Michael Swickard
“Last year we said, ‘Things can’t go on like this,’ and they didn’t, they got worse.” – Will Rogers
2009 set a record for being uniquely weird. Here are a few examples:
• In Health-care reform the U.S. Senate stayed in session until Christmas Eve, driven by the professed desire to address the issue of Americans without health care insurance. But the relief in the just-passed bill does not take effect until 2013.
During the debate some senators said, “Bribe me for my vote.” So bribes were made. New Mexico’s Sens. Bingaman and Udall allowed citizens in other states to get a much better health-care deal than New Mexicans did.
• Likewise, in the summer Rep. Harry Teague was flabbergasted when district citizens yelled at him for supporting the Democrat agenda. He blamed everyone but himself for the voter anger.
• In this year of strange notions, our government printed money with no backing in huge amounts while acting as if the worldwide financial community is just going to ignore our government’s insolvency forever and ever. That is not likely.
• As to Global Warming, this was the year the debate heated up. There were admissions of serious attempts by Global Warming proponents to fake data and to keep real scientists from publishing data showing that Manmade Global Warming is a hoax. Then it got real weird.
The Global Warming advocates went to Copenhagen in the dead of winter and were caught in the first Copenhagen blizzard in many years. They warned, between shivering lips, about Global Warming. Maybe it is just me but I would have gone to Death Valley, California in the middle of summer to make that announcement. To get frostbite while talking about global warming sets a new record for stupidity.
• The Environmental Protection Agency, without congressional approval, declared carbon dioxide a health hazard. Many people addicted to carbonated beverages started stocking up for when soda carbonation is removed “for our own good.”
The power grab by the EPA signaled that things were going to be much more expensive in our country despite the recession. And that the executive branch of government was more powerful than the Legislative.
• This year, the concerns over Swine Flu were met by very limited vaccine supplies. I got my H1N1 vaccine finally Monday by standing in line for over an hour. There were only 30 doses available. In another government triumph, more people were turned away than got vaccinated.
• The “war” against terrorism was made less distinct this year when the word “terror” was removed. It is now officially the Struggle Against Misguided People. While the mantra for the last election was “change,” the administration is using the same tactics against our enemies that did not work for George W. Bush.
What is weird is that we are no closer to stopping the attacks upon us by militants than in the days of Lawrence of Arabia in the 1920s. Incidentally, the mindset remains the same both in the Islamic world and in our world from that time to now. Prediction: more of the same.
• Also weird this year is our “war” against drugs, which made no headway other than move our country further toward a police state in that every year more police are hired while those who want to get high still do so. Our neighbor Ciudad Juárez is a city under siege and no one seems to be thinking outside the box on how to stop the violence that is funded by Americans buying drugs. There is no real plan in our country to deal with illegal drugs except do what we have done for decades without success.
• Then there were the people who made the news even weirder. First, within a month of becoming the president of the United States, Barack Obama was named the recipient of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. He was scheduled to receive his award in December. However, just before he went to the ceremony he increased significantly the number of soldiers in Afghanistan, causing some peace advocates to mutter under their breath that the award was for peace, not war.
• Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich gave even his own party the willies and was removed from office for the appearance of rampant corruption. The fallout was that N.M. Governor Bill Richardson, who still has not been charged with any crime, was linked in the minds of people with possible “pay for play” actions. Hence, his appointment to the Obama cabinet was abruptly withdrawn and, red-faced, he returned to New Mexico.
Throughout the year several other prominent New Mexicans were investigated and several were convicted of corruption, but that is not weird at all. The weirdness was that it took a comparison to Rob Blagojevich to derail Richardson’s six-year juggernaut toward getting out of this state and back to his home in Washington, D.C.
• Then came the strange story of Tiger Woods, a man who had worked tirelessly his entire life to reach the place in American consciousness as the most admired person of all time. While not convicted of any crime, he has fallen from those lofty skies and is just a former shell of the person who at one time commanded millions of dollars just for attending a golf event.
It was a weird year. I imagine an even weirder year coming. Stay tuned.
Swickard is a weekly columnist for this site. You can reach him at michael@swickard.com.
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