What's Been and What's Ben

What was that all about, 2009. You started out with such hope and fear and you ended with such hope and fear. Obama held the promise that he would make vegetables delicious and taxes fun. He is ending the year with W. level approval as people feel the disappointment that the second coming of Jesus will not in the aughts (2000-2009). When can we just start calling years like years without the obvious “two-thousand” prefix?

We had those seals shoot the Somali pirates in the head at sea to save the sea captain. Al Franken became a U.S. senator after a few months of recount. Iraq looks like we might leave soon. World economic collapse was averted. KAUST opened. I don’t think anything legitimately worthy of a Mission Accomplished banner.

On the other hand unemployment went to double digits as Washington became stalemated by a republican party that refused to accept that they were in the minority. Michael Jackson died and people forgot he like children a bit too much. I liked Thriller, but didn’t feel he warranted more than a brief mention on the news.

I feel that the Obama hate has been masked racism. I hope somebody is doing some psychological study on the tea-baggers. After the doctrines of Bush failed people were so used to attacking things that we ran out of will to build anything up. The tea-baggers have no mantra of their own. They enjoy shouting at Obama. Glenn Beck and the like have risen to power by feeding on fear. Perhaps this has been the decade of fear.