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The Year in Review: 2012
Jan. 1st, 2013 08:08 amThis year, beings of various gender and gender identities, was Not My Year. Which follows on last year, also Not My Year. I think the last year that I had that could have been My Year (no major long-term anxieties, issues, or insecurities) was five years ago, which was sort of the high point of my life in terms of major accomplishments.
That said, there were good things and bad in this year, like there are in all years. I'm appreciative of the fact that I have a blog-reading audience in any form, and that other places, where I leave comments, they seem to be appreciated or, at least, I haven't been driven out of there by an angry mob.
I underestimate myself a lot. It makes things safer, less likely to result in disappointment.
So, this year started in the Time of Nearly Certain Doom, where I could have been dismissed at will had the capricious manager decided that was her wish for that day. No light was yet visible at the end of the tunnel at this point, even though we knew that she would be retiring at the beginning of the next month. It was checkpoint one, and if we could manage to get there, things looked potentially better.
Elsewhere, though, the turnings of the world and the United States provided all sorts of interesting distractions and events to follow.
Since it was an election year, and the Presidential office was to be decided, the primary process for the Republican Party (and other parties, such as Americans Elect) was in full swing. The Republican Party was, at that time, fielding theocratic Tea-Party friendly candidate as frontrunners, discounting the Randian libertarians, and giving plenty of press to those who were only in it for the money. The person who was to capture the nomination was just starting to consolidate his power.
PFC Bradley Manning, accused WikiLeaker, was recommended for a court-martial. Much later on, we would find out the details of his confinement - they resemble the torturous conditions of solitary confinement in prisons...but worse.
The tug-of-war that is convincing people to grant basic human rights to all people, regardless of anything, saw victories and defeats as the march of progress looked anything but inexorable. (Sometimes you have to pop the fantasy that all is well and equal to get started.)
And two bills went down in flames that would have severely restricted the ability to do legitimate things on the Internet, if what you did was something the media cabals didn't like. (They were promptly reintroduced in new forms.)
In February, retirement. And a compliment for the slideshow that I had put together for the outgoing manager (at the request of a co-worker). Checkpoint achieved. Now came the Uncertain Times of Doom, as a temporary boss was appointed to run the place until they could find a more permanent replacement. We were not out of the woods by any stretch, but sympathetic co-workers noted it would be unlikely that the temporary person in charge would do any dismissal.
Elsewhere, the surveillance state continued to deploy new technologies to observe people without their consent, and without any sort of actual debate about the virtue of doing such a thing.
The Komen Foundation, mission: cure breast cancer, withdrew it's support from Planned Parenthood, mission: keep women healthy, for a short time, then reinstated its support after the outcry created backdraft. In the various state legislatures, the march to remove as many rights from women as possible continued apace, with restrictions on abortion being the most popular way of getting to that point.
Ah, and the Middle East - Syria was still in the middle of a vicious civil conflict. And when we say "vicious", we understate it by several orders of magnitude.
Penguin decided it would stop selling e-materials to libraries because they didn't like Amazon being allowed into the loop.
And the Mars Rover Spirit/Opportunity mission entered year eight of data collection, having long since passed the "three-hour tour" point of its planned life.
March came upon us with a realization. Having passed the halfway point, it was possible that we might escape the Doom with our existence and position intact. That's not to say that optimism was the default position, just that the possibility of getting through things okay was now on the horizon.
If there's one thing in civil rights that was going forward at this point, it's marriage equality - and remarkably, that trend would continue through the rest of the year.
And there was some comeuppance - Rush Limbaugh started suffering from advertiser shunning after he went well beyond the pale in calling a law student a slut because she has health insurance that covers birth control.
PayPal attempted to use their space as a processor of payments to demand sites remove content they thought was objectionable or risk losing the ability to take PayPal. They failed.
And a middle-aged white man shot an unarmed black teenager and was not convicted for it, because the laws in Florida allowed him to do so, so long as he claimed he felt he was in danger from the black teenager. We would find out later that those same protections did not apply to a woman shooting her abusive husband.
April showed the first signs of additional big trouble in the State of Michigan, where the rule of law and the procedures of the legislature were suspended, on the record, with recording devices present. Then, a person with a clear conflict of interest allowed a petition to be deadlocked instead of certified, because the petition would have worked against the dictatorial powers granted to the Governor.
The Time of Uncertain Doom continued, with another boss changeover from Temporary Boss to More Permanent Boss, again with assurances that things were unlikely to change. By the end of the month, it looked like getting out from under the Doom was a very real possibility.
Willard "Mitt" Romney became the Republican nominee for the 2012 election, even though the official nomination wouldn't happen for several months afterward.
The Occupy movement continued to suffer siege and abuse at the hands of local police departments, most notable at UC Davis where high-volume pepper spray was directed at sitting protesters, as well as police violence.
And there was a perfect (27 batters retired in order without a hit or base on balls) game.
May reminded us of the failures of austerity movements and the power of democratic elections. Governments were changed out, and Egypt held a democratic election for the first time in decades. Many of the Syrian foreign ambassadors were expelled from countries after a militia force in the country executed children.
Also, some quiet attempts at engineering delegations to elect a different candidate for the Republican nomination other than the presumed frontrunner. Didn't quite work, but we salute the Paul campaign for playing by the rules.
The Republican Party continued to eat its own tail in choosing candidates to run for national office in November, purging moderates and anyone who wasn't sufficiently ideological.
Shaq got his doctorate. Well-played, sir.
The President of the United States went on the record saying he is for marriage equality.
He also believes that he has unilateral authority to order the death of anyone in the world, and supports automated systems that crunch data to derive conclusions and attack people, without necessarily passing it through the sanity filter of an actual human being.
Google put an automated vehicle on the roads of Nevada.
Ah, and the Time of Uncertain Doom passed into history. I made it through without being dismissed. The scars from that action are still quite visible, though, and it takes mental effort not to spin completely into a panic any time the management wants to talk with me / the librarians about anything at all, because anything could potentially be the start of yet another sequence leading to Doom. The capriciousness and lack of listening to explanation the first time has me concerned that it will happen again.
June opened with a second case of the federal Defense of Marriage Act being ruled against the Constitution. Eyes turned to the Supreme Court to see whether or not they would hear a case on those matters. They kind of have to, because now there are conflicts in the rulings of law.
The anti-union governor and lawmakers in Wisconsin survived efforts to recall them out of office and remove their majority. Full anti-union speed ahead.
More problems in Michigan, where two female legislators were censured for talking about vaginas in the context of an anti-abortion bill. In response, a very large production of the Vagina Monologues on the Capitol's lawn.
The President ordered that discretion be used in determining whether to deport young children from the country, especially those that are here through no fault of their own.
July meant the turning of the hands of age for me. Congratulations, self, you leveled up.
The Supreme Court found 5-4 in favor of the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act, allowing it to continue, which sent a large amount of the conservative world into apoplexy.
The House of Representatives voted to hold the Attorney General in contempt over a nonexistent scandal.
A major financial house admitted to rigging a major component of the financial system for their own profit.
And Republicans everywhere were gearing up for the election by trying to make it harder for people to vote in that election.
Did we mention the systematic lying from the Romney campaign and the continual attempts of conservatives to push back against progress made on marriage equality and basic acceptance of QUILTBAG people?
The Chick-fil-A corporation found the Jim Henson Creature Shop terminating their partnership because of the anti-QUILTBAG stance of Chick-fil-A. The corporation then fabricated a story about "safety concerns" to cover the actual reason for the removal.
Weather systems were demonstrating destructive powers, perhaps as a lead-in to the hurricane that would happen later that completely devastated the parts of the East Coast where it landed.
The Games of the XXX Olympiad started, featuring Jo Rowling reading an excerpt from Peter Pan. And, for a few weeks, sports that are entirely fascinating but would otherwise receive no television coverage were broadcast to the world.
August brought with it the requirement that new insurance plans cover contraceptive care without charging women additionally. Thank you, Affordable Care Act!
Another Mars rover touched down successfully - let's see what Curiosity will bring.
The ability to social-engineer people is still the weakest link in any security system. With systems being linked together more and more, though, one weak link can potentially result in the compromising and destruction of all of one's digital life and work.
Michigan's recall of the dictatorial powers act went forward due to a court ruling that overturned the font-size challenge.
Mitt Romney picked Paul Ryan as a running mate. And boy howdy, the quotes from those two were only just now starting to get good...
...although not to be outdone by some Congressional candidates, one who started the chain by talking about how pregnancy wasn't possible in "legitimate rape".
There was another Perfect Game thrown, this time by a Seattle Mariners pitcher, in a game the Mariners won 1-0.
September started with the campaigns bearing down in earnest. Which only increased the tempo of lies and misdirection from the Republican candidate. Since we were getting close to the point of the elections, the attempts to reduce the voting rolls to as small as possible were also underway. Mitt Romney spoke to a closed-door fundraising group where he revealed his disdain for about half of the country. Even if that's what you believe, it's probably not wise to say it in public if you want to be elected.
A court tossed out Wisconsin's law that stripped collective bargaining rights for public-sector unionized employees.
Virginia forced women's health clinics to close or renovate, with the Attorney General claiming he wouldn't represented the Board of Health if they got sued because the Board of Health wanted to grandfather in existing clinics and exempt them from the requirements of the new laws designed to force them to close.
A United States ambassador was killed at a consulate when it came under attack. The findings on that death would make the State department at fault for not providing enough security to protect the ambassador, although there was a lot of complaint about the Congress not fully funding the State Department's requests for more security.
And we celebrated Petrov Day, the day that we came closest to wiping out the world with nuclear weapons, to be saved by an engineer correctly diagnosing a bug.
October meant Presidential Debates. Which also meant plenty of opportunities for drinking and drinking games, if you were so inclined. (I think a lot of us were.) I always find it interesting to see how political commentators react to things like debates, and this mostly confirmed that they're after style, rather than substance. Possibly because they think the voting populace is. If that's the case, though, shouldn't they be trying to whip us up into paying attention to the issues instead?
And the Vice Presidential Debate was...sad in its own way, when you realize that one of the two sides had prepared substance and the other had not.
News coverage became myopic on the Presidential Election, but there were a lot of people who were busily providing other things to look at on the blog rolls. Thank you, all of you, for posting about stuff you think is cool. (Or totally not cool and deserving of a smackdown.) Several candidates for office displayed their utter contempt for women, but there were also nice pieces about how awesome the current time is, in terms of "we live in a science-fiction novel". Employers started !harassing their employees to vote the way the CEO wants them to vote, doing things like threatening jobs or putting anti-candidate material in their required courses for someone to become part of Management.
Did we also mention that the Congressional Research Service disproved the main Republican plank about marginal tax rates this month? In retaliation, the Republican Party forced the CRS to temporarily pull the report.
And then there was the hurricane that shredded the east coast of the country and flooded large parts of highly population-dense major metropolitan areas. After which, the partisanship vanished, at least regarding recovery efforts. (Not that the Republican Governor didn't take heat from the conservative base and their media propaganda arm for working to help people rather than playing politics.)
November got off to a swift start. Within the first seven days, the United States Presidential contest had been decided in favor of Barack Obama, maintaining the status quo and avoiding the potential alternate future where the robber barons were able to accelerate their pillage with the government doing less and less to stand in their way.
Better than the election of the center-rightist, though, were the resounding defeat of anti-women candidates, a clean slate of victories on questions of marriage equality, more women in the Congress and state legislatures than ever before, the first Asian-American woman in the senate, a completely female Congressional delegation, and an openly-gay Senator elected.
And the dictatorial Emergency Financial Manager Law in Michigan was repealed. As it turns out, this would have severe consequences.
None of this would make a dent in the ideological armor of the Republican Party. Governors would refuse to provide health care to their people because the wrong ideology advanced the idea, for example.
There was also the scandal that wasn't (Susan Rice's involvement in the Benghazi attack), and the scandal that definitely is (David Petraeus and an extramarital affair, with shocks that might reach down the ladder at Defense.)
And the media cabals tightened their noose to control everyone's access and cut them off if there's even the suspicion of copyright infringement.
December brought Vague Early Winter Possibly Religious Festivals, some lovely correspondence for the same, a new Doctor Who episode (finally!), and the final episodes of Leverage.
There was also an apocalyptic fright - good thing is, the Prime Minister of Australia was calm and collected as she explained to us about what was going to happen. (As a joke spot for a radio show.)
Austerity measures worldwide continued to take effect, with the poor suffering and rich skating. And the United States braced itself for a big, easily-preventable austerity measure to take effect because House Republicans could not get off their collective ideological ass and pass legislation in time.
Michigan's Republican legislature and governor exacted a swift revenge on the defeat of the Emergency Financial Manager law, by proposing and passing legislation within a few hours that made the state a Right-To-Work state, thus allowing people to reap the benefits of union membership in union jobs, but without having those workers join the union or pay a fee to the union for the benefit of the collective bargaining and other union perks. Apparently, when they really do want to, Republicans are quite capable of passing all sorts of legislation.
(This includes yet more onerous restrictions on women's health clinics designed to shut them down and prevent women from getting family planning, cancer screening, wellness, and abortion services.)
And thus, we are here, at the endpoint, ready to see again what happened and hopefully take those lessons forward into our lives. We also lost a lot of people this year who were iconic and contributed to the culture and to fighting the worst aspects of the culture. The difficulty of living through time is that time passes, and the passage of time means that people are sometimes taken from us that shouldn't be, or that we're not ready for yet.
That said, there were good things and bad in this year, like there are in all years. I'm appreciative of the fact that I have a blog-reading audience in any form, and that other places, where I leave comments, they seem to be appreciated or, at least, I haven't been driven out of there by an angry mob.
I underestimate myself a lot. It makes things safer, less likely to result in disappointment.
So, this year started in the Time of Nearly Certain Doom, where I could have been dismissed at will had the capricious manager decided that was her wish for that day. No light was yet visible at the end of the tunnel at this point, even though we knew that she would be retiring at the beginning of the next month. It was checkpoint one, and if we could manage to get there, things looked potentially better.
Elsewhere, though, the turnings of the world and the United States provided all sorts of interesting distractions and events to follow.
Since it was an election year, and the Presidential office was to be decided, the primary process for the Republican Party (and other parties, such as Americans Elect) was in full swing. The Republican Party was, at that time, fielding theocratic Tea-Party friendly candidate as frontrunners, discounting the Randian libertarians, and giving plenty of press to those who were only in it for the money. The person who was to capture the nomination was just starting to consolidate his power.
PFC Bradley Manning, accused WikiLeaker, was recommended for a court-martial. Much later on, we would find out the details of his confinement - they resemble the torturous conditions of solitary confinement in prisons...but worse.
The tug-of-war that is convincing people to grant basic human rights to all people, regardless of anything, saw victories and defeats as the march of progress looked anything but inexorable. (Sometimes you have to pop the fantasy that all is well and equal to get started.)
And two bills went down in flames that would have severely restricted the ability to do legitimate things on the Internet, if what you did was something the media cabals didn't like. (They were promptly reintroduced in new forms.)
In February, retirement. And a compliment for the slideshow that I had put together for the outgoing manager (at the request of a co-worker). Checkpoint achieved. Now came the Uncertain Times of Doom, as a temporary boss was appointed to run the place until they could find a more permanent replacement. We were not out of the woods by any stretch, but sympathetic co-workers noted it would be unlikely that the temporary person in charge would do any dismissal.
Elsewhere, the surveillance state continued to deploy new technologies to observe people without their consent, and without any sort of actual debate about the virtue of doing such a thing.
The Komen Foundation, mission: cure breast cancer, withdrew it's support from Planned Parenthood, mission: keep women healthy, for a short time, then reinstated its support after the outcry created backdraft. In the various state legislatures, the march to remove as many rights from women as possible continued apace, with restrictions on abortion being the most popular way of getting to that point.
Ah, and the Middle East - Syria was still in the middle of a vicious civil conflict. And when we say "vicious", we understate it by several orders of magnitude.
Penguin decided it would stop selling e-materials to libraries because they didn't like Amazon being allowed into the loop.
And the Mars Rover Spirit/Opportunity mission entered year eight of data collection, having long since passed the "three-hour tour" point of its planned life.
March came upon us with a realization. Having passed the halfway point, it was possible that we might escape the Doom with our existence and position intact. That's not to say that optimism was the default position, just that the possibility of getting through things okay was now on the horizon.
If there's one thing in civil rights that was going forward at this point, it's marriage equality - and remarkably, that trend would continue through the rest of the year.
And there was some comeuppance - Rush Limbaugh started suffering from advertiser shunning after he went well beyond the pale in calling a law student a slut because she has health insurance that covers birth control.
PayPal attempted to use their space as a processor of payments to demand sites remove content they thought was objectionable or risk losing the ability to take PayPal. They failed.
And a middle-aged white man shot an unarmed black teenager and was not convicted for it, because the laws in Florida allowed him to do so, so long as he claimed he felt he was in danger from the black teenager. We would find out later that those same protections did not apply to a woman shooting her abusive husband.
April showed the first signs of additional big trouble in the State of Michigan, where the rule of law and the procedures of the legislature were suspended, on the record, with recording devices present. Then, a person with a clear conflict of interest allowed a petition to be deadlocked instead of certified, because the petition would have worked against the dictatorial powers granted to the Governor.
The Time of Uncertain Doom continued, with another boss changeover from Temporary Boss to More Permanent Boss, again with assurances that things were unlikely to change. By the end of the month, it looked like getting out from under the Doom was a very real possibility.
Willard "Mitt" Romney became the Republican nominee for the 2012 election, even though the official nomination wouldn't happen for several months afterward.
The Occupy movement continued to suffer siege and abuse at the hands of local police departments, most notable at UC Davis where high-volume pepper spray was directed at sitting protesters, as well as police violence.
And there was a perfect (27 batters retired in order without a hit or base on balls) game.
May reminded us of the failures of austerity movements and the power of democratic elections. Governments were changed out, and Egypt held a democratic election for the first time in decades. Many of the Syrian foreign ambassadors were expelled from countries after a militia force in the country executed children.
Also, some quiet attempts at engineering delegations to elect a different candidate for the Republican nomination other than the presumed frontrunner. Didn't quite work, but we salute the Paul campaign for playing by the rules.
The Republican Party continued to eat its own tail in choosing candidates to run for national office in November, purging moderates and anyone who wasn't sufficiently ideological.
Shaq got his doctorate. Well-played, sir.
The President of the United States went on the record saying he is for marriage equality.
He also believes that he has unilateral authority to order the death of anyone in the world, and supports automated systems that crunch data to derive conclusions and attack people, without necessarily passing it through the sanity filter of an actual human being.
Google put an automated vehicle on the roads of Nevada.
Ah, and the Time of Uncertain Doom passed into history. I made it through without being dismissed. The scars from that action are still quite visible, though, and it takes mental effort not to spin completely into a panic any time the management wants to talk with me / the librarians about anything at all, because anything could potentially be the start of yet another sequence leading to Doom. The capriciousness and lack of listening to explanation the first time has me concerned that it will happen again.
June opened with a second case of the federal Defense of Marriage Act being ruled against the Constitution. Eyes turned to the Supreme Court to see whether or not they would hear a case on those matters. They kind of have to, because now there are conflicts in the rulings of law.
The anti-union governor and lawmakers in Wisconsin survived efforts to recall them out of office and remove their majority. Full anti-union speed ahead.
More problems in Michigan, where two female legislators were censured for talking about vaginas in the context of an anti-abortion bill. In response, a very large production of the Vagina Monologues on the Capitol's lawn.
The President ordered that discretion be used in determining whether to deport young children from the country, especially those that are here through no fault of their own.
July meant the turning of the hands of age for me. Congratulations, self, you leveled up.
The Supreme Court found 5-4 in favor of the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act, allowing it to continue, which sent a large amount of the conservative world into apoplexy.
The House of Representatives voted to hold the Attorney General in contempt over a nonexistent scandal.
A major financial house admitted to rigging a major component of the financial system for their own profit.
And Republicans everywhere were gearing up for the election by trying to make it harder for people to vote in that election.
Did we mention the systematic lying from the Romney campaign and the continual attempts of conservatives to push back against progress made on marriage equality and basic acceptance of QUILTBAG people?
The Chick-fil-A corporation found the Jim Henson Creature Shop terminating their partnership because of the anti-QUILTBAG stance of Chick-fil-A. The corporation then fabricated a story about "safety concerns" to cover the actual reason for the removal.
Weather systems were demonstrating destructive powers, perhaps as a lead-in to the hurricane that would happen later that completely devastated the parts of the East Coast where it landed.
The Games of the XXX Olympiad started, featuring Jo Rowling reading an excerpt from Peter Pan. And, for a few weeks, sports that are entirely fascinating but would otherwise receive no television coverage were broadcast to the world.
August brought with it the requirement that new insurance plans cover contraceptive care without charging women additionally. Thank you, Affordable Care Act!
Another Mars rover touched down successfully - let's see what Curiosity will bring.
The ability to social-engineer people is still the weakest link in any security system. With systems being linked together more and more, though, one weak link can potentially result in the compromising and destruction of all of one's digital life and work.
Michigan's recall of the dictatorial powers act went forward due to a court ruling that overturned the font-size challenge.
Mitt Romney picked Paul Ryan as a running mate. And boy howdy, the quotes from those two were only just now starting to get good...
...although not to be outdone by some Congressional candidates, one who started the chain by talking about how pregnancy wasn't possible in "legitimate rape".
There was another Perfect Game thrown, this time by a Seattle Mariners pitcher, in a game the Mariners won 1-0.
September started with the campaigns bearing down in earnest. Which only increased the tempo of lies and misdirection from the Republican candidate. Since we were getting close to the point of the elections, the attempts to reduce the voting rolls to as small as possible were also underway. Mitt Romney spoke to a closed-door fundraising group where he revealed his disdain for about half of the country. Even if that's what you believe, it's probably not wise to say it in public if you want to be elected.
A court tossed out Wisconsin's law that stripped collective bargaining rights for public-sector unionized employees.
Virginia forced women's health clinics to close or renovate, with the Attorney General claiming he wouldn't represented the Board of Health if they got sued because the Board of Health wanted to grandfather in existing clinics and exempt them from the requirements of the new laws designed to force them to close.
A United States ambassador was killed at a consulate when it came under attack. The findings on that death would make the State department at fault for not providing enough security to protect the ambassador, although there was a lot of complaint about the Congress not fully funding the State Department's requests for more security.
And we celebrated Petrov Day, the day that we came closest to wiping out the world with nuclear weapons, to be saved by an engineer correctly diagnosing a bug.
October meant Presidential Debates. Which also meant plenty of opportunities for drinking and drinking games, if you were so inclined. (I think a lot of us were.) I always find it interesting to see how political commentators react to things like debates, and this mostly confirmed that they're after style, rather than substance. Possibly because they think the voting populace is. If that's the case, though, shouldn't they be trying to whip us up into paying attention to the issues instead?
And the Vice Presidential Debate was...sad in its own way, when you realize that one of the two sides had prepared substance and the other had not.
News coverage became myopic on the Presidential Election, but there were a lot of people who were busily providing other things to look at on the blog rolls. Thank you, all of you, for posting about stuff you think is cool. (Or totally not cool and deserving of a smackdown.) Several candidates for office displayed their utter contempt for women, but there were also nice pieces about how awesome the current time is, in terms of "we live in a science-fiction novel". Employers started !harassing their employees to vote the way the CEO wants them to vote, doing things like threatening jobs or putting anti-candidate material in their required courses for someone to become part of Management.
Did we also mention that the Congressional Research Service disproved the main Republican plank about marginal tax rates this month? In retaliation, the Republican Party forced the CRS to temporarily pull the report.
And then there was the hurricane that shredded the east coast of the country and flooded large parts of highly population-dense major metropolitan areas. After which, the partisanship vanished, at least regarding recovery efforts. (Not that the Republican Governor didn't take heat from the conservative base and their media propaganda arm for working to help people rather than playing politics.)
November got off to a swift start. Within the first seven days, the United States Presidential contest had been decided in favor of Barack Obama, maintaining the status quo and avoiding the potential alternate future where the robber barons were able to accelerate their pillage with the government doing less and less to stand in their way.
Better than the election of the center-rightist, though, were the resounding defeat of anti-women candidates, a clean slate of victories on questions of marriage equality, more women in the Congress and state legislatures than ever before, the first Asian-American woman in the senate, a completely female Congressional delegation, and an openly-gay Senator elected.
And the dictatorial Emergency Financial Manager Law in Michigan was repealed. As it turns out, this would have severe consequences.
None of this would make a dent in the ideological armor of the Republican Party. Governors would refuse to provide health care to their people because the wrong ideology advanced the idea, for example.
There was also the scandal that wasn't (Susan Rice's involvement in the Benghazi attack), and the scandal that definitely is (David Petraeus and an extramarital affair, with shocks that might reach down the ladder at Defense.)
And the media cabals tightened their noose to control everyone's access and cut them off if there's even the suspicion of copyright infringement.
December brought Vague Early Winter Possibly Religious Festivals, some lovely correspondence for the same, a new Doctor Who episode (finally!), and the final episodes of Leverage.
There was also an apocalyptic fright - good thing is, the Prime Minister of Australia was calm and collected as she explained to us about what was going to happen. (As a joke spot for a radio show.)
Austerity measures worldwide continued to take effect, with the poor suffering and rich skating. And the United States braced itself for a big, easily-preventable austerity measure to take effect because House Republicans could not get off their collective ideological ass and pass legislation in time.
Michigan's Republican legislature and governor exacted a swift revenge on the defeat of the Emergency Financial Manager law, by proposing and passing legislation within a few hours that made the state a Right-To-Work state, thus allowing people to reap the benefits of union membership in union jobs, but without having those workers join the union or pay a fee to the union for the benefit of the collective bargaining and other union perks. Apparently, when they really do want to, Republicans are quite capable of passing all sorts of legislation.
(This includes yet more onerous restrictions on women's health clinics designed to shut them down and prevent women from getting family planning, cancer screening, wellness, and abortion services.)
And thus, we are here, at the endpoint, ready to see again what happened and hopefully take those lessons forward into our lives. We also lost a lot of people this year who were iconic and contributed to the culture and to fighting the worst aspects of the culture. The difficulty of living through time is that time passes, and the passage of time means that people are sometimes taken from us that shouldn't be, or that we're not ready for yet.
