of spotters, the plan was foiled. Later on in the year, the person responsible would be apprehended and charged.
And the problems of Wikileaks as scapegooat, PFC Bradley Manning, a void of investigation into the previous administration and the current administration's continuation of most of their over-reaches, and a lot of spillover from the Interference Model of 2010 taking up residence in 2011.
(Oh, and I stuck my foot in my mouth pretty well, too.)
-------------
"Eh, who am I kidding? It was really more worsts than bests."
With Janus's month over, the shortest month began. The Arab Spring continued in full force, with Egypt's leader stepping down, Algeria igniting their own revolution, Yemen joining in, Syria desperately trying (and eventually failing) to stave off their own, Libya and Iran going straight to the violence to try and stop anything getting going in their countries, and Bahrain getting quite hot in their own country.
A person died in Guantanamo Bay without ever having had access to a trial, a lawyer, or any of the due process of American law.
Anti-Islam, Anti-women, Anti-QUILTBAG, and Anti-public sector sentiment was regularly raised, stirred, and sometimes legislated or decreed in the states and the House of Representatives where Republicans held sway and control. Governor Walker of Wisconsin explicitly took away the ability of state workers to collectively bargain. And got more than just an earful for it from all the people and union members he pissed off in doing so. The Capitol building and surrounding city were constantly full of protestors and citizens making their grievances known.
Pushback against these measures also resulted in demonstrations outside of businesses asking them to pay their tax shares, rather than to duck them and insist that government cut services instead.
Georgia and Nebraska considered bills that would have made fetus death a criminal offense and would have ruled the killing of an abortion provider a justifiable homicide, respectively.
The Borders bookstore chain filed for bankruptcy, a victim of the same techniques that it had used to get smaller bookstores to close their doors.
The supercomputer named Watson defeated two Jeopardy! champions in the game.
We lost the last United States veteran of the first Great War, and thus our last chance to obtain primary data about the experience. I hope we got enough.
And I had to make the decision to end the life of one of my pet cats. I still miss you, Gandalf, and I cry every time I think about it.
------------------------
"But the worst was yet to come..."
March! The march of time progresses. Governor Walker got his anti-union bill passed, despite the clear lack of quorum to do so, which kicked protestinto a completely new gear, including recall petitions for state senators that passed the bill. Michigan continued to suffer under the new super-powerful emergency financial manager law that gave fiat to a state-appointed person and overrode any shred of local democracy.
The Republican plan to vote to de-fund everything publically funded that might help people continued, as did their anti-women agenda in the states and nationally (symbolically nationally, thankfully). Trhough all of this, the population got a good history lesson on just hwo much of what they consider normal working conditions were the result of union struggles.
An underwater earthquake off the coast of Japan exposed the weakness of a power plant, the fact that the weakness was known about three years before the tsunami, and a very tense scenario began where the world waited and hoped that the cores of the nuclear vessels did not cause full-scale highly-radioactive meltdowns.
Protests continued in several African, South American, and Eurasian locales, as the struggle for democracy didn't fizzle, but grew. A NATO coalition, backed by the UN, began air strikes against Libya in support of rebellion forces that would be followed u pwith the presence of ground troops.
American Telephone and Telegraph made a bit to buy Deutshe Telekom's U.S. arm, T-Mobile, a bid for which they would ultimately be unsuccessful and withdraw in December.
There was a bright spot. Vermont passed a signle-payer health care plan for all the residents in the state.
Elizabeth Taylor died, as did Dianna Wynne Jones, Lanford Wilson, Geraldine Ferraro, and Paul Baran (inventor of packet-switching).
------------------
"Your optimism is regfreshing, if a bit misplaced."
April! "Personhood" bills designed to outlaw abortion and miscarriage by caling it murder. The highest court in the land declaring there is a Constitution-free zone that extends one hundred miles from any border of the United States, where the Customs and Border Patrol can do anything. Withdrawals of states from social programs. And more...
The big talking point of April was the Paul Ryan "Let's Kill the social programs" budget that plenty of Republicans and pundits signed on to publically. The government also barrelled toward a shutdown based on debt ceiling rules and an unwillingness to raise such. For supposedly being about jobs and debt, the Republican Party has made remarkably little progress on either, often acting to obstruct things that would have been beneficial, or turning their attention elsewhere whenever subtantive measures appeared.
The Ivory Coast rebellion succeeded with the arrest of the incumbent leader that had refused to give up power. Yemen's leader stepped down after delivering several barbs about women. Uganda's opposition movement gathered steam.
A school in Michigan that helps pregnant teen girls finish their schooling and get on to university was slated for closure thanks to an emergency Financial Dictator in Michigan.
We lost Jerry Lawson (architect of the software catridge) and Elizabeth Sladen (best known as Sarah Jane Smith, companion to The Doctor)
And my vehicle was broken into and a musical instrument stolen.
----------------------
"Well, that was an object lesson. In what, we don't know yet."
The fifth month opened with news that Osama bin Laden has been killed. The longtime frontperson and spokesperson for al-Qaeda was killed on a raid operating inside the borders of another country, without their permission or awareness. The matters of ends, means, justification, who actually won the fight with bin Laden, and the legality of black ops in other countries would be the fallout for those discussing the matter rather than thumping their chests in jingoistic pride and refusing to hear anything else. The death of Osama bin Laden did not deter in the slightest the conservative opinion narrative that Muslims, acting as a united transnational front, were planning on taking over democratic countries and instituting the most repressive form of Islamic society on their newly conquered subjects.
The economy was still pretty awful, with more than one million applicants fighting for 50,000 jobs at McDonalds.
The Republican candidates for President in 2012 held their first Presidential debate...in May of 2011. Soon, the campaigns will begin after the swearing-in of the last elected officers.
In May, the very last known living veteran of the First Great War died.
We found out that the Fukushima plant in Japan had suffered at least one meltdown from the flooding and lack of power, quite some time after it happened.
The first of several bills that would give the multimedia industry control over the Internet and require the government prevent ISPs from resolving sites that the media cabals consider pirate sites appeared in the Congress.
The government continued to routinely act in a manner inconsistent with the stated principles and laws of the United States, sometimes to worser degrees than the previous administration, and justify it or otherwise get it through without challenges. They also vigorously employed character attacks and vaguely-worded laws to discredit anyone significant objecting to their actions.
And the big word on the lips of politicians in the United States were "debt ceiling" and what they were going to let die or be harmed so as to get their budget cuts.
---------------------------
"What, exactly, were you expecting? A happy ending?"
At the halfway point of the year, a push was on, from liberals and the President, to actually put someone in charge of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency that had the teeth and power to be able to actually regulate unfair practices and deceptive fine print. There was just as much a pushback from the Republicans in the Senate, who did not want to see such a thing come into being.
A small flap erupted over a columnist that claimed teenagers needed to be readng happier material than the current YA crop, with a lot of people, authors and readers alike, saying how much those dark teen novels helped them cope with their dark lives. YA Saves (and always has).
A concerted effort against Planned Parenthood by Republicans in state and federal governments indicated how much the anti-women agenda had play and popularity in the party that nominally professes to believe in small government.
The Catherine Ferguson Academy was saved from closure by being sold off and turned into a charter school. Yay, school exists, boo, that the emergency financial manager of the Detroit Public Schools didn't want to hold on to a school that was working.
Ah, and there was a debate between candidates for the Republican ballot for President. There was no rejoicing, only a lot of "Ick."
Peter Falk, of Columbo fame, died.
There was also a bright spot - New York made it possible for all persons to be married. And Greece erupted in protests over a plan to sell off state assets to pay the debts of the banks and rich people that got them into their problems.
----------------------------
"Just repeat to yourself, it's just a show, it's just a show."
This is where things really started to turn southward, although I didn't really know it at the time - I thought it was a one-off, but instead, it was the harbinger for things to come. And that's about as clear as I'll get about it.
The march of the Corporations continued, without interference from the government to restrain their excesses or to persuade them that an economy that requires people to be able to make enough money to spend on their products. And the police continued their willingness to use excessive amounts of force when a small amount of diplomacy...or sense...would have gone much further.
A Murdoch-owned paper was implicated in a scandal that involved tampering with the voicemail box of a missing person in the hope of having more voicemails come into the box. After the outcry and worse, the paper itself was shut down.
Ah, did we mention all of the states that want or pass laws to force people on government benefits to be tested for drugs? Because poor people need to be shamed more for getting assistance. And the continued manufacturing of a crisis regarding a debt ceiling that was entirely self-imposed?...
--------------------------
"It goes downhill from here, doesn't it?"
...that led into the Gang of Twelve - a group that was supposed to figure out how to make cuts in the budget...assuming they could get over the vicious partisanship and obstruction that has been Repblican politics of these past years.
That's in addition to the assumption that black and brown people deserve to be stopped and have their citizenship papers demanded of them, the assumption that women are merely incubators whose fetuses are more important than they are, and the strident effort to ensure that only their brand of morality is ever legislated and those they consider sinners should be punished and driven underground.
A credit rating agency downgraded the credit of the United States government one notch over the flap regarding the debt ceiling manufactured crisis.
Jack Layton, leader of the NDP, died from cancer at 61.
And my current nightmare finally made itself known that it wasn't going away...
However, one very bright star shone in this month - Representative Giffords returned to the House chamber only a few months after being shot, to a standing ovation from her colleagues and the gallery inattendance.
And a woman achieved the highest rank of black bet a judo master could achieve.
August was an interesting month.
-------------------------
"Downhill is relative. But I do sense some extra cynicism."
In September, anti-unionism continued to be a popular talking point even as efforts undertaken to repeal anti-union measures continued to gather steam and to be put on ballots for November elections.
The Borders bookstore chain closed its doors and liquidated its assets, as it could not compete with Amazon.
A collaboration betweeen YA authors was told they needed to change the pairing or the story wouldn't be published. The authors refused. The editors and their published stood fast. Several other authors withdrew their names from the collaboration. A bridal shop refused to sell a wedding dress to a lesbian, claiming she didn't want to participate in "illegal acts", despite LGBT marriage being legal in the state she was in.
The founder of Project Gutenberg died, but his legacy lives on.
The Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy that officially dismissed openly gay soldiers died a long-overdue death this month, sparking rejoicing everywhere, inside the service and outside.
The Occupy Wall Street started to occupy Zucotti Park, setting up a semipermanent settlement near the halls of money, protesting the manner in which corprations have controlled and continue to control everything. This is the first stage - being ignored.
---------------------------
"Define 'Cynical'."
In October, Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Computer with Steve Wozniak, died at 64 years of age.
But we also found a vaccination for malaria strains.
The Republicans savaged each other with greater fervor, as the electorate continued to fawn over one candidate, then find some reason to not want them, and then get sweet on another candidate. This cycle continues on throughout not just this month, but through the rest of the year. There's no reason to believe that the Republican electorate is satisfied with any of their candidates...but they most definitely don't want Mitt Romney to win.
Mississippi put forth their own "personhood" amendment, to criminalize miscarriage.
Libyan leader Gaddafi was killed by the rebellion that captured him and his remaining stongholds, starting on the difficult path of rebuilding a country that was under the control of a strongman for decades.
The second stage (or is it third?) began for the Occupy movement - police in various cities were called in to forcibly remove protesters from their encampments. SWAT teams and riot police attacked a peaceful protest with violence.
The government proposed rules that would allow them to lie about Freedom of Information Act requests.
And the United Nations granted member status to the Palestinian Authority.
-----------------------
"Would that be the party that's supposedly focused on jobs doing everything but jobs?"
"No, that's not cynical. That's politics."
There was an election at the beginning of the month. A lot of states decided that new ID requirements were in vogue, neatly disenfranchising many poor and minority voters who don't have those IDs and can't spare the time, the money, or don't have the means of getting to the offices to obtain such things.
The anti-union measure in Ohio got WHOMPED. Mississippi's personhood measure got a hearty "Fuck. Off." And the author of the Papers Please law in Arizona got recalled. (Oh, and Washington State was told to give up its liquor monopoly.)
Joe Paterno was fired from his position as head coach of the Pennsylvania State University football team for his role in a cover-up of a coach sexually abusing players.
Another series of bills appeared in the Congress that would turn over control of the Internet to the media cabals to block as they wish on even the suspcion of privacy.
The might of the police was turned upon the Occupy Wall Street encampment, with property seized and destroyed and the movement forcibly driven out of Zucotti Park, even with a court order allowing them to be there.
The Gang of Twelve failed, triggering several automatic cuts to the budget. The Republicans immediately started trying to find ways to not have those triggers actually come into being. The President smiled and said "No."
The nightmare continued, and mutated, and worsened.
(And we lost Joe Frazier, Andy Rooney, and Anne McCaffery.)
-----------------------------
"Dear Lord, that's the loudest profanity I've ever heard!"
And thus, we come screaming into the last month of the year. Not because it's been fun, but because there's really only one way of getting a year's worth of anger, fear, and rage out quickly.
There were elections held in Egypt. Near them, though, governments of Syria and Iran attacked their people and other embassies.
The Defense Appropriations Bill passed by the Congress contained language that permanently instituted imprisonment by military without trial, tribunal, or recourse to the law.
AT&T withdrew their bid to buy T-Mobile.
The Iraq War ended, officially, not with a bang, nor a whimper, but barely any noise at all.
And the nightmare continues. I can only hope that we will wake from it soon.
That was your 2011. It followed Sturgeon's Law to the hilt. Next year will hopefully be a lot better.
It was a year of ups and downs...a lot of downs, looking back on it right now, anyway. The year began with many changes, some of which would turn out to have consequences far beyond what were envisioned at the time. Tom DeLay was finally sentenced for misconduct in 2002.
NBC merged with Comcast, the first of many big big merger attempts for the year.
The recently-elected Republican majority in the House of Representatives arrived, with claims of reform, transparency, and Constitutional Authority... and then they botched a swearing-in, the reading of the Constitution, and they violated their won rules about transparency almost immediately. Ah, and the grand agenda started faling apart almost immediately at the natinoal level. Mr. Steele gave way to Mr. Priebus (and Mr. Steele went to MSNBC, where he beecame a much better person when not having to spout official Party Line) Those seeing omens at the time are to be congratulated for their foresight.
Huck Finn got a new release where all instances of the word "nigger" were replaced by "slave", in an attempt to get the book back into classrooms. Problem is, in doing so, one loses a very good vehicle for discussing "n-word privileges" and the history behind the word.
Anti-union sentiments finally found themselves outlets in the new legislatures and the new House of Representatives. Their specifics were yet to be determined, but would be explosive. Libraries were on the public's chopping block repeatedly, along with other city services, all in the name of austerity and budget balancing. As more people needed unemployment insurance, food assistance, and other government help, states and local governments continued to cut back because they did not have the funding.
And just about everyone with an R after their name went after women's rights with a relentless vengeance.
Southern Sudan was born. Lebanon's government collapsed. Tunisia evicted their leader through popular uprising. Egypt began what would be a months-long struggle against their strongman.
A sitting Representative of the United States House of Representatives was shot by a conservative fanatic full up on inflammatory rhetoric. If not for the swift action of a staffer, the Representative would have died. As it is, the Representative began a long journey of healing and rehabilitation, and the United States cheered the fact that she opened her eyes on her own only a few days after being shot.
Another fanatic planned on detonating explosives along a parade route intended to honor Dr. Martin Luther King. Through the good work of spotters, the plan was foiled. Later on in the year, the person responsible would be apprehended and charged.
And the problems of Wikileaks as scapegooat, PFC Bradley Manning, a void of investigation into the previous administration and the current administration's continuation of most of their over-reaches, and a lot of spillover from the Interference Model of 2010 taking up residence in 2011.
(Oh, and I stuck my foot in my mouth pretty well, too.)
-------------
"Eh, who am I kidding? It was really more worsts than bests."
With Janus's month over, the shortest month began. The Arab Spring continued in full force, with Egypt's leader stepping down, Algeria igniting their own revolution, Yemen joining in, Syria desperately trying (and eventually failing) to stave off their own, Libya and Iran going straight to the violence to try and stop anything getting going in their countries, and Bahrain getting quite hot in their own country.
A person died in Guantanamo Bay without ever having had access to a trial, a lawyer, or any of the due process of American law.
Anti-Islam, Anti-women, Anti-QUILTBAG, and Anti-public sector sentiment was regularly raised, stirred, and sometimes legislated or decreed in the states and the House of Representatives where Republicans held sway and control. Governor Walker of Wisconsin explicitly took away the ability of state workers to collectively bargain. And got more than just an earful for it from all the people and union members he pissed off in doing so. The Capitol building and surrounding city were constantly full of protestors and citizens making their grievances known.
Pushback against these measures also resulted in demonstrations outside of businesses asking them to pay their tax shares, rather than to duck them and insist that government cut services instead.
Georgia and Nebraska considered bills that would have made fetus death a criminal offense and would have ruled the killing of an abortion provider a justifiable homicide, respectively.
The Borders bookstore chain filed for bankruptcy, a victim of the same techniques that it had used to get smaller bookstores to close their doors.
The supercomputer named Watson defeated two Jeopardy! champions in the game.
We lost the last United States veteran of the first Great War, and thus our last chance to obtain primary data about the experience. I hope we got enough.
And I had to make the decision to end the life of one of my pet cats. I still miss you, Gandalf, and I cry every time I think about it.
------------------------
"But the worst was yet to come..."
March! The march of time progresses. Governor Walker got his anti-union bill passed, despite the clear lack of quorum to do so, which kicked protestinto a completely new gear, including recall petitions for state senators that passed the bill. Michigan continued to suffer under the new super-powerful emergency financial manager law that gave fiat to a state-appointed person and overrode any shred of local democracy.
The Republican plan to vote to de-fund everything publically funded that might help people continued, as did their anti-women agenda in the states and nationally (symbolically nationally, thankfully). Trhough all of this, the population got a good history lesson on just hwo much of what they consider normal working conditions were the result of union struggles.
An underwater earthquake off the coast of Japan exposed the weakness of a power plant, the fact that the weakness was known about three years before the tsunami, and a very tense scenario began where the world waited and hoped that the cores of the nuclear vessels did not cause full-scale highly-radioactive meltdowns.
Protests continued in several African, South American, and Eurasian locales, as the struggle for democracy didn't fizzle, but grew. A NATO coalition, backed by the UN, began air strikes against Libya in support of rebellion forces that would be followed u pwith the presence of ground troops.
American Telephone and Telegraph made a bit to buy Deutshe Telekom's U.S. arm, T-Mobile, a bid for which they would ultimately be unsuccessful and withdraw in December.
There was a bright spot. Vermont passed a signle-payer health care plan for all the residents in the state.
Elizabeth Taylor died, as did Dianna Wynne Jones, Lanford Wilson, Geraldine Ferraro, and Paul Baran (inventor of packet-switching).
------------------
"Your optimism is regfreshing, if a bit misplaced."
April! "Personhood" bills designed to outlaw abortion and miscarriage by caling it murder. The highest court in the land declaring there is a Constitution-free zone that extends one hundred miles from any border of the United States, where the Customs and Border Patrol can do anything. Withdrawals of states from social programs. And more...
The big talking point of April was the Paul Ryan "Let's Kill the social programs" budget that plenty of Republicans and pundits signed on to publically. The government also barrelled toward a shutdown based on debt ceiling rules and an unwillingness to raise such. For supposedly being about jobs and debt, the Republican Party has made remarkably little progress on either, often acting to obstruct things that would have been beneficial, or turning their attention elsewhere whenever subtantive measures appeared.
The Ivory Coast rebellion succeeded with the arrest of the incumbent leader that had refused to give up power. Yemen's leader stepped down after delivering several barbs about women. Uganda's opposition movement gathered steam.
A school in Michigan that helps pregnant teen girls finish their schooling and get on to university was slated for closure thanks to an emergency Financial Dictator in Michigan.
We lost Jerry Lawson (architect of the software catridge) and Elizabeth Sladen (best known as Sarah Jane Smith, companion to The Doctor)
And my vehicle was broken into and a musical instrument stolen.
----------------------
"Well, that was an object lesson. In what, we don't know yet."
The fifth month opened with news that Osama bin Laden has been killed. The longtime frontperson and spokesperson for al-Qaeda was killed on a raid operating inside the borders of another country, without their permission or awareness. The matters of ends, means, justification, who actually won the fight with bin Laden, and the legality of black ops in other countries would be the fallout for those discussing the matter rather than thumping their chests in jingoistic pride and refusing to hear anything else. The death of Osama bin Laden did not deter in the slightest the conservative opinion narrative that Muslims, acting as a united transnational front, were planning on taking over democratic countries and instituting the most repressive form of Islamic society on their newly conquered subjects.
The economy was still pretty awful, with more than one million applicants fighting for 50,000 jobs at McDonalds.
The Republican candidates for President in 2012 held their first Presidential debate...in May of 2011. Soon, the campaigns will begin after the swearing-in of the last elected officers.
In May, the very last known living veteran of the First Great War died.
We found out that the Fukushima plant in Japan had suffered at least one meltdown from the flooding and lack of power, quite some time after it happened.
The first of several bills that would give the multimedia industry control over the Internet and require the government prevent ISPs from resolving sites that the media cabals consider pirate sites appeared in the Congress.
The government continued to routinely act in a manner inconsistent with the stated principles and laws of the United States, sometimes to worser degrees than the previous administration, and justify it or otherwise get it through without challenges. They also vigorously employed character attacks and vaguely-worded laws to discredit anyone significant objecting to their actions.
And the big word on the lips of politicians in the United States were "debt ceiling" and what they were going to let die or be harmed so as to get their budget cuts.
---------------------------
"What, exactly, were you expecting? A happy ending?"
At the halfway point of the year, a push was on, from liberals and the President, to actually put someone in charge of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency that had the teeth and power to be able to actually regulate unfair practices and deceptive fine print. There was just as much a pushback from the Republicans in the Senate, who did not want to see such a thing come into being.
A small flap erupted over a columnist that claimed teenagers needed to be readng happier material than the current YA crop, with a lot of people, authors and readers alike, saying how much those dark teen novels helped them cope with their dark lives. YA Saves (and always has).
A concerted effort against Planned Parenthood by Republicans in state and federal governments indicated how much the anti-women agenda had play and popularity in the party that nominally professes to believe in small government.
The Catherine Ferguson Academy was saved from closure by being sold off and turned into a charter school. Yay, school exists, boo, that the emergency financial manager of the Detroit Public Schools didn't want to hold on to a school that was working.
Ah, and there was a debate between candidates for the Republican ballot for President. There was no rejoicing, only a lot of "Ick."
Peter Falk, of Columbo fame, died.
There was also a bright spot - New York made it possible for all persons to be married. And Greece erupted in protests over a plan to sell off state assets to pay the debts of the banks and rich people that got them into their problems.
----------------------------
"Just repeat to yourself, it's just a show, it's just a show."
This is where things really started to turn southward, although I didn't really know it at the time - I thought it was a one-off, but instead, it was the harbinger for things to come. And that's about as clear as I'll get about it.
The march of the Corporations continued, without interference from the government to restrain their excesses or to persuade them that an economy that requires people to be able to make enough money to spend on their products. And the police continued their willingness to use excessive amounts of force when a small amount of diplomacy...or sense...would have gone much further.
A Murdoch-owned paper was implicated in a scandal that involved tampering with the voicemail box of a missing person in the hope of having more voicemails come into the box. After the outcry and worse, the paper itself was shut down.
Ah, did we mention all of the states that want or pass laws to force people on government benefits to be tested for drugs? Because poor people need to be shamed more for getting assistance. And the continued manufacturing of a crisis regarding a debt ceiling that was entirely self-imposed?...
--------------------------
"It goes downhill from here, doesn't it?"
...that led into the Gang of Twelve - a group that was supposed to figure out how to make cuts in the budget...assuming they could get over the vicious partisanship and obstruction that has been Repblican politics of these past years.
That's in addition to the assumption that black and brown people deserve to be stopped and have their citizenship papers demanded of them, the assumption that women are merely incubators whose fetuses are more important than they are, and the strident effort to ensure that only their brand of morality is ever legislated and those they consider sinners should be punished and driven underground.
A credit rating agency downgraded the credit of the United States government one notch over the flap regarding the debt ceiling manufactured crisis.
Jack Layton, leader of the NDP, died from cancer at 61.
And my current nightmare finally made itself known that it wasn't going away...
However, one very bright star shone in this month - Representative Giffords returned to the House chamber only a few months after being shot, to a standing ovation from her colleagues and the gallery inattendance.
And a woman achieved the highest rank of black bet a judo master could achieve.
August was an interesting month.
-------------------------
"Downhill is relative. But I do sense some extra cynicism."
In September, anti-unionism continued to be a popular talking point even as efforts undertaken to repeal anti-union measures continued to gather steam and to be put on ballots for November elections.
The Borders bookstore chain closed its doors and liquidated its assets, as it could not compete with Amazon.
A collaboration betweeen YA authors was told they needed to change the pairing or the story wouldn't be published. The authors refused. The editors and their published stood fast. Several other authors withdrew their names from the collaboration. A bridal shop refused to sell a wedding dress to a lesbian, claiming she didn't want to participate in "illegal acts", despite LGBT marriage being legal in the state she was in.
The founder of Project Gutenberg died, but his legacy lives on.
The Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy that officially dismissed openly gay soldiers died a long-overdue death this month, sparking rejoicing everywhere, inside the service and outside.
The Occupy Wall Street started to occupy Zucotti Park, setting up a semipermanent settlement near the halls of money, protesting the manner in which corprations have controlled and continue to control everything. This is the first stage - being ignored.
---------------------------
"Define 'Cynical'."
In October, Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Computer with Steve Wozniak, died at 64 years of age.
But we also found a vaccination for malaria strains.
The Republicans savaged each other with greater fervor, as the electorate continued to fawn over one candidate, then find some reason to not want them, and then get sweet on another candidate. This cycle continues on throughout not just this month, but through the rest of the year. There's no reason to believe that the Republican electorate is satisfied with any of their candidates...but they most definitely don't want Mitt Romney to win.
Mississippi put forth their own "personhood" amendment, to criminalize miscarriage.
Libyan leader Gaddafi was killed by the rebellion that captured him and his remaining stongholds, starting on the difficult path of rebuilding a country that was under the control of a strongman for decades.
The second stage (or is it third?) began for the Occupy movement - police in various cities were called in to forcibly remove protesters from their encampments. SWAT teams and riot police attacked a peaceful protest with violence.
The government proposed rules that would allow them to lie about Freedom of Information Act requests.
And the United Nations granted member status to the Palestinian Authority.
-----------------------
"Would that be the party that's supposedly focused on jobs doing everything but jobs?"
"No, that's not cynical. That's politics."
There was an election at the beginning of the month. A lot of states decided that new ID requirements were in vogue, neatly disenfranchising many poor and minority voters who don't have those IDs and can't spare the time, the money, or don't have the means of getting to the offices to obtain such things.
The anti-union measure in Ohio got WHOMPED. Mississippi's personhood measure got a hearty "Fuck. Off." And the author of the Papers Please law in Arizona got recalled. (Oh, and Washington State was told to give up its liquor monopoly.)
Joe Paterno was fired from his position as head coach of the Pennsylvania State University football team for his role in a cover-up of a coach sexually abusing players.
Another series of bills appeared in the Congress that would turn over control of the Internet to the media cabals to block as they wish on even the suspcion of privacy.
The might of the police was turned upon the Occupy Wall Street encampment, with property seized and destroyed and the movement forcibly driven out of Zucotti Park, even with a court order allowing them to be there.
The Gang of Twelve failed, triggering several automatic cuts to the budget. The Republicans immediately started trying to find ways to not have those triggers actually come into being. The President smiled and said "No."
The nightmare continued, and mutated, and worsened.
(And we lost Joe Frazier, Andy Rooney, and Anne McCaffery.)
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"Dear Lord, that's the loudest profanity I've ever heard!"
And thus, we come screaming into the last month of the year. Not because it's been fun, but because there's really only one way of getting a year's worth of anger, fear, and rage out quickly.
There were elections held in Egypt. Near them, though, governments of Syria and Iran attacked their people and other embassies.
The Defense Appropriations Bill passed by the Congress contained language that permanently instituted imprisonment by military without trial, tribunal, or recourse to the law.
AT&T withdrew their bid to buy T-Mobile.
The Iraq War ended, officially, not with a bang, nor a whimper, but barely any noise at all.
And the nightmare continues. I can only hope that we will wake from it soon.
That was your 2011. It followed Sturgeon's Law to the hilt. Next year will hopefully be a lot better.
