The Tens

Welcome to 2008 – on the left coast, we’ve got snow and cold, although I think Florida remains sunny — on the right, manic winds and soggy deluge; here in the Patch, with windchill, we’ve got 3 degrees. So, except for you Wavers in Florida, you’ll need something to read — here are the “lists.”

Every year we get the “10 Best” and the “10 Worst” articles to dot the “i” on the year end. Since it was a painful year — defeating our early hopes and pitting us against the Bush machine in a series of disheartening skirmishes — there are more worst lists here than best. But there were some achievements to celebrate as we brought the forward thrust of the Bushies to a slowdown; the slowdown itself is one of them. And there is much to hope for, as the world has now shaken itself awake and turned its eyes toward “failure” on every level of government [and damned near everywhere, not just here in Amurika.]

Change is here, and now. Buckle up — it’ll be a bumpy ride.

Many interesting lists in this post — “to do” lists that give us a blueprint of what needs fixing. The first link will take you to scathing snark and fun graphics, trashing everybody in sight — the first article is a wrap-up of the year, the next a somewhat philosophical snip that pleased me, both pieces entertaining so they don’t hurt too much going down; then a collection of The Tens [note that each of them is full of links to explore, if you wish.]

And here’s the link to my Planet Waves offering this week, For Auld Lang Syne, in case you missed it.

Happy New Year — “happy” is always a choice well worth making, although it would be wise to consider that “happy” and “easy” are not the same thing.

Jude

50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2007
The BEAST

An Inconvenient Year
Relive the zany antics of Al Gore, Leonardo DiCaprio, Madonna and a cast of thousands in 12 months we need to remember to forget
Dave Barry, Washington Post
Sunday, December 30, 2007

It was a year that strode boldly into the stall of human events and took a wide stance astride the porcelain bowl of history.

It was a year in which roughly 17,000 leading presidential contenders, plus, of course, Dennis Kucinich, held roughly 63,000 debates, during which they spewed out roughly 153 trillion words; and yet the only truly memorable phrase emitted in any political context was, “Don’t tase me, bro!”

It was a year filled with bizarre, insane, destructive behavior — an alarming amount of which involved astronauts.

In short, 2007 was a year of deep gloom, pierced occasionally by rays of even deeper gloom. Oh, sure, there were a few bright spots:

* Several courageous members of Congress — it could be as many as a dozen — decided, incredibly, not to run for president.

* O.J. Simpson discovered that, although you might be able to avoid jail time for committing a double homicide, the justice system draws the line at attempted theft of sports memorabilia.

* Toward the end of the year, entire days went by when it was possible to not think about Paris Hilton.

* Apple released the iPhone, which, as we understand it, enables users to fly, cure cancer, read minds and travel through time.

* The plucky, lovable New York Yankees once again found a way, against all odds, to bring joy to the literally billions of people who do not root for them.

* Dick Cheney did not shoot anybody, as far as we know.

But, other than that, 2007 was a disaster. American consumers came to fear products manufactured in China, which covers pretty much everything in the typical American home, except the dirt. Global warming continued to worsen, despite the efforts of leading climate experts such as Madonna and Leonardo DiCaprio, who emerged briefly from private jets to give the rest of us helpful tips on reducing our carbon footprints.

On the economic front, the dollar continued to lose value against all major foreign currencies and most brands of bathroom tissue. There was a major collapse in the credit market, caused by the fact that for most of this decade, every other radio commercial has been some guy selling mortgages to people who clearly should not have mortgages. (”No credit? No job? On death row? No problem!”) It got so bad that you couldn’t let your dog run loose because it would come home with a mortgage. The subprime mortgage fiasco resulted in huge stock market losses, and the executives responsible, under the harsh rules of Wall Street justice, were forced to accept lucrative retirement packages.

So, they did okay. But, for the rest of us, it was another bad year. And as is so often true of bad years, it began with . . .

{JANUARY}

. . . when Democrats, having won the November election, take control of both houses of Congress with surprisingly little loss of life. In the House of Representatives, incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi pledges “a new era of bipartisan cooperation,” then brings the gavel down on the head of outgoing Speaker Dennis Hastert.

Upon taking power, the Democrats, who campaigned vigorously against the war in Iraq, and who hailed their victory as a clear voter mandate to get the troops out of Iraq, immediately get down to the business of being careful to not do anything that might actually result in the removal of troops from Iraq, in case that might turn out to be a bad idea. This is fine with President Bush, who calls for a “troop surge,” based on his understanding of the comprehensive Iraq Study Group report, as interpreted for him by aides equipped with 20,000 GI Joe action figures.

As the debate over Iraq intensifies, the eyes of a worried nation turn to another trouble spot: New York City, where Donald Trump and Rosie O’Donnell are locked in a bitter high-stakes battle to determine who is the bigger horse’s ass. After meeting with both sides, a visibly shaken Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reports that Trump’s hair “is exactly the same color as a Cheez-It.” While the White House ponders its options, congressional Democrats vow to strongly oppose whatever action the president decides to take while at the same time voting to fund it.

On the homeland security front, the U.S. government begins requiring people arriving in the United States by air from Mexico or Canada to present passports, fueling speculation that Canada is a foreign country. The government notes that the passport requirement “does not apply to people sneaking in by land.”

The slump in home sales continues into the new year, with a nationwide total of one home sold in January. In many cities, gangs of real estate agents ¿ sometimes wearing “colors” in the form of canary-yellow jackets ¿ roam the streets, surrounding their victims and extracting money from them in forcible “closings.”

In sports, a Los Angeles team signs glamorous British soccer star David Beckham to a $250 million contract. This raises eyebrows, both because of the amount of money, and because the team is the Dodgers. But Beckham’s glamorous presence quickly boosts ticket sales; within days, the Lakers sign Angelina Jolie.

Sports remains in the news in . . .

{FEBRUARY}

. . . when South Florida hosts Super Bowl Roman Numeral. Concern over terrorism security is extremely tight, particularly outside South Beach nightclubs, where large bouncers refuse to let any terrorists inside unless they are really hot. After what feels like three months of pregame festivities, an actual game is played, pitting the Chicago Bears against the Indianapolis Peyton Mannings. What begins as a close contest is broken wide open in the third quarter when the Bears defense is unable to stop a 1993 Buick LeSabre driven by 87-year-old North Miami Beach resident Winifred Bingleman, who took a wrong turn on her way to mah-jongg. She is immediately signed by the Miami Dolphins.

In other February action, Democrats in the House of Representatives, after a large amount of talking, pass a nonbinding resolution sternly ordering President Bush to get out of Iraq, unless, of course, he chooses not to. Over in the Senate, Democrats try to pass a nonbinding resolution that would not bind the president to the same course of action that the House resolution did not bind him to. But that one fails, leaving the president, according to political observers, somewhat less nonbound than he might otherwise have been. Everyone agrees it has been a busy, busy time in Washington.

Abroad, the six-party talks in Beijing conclude on an optimistic note as North Korea’s leader, Insane Lunatic Liar II, announces that his country will dismantle its nuclear weapons program just as soon as it receives the nuclear dismantler that it ordered on eBay. All six parties agree that this sounds reasonable; they resume partying. On a more ominous nuclear note, President Bush warns Iran that it is, quote, “awfully close to Iraq, if you look at a map, which I have.” In another increasingly tense international arena, the U.N. Security Council sends 1,000 peacekeeping troops to New York City in an effort to quell Rosie O’Donnell, who repels them by shouting.

But the big news in February is the death and subsequent wacky adventures of Anna Nicole Smith, whose body remains in a refrigerator in the medical examiner’s office while her infant child is embroiled in a paternity dispute that eventually comes to involve pretty much every adult male resident of the United States except Richard Simmons. The news media cover this story with their usual taste and restraint, keeping the public informed of important developments via such journalistic innovations as the Refrigerator Cam; Greta Van Susteren jets to Aruba in case there is a Natalee Holloway link. The dramatic finale takes place in a Florida courtroom presided over by Judge Weeping Twit, who, in a display of Solomonic wisdom, rules that everyone involved will get a TV show.

Another important February story getting huge media coverage is the Revenge of the Scary Astronaut Diaper Woman, which concerns astronaut Lisa Nowak, who, after allegedly driving nonstop from Houston to the Orlando airport, is arrested and charged with the attempted murder of a woman whom she viewed as a rival for a male astronaut who no doubt wishes he had just stayed up there in space. According to police, Nowak’s car contained latex gloves, a black wig, a BB pistol, a knife, pepper spray and — most disturbing of all — a 55-gallon drum filled with Tang.

In other aviation news, JetBlue has a public relations disaster when 10 of its flights are stranded on runways for so long that they are enveloped by glaciers. Fortunately, all the passengers manage to survive, in some cases by eating their carry-on luggage. This fiasco prompts the FAA to fine JetBlue for violating strict federal regulations against allowing passengers to have anything edible in coach class.

At the Academy Awards, Martin Scorsese finally breaks his long drought, winning a best-picture Oscar for his film “Give Me an Oscar, or This Time I Swear I Will Kill Myself.”

Speaking of drama, in . . .

{MARCH}

. . . the riveting trial of Scooter “Scooter” Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, concludes, with Scooter being convicted on federal charges of being guilty of something having to do with Nigeria and somebody named Valerie, but we are darned if we can remember what, although we certainly hope Scooter has learned his lesson.

In other scandal news, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, gets into hot water when congressional Demo-crats allege that his name can be rearranged to spell “Re-Label Zoo Gnats” and “Gala Lobster Zone.” President Bush calls Gonzales “a person in which I have the utmost whaddyacallit” and pledges to “stand behind him 100 percent for the time being.”

Speaking of time: Americans attempt to adjust to a new daylight saving time law, which Congress passed because it apparently felt that the old law was not annoying and confusing enough. The new law produces immediate economic benefits in the form of an estimated $175 billion paid by corporations and individuals to fix the computers, PDAs, phone systems, etc. that were screwed up by the time change. Of course, none of this affects Congress, which has exempted itself from the new law and continues to operate by sundial.

On a somber note, Anna Nicole Smith is finally laid to rest in the Bahamas in an intimate funeral service attended only by family, close friends, acquaintances, total strangers, tourists and an estimated 750 cable-TV legal analysts, several of whom have to be forcibly removed from the casket as they attempt to commit one final act of legal analysis.

Speaking of bad taste, in . . .

{APRIL}

. . . the broadcasting industry is shocked, shocked, when radio personality Don Imus, who has spent several decades making and chuckling at crude racist statements, makes a crude racist statement about the Rutgers women’s basketball team. The revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are deeply offended and immediately set about the difficult but necessary work of drawing still more attention to themselves. Before it is over, everybody involved will be wealthier, except, of course, the members of the Rutgers women’s basketball team.

In politics, the burgeoning Alberto Gonzales scandal — rapidly becoming the most riveting scandal to rivet Washington since the “Scooter” Libby scandal — burgeons still further when congressional Democrats charge that Gonzales’s name can also be rearranged to spell “A Stern Legal Bozo” and “Snot Blaze Galore.” President Bush defends his beleaguered attorney general, accusing the Democrats of “a new low in beleaguering” and stating that he has “no intention whatsoever of replacing Mr. Gonzales with anybody else, such as Michael Mukasey, if he is available.”

Speaking of beleaguered: Rosie O’Donnell announces that she will leave the TV show “The View” to pursue a career making bizarre statements on the Internet. Although O’Donnell claims her departure is amicable, insiders say she tried to oust Barbara Walters as the show’s producer, a move that Walters was able to repel by blasting the outspoken comedienne with 150,000 cubic feet of hairspray, which for Barbara is nearly a two-day supply.

In other show business news, the surprise contestant on “American Idol” is llama-hairstyled Sanjaya Malakar, who, with the support of millions of viewers, all apparently deaf, manages to reach the late rounds of the competition before being eliminated by a blowgun dart from Simon Cowell.

Another surprise hit in April — in fact, the No. 1 recording, played relentlessly for days by every radio and TV station in the country — is “Alec Baldwin Talks to His 11-Year-Old Daughter the Way Tony Soprano Talks to Somebody Whose Legs He Is About to Drive Over in His Chevrolet Suburban.”

Speaking of strong action, in . . .

{MAY}

. . . Democrats in Congress — continuing to implement their policy of being passionately against the war while avoiding doing anything that might get them blamed for stopping the war — vote to continue funding the war, but boldly enter many snippy remarks about it into the congressional record. President Bush receives this devastating news stoically, then goes ahead and makes his putt.

Meanwhile, the Senate, after months of secret negotiations, releases its comprehensive immigration reform plan, under which immigrants would earn points toward becoming U.S. citizens by having basic citizenship skills such as being able to do the Electric Slide and place an order at Starbucks. To placate conservatives, the plan also calls for a 300-mile fence to be constructed around Rosie O’Donnell.

In presidential politics, Florida — continuing its proud tradition of screwing up elections — announces that it will move its primary up to January 29. This infuriates Iowa and New Hampshire, which want to be first because otherwise no sane person would ever go to either state in the winter. So New Hampshire moves its primary to early January, and Iowa moves its caucus to even earlier in January. Soon the other states, not wanting to be left out, start moving up their elections; before the frenzy is over, Nebraska has officially declared that its 2008 primary election will take place in 1973. Of course, normal American voters pay no attention to any of this, which is why they are always the last ones to find out who their presidential choices will be.

Abroad, the French presidential election, in what political analysts see as a break with recent trends, is won by John Kerry.

As May draws to a close and the Atlantic hurricane season looms, weather experts, having reviewed all their data and their sophisticated computer models, announce that they have absolutely no clue what is going to happen.

Ha-ha! We are, of course, kidding. The experts confidently predict that we are going to have a worse-than-usual hurricane season. This is also what they confidently predicted last year, which as you may recall was an unusually quiet season. It is only a matter of time before these experts are hired by the Miami Dolphins.

In sports, the Indianapolis 500 is won by Britney Spears in a car equipped with two infants but no car seats.

Speaking of outstanding drivers, in . . .

{JUNE}

. . . the nation is riveted by the drama of Paris Hilton, who, after a string of motor vehicle violations, including driving with a suspended license, driving at excessive speed through a nightclub, driving over the young of an endangered species and driving with the brain functionality of a cabbage, is ordered to go to jail, then is released from jail and then — in what many observers see as an unfair punishment, based solely on resentment of her celebrity status — is burned at the stake.

No, seriously: Paris is sent back to jail for several brutal weeks, during which she is repeatedly subjected to a harsh generic hair conditioner. Somehow she survives this ordeal and, upon leaving prison, adopts a low public profile, except for appearing with Larry King, who does a fine job once he realizes, about 40 minutes into the interview, that she is not Goldie Hawn.

In other June TV highlights:

* Cuban television broadcasts an interview of Fidel Castro apparently intended to prove that the ailing dictator is still alive; cynics note, however, that the interview was conducted by Edward R. Murrow.

* The hit HBO series “The Sopranos” comes to an ambiguous end when, in mid-scene, the screen goes black. Many viewers at first think this is a technical problem; cable-TV companies log 3 million complaint calls, nearly 30 percent of them from the White House.

In other government action, the Senate discovers that its comprehensive immigration reform bill, despite having been painstakingly crafted behind closed doors by veteran bill crafters, is unpopular with a segment of the U.S. population defined as “the public.” The Senate responds swiftly, dropping the immigration issue like a bag of rat sputum and returning to its traditional role of funding large unnecessary projects in West Virginia named after Robert Byrd.

In sports, the Anaheim Ducks defeat the Ottawa Senators in a Stanley Cup playoff series watched worldwide by most of the players’ parents.

But the biggest story in June, as well as the history of the universe, is the release of the Apple iPhone, which, in addition to enabling you to make phone calls, has all kinds of brilliant and innovative features, including AutoFondle, an application that enables the iPhone to fondle itself during those times when you are unable to fondle it manually because you’re sleeping or undergoing surgery from wounds you sustained when friends or co-workers finally lost it and beat you senseless to make you shut up about your freaking iPhone already.

Speaking of medical procedures, in . . .

{JULY}

. . . President Bush undergoes a colonoscopy; congressional Democrats immediately pass a resolution condemning the procedure, while maintaining that they “fully support the colonoscope.” Vice President Cheney serves as acting president for 2 1/2 hours, during which he performs what his office describes as “routine executive duties,” including “signing some routine papers” and “ordering some routine bomb strikes against Iran.” France immediately surrenders.

In other executive action, President Bush, on the eve of July 4, commutes “Scooter” Libby’s prison sentence on the grounds that, quote, “Hey, c’mon, it’s Scooter.” Congressional Democrats are outraged, but the public is more concerned with the issue of whether to go ahead and have that fifth beer.

Speaking of which: The troubled space program is dealt yet another blow when a special panel reveals that, on at least two occasions, astronauts were cleared to fly while drunk. This is thought to explain some unusual research conducted by shuttle crews, including the “weightless naked Twister experiment” and “wedgies in space.”

On the environmental front, the big story is Al Gore’s Live Earth, a massive rock concert in which more than 150 music acts perform at 11 locations around the world to fight global warming, which is swiftly brought to its knees.

In the arts, July is dominated by the release of the seventh and last Harry Potter book, Harry Potter Spends Half the Book Camping, which enthralls the nation as nothing has enthralled it since the release of the iPhone. The book is generally well-received, although some fans are troubled by the ending, which culminates in the death of Harry’s longtime nemesis, Tony Soprano.

In sports, suspicions of doping continue to plague the Tour de France when the grueling 2,200-mile race is won, in a stunning upset, by Barry Bonds. Pro basket-ball also suffers a blow following reports that NBA referee Tim Donaghy bet on games that he officiated, which could explain some of his questionable calls in critical situations, including fouls for “bad posture” and “dribbling too loud.”

Speaking of image problems, in . . .

{AUGUST}

. . . Mattel, responding to new reports of hazardous materials in Chinese-made products, recalls millions of toys. A Mattel spokesperson insists that “there is no cause for alarm,” but suggests that consumers who have come into contact with the Barbie Magic Kitty Dream Castle should “seek medical help” and “try not to breathe on anyone.”

In politics, the leading Democratic and Republican contenders for president, having failed to draw much of an audience for their previous debates, experiment with new formats. The Republicans hold a “Charades Debate,” during which Mike Huckabee injures his shoulder attempting to mime his plan for tax reform; the

Democrats fare little better in their “West Side Story Rumble Debate,” which ends early when a switchblade-wielding John Edwards “accidentally” stabs Hillary Clinton in her pantsuit. Despite the excitement, both debates get lower TV ratings than a rerun of the Ducks-Senators Stanley Cup final.

But the big story in politics is Idaho Sen. Larry “Wide Stance” Craig, who pleads guilty in August after being arrested in June for allegedly attempting to engage in acts of explicit filibustering with an undercover detective in a Minneapolis airport bathroom stall. Sen. Craig explains that, even though he pleaded guilty, he is innocent, but he promises that he will resign, a pledge he later clarifies by explaining that he will not resign. The Senate, responding with unusual speed and firmness, funds a large unnecessary project in Alaska named after Ted Stevens.

In other scandal news, beleaguered Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is finally forced to resign when Democrats leak documents showing that his name can also be rearranged to spell “Large Ozone Blast” and “Glean Zebra Stool.” President Bush attempts to commute Gonzales’s sentence, only to be informed that there isn’t one.

On the weather front, the nation is gripped by a heat wave. This has happened pretty much every August since the dawn of human civilization, but it totally stuns the news media.

In show business, Merv Griffin, entrepreneur, entertainer and host, passes away at age 82 and appears for two riveting hours on “Larry King Live.”

In sports, Barry Bonds, fresh off his Tour de France triumph, hits his record-breaking 756th home run in front of a crowd that does not include baseball commissioner Bud Selig, who had this other thing he had to do. In Cooperstown, N.Y., the Baseball Hall of Fame starts making plans for a special “Barry Bonds Wing,” to be located in Taiwan.

But the big sports story is Michael Vick, whose guilty plea in connection with a dogfighting operation effectively ends his football career, costing him a fortune and setting a standard for moronic, immoral and self-destructive
professional-athlete behavior that will take O.J. Simpson nearly a month to surpass. Speaking of troubled personalities, in . . .

{SEPTEMBER}

. . . Iranian President Mahmoud “Scooter” Ahmadinejad, speaking at Columbia University, defends his denial of the Holocaust and claims there are no gays in Iran. He and his entourage then head to Greenwich Village to shop for chaps.

In Washington, Congress once again tackles Iraq as Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker testify in Senate and House committee hearings totaling 16 hours, of which 11 hours are taken up by Joe Biden’s welcoming remarks. Afterward, Democrats and Republicans agree that they have gained a better understanding of this extremely complex issue and will henceforth abandon crude partisanship and try to find common ground on the planet Floob, where this might actually happen. Here on Earth, both sides immediately resume declaring that the other side is scum.

President Bush nominates Michael B. Mukasey to be attorney general, despite published reports that his name can be rearranged to spell “Lube Mama’s Hickey” and “Mace His Leaky Bum.” Senate leaders, in a rare display of bipartisanship, pledge to fund large unnecessary projects in both West Virginia and Alaska.

A talk by John Kerry at the University of Florida is interrupted by a struggle between police and a disruptive student, who shouts, “Don’t tase me, bro!” at an officer, who then tasers him, possibly because she is not in fact a “bro.” The video of this incident — showing the student shouting “Help!” and wrestling with police on the floor while Kerry’s droning voice can be heard in the background saying, “It’s a very important question” — becomes a huge YouTube hit. The consensus is that the student was obnoxious, although the ACLU objects to the tasering, arguing that, quote, “you get better results with pepper spray.”

In other political developments:

* Fred Thompson, ending months of speculation, formally declares that he has a hot wife.

* Hillary Clinton’s campaign returns $850,000 in contributions raised by fugitive Chinese American businessman Norman Hsu following published reports that the money had a high lead content.

In Las Vegas, O.J. Simpson, an ordinary citizen minding his own business and exercising his basic constitutional right to retrieve sports memorabilia from somebody else’s hotel room with the aid of armed thugs, somehow runs afoul of the law. He insists he is innocent but winds up facing trial on robbery and kidnapping charges that could send him to jail for a life term, after which he will undoubtedly be signed by the Miami Dolphins.

Speaking of trouble, in . . .

{OCTOBER}

. . . uncontrolled fires sweep across large areas of California. President Bush, looking down from his helicopter, pronounces the scene “devastating,” only to be informed that the helicopter is flying over Camp David. Aides later explain that the president meant “devastating in a good way.” Congress, after an intense debate, narrowly passes a nonbinding resolution supporting the firefighters.

In politics, the race for the Democratic nomination heats up during a nationally televised debate when John Edwards and Barack Obama, in what political observers view as a thinly veiled attack on Hillary Clinton, repeatedly raise the issue of ankle size. On the Republican side, Sam Brownback announces that he is dropping out of the race; political observers view this as an indication that he thought he was in the race.

Al Gore is named co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to raise awareness of climate change. In an emotional statement, Gore says he is “deeply humbled,” stressing that he could not have won the honor without “an extremely high IQ.”

On the economic front, the Federal Reserve Board cuts interest rates in an effort to counteract economic stagnation caused by the fact that Americans are now spending $743 billion a year — nearly half their disposable income — on Hannah Montana tickets.

In aviation news, the Airbus A380, the world’s largest passenger plane, makes its maiden commercial flight from Singapore to Sydney. In full economy configuration, the giant plane carries 853 passengers, a crew of 20 and three packages of pretzels.

In sports, track star Marion Jones admits that she used banned substances. She is stripped of her five Olympic medals by the International Olympic Committee and hired as a designated hitter by the San Francisco Giants.

In entertainment news, author J.K. Rowling surprises fans of the Harry Potter series when she reveals that Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts School, was also secretly a U.S. senator from Idaho.

October ends with America shutting down for roughly a week to celebrate Halloween, a time when millions of adults get back in touch with their “inner child” by getting drunk while dressed as pimps and hookers. For younger children, there is also trick-or-treating, but because of safety concerns this is pretty much restricted to Kansas.

Speaking of pimps and hookers, in . . .

{NOVEMBER}

. . . the presidential contenders start to show signs of emotional wear during their debates, as exemplified by Mitt Romney’s decision, following a heated exchange on trade policy, to whip out a Sharpie and write a bad word on Rudy Giuliani’s forehead.

The mood is equally testy on the Democratic side, where Bill Richardson, in the role of peacekeeper, has to physically restrain Hillary Clinton from repeatedly striking Barack Obama with Dennis Kucinich.

Meanwhile, CNN faces allegations of allowing planted questions in its televised debates after a group of audience members billed as “ordinary, undecided voters” — including a police officer, a construction worker, a soldier, a rancher and a Native American — turn out to be, in fact, the Village People.

As the political debates increase in frequency and intensity, the American public, realizing that the time to make a decision will soon be at hand, tunes in by the millions to the finale of “Dancing With the Stars.” The surprise winner is race-car driver Helio Castroneves, who is immediately signed by the Miami Dolphins.

In economic news, the Federal Reserve Board, responding to recession fears and the continued weakening of the dollar, votes unanimously to be paid in euros. And, in what economists see as an indication of the worsening subprime mortgage crisis, Russia forecloses on Alaska.

On the labor front, the Writers Guild — representing film, television and radio writers — goes on strike. In solidarity with them, I will not put a punch line here.

The big international story is the Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, which is opened by President Bush, who declares that he is “pleased to grant a pardon to this turkey” before being hustled from the room for what aides describe as “a very important meeting.” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice takes over, declaring that the goals of the conference are to “achieve lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians” and “find a real unicorn.” The rest of the conference goes smoothly until what participants describe as a “frank exchange of views” concerning the conference room thermostat setting ends in gunfire.

Abroad, French transit workers attempt to end a strike, only to discover that they have forgotten how to operate the trains. Everybody enjoys a hearty laugh and returns to the cafe.

As the month draws to a close, Americans celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday much as the early Pilgrims did, lining up outside Best Buy at 3 a.m. to buy steeply discounted appliances.

Speaking of giving thanks, with the end of November comes the end of what has turned out to be another milder-than-usual hurricane season. Hurricane experts, plugging this updated data into their sophisticated computer models, announce that there is “a high statistical probability that next month will be April.” This leads us to . . .

{DECEMBER}

. . . in which the race for the presidency becomes even more riveting than it already was, if such a thing is possible. On the Democratic side, a major spate of snippiness erupts when Barack Obama suggests that Hillary Clinton is more ambitious than he is. In response, Clinton’s campaign, showing the wacky sense of humor it is famous for, releases documents showing that Obama thought about running for president when he was in kindergarten. Obama’s campaign retaliates by releasing a sonogram allegedly showing that Clinton was running for president in the womb. (I am making only some of this up.)

On the Republican side, Mitt Romney seeks to defuse the religion issue by making a major speech in which — echoing the words of John F. Kennedy — he declares that he is a Catholic. But the big story on the GOP side is former senator or governor of some state Mike (or possibly Bob) Huckabee, who surges ahead in the polls because (a) nobody knows anything about him, and (b) it’s fun to say “Huckabee.” Huckabee Huckabee Huckabee.

In Washington, President Bush proposes to ease the subprime mortgage crisis via a two-pronged program consisting of interest rate freezes and water-boarding. Outraged congressional Democrats promise to pass a nonbinding resolution containing language so strong that nobody will be able to look directly at it without sunglasses.

In other economic news, retailers report strong holiday sales, although shoppers remain wary of Chinese-manufactured toys after a Tennessee Wal-Mart is leveled by what an investigator describes as “the worst Polly Pockets explosion I have ever seen.”

Abroad, U.S. intelligence experts release a report stating that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons. This appears to throw a monkey wrench into the Bush administration’s Mideast policy, although the president, after aides brief him on a synopsis of the executive summary of the introduction to the report, points out that “it could be referring to a different Iran.”

In a major Latin American story, Venezuelan voters reject sweeping constitutional changes pushed by President Hugo Chavez, including a law that would make it illegal for anybody to be taller than he is. A defiant Chavez concedes defeat but notes that he is still polling ahead of both Joe Biden and John McCain in Iowa.

In sports, a wildly unpredictable season of college football, marked by a slew of upsets, ends with the Bowl Championship Series computer awarding the final No. 1 ranking to Bryn Mawr. The Owls will play the BCS computer’s No. 2-ranked team, Vassar, for the 2007 national championship in the Sugar Bowl, scheduled to be played, because of TV-marketing requirements, next July.

Meanwhile, NASA suffers yet another black eye when the space shuttle Vagabond is launched into orbit carrying a crew of nine, four of whom turn out to be Hooters waitresses.

But the picture is not so rosy for those of us stuck here on Earth. As we stagger to the end of 2007, we have to face the fact that 2008, being a leap year, will have a whole extra day of alarming events. So, as bad as this year was, we should not be in such a hurry to move on. Instead, we should pause for a moment to raise a glass and offer a toast to our friends and loved ones, wishing them health and happiness.

And then we should put the glass down, because it was probably made in China.

Dave Barry retired his nationally syndicated column three years ago. He now spends a lot of time in his pajamas. His New Year’s resolution is to find a way back to about 1957…

An Optimist to the Bone
Bill Curry, HuffPo
December 31, 2007

New Year’s is about optimism, just as July Fourth is about patriotism and Thanksgiving, gratitude. Optimism is sometimes hardest to muster up. It isn’t based on experience; indeed, it’s how we endure despite everything that happens to us.

Survival skills are learned. The will to survive comes from a deeper place and entails much disregarding of facts. Janus gazes on past and future but the real motto of the day is ‘don’t look back.’

It’s why resolutions are more popular than year-end reviews, including news reviews. I’ve no stomach for leafing through ‘the year in pictures.’ I’d rather picture the year ahead. Forced to toast the old year, I’d go on about war, assassins and the venality of politics and wind up sounding like Brando’s Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. It’s why we toast the new year, not the old.

2007 is a case in point. Benazir Bhutto’s murder cast a shadow over the world. It betrays America’s narcissism that the questions we asked are what to tell Pakistan to do about it and how it will affect the Iowa caucuses. Five years into Iraq and Afghanistan we still don’t get that meddling in other people’s politics is both futile and undemocratic or that democracy and non-violence must be modeled, never imposed.

On the election front, John McCain finished the year on an upswing, less for his strengths than others’ weaknesses. Former front-runner Rudy Giuliani is tanking like a guy thrown in the East River in cement shoes, to pick a random analogy. You wouldn’t believe Mitt Romney if he told you his blood type while lying on an operating table. Fred Thompson has audiences wondering how he made a living as an actor. Ron Paul’s a novelty act and even I don’t know who Duncan Hunter is.

That leaves McCain and Huckabee. Their appeal is their willingness to say things that don’t spring directly from a pollster’s forehead. Huckabee lent a rare dollop of humanity to debates when he chided opponents for being unloving. Almost everything he’s said since shows less character. McCain says lots of stuff he doesn’t believe but with a pained look that says at least he’s not lying to himself. It’s what passes in these times for integrity.

On the Democratic side Clinton is for ‘experience,’ Obama is for ‘change’ and Edwards is for ’standing up to special interests.’ More concretely, Dennis Kucinich is for single payer health care but it may not help him much; caucus voters aren’t sticklers for specificity.

Pundits say Bhutto’s assassination gives Clinton an edge due to her experience. I’m sure it will, unless someone notices that Clinton, Obama and Edwards have about five years of foreign policy experience among them, while Dodd, Biden and Richardson have nearly a century. It may not help them; caucus voters care about experience but only as a theme.

Discouraged? Surveying all this dismal scene I remain optimistic to my bones. I find myself lately thinking back 40 years to 1968 and the horrible assassinations, the horrible, endless war and the horrible wrong turn the nation took. No one guessed when Nixon won we’d fallen down a rabbit hole we’d be 40 years climbing out of. In 2008 I know we can.

America isn’t meant to be a backwater. Health care, clean energy and a nation at peace are the unfinished business of a generation that with a little help can still be great. we may not have a Martin Luther King or Robert Kennedy, but then again such leaders don’t always announce themselves.

In 1932, Walter Lippman belittled FDR as a shallow, gossipy underachiever without a vision. He had him just right, missing only the extraordinary core that made him perhaps the one man who could lead us out of a depression and through a war.

We pray that next year’s winner is secretly Franklin Roosevelt but we resolve to do all we can do to create the conditions for change. And we remember the words of the Talmud: ‘Look ahead. You are not required to complete the task; neither are you permitted to lay it down.”

Let’s Toast to Ten Good Things About 2007
Medea Benjamin, CodePink
December 30th, 2007

As we close this year on the low of Congress giving Bush more billions for war, and the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, let’s remember some of the year’s gains that can revive our spirits for the New Year. Here are just ten.

1. With the exception of the White House, this has been a banner year for environmental consciousness and action. Al Gore and the scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the Nobel Peace Prize. Green building and renewable energy have exploded. Congress passed the Green Jobs Act of 2007, authorizing $125 million for green job training. Over 700 U.S. mayors, representing 25 percent of the U.S. population, have signed a pledge to reduce greenhouse gases by 2012. Illinois became the 26th state to require that some of the state’s electricity come from renewable sources and Kansas became the first state to refuse a permit for a new coal-fired power plant for health and environmental reasons. That’s progress!

2. On the global environmental scene, the Bush dinosaurs were tackled head on. When the US delegation at the UN climate change conference in Bali tried to sabotage the negotiations, the delegate from tiny Papua New Guinea threw diplomatic niceties to the wind and said that if the U.S. couldn’t lead, it should get out of the way. Embarrassed by international and domestic outrage, the U.S. delegation buckled, and the way was cleared for adopting the “Bali road map.” Although it is a weak mandate, it lays the groundwork for a stronger climate agreement post-2012 when the first phase of the Kyoto Protocols ends.

3. Imagine living in a waste-free urban society? Well, it’s no longer a utopian dream but a well-thought-out plan for India’s state of Kerala. The plan to be “waste-free” within five years includes waste prevention, intensive re-use and recycling, composting, replacing unsustainable materials with sustainable ones, training people to produce these materials, and providing funds for setting up sustainably run businesses. The ground-breaking plan, spearheaded by a local grassroots movement, demonstrates how citizen groups can advance pioneering policies to heal the planet.

4.While the war in Iraq rages on, a new war was stopped. The specter of war with Iran loomed large throughout the year, with Washington accusing Iran of killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq and being a nuclear threat. Then in December came the National Intelligence Estimate showing that the Bush administration knew all along that Iran had shelved its nuclear weapons program in 2003. It exposed the Administration claims of an Iranian threat as unjustifiably inflated, and the winds of war were suddenly subdued. Nothing is guaranteed, but a U.S. military attack on Iran is less likely now than it was earlier in the year.

5.This year also brought a decrease in tensions with North Korea. Hostilities flared after North Korea successfully conducted a nuclear test in 2006. But the Bush administration, bogged down in Iraq and pushed by international pressure, agreed to negotiate. Following a series of six-party talks involving North Korea, South Korea, China, Russia, Japan, and the U.S, on March 17, 2007, an historic agreement was reached. North Korea agreed to shut down its main nuclear facility and submit a list of its nuclear programs in exchange for fuel and normalization talks with the U.S. and Japan. During this age of raw aggression, it is a welcome example of putting diplomacy first.

6. The Iraqi people have little to celebrate, but there was one important victory for the people this year. Remember how the Bush administration and Congress were insisting that the Iraqi Parliament pass a new oil law? Touted as a way to “share oil revenue among all Iraqis”, the oil law was really designed to transform the country’s currently nationalized oil system to one open to foreign corporate control. But opposition was fierce inside Iraq, especially from the nation’s oil worker unions. In a rare sign of independence from Washington and concern for domestic opinion, the Iraqi Parliament withstood intense U.S. pressure and refused to pass the oil law.

7. In early 2007, few Americans had heard of the private security company Blackwater. By year’s end, Blackwater had become infamous for the killing of civilians in Iraq. The radical privatization of our military to corporations like Blackwater that are accountable to no one was exposed for all to see. This frightening process is still well under way, with more private contractors in Iraq than soldiers, but at least the issue has now entered the public dialogue. And Blackwater has received such a black eye that it’s unlikely to get a new Iraq contract when the present one expires in May.

8. One victory on both the war and environmental fronts came in Australia, where Labor Party’s Kevin Rudd beat conservative John Howard to become Prime Minister. Howard was an enthusiastic backer of George Bush’s disastrous war on terror, from defending the Guantánamo prison and extraordinary rendition to sending troops to Iraq and Afghanistan. Howard also joined Bush in refusing to ratify the Kyoto Agreement, arguing it would cost Australians jobs. After assuming office on December 3, Kevin Rudd immediately signed the Kyoto agreement and he has promised to remove Australia’s combat troops from Iraq by mid-2008.

9. Sometimes a loss is a win. Hugo Chavez had initiated a constitutional referendum that would have, among other changes, scrapped term limits. His immediate acceptance of a razor-thin margin of defeat before all the votes were even counted showed his democratic colors and made it a lot harder for Bush and the corporate media to label him a dictator. Despite the loss, Chavez remains extremely popular, especially among the poor and working class in Venezuela. And throughout Latin America, the historic transformation led by progressive leaders like Chavez continues to blossom.

10. Last but not least, this year saw the resignation of some of Bush’s closest allies in government-Donald Rumsfeld resigned as Secretary of Defense, Alberto Gonzalez as Attorney General, and Karl Rove as Deputy Chief of Staff. Best of all, we can give thanks that we only have ONE YEAR left of the criminal, war-mongering, constitution-shredding, rights-violating, torture-sanctioning Bush Administration! It’s just GOT to get better than this!

So here’s a toast to a green future, diplomacy, and surviving the last throes of the Bush regime. Que viva 2008!

Medea Benjamin (medea@globalexchange.org ) is cofounder of CODEPINK and Global Exchange.

Top Ten Middle East Policy Challenges for the US in 2008
The US must insist that the Israeli siege of Gaza must be lifted and more…
Juan Cole, Informed Comment
December 31, 2007

10. Helping broker a deal in Lebanon between the March 14 Movement and the Shiites so that a new president can be elected and a national unity government can be formed.

Lebanon’s economy was badly damaged by the Israeli war on the poor little country in summer of 2006. Tourism is a big part of that economy, and is being hurt by the continued political instability. Given historically high oil prices, Iran will probably make $56 billion from petroleum sales this year. That gives it lots of carrots to hand out in Lebanon. If the Lebanese were better off, foreign oil money would not be as important to them. Likewise, the country’s poverty breeds social ills. Hizbullah militiamen might be harder to find if there was well-paying work for young men in the south. The dire poverty of Palestinians in camps such as Nahr al-Bared near Tripoli has made them open to predations by Mafia-like groups linked to al-Qaeda. Just a couple of weeks ago, Lebanese security broke up a plot to blow up churches in Zahle on the part of a small group of jihadis. An economically flourishing Lebanon would be less likely to be beset by these ills. The Levant is not that far away from the US or its major interests, and it is very unwise to allow the pathological situation in Lebanon to fester. A prosperous, healthy Lebanon is good for US security and is less likely to become the cat’s paw of regional powers hostile to US interests.

9. The US should exercise its good offices to encourage continued dialogue between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The capture of Baghdad by the Shiites and the ethnic cleansing of most Sunnis from it have set the stage for a big Sunni- Shiite battle for the capital as soon as the US troops get out of the way. It is absolutely essential to Gulf security, and to American energy security, that Saudi Arabia and Iran not be drawn into a proxy Sunni-Shiite war in Iraq. Keeping in close contact with each other and with Iraqis of the other sect is the best way for them to avoid a replay of the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. Those in the Bush administration who dream of an Israeli-Saudi alliance against Iran are playing with fire, a fire that is likely to boomerang on the US. If the Persian Gulf goes up any further in flames, the resulting unprecedentedly high petroleum prices will likely finally produce a bad impact on the US economy. Instead, the US should be attempting to bring Iran in from the cold, now that the NIE has absolved it of nuclear-weapons ambitions.

8. Congress should expand funding for, and guarantee the future of, the Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point. Its researchers do among the very best jobs of analyzing the writings and activities of the Salafi Jihadis, and so of combatting them. Few government institutions are as effective. If the US government were serious about the threat of terrorism, I would not even have to make this plea. Of course, if Bush and Cheney had really cared about the threat of al-Qaeda, they would have gone after it and gotten Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri rather than rushing off on a fool’s errand in Iraq.

7. The US must repair its tattered relations with Turkey. Turkey has been a NATO ally for decades and Turkish troops fought alongside American ones in the Korean War. Turkey stood with the US in the Cold War and gave the US bases on its soil. As a secular country, it is an ally in the struggle against the Salafi Jihadis, for which even religious Turks have contempt. Turkey has among the more promising economies in the Middle East, among non-oil states, and is attracting billions in foreign investment.

The US has for some strange reason stiffed Turkey several times in the past decade. The Clinton administration promised Turkey a billion dollars in restitution for the monies it lost during the Gulf War, and then Congress refused to appropriate the money. More recently, the US has unleashed a virulent and violent Kurdish nationalism by allying with Massoud Barzani in Iraq. Barzani in turn has given safe harbor to guerrillas of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), who have been going over the border and killing Turks, then retreating to Iraq. The Bush administration has tried to resolve this probably by helping the Turks bombard PKK positions inside Iraq, but that is not ideal. Instead, the US should put economic and other pressure on Barzani to expel the PKK from Iraq.

6. The US must keep the pressure on Pervez Musharraf to hold free and fair, early elections in Pakistan. The elections probably cannot be held on Jan. 8, as planned, because of the extensive turmoil and destruction of polling stations and ballots during the past few days. But they should not be postponed past March 1. Musharraf’s own legitimacy has collapsed, and he is in danger of becoming a Shah of Iran figure, hated by his own people and driven from office. Such a scenario could be very bad for the United States. That is why Joe Biden is right and John McCain is wrong when the latter warns against dumping Musharraf. Why cannot the American Right learn that backing the wrong horse is often worse than not having a horse in the first place?

5. The US and NATO have to stop doing search and destroy missions in Afghanistan. The Pushtun tribespeople are never going to put up with tens of thousands of foreign troops in their country, and, indeed, in their underwear drawers. Search and destroy missions just multiply feuds with local people. The NATO and US military missions in Afghanistan have to be redefined so that they are not simply putting down tribes for the central government. The best Afghan central governments have ruled by playing the tribes off against one another, not by trying to crush them. The solutions in Afghanistan are political and economic. More reconstruction needs to be done. Farmers need aid to be weaned off poppies. Forced eradication of poppy crops appears to be behind a lot of the “Taliban resurgence,” which actually often looks to me from a distance like angry farmers taking revenge for the destruction of their livelihoods.

4. The US must facilitate provincial elections in Iraq. They are arguably more important than any other step. They would solve a number of important problems. The Sunni Arab provinces of Al-Anbar, Salahuddin, Ninevah and Diyala have unrepresentative governments (Diyalah, 60% Sunni, is ruled by the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a hard line Shiite group!) The Sunni Arab parties declined to run in January, 2005, and there have been no subsequent provincial elections. Representative Sunni provincial governments could negotiate from a greater position of strength with the federal government of Shiite Dawa Party leader and prime minister Nuri al-Maliki. Some of the Awakening Councils members, who are self-appointed, might get elected and so gain greater legitimacy.

Without legitimate provincial governments in the Sunni Arab provinces, it is hard to see how the US can hope to withdraw troops and turn over security to locals, as Gen. Petraeus had planned to do in Mosul this year.

In the south, Basra needs new elections because its provincial government saw a major division this year, leading to an ISCI-led vote of no confidence in the governor, who is from the Islamic Virtue Party. But then the governor refused to step down!

Ineffective governance in oil-rich Basra, which contains the country’s only major ports, is bad for the whole country. In some other southern provinces, such as Diwaniya, a more representative provincial government might make for more social peace.

What I am saying now is not new, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Gen. Petraeus have repeatedly called for such elections. I am saying, now is the time to make a big push for them. If the US starts drawing down troops this year, it will make it harder to hold elections, since the Iraqi security forces probably cannot keep the voters dafe. If the US leaves behind the current provincial governments, as with Diyala, Diwaniya and Basra in particular, it is probably leaving behind provincial civil wars.

3. The US Congress must allocate substantial funds, on the order of $1 billion or more, for Iraqi refugee relief in Syria and Jordan. UNO relief funds are running out. Iraqis’ own savings are running out. Children are not in school and are going hungry. People are being exploited, including young girls forced into prostitution. A majority of the 1.5 million Iraqis in Syria went there in 2007, nd almost all of them have been forced out of Baghdad and other areas because of the political instability that the United States unleashed in their country. The surge is being touted as a victory in the US press, but it seems to have displaced 700,000 Iraqi civilians! The US is spending $15 billion a month on the Iraqi and Afghanistan Wars. It can afford $1 billion a year for refugee relief. This is our responsibility. How future generations o f Iraqis view the United States will in part depend on whether we do this. I ask all Americans to write your congressional representatives and press them on this humanitarian issue.

2. The Bush administration should expend all of its remaining political capital in the region to have the Israelis return the Golan Heights to Syria. The Golan was captured in 1967. By the United Nations Charter, countries may not permanently grab the territory of their neighbors. The Syrians will have to agree to keep the Golan a demilitarized zone, with UNO blue helmets patrolling as a safeguard. In return, Syria would have to agree to cease backing Palestinian militants and would have to play a positive role in creating a Palestinian state. Damascus would also have to work to restore social peace in Lebanon. Such a deal might help to detach Syria from its alliance with Iran. That in turn would weaken Hizbullah. This deal would be good for Israeli security, and if it helped speed up the creation of a Palestinian state, might even keep Israel from falling into the Apartheid situation that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently said he fears.

1. The US must insist that the Israeli siege of Gaza must be lifted. A third of Palestinians killed by Israel this year were innocent civilians. The agricultural sector is being destroyed because farmers cannot export their goods owing to the Israeli blockade. Food, water, essential medicines are all being denied to civilian populations, including children. If Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is so worried about Israel being seen as an Apartheid state, he should release Gazans from their penitentiary and stop deploying collective punishment against civilians.

Ten Worst Public Policies of 2007
Andrea Batista Schlesinger, HuffPo
December 29, 2007

1. Selling Out Consumer Safety

As headlines about the recall of millions of children’s toys coated with highly toxic lead paint dominated the newspapers this summer, many Americans wondered: isn’t there some kind of government agency that’s supposed to keep dangerous goods off store shelves in the first place? Enter the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC), an anemic agency with a meager budget that pays for just 15 employees to inspect consumer product imports and one employee to inspect toys. Overall, the agency staff is just half what it was in the 1980s, when many fewer imported goods were on the market. Congress recently moved to remedy the problem, proposing to enlarge the CPSC’s staff and budget, increase the maximum penalties for safety violations, and strengthen protections for industry whistle-blowers. Astonishingly, the Commission itself said thanks, but no thanks. Acting Chairwoman Nancy Nord, a former corporate lawyer who was appointed without congressional approval, insisted that she had not requested the staff and budget increases and that the bill was too tough on manufacturers. For undermining its own mission to improve consumer safety, the CPSC’s sell out is one of the worst policies of 2007.

2. Assault on Gun Tracing

The National Rifle Association is again working feverishly to protect our right to privacy. Never mind warrantless wiretapping, Internet searches saved for all eternity, and cell phone tracking systems. The pressing privacy issue of the day is ensuring that gun trace data is kept out of the hands of safety officials who would use it to track down illegal gun dealers. Representative Todd Tiahrt (R-KS) is the NRA’s mouthpiece in Congress on the issue; for years, he has sponsored amendments to limit city and state governments’ capacity to gather the data needed to establish distribution patterns linking dealers to illegal guns. The Tiahrt amendment v.2007 goes even further by prohibiting the use of trace data in civil suits against gun dealers and manufacturers. This newest legislation is a direct assault on the civil litigation strategy pioneered by the country’s mayors which seeks to root out and prosecute the slimiest 1% of gun dealers who sell 57% of illegal guns. This year’s Tiahrt amendment perpetuates the NRA’s strategy of keeping federal gun enforcement ineffective, while staunching creative local innovations to limit gun violence. For a tragic misfire when it comes to keeping illegal guns off the streets, the Tiahrt amendment is one of the worst policies of 2007.

3. Bush Not Hip on SCHIP

What does President Bush have against sick children? In September, large bipartisan majorities in Congress passed legislation reauthorizing the State Child Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and expanding it to provide health coverage to an additional 3.8 million low- and moderate-income kids. A joint state and federal program, SCHIP has been enormously successful in making sure that uninsured children have access to timely medical care–serving up to six million young Americans so far. Even the insurance industry was rooting for the measure to get passed. Nevertheless, the “compassionate conservative” president tanked the bill with a veto. Justifying the cold-hearted move with bogus rationalizations about middle-income kids abandoning private insurance for the government program, the President suggested leaving millions of children uninsured was not really such a big problem anyway: “After all, you just go to an emergency room.” For preventing millions of uninsured children from getting the health coverage they need, Mr. Bush’s policy of funding war over funding children’s health flat-lines as one of this year’s “worst.”

4. Supreme Court Tomfoolery

Should the age-old adage “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me” apply to discriminatory employment practices? The Supreme Court thinks so. In Ledbetter v. Goodyear, the Court’s majority found that complaints of pay discrimination must be filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission within 180 days of the first discriminatory act. The problem? Since workplaces frequently prohibit employees from even discussing how much they’re paid, many aren’t aware they’ve been discriminated against until it’s been going on for years. By that time, according to the Court, it is simply too late to complain. That’s what happened to Lilly Ledbetter, one of the few female supervisors at a Goodyear tire plant in Gadsden, Alabama, who proved to a jury that she had been paid hundreds of dollars a month less than her male counterparts for nearly 20 years. The Court ruled that she had no recourse within the law because she failed to register her complaint within 180 days of her first paycheck. The Ledbetter decision will have a chilling effect on cases of pay discrimination and gives a green light to employers to “fool” their employees with incremental discrimination once, then twice, then again and again. For ignoring the realities of the workplace, the Ledbetter decision is one of the worst policies of the year.

5. Tricked on Trade?

Fair trade certainly wasn’t the only issue in the 2006 elections, but it played a major role in some of the key races that won the Democrats a congressional majority. So the news last May came as quite a surprise: behind closed doors, the Democratic leadership had negotiated with President Bush to pass a new NAFTA-style trade deal with Peru. To be fair, the deal contains some important advances over previous trade agreements, including measures requiring Peru to fulfill its obligations on environmental agreements, as well as new language on labor rights. But the deal also retains incentives for companies to outsource jobs and has troubling language that gives foreign investors special rights to challenge American laws–from local zoning decisions to environmentally-friendly procurement policies–in foreign courts. What’s more, in a time of increased concern about the safety of imported products, the deal raises alarm bells with its limits on U.S. inspections of food imports. Even the labor provisions may be less positive than they sound: Peru must agree to follow a set of labor rights principles, but is not bound to specific agreedupon standards. As yet another unfair trade deal that meets only the lowest standard, the Peru agreement is one of 2007’s worst policies.

6. Government for Hire

What do Coast Guard cutters, border security, and dams in Louisiana have in common? Both by land and by sea, the federal government is contracting important public functions like these to private companies, a practice now valued at $400 billion a year. What makes this redistribution of taxpayer dollars to large corporations–the 20 largest contractors receive 38% of procurement dollars–so insidious, though, is the waste, fraud, and failure associated with the projects. The value of non-competitive contracts has tripled since 2000 while government oversight of the contracting process has withered. These days we’re even contracting out oversight over the contractors! From the lawlessness of private military contractors in Iraq to the incompetence of security contractors caught sleeping while on guard at a nuclear power plant, the result is a proliferation of contracts for overpriced goods and services of indeterminable quality. The accelerated creation of an unaccountable “shadow government” working for private gain rather than the public good is one of the worst public policies of 2007.

7. Shredding the Welcome Mat

Most towns want people to move in; with new residents come vibrancy, tax revenue, small businesses, new customers and a workforce. But don’t tell that to Riverside, New Jersey, where the town’s anti-immigrant policies effectively hamstrung its main source of economic activity: immigrants. Earning the dubious distinction of being at the vanguard of a wave of local anti-immigrant ordinances, Riverside, NJ’s local law penalized landlords who rent to undocumented immigrants and employers who hire them. It’s a prime example of vindictive, impractical, and shortsighted public policy on immigration. While instilling a sense of fear among the town’s large immigrant population, the measure also succeeded in crippling the old factory town’s economy, which had been revived by immigrant entrepreneurs and other small businesses that catered to Riverside’s growing number of immigrant consumers. Though ultimately repealed in September 2007, Riverside’s business district remains a ghost town. The town’s scapegoating of immigrants to the peril of immigrant and native-born residents alike qualifies their policy as one of the worst of 2007.

8. Fewer Choices, Fewer Voices

Viacom, CBS, General Electric, Disney, AOL Time Warner–and let’s not forget Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. The list of corporations that dominate U.S. media is short. Even on the freewheeling Internet, a majority of Americans get their news from just a few sites. As fewer and fewer big companies own more media outlets, local news coverage declines and the diversity of voices and viewpoints is diminished. Yet, the FCC has decided to loosen regulations on media ownership and allow even more consolidation. The proposal itself is vague: in general the plan would allow a single company to own more radio and TV stations in one city while also controlling a daily newspaper (perhaps the only daily newspaper) in town. Although the details have not been announced, the FCC has held a series of poorly publicized public hearings and aims to have the new policy in place by the end of 2007. With democracy itself dependent on an informed public making knowledgeable decisions, the stakes couldn’t be higher. For failing to address media diversity and promoting an anti-democratic monopoly on information, this policy gets a spot in our lineup of worst policies.

9. One Sick Policy

There’s no domestic problem that can’t be solved by tax cuts. At least that seems to be the Bush Administration’s position. So faced with growing public outcry over rising health insurance costs and the plight of 47 million Americans without coverage, it’s no surprise what President Bush proposed. The President’s “standard deduction for health insurance,” unveiled during the 2007 State of the Union Address, would provide a limited tax break to both employers and individuals who purchase health coverage. But the proposal would do little to help low-income Americans who are most likely to be uninsured–they already pay too little in taxes for a deduction to be meaningful. Worse, the plan would erode the already frayed system of employer-sponsored health insurance, replacing it with a private market in which each family must fend for itself when it comes to finding coverage. The open market, however, contains no mechanism for pooling risk, meaning that healthy people could buy cheap insurance, but many sick people who need coverage most would be in worse shape than today. Luckily, Congress has shown little interest in this boondoggle. Our diagnosis: “fixing” health care with tax breaks is one of 2007’s worst prescriptions.

10. Incredible Injustice

Will the Patriot Act ever cease to rear its ugly head? The 2006 reauthorization of the bill precipitated this year’s biggest scandal by permitting the Justice Department to make indefinite interim appointments of U.S. attorneys without congressional oversight. With a sixth sense for political opportunism, the Attorney General’s office sprung into action, using targeted firings to replace eight U.S. attorneys whose otherwise positive job reviews did not include being “loyal Bushies” or capitulating to pressure from the Beltway to initiate unethical, politically motivated prosecutions. An intractable Alberto Gonzalez initially refused to resign his post, despite evidence that the prosecutors had been contacted at home by prying U.S. senators, that the White House wanted to pad the resumes of Republicans by inserting them in the ousted attorneys’ posts, and that most of the former prosecutors had been involved in investigations that ran counter to the administration’s interests. Even if, at our own risk, we dismiss the scheming e-mails and conveniently timed firings as conspiratorial, the U.S. attorney scandal at the very least compromises the credibility of justice. For this, it is one of the worst policies of 2007.

Legal Fictions
The Bush administration’s dumbest legal arguments of the year.
Dahlia Lithwick, Slate
Friday, Dec. 28, 2007

This time last year, I offered up a top 10 list of the most appalling civil-liberties violations by the Bush administration in 2006. The grim truth is, not much has changed. The Bush administration continues to limit our basic freedoms, conceal its own worst behavior, and insist that it does all this in order to make us more free. In that spirit, it seemed an opportune moment to commemorate the administration’s worst legal justifications and arguments of the year. And so I humbly offer this new year’s roundup: The Bush Administration’s Top 10 Stupidest Legal Arguments of 2007.

10. The NSA’s eavesdropping was limited in scope.

Not at all. Recent revelations suggest the program was launched earlier than we’d been led to believe, scooped up more information than we were led to believe, and was not at all narrowly tailored, as we’d been led to believe. Surprised? Me neither.

9. Scooter Libby’s sentence was commuted because it was excessive.

Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, Scooter Libby, was found guilty of perjury and obstructing justice in connection with the outing of Valerie Plame. In July, before Libby had served out a day of his prison sentence, President Bush commuted his sentence, insisting the 30-month prison sentence was “excessive.” In fact, under the federal sentencing guidelines, Libby’s sentence was perfectly appropriate and consistent with positions advocated by Bush’s own Justice Department earlier this year.

8. The vice president’s office is not a part of the executive branch.

We also learned in July that over the repeated objections of the National Archives, Vice President Dick Cheney exempted his office from Executive Order 12958, designed to safeguard classified national security information. In declining such oversight in 2004, Cheney advanced the astounding legal proposition that the Office of the Vice President is not an “entity within the executive branch” and hence is not subject to presidential executive orders. When, in January 2007, the Information Security Oversight Office asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resolve the dispute, Cheney recommended the executive order be amended to abolish the Information Security Oversight Office altogether. In a new interview with Mike Isikoff at Newsweek, the director of the ISOO stated that his fight with Cheney’s office was a “contributing” factor in his decision to quit after 34 years.

7. The Guantanamo Bay detainees enjoy more legal rights than any prisoners of war in history.

This has been one of the catchiest refrains of the war on terror, right up there with the claim that the prisoners there are well-fed and cared for. The government brief in the December Supreme Court appeal on the rights of these detainees to contest their detentions proudly proclaimed that the “detainees now enjoy greater procedural protections and statutory rights to challenge their wartime detentions than any other captured enemy combatants in the history of war.” That certainly sounds plausible. But as my colleague Emily Bazelon detailed here in Slate, a vast gaggle of historians, constitutional scholars, and retired military officers vehemently dispute that characterization of the legal processes afforded the detainees. The argument that Guantanamo prisoners have greater rights than they would otherwise be afforded relies on deep distortions of both fact and law.

6. Water-boarding may not be torture.

Water-boarding is torture. It’s torture under the Geneva Conventions and has been treated as a war crime in the United States for decades. The answer to the question of its legality should be as simple as the answer to whether boiling prisoners in oil is legal. But in his confirmation hearings to become U.S. attorney general, Michael Mukasey could not bring himself to agree. He claimed not to have been “read into” the interrogation program and to be incapable of speculating about hypothetical techniques. He added that he did not want to place U.S. officials “in personal legal jeopardy” and that such remarks might “provide our enemies with a window into the limits or contours of any interrogation program.” Even Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., seems to be catching on to what it means when senior legal advisers find themselves incapable of calling water-boarding torture.

5. Everyone who has ever spoken to the president about anything is barred from congressional testimony by executive privilege.

This little gem of an argument was cooked up by the White House last July when the Senate judiciary committee sought the testimony of former White House political director Sara Taylor, as well as that of former White House counsel Harriet Miers, in connection with the firing of nine U.S. attorneys for partisan ideological reasons. Taylor was subpoenaed in June and, according to her lawyers, she wanted to testify but was barred by White House counsel Fred Fielding’s judgment that the president could compel her to assert executive privilege and forbid her testimony. As Bruce Fein argued in Slate, that dramatic over-reading of the privilege would both preclude congressional oversight of any sort and muzzle anyone who’d ever communicated with the president, regardless of their wish to talk.

4. Nine U.S. attorneys were fired by nobody, but for good reason.

Of course, the great legal story of 2007 was the unprecedented firing of nine U.S. attorneys who either declined to prosecute Democrats or were too successful in prosecuting Republicans. After months of congressional hearings, subpoenas, and investigations, the mastermind behind the plan to replace these prosecutors with “loyal Bushies” has yet to be determined. The decision is instead blamed on a “process” wherein unnamed senior department officials came to a “consensus” decision. No one is willing to name names, even though the firings were ostensibly legal, because, in the words of the president himself, these prosecutors all “serve at the pleasure of the president” and can be fired for any reason. Nevertheless, the firing of the nine U.S. attorneys—many of whom had stellar records and job reviews—remains shrouded in secrecy, although at least according to everyone who’s testified, they were all fired for good reasons (which also cannot be articulated).

3. Alberto Gonzales.

I am forced to put the former attorney general into his own category only because were I to attempt to round up his best legal whoppers of the calendar year, it would overwhelm the rest of the list. As Paul Kiel over at Talking Points Memo so aptly put it earlier this year, Gonzales was and is clearly “the lying-est attorney general in recent history.” Kiel went on to catalog Gonzales’ six most egregious legal lies of the year, but I’ll focus here on just two. First, his claim at a March press conference that he “was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on” with respect to the U.S. attorney firings. This was debunked shortly thereafter when Kyle Sampson testified that Gonzales was frequently updated throughout the process. Second, his April testimony that he had not “talked to witnesses because of the fact that I haven’t wanted to interfere with this investigation and department investigations,” which was promptly contradicted by Monica Goodling’s testimony about his efforts to coordinate his version of the story with hers.

2. State secrets.

Again, it’s virtually impossible to cite the single most egregious assertion by the Bush administration of the state-secrets privilege, because there are so many to choose from. This doctrine once barred the introduction into court of specific evidence that might compromise national security, but in the hands of the Bush administration, it has ballooned into a doctrine of blanket immunity for any conduct the administration wishes to hide. The privilege was invoked in 2007 to block testimony about its torture and extraordinary rendition program, its warrantless surveillance program, and to defend the notion of telecom immunity for colluding in government eavesdropping, among other things. No longer an evidentiary rule, the state-secrets privilege has become one of the administration’s surest mechanisms for shielding its most egregious activities.

1. The United States does not torture.

First there was the 2002 torture memo. That was withdrawn. Then there was the December 2004 statement that declared torture “abhorrent.” But then there was the new secret 2005 torture memo. But members of Congress were fully briefed about that. Except that they were not. There was Abu Ghraib. There were the destroyed CIA tapes. So you see, the United States does not torture. Except for when it does.

Dahlia Lithwick is a Slate senior editor.

The Year in Pain: Top Ten Economic Stories of 2007
We even found a few bright spots. Which ones did you miss?
AlterNet Staff, AlterNet
December 30, 2007

We live in a new Gilded Age, one in which the wealthy are doing amazingly well — really well — while the vast majority of Americans try to cover spiraling costs with stagnant wages and struggle to stay afloat. This year, AlterNet writers analyzed the shifts in the American economy during (and before) the Bush years, held corporations accountable for the kinds of outrages the commercial media rarely touch and even found a few bright spots within the gloom. Here are your ten favorite pieces from

2007:

10. The Big Corporate Motherhood Conspiracy
By Janina Stajic, AlterNet
Retailers have created a new trend and are selling yet another a myth: the problem- and pain-free motherhood. Too bad reality doesn’t measure up.

9. Twenty Things You Should Know About Corporate Crime
By Russell Mokhiber, AlterNet
Did you know that corporate crime inflicts far more damage on society than all street crime combined? This and 19 more amazing facts about the state of corporations in America.

8. Why Having More No Longer Makes Us Happy
By Bill McKibben, Mother Jones
The formula of human well-being used to be simple: Make money, get happy. So why is the old axiom suddenly turning on us?

7. Fighting the Corporate Theft of Our Water
By Tara Lohan, AlterNet
The Bush administration is helping multinationals buy U.S. municipal water systems, putting our most important resource in the hands of corporations with no public accountability.

6. Why Working Women Are Stuck in the 1950s
By Ruth Rosen, The Nation
Though most mothers are in the workforce, Americans remain trapped in a time warp, convinced that women should and will care for children, the elderly, homes and communities.

5. How to Save the Middle Class from Extinction
By Paul Krugman, AlterNet
Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman explains in simple terms how the American economy went from having the world’s most dynamic middle class to being on the verge of a rich-poor state in only 30 years.

4. America Gone Wrong: A Slashed Safety Net Turns Libraries into Homeless Shelters
By Chip Ward, Tomdispatch.com
A dirty little secret about America is that public libraries have become de facto daytime shelters for the nation’s street people while librarians are increasingly our unofficial social workers for the homeless and mentally disturbed.

3. The Crash of 1929: Are We on the Verge of a Repeat?
By Scott Thill, AlterNet
Hedge funds have helped create a counterfeit economy that some experts say could lead to another full-blown economic depression.

2. Ten Ways to Prepare for a Post-Oil Society
By James Howard Kunstler, Kunstler.com
The best way to feel hopeful about our looming energy crisis is to get active now and prepare for living arrangements in a post-oil society.

And, now, with much fanfare, the top story of 2007 …

1. Maybe We Deserve to Be Ripped Off By Bush’s Billionaires
By Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com
While America obsessed about Brittany’s shaved head, Bush offered a budget that offers $32.7 billion in tax cuts to the Wal-Mart family alone, while cutting $28 billion from Medicaid.

The 2007 GOP Adulterers Hall of Fame Nominees…
It