Politics
 

2009

From Left Space

2008 2009 2010

Contents

[edit] Timeline

[edit] January

January 20: U.S. Inauguration Day: President Barack Obama takes office.
January 23: President Obama issues memorandum rescinding the Reagan adminsitration's 1984 "Mexico City Policy" gag rule that denied USAID funds to NGOs working in family planning if they also provided advice about abortion. The second Bush administration restated the counterproductive policy in 2001.
January 29: Pres. Obama signs the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

[edit] February

February 4: Pres. Obama signs the Children’s Health Insurance Reauthorization Act.
February 4: Female suicide bomber kills 35 in Baghdad.
February 11: "What kind of heat would Jesus pack?" The Arkansas House of Representatives approves by a vote of 57-42 a bill allowing worshippers to conceal firearms while in church, temple, mosque or other place of worship. Republican wingnut State Representative Beverly Pyle (Cedarville) said she introduced the bill so Arkansans would have the right to draw down "should a situation happen in one of our churches." What does she mean by "our churches?"
February 11: Bomb in Baghdad market kills 16
February 12: Happy Darwin Day! Darwin's 200th Birthday and the 150th Anniversary of the publication of On The Origin of Species.
Februrary 12: Bombings in Mosul and Karbala'
February 13: 32 Shia pilgrims killed south of Baghdad.
February 13: Pres. Obama signs the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, a.k.a. the Stimulus Bill.
February 15: Iranian Prosecutor General Dorri-Najafabadi states that "there is irrefutable evidence that adherents of the Baha'i sect are in close contact with the enemies of the Iranian nation."
February 18: Iranian judicial spokesperson Ali-Reza Jamshidi states that seven imprisoned Baha'i leaders (Fariba Kamalabadi, Jamaloddin Khanjani, Afif Naemi, Saeid Rezaie, Mahvash Sabet, Behrouz Tavakkoli, and Vahid Tizfahm) have been accused of espionage for "foreigners (read Israel) and will face trial.
February 18: Texas Gov. Rick Perry whines about the stimulus package but lacks the backbone to say 'no' to the money for his state: "My concern is there's going to be commitments attached to it that are a mile long...And we need the freedom to say 'No thanks'." So don't be a hypocrite Perry. Just take nothing. More for the states that didn't foist GW Bush on the country.
February 18: Steve Smick, 48, commits suicide with a handgun inside televangelist Robert H. Schuller's Crystal Cathedral while standing in front of a cross.
February 19: Pres. Barack Obama fulfills tradtion among new presidents by visiting Canada first as he flies to Ottawa to meet with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The unpopular conservative Canadian PM refuses to promise more Canadian troops for the mission in Afghanistan.
February 19: Anti-Abortion agitator Rev. Walter Hoye (Progressive Missionary Baptist Church of Berkeley) is sentenced to 30 days in jail because of his arrest last May on charges of violating clinic buffer zone restriction law, Title 8 Health and Safety Chapter 8.52: Access to Reproductive Health Care Facilities of the Oakland Municipal Code.
February 19: DC lobbyist Vicki L. Iseman settled libel suit against The New York Times without payment or retraction of the article by the newspaper.
February 20: Regulators seize Robert Allen Stanford's (Sir Robert after being "knighted" by the government/tax haven of Antigua) Stanford International Bank. U.S. SEC accuses him of defrauding investors of $8-$9 billion.
February 20: Israeli President Shimon Peres chose hard-line Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu to form a new Israeli coalition government.
February 20: Center-Right Latvian PM Ivars Godmanis resigns in response to the demand by the People's Party and the Union of Greens and Farmers.
February 21: Another day to make Gun Nuts Proud! In Pennsylvania, pregnant 26-year-old Kenzie Marie Houk is shot to death by her boyfriend's 11 year old son, Jordan Brown. The fifth grader then got on the school bus to go to school. Houk's body was found after her 4 year old daughter told tree cutters on the property that she thought her mommie was dead. Little Jordan's father, Jack Houk, taught his son to shoot behind their farmhouse, and the two enjoyed hunting together. The 20 gauge shotgun used as a mirder weapon was a Christmas present from dad. So isn't that exactly what the NRA promotes?
February 22: Terrorist bomb blast in Hussain Square in Cairo kills a 17 year old French teenage girl and wounds 13 French citizens, 3 Saudis and 4 Egyptians.
February 23: British citizen, torture victim and Guantanamo prisoner Binyam Mohamed released.
February 24: Kentucky Republican Senator Jim Bunning apologizes to 75-year-old Ruth Bader Ginsburg for saying he believes she could die within a year from pancreatic cancer.
February 24: Australian/British/American press lord Rupert Murdoch issues unmanly quasi-apology for racist anti-Obama cartoon in his New York Post.
February 24: Guess he owns one of Kentucky's two U.S. Senate seats. Republican Senator Jim Bunning threatens that he would have grounds for a lawsuit against National Republican Senatorial Committee if it backed a GOP challenger to him in the 2010 primary.
Fabruary 24: Quasi-State of the Union Adress by Barack Obama: 42 minutes on the economy and 10 minutes on foreign policy. "[I]n a time of crisis, we cannot afford to govern out of anger, or yield to the politics of the moment." Republican presidential wannabe Little Bobby Jindal delivers the Republican rebuttal. "Like the president's father," said Jindal, "my own parents came to this country from a distant land." Big wow Bobby.
February 24-25: The Bangladesh Rifles mutiny for better pay and are rewarded with an offer of amnesty by Bangladeshi PM Sheikh Hasina.
February 26: Arkansas Senate Judiciary Committee defeats the concealed carry in church bill on a voice vote.
February 26-28: Conservative Political Action Committee 2009 (CPAC 2009) features gaggle of political elites whose only carrer option is to exploit the self-deception of the shrinking conservative ideological minority. Unable to think realistically about the present or the near future, the assembled conduct a straw poll for their 2012 presidential favorites.

Straw Poll Results:

Mitt Romney 20%
Bobby Jindal 14%
Ron Paul 13%
Sarah Palin 13%
Newt Gingrich 10%
Mike Huckabee 7%
Mark Sanford 4%
Rudy Giuliani 3%
Tim Pawlenty 2%
Charlie Crist 1%
Undecided 9%
Effective Number of Candidates = 1.55 (with undecideds)
Effective Number of Candidates = 1.57 (without undecideds)
February 28: Paul Harvey, voice of conservative populism wrapped in sacchrine sentimentality, dies.

[edit] March

March 1: Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius accepts appointment as Secretary of Health and Human Services.
March 8: Bomb at police academy kills 28 in Baghdad.
March 9: Another blow against theocracy. Pres. Obama signs executive order overturning Bush's Oct. 2001 banning federal funding on embryonic stem cell research.
March 11: Individuals commit civil atrocities with firarms. Michael McLendon shoots and kills 10 (family members and strangers) with a semoautomatic weapon in a two county shooting spree in south Alabama before killing himself. A 17 year old gunman shoots and kills 15 in Winnenden (near Stuttgart), Germany before being killed by police.
March 12: Iraqi court sentences Iraqi journalist, Muntader al-Zaidi, for throwing two shoes at a smirking George W. Bush, to three years in prison. al-Zaidi said: "I am innocent. It was a natural reaction to the crime of occupation." NYT News Report
March 12: Common Sense Continues to Blossom in Washington, DC: Pres. Obama names Margaret A. Hamburg and Joshua Sharfstein as Director and Deputy Director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
March 12: Louisiana Republican Senator David Vitter attempts to open security door at Washignton Dulles Airport during a " do you know who I am?" temper tantrum. News Report
March 16: White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs slams the ailing Republican machine by dismissing the appearance of still unindicted former V.P. Richard B. "Dick" Chency on State of the Union: Well, I guess Rush Limbaugh was busy ... so they trotted out the next most popular member of the Republican cabal.
March 16: Report that the AIDS/HIV infection rate in Washington, DC is an estimated 3%.
March 16: Speaking on Iowa radio station WMT, Iowa Republican Senator vents populaist anger: “The first thing that would make me feel a little bit better towards them if they’d follow the Japanese model and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say I’m sorry, and then either do one of two things—resign, or go commit suicide.”
March 17: During a visit to Yaounde, Cameroon, Pope Bendict Benedict XVI claims that condom use will make the AIDS/HIV problem worse: "You can't resolve it with the distribution of condoms. On the contrary, it increases the problem." How many will die or become infected needlessly because of this Pope's fanaticism?
March 24: Holy Temper Tantrum: Roman Catholic Bishop John D'Arcy of Ft. Wayne, IN announces he will not attend the graduation ceremonies at the University of Notre Dame because he disapproves of with the stem-cell research and abortion policies of the commencement speaker: President Obama. How many other Roman Catholic parents will follow his absurd example and refuse to attend their children's graduation ceremony?
March 27: Lancet writes that Pope Benedict XVI “publicly distorted scientific evidence to promote Catholic doctrine” in condemning the use of comdoms to prevent HIV/AIDS.
March 28: Earth Hour goes global.
March 28: Ridiculous Fox News crawl still uses the phrase "homicide bomber" to describe a suicide bomber. Are there really none non-homicide bombers Fox News crawl writers? Why are you still trying to promote this creepily Orwellian construction that no one else uses?
March 29: Robert Stewart, 45, uses a firearm to shoot 11 people, killing 8 in Pine Lake Health and Rehabilitation Center in Carthage, North Carolina.
March 29: Mass murder-suicide by firearm takes the life of 6 people with a 7th gravely wounded in upscale Rivermark community in Santa Clara, California.
March 30: Pres. Obama signs Omnibus Public Lands Management Act of 2009, which protects land in California's Sierra Nevada, Oregon's Mount Hood, Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park, parts of Virginia's Jefferson National Forest, Idaho's Owyhee canyons, Michigan's Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore and Utah's Zion National Park.
March 31: Wingnut Iowans for Tax Relief mob attempts unsuccessfully to disrupt an Iowa State House hearing on House File 807 and Senate Study Bill 1317, which would end Federal tax deductibility on Iowa state taxes.
March 31: Pres. Obama arrives in London for the G20 Summit. French Pres. Nicholas Sarkozy threatens temper tantrum unless he gets his way.

[edit] April

April 1: Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN) legislative committee criticizes Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's nomination of NRA gumbah Wayne Anthony Ross as the state's Attorney General.
April 3: Another proud day for the Gun Lobby. Recently unemployed Vietnamese immigrant 42-year-old Jiverly Voong uses firearm to kill 13 and then himself at the American Civic Association in Binghamton, New York.
April 3: Iowa Supreme Court rules on equal protection grounds to legalize same size marriage.
April 3: Carlos Santana speaks truth to power: "Legalize marijuana and take all that money and invest it in teachers and in education. You will see a transformation in America...I really believe that as soon as we legalize and decriminalize marijuana we can actually afford a really good governor who won't keep taking money away from education and from teachers and send him back to Hollywood where he can do 'D' movies and we can get an 'A' governor." Santana was apparently referencing none other than California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
April 4: North Dakota Senate votes down proposal to designate fertilized human eggs as persons, 29-16.
April 5: Five children between ages between 7 and 16 are found shot to death in their home south east of Tacoma, Washington. The shooter is believed to be their father, who committed suicide.
April 7: Special Election (by-election)to fill the Ilinois 5th District seat vacated by Rahm Emmanuel.
Democratic candidate Mike Quigley 12,118 votes, 69.9%.
Republican candidate Rosanna Pulido 4,042 votes, 23.7%.
Green candidate Matt Reichtel, 500 votes, 6.7%.
April 15: Tea Party Protest Flop. Despite massive hype by Fox News and its stable of conservative news anchors/commentators/aspiring Republican presidential candidates and advisors, only modest to small crowds attracted to the conservative temper tantrums staged Boston, MA, Washington, DC, East Hampton, NY, Sacramento, CA and Yakima, WA. Only hundreds show up in Washington, DC. However the only organization in Boston actually re-enacting the American Revolutionary original tea party was from the Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender community, which protested the unequal tax treatment of married same-sex couples.
April 15: Georgia's Republican Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle drop outs of the 2010 governor’s race for health reasons.
April 15: Three die in yet another firearms atrocity, this time at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center. Kelly Hales, 56, and Hugo Bustamante, 46, are shot to death by Mario Ramirez, 50, before he kills himself.
April 19: Five die in murder-suicide in Middletown, Maryland. The shooter used a .25 caliber pistol to kill his wife and his three children, aged 5,4 and 2. He then killed himself with a shotgun.
April 25: Three killed and three wounded in shooting in Athens, Georgia involving a domestic dispute. The suspected killer is a respected Marketing Professor. So even elites fall prey to crimes of mass violence when guns are easily available.

[edit] May

May 2: Boston's WTKK-FM radio station suspends wingnut talk show host Jay Severin for failing to modulate his right wing vituperation. His expression of rightist hate--describing Mexican immigrants as "criminaliens," "primitives," "leeches," and exporters of "women with mustaches and VD" was deemed unacceptable. News Report Host Michael Graham's style of conservative whining is still deemed acceptable.
May 11: Five military personnel killed in a mass shooting in Camp Liberty, outside Baghdad. Sgt. John M. Russell is arrested for the crime. President Barack Obama "was shocked and deeply saddened" to learn of the deaths.
May 17: Despite massive promotion by Fox News, the demonstrations against Notre Dame giving Barack Obama an honorary degree at commencement attract a total of only hundreds. Even the Fox News reporting cannot contain the failure of mobilization.
May 19: Embattled RNC Chair Michael Steele delivers speech in which he seems to blame President Obama for the recession that begin before he took office. This is illogical because it violates the time order of causation.
May 19: Obama Administration issues long overdue nationwide rules for automobile emissions and mileage standards. Will not take effect until 2012.
May 19: Expense account scandal in the British House of Commons results in the resignation of Speaker Michael Martin.
May 20: Convicted dog abuser Michael Vic is released from prison.
May 22: President Barack Obama signs the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure (CARD) Act of 2009
May 23: Under investigation for bribery, former South Korean President (2003-2008) Roh Moo-Hyun commits suicide by jumping off a cliff called the Bueong'i Bawi or Owl's Rock.
May 26: Pres. Obama nominates U.S. Appeals Court judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court. Jeffrey Rosen at the New Republic attacks her as an intellectual underachiever. Rosen and Sotomayor are both graduates of Yale Law School; Sotomayor was an editor at the Yale Law Journal.

[edit] June

June 2: Suspected wingnut anti-abortion terrorist Scott Roeder is being held without bail on a first-degree murder charge and two counts of aggravated assault. How did an unstable character like Roeder get a gun in America? When are conservatives going to apologize and admit they were wrong for criticizing the Depertment of Homeland Securioty's Report on Rightwing Extremism?
June 3: Televised debate between Iranian presidential candidates, President Mahmud Ahmadinejad and reformist rival, former Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi.
June 8: Former House Speaker and old school market conservative Newt Gingrich, and not Alaska Governor and Christian Rightist Sarah Palin will be the keynote speaker at the annual Republican Senate-House Dinner.
June 10: Suspected wingnut anti-semitic terrorist James von Brunn is shot after shooting to death a guard, 39 year old Stephen T. Johns, at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial and Museum. How did an unstable character like von Brunn get a gun in America? When are conservatives going to apologize and admit they were wrong for criticizing the Depertment of Homeland Securioty's Report on Rightwing Extremism?
June 11: U.S. Holocaust Memorial and Museum is closed for the day.
June 12: Pima County Sheriff files first degree murder charges against anti-immigrant extremists Jason Eugene Bush, 34, Shawna Forde, 41, and Albert Robert Gaxiola, 42, for deaths of the father and his 9 year old daughter on July 24, 1997.
June 12: Iranian Presidential election. Incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appears to defeat former Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi 66% to 33%, but accusations of electoral fraud undermine the legitimacy of the outcome.
June 13: Protests erupt about the outcome of the Iranian presidential election. Some 170 opposition figures are arrested, including Mohammed Reza Khatami. Mir-Hossein Mousavi is reportedly placed under house arrest.
June 14: In a rant on Fox News about "perspective," Glenn Beck complains that the problem with news coverage is that only describes what has happened in the past. Beck then brags about his successful predictions about future events, which were made in the past.
June 15: Matt Kennard writes in Salon.com that neo-Nazis and other right wing extremists are being recruited into the U.S. military.
June 15: President Obama dares to bell the cat, albeit an aging cat. Speaking at the Annual Conference of the American Medical Association (AMA) he tells the assembled the harsh truth about the politics of heath care reform: "But we also know that there are those who will try and scuttle this opportunity no matter what -- who will use the same scare tactics and fear-mongering that's worked in the past; who will give warnings about socialized medicine and government takeovers, long lines and rationed care, decisions made by bureaucrats and not doctors. We have heard this all before. And because these fear tactics have worked, things have kept getting worse." Only one in four American physicians now belongs to the AMA.
June 16: Arizona Senator and losing 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain complains that Pres. Barack Obama needs to, "speak out that this is a corrupt, flawed sham of an election and that the Iranian people have been deprived of their rights." (To what extent did McCain speak out against the awarding of the 2000 U.S. presidential election to G.W. Bush in a party line vote in the U.S. Supreme Court?)
June 18: U.S. Senate unanimously passes resolution apologizing for slavery. All it took was a liberal Democratic majority in the chamber and waiting until the 21st century. Perhaps in 2109 the U.S. Senate will vote to apologize to the peoples of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia for area bombing, agent orange, the Phoenix Program.
June 18: A Lilburn mother Sandra Alfred and a friend, Larry Powell, are arrested and charged with Cruelty to Children after they attempt to perform an exorcism on her 15 yer old son.
June 19: Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei uses his Friday Prayer speech at Tehran University to back the flawed election of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and threaten the opposition: "If political elite want to ignore law and break the law and take wrong measures which are harmful, willy nilly, they will be held accountable for all the violence and blood and rioting." In less than prayerful language Khamenei describes rails at Western states, stating that the "most evil of them is the British government." Has been listening to Lyndon LaRouche?
June 21: Speaker of the British House of Commons Michael Martin scheduled to step down.
June 21: South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer discovers that Governor Mark Sanford’s whereabouts are unknown.
June 22: Rumors are heard that Republican South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford’s whereabouts are unknown. At 2:50 p.m. the Governor’s Office issues a statement that he is, "taking some time away from the office this week to recharge after the stimulus battle (Sanford declined Federal stimulus funds either on libertarian principle or because of ambition for the Republican nomination for president). Later in the afternoon they issue another statement that Sanford is hiking on the Appalachian Trail.
June 22: Benjamin Speakman, 27, is sentenced to three years probation for plotting to kill his wife and mother-in-law and then storm "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' Jordan River Temple. Speakman had amassed a small arsenal of firearms.
June 23: Karl Rove is scheduled to serve as keynote speaker for a dinner at the Ritz Carlton, Laguna Niguel, California.
June 24: CIA Director Leon Panetta briefs House and Senate intelligence committees about an intelligence eprogram that former Republican Vice President Richard B. "Dick" Cheney had ordered the CIA not to disclose to the U.S. Congress. American conservatives love the U.S. Constitution in the same way that they love their wives, they cherish it but they just don't respect it.
June 24: Republican South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford is observed at the Atlanta Harstsfield Airport getting off a flight from Buenos Aires, having ended his trek at the far southern end of the Appalachian Trail.
June 24: Desperate seeking attention. Conservative Ann Coulter mocks murder of Dr. George Tiller on the O'Reilly Factor. "I am personally opposed to shooting abortionists, but I don't want to impose my moral values on others," she stated.
June 25: John Stuart on the Daily Show describes Republican South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford as just another politician with a conservative mind and a liberal penis.
June 28: Contradicitons inherent in the way conservatives treat private life as public and public life as private are on display as Mitt Romney and SC Sen. Lindsey Graham on Meet the Press attempt to explain how they understand the scandal of SC Governor Mark Sandford. Graham uses prissy family values moralizing to dodge the hard questions. The questioning only hints that Republicans have begun to pay the price for conflating the private and public.
June 30: Minnesota Supreme Court declares Al Franken the winner of the 2008 U.S. Senate race. With all appeals exhausted, incumbent Republican Norm Coleman finally concedes. Coleman will devote his energies to the Republican Jewish Coalition.

[edit] July

July 3: Alaska's Christian Right Governor Sarah Palin announces she will quit being governor in a weird public statement at her home in Wasilla. Included in her stated reasons are that her children had experienced mockery of her youngest child: Trig. What she was referring to was unclear, but then the speech was hardly an example of coherence. What would a speech by a Christian Rightist be without a touch of victimism? Even Fox News found it hard to defend her. Is she thinking of a third party run for the White House in 2012? The Republicna Party looks like a shell anyway and the Christian Right is reminded at every turn that it is the junior partner to old money Republican establishment.
July 16: Pres. Obama resets relations between America and Russia.
July 21: Oakland voters approve a marijuana tax initiative 80% to 20%! The intiative reads as follows: "Shall City of Oakland's business tax, which currently imposes a tax rate of $1.20 per $1,000 on 'cannabis business' gross receipts, be amended to establish a new tax rate of $18 per $1,000 of gross receipts?"
July 21: Anthony Wesley, an amateur astronomer in Murrumbateman, OZ discovers that some cosmic debris has punched a Pacific Ocean sized hole in Jupiter. Incredibly Earth still has no planetary defense force but tens of billions are spent every year to prevent people from concuming marijuana.
July 23: Date that convicted dog abuser Michael Vic was scheduled to be released from Federal Prison in Leavenworth, Kansas.
July 27: FBI investigation leads to arrests of three New Jersey mayors, two members of the New Jersey Legislature, numerous local officials, five rabbis, and a Brooklyn broker of human kidneys. The five rabbis are acused of laundering money made from counterfeit goods through the charities linked to their synagogues for a handling fee of 5-10%. And conservatives believe that religion is the source of morality!

[edit] August

August 4: George Sodini shoots three women to death and wounds nine more women before killing himself at the La Fitness health club in Bridgeville, PA. Sodini was able to act on his hatred of women with murderous effectiveness because gun nuts have imposed a flawed interpretation of the Second Amendment on American society. Sodini purchased his handgun accessories from TGSCOM Inc. of Green Bay, Wisconsin.
August 7: Jenny Sanford, the wife of South Carolina's Republican Governor and noted world traveler Mark Sanford, announces that she and their sons will depart the governor's mansion in Columbia for a new home in Charleston.
August 26: Third anniversary of the statement by Fox News commentator Sean Hannity that "there are things in life worth fighting and dying for and one of 'em is making sure Nancy Pelosi doesn't become Speaker." (Source: The Sean Hannity Show ABC Radio Networks August 29, 2006). Although Pelosi was elected Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Hannity neither fought not died to prevent her from becoming the most powerful women in American political history.
August 24: Former as yet unindicted Vice President Richard B. 'Dick' Cheney accuses the Obama administration of politicizing the U.S. Justice Department. This may be the most hypocritical accusation in American political history.
August 25: Senator Edward M. Kennedy dies.

[edit] October

October 23: Rush Limbaugh regurgitates hoax story about Obama's undergraduate thesis at Columbia, then tries to backtrack without admitting a mistake. Moral cowardice.

[edit] November

November 28: Presidential Election in Romania (First Round)

[edit] December

December 12: Presidential Election in Romania (Second Round)
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