271. 2006: AN OVERVIEW

From the Archives (5 January 2007) Raging gas prices and Borat guffaws and the Pentagon prayer memo. An Inconvenient Truth and Abu Ghraib and North Korean nuclear testing. Mutilated American soldiers burning in the streets of Yusufiya and Spike Lee reminding us of When The Levees Broke.

The White House declining to provide Hurricane Katrina papers to investigators trying to determine what went wrong and that poseur James Frey portraying himself as a badass. Gitmo suicides and the judicial system informing the president that he can't just hold prisoners in cruel and degrading conditions indefinitely without ever charging them with a crime.

Radio talk show bobbleheaded bimbos declaring those judges radical liberal activists. A potentially activist US Supreme Court. Military tribunals and illegal black houses and Boeing transporting prisoners overseas for torture. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, killed in an American air strike.

Haditha, where American soldiers executed 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians. Coercive interrogation techniques and the cowboy who used his silver spoon to avoid Vietnam now trying to legalize torture. Molly Ivins highlighting Texas's ridiculous sex toy laws. Cindy Sheehan and the self-same cowboy who declared the Constitution just a goddamn piece of paper.

Americans bidding farewell to habeas corpus then turning back to Survivor. Danish cartoonists poking fun at (now rioting) jihadists (proving, again, that religious freaks can dish it out but they sure can't take it).

Coretta Scott King breaking her earthly bounds along with Lloyd Bentsen. (Bentsen's best line, spoken to Dan Quayle in the VP debate: I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy.) Katie Couric trying to morph herself into seriousgrrl. Magazines splashing Branjolina across every major supermarket aisle while ignoring the atrocities in Darfur. An Indonesian earthquake and Pedro Almodóvar's Volver and Penelope Cruz still looking mmm, mmm good.

Ann Richards' farewell—her best line: Poor [king] George [the former]. He can't help it if he was born with a silver foot in his mouth—and Medea wondering who inherited Ann's kewl Harley.

Tom "the hammer" DeLay getting busted at last, then trying to reinvent himself online. Jason Cooper, the American reservist, hanging himself after returning from Iraq. Seventy-some other PTSD-suffering American soldiers also committing suicide once they're back on "safe" soil.

A Day without Immigrants and poor Ilan Halimi, kidnapped and tortured and murdered for being a Jew.

Pat Buchanan and Mel Gibson and Michael Richards spouting their white-man bigotry—again—as stupid conservative dingleberry legislators floated ideas for building a wall around the whole dang country in an effort to keep them suspicious fuuuuurners out—apparently forgetting that the servants who keep their gated communities repaired and clean and spic (um) and span are mostly underpaid foreigner workers.

American soldiers setting another Iraqi woman on fire after raping her in Mahmudiya. Seattle extremes: rave murders and flooding and mudslides in my favorite part of the country and let's don't forget the Seattle non-profiteer who was murdered for being a Jew.

Lawrence Summers finally leaving Harvard and those unprepared Mount Hood hikers.

Abeer Qassim Hamza, the young Iraqi girl whose name means "fragrance of flowers," raped then murdered by even more American soldiers (who had already killed her family).

Tee Corinne, pioneering lesbian artist, erotic photographer, and author of the vagina coloring book, dying without insurance. Addvwaitya, the two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old giant aldabra tortoise whose name means "the one and only," dying in a dusty India zoo.

OJ confessing what everyone already knew and Rupert being pressured into pulling his noxious book. Floyd Landis pissing away a Tour de France victory and Lou Rawls dying too.

Lim Jeong-hyun posting his amazing version of Pachelbel's Canon online and those sorry poseurs who rushed to claim his glory.

Ken "Enron" Lay and his criminal folksiness dying. (If only they could throw Pat Robertson and his eye-twitching hokeyness in there with him.) Tabloids showing Americans more than we ever wanted to know about TomKat's cover-up-my-queerness-marriage.

Meanwhile, Darfur.

A culture of violence seeping its way into an unwired Amish schoolhouse. James Brown getting on the bad foot and dying in Georgia. Robert Altman dead. Eleven-year-old Haleigh Poutre suffering massive brain injuries after the state of Massachusetts repeatedly failed to protect her.

Reagan welcoming Caspar "Iran-Contra Affair" Weinberger into the metaphorical fires of Hell as the American poor let out a collective satisfied sigh, knowing full well that the man who all but demolished Johnson's Great Society programs in the name of higher profits was finally dead dead ding dong dead, the greedy warlock. Dead.

Reagan greeting Slobodan "The Butcher of the Balkans" Milosevic there too and Shelley Winters dying (causing old-timers to hum to themselves there's got to be a morning after, It's waiting just outside the door. The White House listening in to private conversations and claiming the right to detain American citizens without a trial or formal charges. Creeping presidential powers. Mark Foley and Ted Haggard and other prominent Colorado Christianists revealing their reckless homophobic hypocrisy.

Fat-ass misogynist Rush Limbaugh attempting to hide his Viagra. The Duke lacrosse team behaving badly. Again. (My hunch? The exotic dancer got righteously pissed when those Richie Rich pricks complained about having to watch a black—gasp!—exotic dancer dance).

I think the prick who told the dancer to thank her grandiddy for his nice white cotton shirt crossed the proverbial line, so she decided that the assholes deserved what she could give them.

Americans flocking to watch Ang Lee's hunky cowboys get it on, then voting to define marriage as a relationship between one man and one woman (plus a whole lotta divorce lawyers and child psychiatrists) only.

New Jersey courts (eventually) making that nonsense null and void.

Saddam breaking his neck (oopsie!) and Jeffrey Skilling getting his and Wilson "Mustang Sally" Pickett—poof!—gone in the midnight hour.

Another Kennedy making the news by crashing his car in the middle of a drug-induced whoopie night. US soldier deaths exceding the 3,000 mark and casualties exceeding 50,000. (Prosthetic sales are up, they say, while the number of dead Iraqi civilians exceeds anyone's estimation.)

American soldiers forced to buy their own protection while Haliburton profits soar. Exxon boasting record profits while citizens go broke filling their tank and oilmen in the Oval office pat each other on their hairy hoary backs for helping big bidness. McCain deporting another 35,000 troops while Bush&Co reconsider the draft in an effort to stay their ridiculous course.

Young Republicans praising their monkeyboy president from the privileged safety of the blogosphere—convinced, no doubt, that any president who would cut benefits for soldiers in harm's would never ever draft his own kind.

Generals discovering a clever new way to kill two birds with one stone by rejecting their previously favored Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy.

Joe "Comback Kid" Lieberman proving again that vanilla GOP wannabes can get themselves re-elected in TV Land.

Donald Rumsfeld finally getting the boot after Democrats seized control of the House and Senate and even the White House was forced to acknowledge their debacle.

Now, jeezuslawd, would those legislators fucking do something!?!