Wed 30 Dec 2009
Good riddance to a decade of failed GOP ideology
Posted by USA / Roy G under Balkers
[3] Comments
Video summaries below of 2000-09, during which the U.S. Republican party was in power and proceeded to wreck the world diplomatically and economically. Non-U.S’ers will be pleased to know that they’re now a (very vocal) minority, effectively a regional party of the Southeastern U.S., with shifting demographics which portend further marginalization in the upcoming decade. Especially as the fixes implemented by a
more Progressive agenda under Obama, begin to correct the damage done at home
and abroad.
2010 will IMO begin the first decade in which we truly move away from the previous century. The first decade in which communications technologies which have shrunk the world and connected it’s people in direct ways, begin to become a political factor.
The decade in which the concept emerges that a globally-connected economy makes nations interdependent and therefore compelled to negotiate, and also puts workers in
a single boat – with shared interests & an increasingly unified voice to demand socio-economic progress on a world scale. That’s a bit hard to visualize at the ’10’s inception, but will be on the radar by it’s close I predict. Recessions on one continent pull the others in it, as we have seen. Governments need to act in coordinated ways to counter it – as they did with the present one – and social safety-nets need to be strengthened where inadequate to cover human suffering, which is most nations of course.
The global economy is not to be feared, only regulated.
That allows us to not only create new wealth and prosperity, but also share it. At least moreso than in decades and centuries prior. Click on the links in B/P Favored at right
to learn how Bill Clinton and Bill & Melinda Gates and Kiva.org, have already begun enfranchising people without regard to national boundaries. They will go down as pioneers of positive globalized change – whereas proponents of laissez-faire neglect, dereliction and vast inequality will hopefully close the decade even more on the scrapheap of history than they are at present.
I’m pleased to have launched Balkingpoints.com into these dawning prospects for
our planet.
Financial problems didnt take long to surface. Meanwhile, the 2000s brought us Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, and the ascent of Google – length 3:22
Despite Y2K panic at the beginning of the decade, the first ten years of the new millennium proved that our fellow humans are much more dangerous than malfunctioning machines – length 4:58
The new millennium began with questions about the dependability of technology – length 3:48
At the turn of the new millennium, American cars were getting bigger and bigger. Meanwhile, Japanese, Chinese and European automakers were going smaller and smaller – length 3:22Right thinking there Roy. I look forward to a new world in the 2010’s as well. It can’t go much worse than this wretched decade did!
History will mark the Bush years with even more corruption than is believed already. That’s my prediciton.
How to take a democracy to
police-state, by Dick Cheney;
1) Five GOP appointees on Supreme Court interfere with Florida’s right to conduct it’s recount, and install Bush Jr, who lost the 2000 popular vote.
2) Downing Street Memos indicate Bush admin meetings & plans to collude with the Blair UK government mere weeks after 9/11/01, in creating justifications for attacking Iraq.
3) CIA intel is “stovepiped” and cherry-picked to justify false claim of imminent WMD threat from Iraq. Bush sends U.S. military into battle on authorizations obtained with smoke and mirrors, thousands of American soldiers are killed, tens of thousands maimed in urban-warfare quagmire.
4) Longtime U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson publishes article in June 2003 refuting Bush “Yellowcake from Africa” claim put forth in his 2003 SOU address. His wife, 20-year covert service agent Valerie Plame is then exposed as a CIA agent by GOP mouthpieces such as Robert Novak, on plan cooked up by Cheney’s office to intimidate any dissenters to Iraq invasion. Plame’s distinguished career is ruined, her life possibly put in danger by the outing.
5) Scooter Libby is convicted for obstruction of justice in the Plame abuse-of-power scandal. Bush then commutes his jail sentence.
6) Shortly after 9/11, Bush admin begins mass surveillance of emails and phone calls of Americans, in violation of the 1978 FISA law and the 4th Amendment. Bush lies to reporter in 2004 campaign, that any surveillance conducted is within the law and the Constitution.
7) Bush administration engages in systematic “enhanced interrogation” and rendition program at Abu Gharib, Guantanamo and secret CIA detention facilities, in violation of Geneva Conventions and U.S. law.
8) Eight U.S. Attorneys are fired by Gonzales for not pursuing hand-picked investigations and prosecutions against Democrats.
These are not just assertions for the sake of quibbling and debate. They’re deeply documented at this point, reported on, and verifiable by Google searches. Can there any longer be any real doubt, about the dictatorial aims of the last administration? Is it really the best thing for our future as a free nation and nation of laws, to let ALL of this slide? Can you imagine Nixon receiving just a nod & wink on Watergate?
With all this abuse A-OK, it’s a green light for any administration to ignore the laws on the books. Bush supporters, OK with you if Obama orders his Justice Dept. to start selectively wiretapping and prosecuting Republicans?
That is why you have a nation of laws. It is above partisan interests. Without upholding them – consistently – you slide down the slope to fascism.