Traditional (?) Year End Post

I posted my annual wrap up over at my LiveJournal account. Traditionally, I've posted a top ten list of predictions and a top ten list of resolutions at the beginning of every year. Because some of my predictions are political, I'm reposting part of that here. Before I get to that, though, I'm going to try something new this year. Some time around the first of the year, I'm going to post top ten lists for political predictions and resolutions here, while posting my top ten lists for personal predictions and resolutions over at my LJ account. We'll see how well that works. Anyway, here's how right and wrong I was about 2007:

Top Ten Predictions for 2007
10. George W. Bush, who up to this point has used his veto power once in six years while appending an unprecedented number of signing statements to legislation he didn’t like, will set the record for presidential vetoes issued in a single year. It didn't happen exactly this way, but I'd say I was about HALF RIGHT here. Though Bush has gotten a bit veto happy, I haven't been able to find proof that he set any records. This is most likely because he didn't have to. Apparently the Republicans in the 110th Congress did it for him by setting records for filibustering and other obstructionist tactics. I like the filibuster, but it's interesting to note that the person leading the charge, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, was among those advocating the "nuclear option" to stop Democrats from filibustering judicial nominees in the 109th Congress. Perhaps the key to Republican success is to have no long term strategy whatsoever.

9. Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats in Congress will abandon half of their first 100 hours agenda within the first two days. I'm going to call this as WRONG. Nancy Pelosi had a "First 100 hours" agenda for what she would do as Speaker of the House. Although I'm not sure she was successful with all of it, I'm pretty sure they did at least push each and every item on it. It's pretty hard to get a definitive breakdown of what they did and didn't do without, you know, actual effort. But I was impressed with how well they stuck with it for 100 hours. After that? Not so much.

8. Harry Potter will not die. I'm going to say I was RIGHT on this one. Sure, Harry had a near death experience, but the end of the story was Harry alive and well, Voldemort dead and not so well, and Ron and Hermione getting laid pretty much regularly. Woot!

7. At least one former U.S. President will. (For those keeping score, I think only Carter, George H. W. Bush, and Clinton are still living). Thankfully, I was WRONG. Of course, I'm posting this on the 28th, so I suppose that if Jimmy Carter passes away in the next three days, you can blame me. I really hope he doesn't, though.

6. Al Gore will run for President. WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. The Nobel Peace Prize and the Oscar were cool, though. Maybe next he'll get a Grammy. Or perhaps a Daytime Emmy? A Tony?.

5. Drought in the Midwest will cause either a major increase in the cost of produce, or a major increase in government subsidies to industrial agriculture. I'm going to call this one RIGHT. I'm not clear on whether drought was a cause (The Economist actually blames ethanol subsidies for part of this) but this year has, in fact, marked "The End of Cheap Food, which Grist says is not necessarily going to lead us toward more sustainable practices. Oh dear.

4. Snow will fail to fall (or appear) on Christmas in Washington, D.C. Apparently, I was RIGHT.

3. There will be widely reported news of U.S. Military action inside the Iranian border. If there was U.S. Military in Iran, it wasn't widely reported, so WRONG. But we did do quite a bit of sabre rattling, even after our intelligence estimates declared that the Iranians had stopped their a nuclear weapons program.

2. Amzell will get into an acting MFA, but will decline to enroll because she’ll be offered professional theatre work. She is working in professional theatre, last I heard

1. I will start a new blog at www.thegreenbanditreport.org. I already knew the answer to this one when I made the prediction. It already existed. It was RIGHT, but not a big cause for celebration.

So, 4.5 right, 4 wrong, and one more or less abstained from. Let's see if I can do better than 50% in the new year, huh?

Happy New Year, see you in 2008!

Time gets a spine, no one understands

Each year, Time magazine chooses " the man, woman, couple, group, idea, place, or machine that 'for better or for worse, ...has done the most to influence the events of the year.'" (Wikipedia, quoting a Time collectors edition). Last year they chose "you." This year their choice was someone controversial: Valdimir Putin. Their profile of Mr. Putin is not particularly flattering. While I'm not entirely sure Putin has "done the most to influence the events of the year" (Al Gore won an Oscar and a Nobel Prize, Pervez Musharraf caused some major tension, Nancy Pelosi was instrumental in shaping a new, spineless majority out of the old, spineless minority, etc, etc, etc) the choice does make a certain amount of sense, especially as Putin prepares to step down.

Yet everyone seems to be acting as though Time's "Person of the Year" is an award, rather than a profile. Several political cartoonists have weighed in on the issue, and each one I've seen has taken a negative position on Time's choice. Yes, Vladimir Putin has done some terrible things, in Russia and the world. That's sort of the point.

Big Dick Cheney

According to Taegan Goddard's Political Wire, Dick Cheney has had a lot to say about the current House of Representatives:

"I’m trying to think how to say all of this in a gentlemanly fashion, but [in] the Congress I served in, that wouldn’t have happened... They are not carrying the big sticks I would have expected."

-- Vice President Cheney, in an interview with The Politico, suggesting Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) and Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) don't stand up to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

I figured maybe it was taken out of context, so I took a look at the link Political Wire provided, and the Politicos article seems pretty clear on what the Vice President is saying. Am I reading too much into this? What does the Veep mean when he says that John Murtha and John Dingell aren't carrying "the big sticks" when they deal with Nancy Pelosi? Am I assigning too much importance to the fact that Speaker Pelosi is the first female Speaker of the House in History? My recollection (assisted by Google) is that Cheney was House Minority Whip for the Republicans -- a party known for falling in line with their party's leadership, especially in the 80's when Cheney was in Congress. As whip, his job would have been to make sure that the rank and file Republicans fell into lockstep with the Minority Leader.

So, am I wrong in thinking that the Veep was accusing Murtha and Dingell of having dicks too small to stand up to a woman? Is that why he was "trying to think how to say all of this in a gentlemanly fashion?"

This man disgusts me. Film at eleven.

/Green Bandit Out.

YouTube, what have you done?

Remember that Obama Girl music video? And the weird Mike Gravel video where he stares at the camera, throws a rock into a pond, then walks off? Well, what happens when someone gets the bright idea to combine the two? Keep in mind, I'm pretty sure that Gravel is the only democratic candidate who has made legalization of marijuana an official part of his platform...



/Green Bandit Out.