No Runny Eggs

Welcome to Day 4 of the NRE 2010 Awards. Today, we focus on the biggest news story of the past year. As a review/preview, here’s the rest of the schedule:

– Jackass of the Year, 1/1
– Thank You for Existing, 1/2
– Dumbest Thing Said, yesterday
– Person of the Year, tomorrow

And the nominees are…

The November election (from realdebate) – Never in my lifetime have I seen such a dramatic shift. The country saw real liberalism in action and rejected it soundly. Major kudos to Wisconsin which had the biggest turn around of any state in the nation: 2 Congresscritters, The Governor’s Office, the State Assembly & Senate and of course a US Senate seat. The left still doesn’t understand it, they just think people who don’t agree with their world view are stoopid.

Passage of Placebocare (Shoebox) – I don’t think there’s any question that the passage of this bill crystalized the anti Obama, anti Democrat, anti incumbent and anti Rino movement that culminated in the elections of 2010.  Sure, people were upset about the stimulus bill, sure, people were upset about the finance bill and numerous other efforts by Democrats to make us less free and more beholden to our D.C. masters.  However, passage of Placebocare, in spite of overwhelming public sentiment against it, showed even those in the electorate middle that we could no longer tolerate the arrogance of the D.C. meritocrisy mentality.  I hope the sleeping giant of the silent majority has finally been awakened….we’ll find out as 2011 plays out.

Chilean mine rescue (from Kevin Fischer) – Trapped in a Chilean mine for 69 days, how did Edison Pena and the other 33 workers survive? With help from the King. Appearing on the David Letterman Show, Pena said the miners found comfort in listening to Elvis on a specially-delivered MP3 player sent into the mine. Without publicity, Elvis Presley Enterprises sent whatever material could fit into a tube: DVDs, CDs, Elvis sunglasses. The men entertained themselves in sing-a-longs to lift their spirits while they waited for help. The Memphis Commercial Appeal wrote this headline: “Elvis to the rescue-The King’s music soothed Chilean miners.”

President Barack Obama becomes President George W. Bush. (From Phineas) This is really more of a theme over several stories, but it also is a story in itself. Riding a wave of Bush-bashing into office and promising to be anything but Bush, Obama found himself time and again mugged by reality and force to continue Bush’s policies: tax rates, military commissions for terrorists, Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan… One can almost hear Obama speak with a Texas twang. The irony is laughable.

The national debt tops $14 trillion (from steveegg) – Up until very late last night, I was going to pretty much repeat last year’s choice of the Tea Party Movement getting vocal (and this time, power), while those in government doubled (this time tripled with both halves of the bipartisan Party-In-Government taking part) down on stupid. However, I’ll get ahead of the fiscal curve and explain why a specific element of that, the debt hitting 95% of the Gross Domestic Product, is going to be THE STORY. Yes, we’ve been in that territory before. However, there are three big differences between 1946 and 2011:

1. There isn’t 16 years of pent-up demand just beginning to be met to drive the GDP up to a point where the debt load becomes manageable.
2. On a related note, we’re not the sole source of goods like we were after World War II.
3. The nature of the debt is far different – rather than the debt being almost exclusively past obligations that, once met, don’t recur, a significant portion is on future obligations that are only increasing.

Sooner or later, the house of cards is going to get a “major makeover”, and another 2-year delay in a serious attempt at a crash diet means it’s more likely that “major makeover” will be a collapse.