Happy New Year!

I, for one, can't wait for this decade to be over. It wasn't a great one, both personally and for all of us.

We survived George W. Bush but were left with the festering sore of right-wing extremism. With Obama's election, many of us hoped he would breathe fresh life into Washington and our political lives but instead we've ended up with even greater partisanship and a Senate Health Care bill that, if left unchanged, could bankrupt the country. We're still engaged in a two front war on terrorism that the hawks would love to see expanded to three. (Do they even know where Yemen is?) Hurricanes, heat waves, tsunamis and earthquakes killed almost 900,000 people in the last decade. Yet millions still deny the reality of climate change.

Personally, this decade pretty much sucked. 2001, in particular was truly awful. Hubby was laid off at December of 2000, Youngest was diagnosed with Lymphedema the day our insurance coverage ran out from that job, and my Dad and eldest sister died. We spent the next 5 years living hand-to-mouth while Hubby went back to college to get his degree. We're only now starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel after incurring a mountain of debt. Still living on that mountain but it no longer feels like it's going to fall down on top of us.

Still, the decade wasn't an entire loss. Progress has been made in marriage equality, Hate Crimes legislation has passed on the federal level and, it can't be said enough, George W Bush is no longer President.

Newsweek has a good review of the decade in the following video:



I will tempt fate and say that the next decade can't get any worse. I do believe that as far as equal rights is concerned, the arc of history is moving towards equal rights for homosexuals. It may the end of the next decade before we see marriage equality on a federal level, a repeal of DOMA, DADT and all the legal inequalities current in our system.

Here's hoping that the next decade is a good one.