New Year’s Day. Our society’s “Reset” button. Our culture – or what’s left of it, anyway – reboots, reloads and starts over.
And with every New Year’s Day – well, every New Year’s Day where I have something resembling half a nanosecond of spare time – comes two things in this household: New Year’s Reminiscing, and New Year’s Resolutions. A look back, and a look forward, as it were.
2010 was the Year of the Tea Party™.  In February 2009, CNBC business editor Rick Santelli suggested holding a tea party for traders after Al-Obambi announced a failed-bit plan to have the government re-finance home mortgages.  Drudge posted the video to his site, and it went viral, creating the movement.  A Seattle, WA blogger, Keli Carender, helped organize some of the first Tea Party protests.  Fox News & Michelle Malkin picked up on it, and the movement gained strength.
This year, the Tea Party helped engineer the Republican takeover of the House side of the Imperial Socialist Congress™.  Sixty-three Demoscum got thrown from office in the midterms, leaving the Donktards with under 200 House members for the very first time, part of nearly 700 nationwide offices that changed party hands.  Names like Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Bill Flores, Ron Johnson, Daniel Webster, Dan Coats & John Boozman helped yank the House gavel out of the witchy clutches of the soon-to-be-ex-Shrieker of the House, San Fran Nan Piglousi.  The Imperial Senate, while not flipping to GOP control, nevertheless realized modest gains, cutting into the heretofore-filibuster-proof 60-vote Demoscum majority.
And Republicans captured a majority of the nation’s governorships, giving the GOP a critical advantage in the redistricting battles for 2011.
2010 was the year that Ayatollah B. HUSSEIN!!!  Obambi followed up his record $1.4 extra-extra-super-duper-large (that’s trillion  to those of you in the Church of the SubTarded) deficit…with another $1.3 extra-extra-super-duper-large one.  It was just one of a myriad of epic failures by the Ayatollah in 2010.
2010 was the year that combat troops officially left Iraq.  And Al-Qaida swooped in, beginning an aggressive bombing campaign to overthrow the new Iraqi government, thus laying waste to the efforts of George W. Bush & the United States’ efforts there.
And in Afghanistan, a troop surge modeled in part after Bush’s successful Iraq surge…didn’t do a whole lot.  Military efforts there are resulting in a lot of spun wheel-age.  The Taliban is still fairly-well entrenched, and a sizable chunk of the country is still unsafe for travel.  Al-Obambi says  it has the Taliban on the run there – but, given their propensity for lying through their teeth, do you belive them?
2010 was also the Year of the Oil Spill, as British Petroleum had Deepwater Horizon oil rig explode in the Gulf of Mexico in April, and the resulting oil spill measured between 53,000 & 62,000 barrels per day until its capping in July.
2010 was the year that the environ-mental cases finally were exposed as the frauds they are, and so-called “global warming” was exposed as a hoax, and Michael “Hide the Decline” Mann was exposed as a douchebaggy jackass.
2010 was the year that ragheaded Muslim bastards tried to rub our noses in 9/11 – by threatening to build a mosque two blocks from the former World Trade Center site.  The concept has sparked massive criticism from conservatives (libtards, true to form have donned the kneepads for the ragheads).  The mosque remains unbuilt as of this writing.
2010 was a flat year for the US economy.  The Dow gained 2,100 points, but unemployment remained above 9.5% all year, and is at this moment closer to 10 percent than 9.5.  The economy has only been adding between 50,000 & 100,000 jobs per month, as opposed to the 800,000 monthly required to bring the unemployment rate down.  (And that’s just the U2 rate – those who are actively seeking employment.  The U6 rate – the U2 rate plus those who have given up looking – runs closer to 18 percent.)  Housing prices continue to drop, and foreclosures continue to rise, as do bankruptcies.  Oil is now up around $90/barrel and rising, and gas is now over $3/gallon in Texas.
In sports, the Tex-ass stRangerS finally won the franchise’s first American League championship (before spitting the bit in the World Series vs. the San Transexual Giants).  The New Orleans Saints played in – and won – their first Super Bowl against the Indianapolis Colts.  And Phil Jackson once again proved that he can coach a talented NBA team to an NBA championship.  Yawn.  (I’m still waiting for proof that he could coach the Clippers.)  And the Shit-cago Blackhawks won their first Stanley Cup in nearly 50 years.  Their reward was to be burdened with excuse-for-a-goaltender Marty Turco for the 2010-11 season.    And Alabama won the BCS football championship, beating the Texas University Shortdicks T-sips Longhorns.
The Dallas Mavericks pulled another one-and-done to an inferior San Antonio Spurs team.  Whereupon the Spurs got their asses handed to them by the Phoenix Suns.
The Dallas Cowboys actually won a playoff game in 2010 – the first one in 13 years.  They promptly got their asses handed to them by the Minne-haha ViQueens, and they continued that suckage through this season, thankfully costing Wade Phillips his job.
The Dallas Stars…meh.  (And, seeing as Donna Don Donna Fehr is now the chief negotiator for the NHL players’ union, pro hockey will continue to be…meh.
In 2010, we lost folks like Teddy Pendergrass, Corey Haim, Peter Graves, John Forsythe, Dixie Carter, Lynn and Carin Redgrave, Lena Horne, Gary Coleman, Dennis Hopper, Rue McClanahan, Eddie Fisher, Gloria Stuart, Tony Curtis, Barbara Billingsley, Tom Bosley, Jill Clayburgh, Leslie Nielsen, Steve Landesberg, Teena Marie, J.D. Salinger, Fess Parker, Robert Culp, Malcolm McLaren, Ronnie James Dio, Art Linkletter, Patricia Neal and Blake Edwards.
Personally…well…I’m still here.  I actually made it through a marriage for a year (   ), and I’m still gainfully employed ( ).  Finances suck, but at least we’re not yet homeless.
Weight’s still a problem (when is it not?), but at least I have it back on a downward trend.  With any luck, when we convene here next year for the 2011 YiR, I’ll be back in my trusty ol’ 38s.
Which brings us to the Resolutions™.  I make ’em, you make ’em, we all  make ’em.  Keeping  ’em is another matter – but that’s another topic for another post.
So with that in mind, here are mine for the year:
(If these look familiar, they should – I got ’em from 2008, but they still apply today.)
1. Try to be more personable.  I’m not exactly what you’d call a social butterfly, when I very well could be – the potential is there.  Efforts will be undertaken this year to smile more, frown less.
2. Go to church more.  This is something that always seems to get neglected, especially when I’m living by myself.  IOW, it’s easy to go when a wife is dragging you along; in solo mode, not so much.  I can afford to go a little more often – and I think Our Lord and Savior would probably appreciate the effort to come to His house.
3. Try not to declare bankruptcy.  Unfortunately, it’s looking like this will be one of the first ones broken.  That’s how bad the finances are.  Maybe if I win a lottery…
4. Continue other traditions.  Such as being the only red-blooded American heterosexual male who is not impressed with either Pamela Anderson, Angelina Jolie, Tila “Tila Tequila” Nguyen, Megan Fox, Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus or Eva Longoria.
And finally…
5. Continue to piss off liberals everywhere I go.  You knew that  one was coming, didn’t you? 
6. Finally upgrade the version of WordPress that’s running This Fine Blog™.  (Certain Supreme Generals will appreciate that.)
Most of all, I resolve to thank all of you once again for making this blog a part of your day.  Without you guys, I’m doing nothing more than screaming into the wind.  I’m most grateful for each one of you.  Even if there really are only six or seven of you. 
Happy New Year 2011.  Let’s go kick some leftist ass!