This year started off in memorable fashion with the president’s State of the Union address, in which he notably criticized the Supreme Court and got a round of applause for disrespecting the judicial branch. The government fighting like children was a running theme of the year.
And 2010’s government fighting wasn’t limited to interparty quarrels either with the Tea Party emerging to force the Republicans further right than many of them care to be.
After months of fighting in the legislature followed by back-door deals, we were reminded by Democrats in Congress that we’re a representative democracy when it passed health care legislation the majority of Americans didn’t support.
Maybe Congress looked to the future and wanted to make sure it could get cheaper health care during its future unemployment?
Either way, it’s been a banner year for the U.S. Congress.
And if Americans thought this was the worst it could get, they really weren’t prepared for much.
The negligence of BP resulted in an explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that would eventually turn out to become the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.
But 2010 wasn’t all bad news.
In August, President Barack Obama declared an end to the combat mission in Iraq with all combat troops removed from the nation.
More good news in 2010 — albeit short-lived — came at the judicial hands of Judge Virginia Phillips when she had the intelligence and the common sense to do what Washington didn’t have the morality to do when she overturned the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.
But alas, the elected government continued to show its inadequacy by challenging the ruling. Furthermore, it hasn’t been able to overturn the policy in the Senate despite having a lame-duck session and a Pentagon study that shows allowing openly gay men and women to serve in the military would have no negative effects.
After more months of government bickering, we finally had the elections.
The good news: We no longer have to hear any more political ads for two more years.
The bad news: It meant that the people of Florida had elected a governor who paid his way to Tallahassee, and they overwhelmingly elected a Tea Party senator.
And although Florida’s silver-medal winner in the gubernatorial race wasn’t a much better option, Florida most assuredly chose the worse of two evils.
So here we stand in early December with our military still as blatantly discriminatory as ever, no government budget worked out for the upcoming years, an economy that’s still a mess, and a split government with both poliyical sides appearing unable or unwilling to compromise.
What is the good news?
There’s always 2011.
Chris Dodson is a first-year finance and journalism student. His column appears every Monday.
