Loosing the late Ted Kennedy’s safe senate seat to the Republicans was an astounding shock to the Democrats, it suddenly torpedoed their supermajority in the upper house which allowed them until then to pass their bills and their other legislative initiatives relatively easily, it reflected very negatively on their fortunes.  During the upcoming mid term congressional election, it was also looked upon by many people as a kind of vote of confidence in the president himself, the way he was handling his job and his ability to cope with the glut of foreign and domestic problems he is facing, and one of the earliest casualties of the Democrat’s misfortune was the two health care reform bills the one in the House and the one in the Senate. Which had by that time and after a lot of efforts reached a stage when they had to be reconciled into one final version which would then go to the President for his signature.  But for the time being it had to go to the shelf only to emerge few weeks later as the main topic of the discussions in a meeting which was suggested by thePpresident, to be presided by him in the presence of the Democratic and Republican leaderships of congress plus few high officials from certain government departments which are concerned with health care reform, the President called the meeting he was convening, a summit.

On the 19th of January, the Bay State [Massachusetts] held a special election to fill the senate seat which was occupied by the late Edward Kennedy [a democrat] for almost half a century which was now filed on an interim basis by one of his former assistants. Massachusetts is the nearest thing to a totally Democratic state, it registers 3 Democrats to 1 Republican, currently all its high elected officials are Democrats.  The state has never elected a Republican for a U.S. senate seat for almost fifty years, this recent contest for the Kennedy seat was fought by one very well known Democrat.  Martha Coakley the current state attorney general, she was challenged by Scott Brown, a fifty years old state senator and a Republican, Scot Brown was much less known who had a fairly difficult  life in his early years but had finally settled in the state’s senate representing Wrentham the city from were he came.  The Democrats never doubted the chances of their candidate, her success was taken for granted, but when the ballots were finally counted they had a very nasty surprise.  The favorite lost and the outsider was the winner with a very comfortable margin, Scott Brown was now the 41 republican U.S. Senator

In the December 7, 2009 issue of Time magazine there was a seven page article about the last decade which it called the decade from hell, the writer claimed that the first ten years of the twenty first century will very likely go down as the most dispiriting and disillusioning decade Americans have lived through in the post world war two era.  In fact the last decade has been similarly hellish to lots of people allover the world including my own country which has been practically destroyed as a result of its invasion y the Americans and my own family when our lives turned upside down as a result of the mistaken and senseless shooting of my son by an American soldier in Baghdad on the 29th of March 2004, a calamity which left him in a vegetative state which I am sure a lot of this blog’s visitors are pretty familiar with, but today I am not talking about my son’s tragedy I am going to try highlighting some of the major events which had taken place during the last decade which is closing up in few days time.

For a very long time throughout history some nations at one time or another gained power while others lost it.  This question is not only of a historical interest but is also very important for the understanding of our world as the twenty first century unravels.  For just as the great empires of the past rose and fell will today’s empires rise and fall as well.  This question as addressed in a book called The Rise and Fall of The Great Powers which was written by Dr Paul Kennedy who was professor of history at Yale University.  The book was an immediate success and a real sensation.  The author was trying to explain why sometimes during history certain powers rose to very great heights and then fell.  In the last few chapters of the book the author was asking whether the United States would go through the same cycle that was in 1987, at that time I thought the question was absolutely irrelevant then the United States was at the peak of its economic and military power.  Now, after spending two years in this country I am sure I was mistaken.