We did it! Sweet Jeebus, we actually did it, making it through our roundup of the stupidest and most ridiculous things to have happened in this year, a year the ancient calendars warned us would be the stupidest and most ridiculous of all possible years. I want to congratulate all of you who managed to look back over all this but who did not decide to just gouge out your own eyes and be done with it—on reflection, a better choice would have been a look back at all the cutest puppies born during the year, or an extended treatise on all the various flavors of ice cream that are out there and what popular winter songs they remind us of. Ah well, at least the memories provide us with a decent reason to finish up all that increasingly-iffy nog.
1. December was the month Republicans tried to regroup and come up with a new plan for killing Obamacare. This would be different from all the other months in no way whatsoever, but I felt we needed to note it here for closure's sake.
2. On the other hand, House Republicans begrudgingly agreed that perhaps the United States of America needed a budget after all. That should easily be the biggest story of the entire year—certainly less predictable than the September-October collapse of the government entirely—but Congress, pundits and reporters alike were just too tired to even care anymore.
3. Fox News "serious news person" Megyn Kelly unleashed a week of mockery for her assertion to the Fox News "kids watching" that "Jesus was a white man," "as is Santa." She even did a special segment on all the people making fun of her and what that might mean.
4. California Republicans created and promoted a fake healthcare website patterned to look like the California exchange, but which instead discouraged visitors from obtaining coverage. That may top the list of worst things any political group has done this year, and that is saying something.
5. The Republican-led Michigan legislature passed a bill requiring the removal of abortion coverage from most state and private health insurance; those wishing the procedure to be covered would be required to obtain prior, separate coverage via riders that critics are calling "Rape Insurance."
6. The death of Nelson Mandela was a tragedy; the reaction in many quarters was a farce. Republican Sen. Ted Cruz was widely excoriated by his conservative fans when he posted a brief message honoring Mandela to his Facebook page; that paled in comparison to the conservative media outrage that erupted when President Obama, attending the funeral,shook the Cuban president's hand.
7. A conspiracy theory claiming Obama was "closing the American embassy to the Vatican" quickly reached even the heights of the Republican Party, with both the NRSC and Jeb Bush weighing in on the supposed outrage.
8. The New York Post makes this roundup for a second time, this time for a widely blastededitorial against improving conditions for the homeless. Ye Gods—if it weren't for Richard Cohen's two credible efforts, that one would be a shoe-in for Worst Editorial of the Year. It may still deserve the win.
And with that, a Happy New Year.