2007 IN THE REAR VIEW MIRROR

2007.  What a ride.  What a finish. 

Just this week, a guy I once beat in arm-wrestling makes Time Magazine Man of the Year (I told the story way back in October of 2003 in Arm Wrestling With Russia – and I sure agree with Mitt Romney that the award was "disgusting.").

It's just too delicious that up on Drudge right now (10am 12/21) is the British Guardian story about Putin's $40 Billion fortune.  You learned about that last February in The World's Richest and Most Dangerous Gangster, which was updated a month ago in Pro-Communist Conservatives.

A country I said back in April of 2005 was going to break apart (Bye Bye Bolivia) is now right on the brink of it.  CNN is reporting Four Bolivian regions declare autonomy from government. 

What's taken so long is fear of Venezuelan troops sent by Chavez.  Now that fear is ebbing with Chavez losing his referendum to seize total power, and becoming a Porque no te callas? (Why don't you just shut up?) laughing stock in the entire Latin world thanks to Spain's King Juan Carlos.

Right on schedule this week, the fellow I said last April who would get elected president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak, in Regime Change in Korea did so in a total landslide.  I expect all of what I predicted in that article to come to pass next year: 

That Lee will make a deal with Beijing for the latter to sell out North Korea and effect North-South reunification on Seoul's terms;  in exchange, Lee will cede to China Korea's side of the last 11 miles of the Tumen River, which forms its border with Russia and thus blocks all of Chinese Manchuria from sovereign access to the Pacific Ocean (see map in the linked article).

And on the domestic front, I hope you're all reveling in the marvelous John Edwards Love Child Scandal detailed in this week's National Enquirer.  Particularly since you learned those details last October in The Breck Boy Is Cleared From The Presidential Field.  Little Johnny is toast, just as predicted.

Yet for all of the above, this week was just getting warmed up. 

A year ago, it was gloom and doom for Republicans, who had been thrown out on their majority ear in Congress – they were minority schmucks saddled with a loser president hated for fighting a losing war.  The Dems were pumped with euphoric hubris, riding tall in the saddle.

The headlines in newspapers around the country this week proclaimed the glorious difference a year makes:  Democrats' High Hopes Fall Flat, Key Setbacks Dim Luster of Democrats' Year, Party Base Slams Top Democrats for Yielding, Dems Lose Key Policy Debates.

Thus the US news story of the year is not some crazed lunatic murdering people on a college campus, as a coffee clatch of newspaper editors yesterday claims, but the capitulation and collapse of the Democrat Party to George Bush.  Pelosi Galore and Lost Harry Reid are the Losers of the Year.

Winner of the Year – the true Man of the Year – is George Bush.  Yes, a persuasive case can be made for Gen. David Petraeus, no doubt.  Yet it was Bush as commander-in-chief that refused to say the war was lost, opted for the surge, and opted for Petraeus to conduct it.

It's tempting to say that the impending victory in Iraq is the international news story of the year – a victory that was predicted, along with concomitant Dem defeat regarding it, right here last February in Democrats at Delphi.

But the victory may just about to be far deeper and extend far beyond Iraq.  The senior theologian of Al Qaeda has this week called upon Moslems worldwide to give up Jihad against America and the West.  This is unbelievably important.  I could not urge you more strongly to read about the call for Al Qaeda to surrender in yesterday's New York Sun.

Al Qaeda's 9/11 attack on America and waging a terrorist Jihad have been a "catastrophe for Moslems," proclaims Sayyed Imam al-Sharif or "Dr. Fadl," Al Qaeda's chief ideologue, who is demanding a special Islamic court try Osama Bin Laden for crimes against Islam.

The unstated reason for why 9/11 and terrorist Jihadism has been a "catastrophe" is because George Bush didn't behave like Bin Laden expected him to, like a Bill Clinton or Algore.  It was the dismaying shock of Bin Laden's life that the US president went straight after him, trying to kill him and every one of his followers, instead of doing a Clinton wimp-out or a Gore blame-America apologia.

If you can, take the time to watch Bush's White House press conference of yesterday (12/20) – the CSPAN link is Pres. Bush Press Conference.  If you do, you will see a man at the top of his game.

He was sharp, informed, and articulate on a very wide range of topics.  He was gracious and courteous to the Dems who had been viciously demeaning and degrading him all year.  He refused in the slightest way to gloat over his wipe-out defeat of them.

And he dropped a nuclear grenade into their mess of pork he just signed into law funding the government, saying he would have OMB director Jim Nussle "review options for dealing with wasteful spending."

That was code for stripping earmarks from nonbinding report language attached to the Omnibus bill.  Some 95% of the bill's over 9,000 pork earmarks are in the reports, and since they do not have the force of law, the OMB can direct federal agencies to ignore them.

Yes, there was skunk amidst the roses – the ghastly energy bill that Bush praised, with its gigantic ethanol scam and doing totally nothing to increase domestic oil and gas production.  But let not the perfect be the enemy of the good.

A seriously weakened president polling in the basement and a demoralized party cast into the minority wilderness ended up trashing the Dems.  Just to list the legislative horrors the Reps stripped out of Democrat bills would double the length of this article.  So here's one:  the Hate Crimes amendment was stripped out of the Defense authorization on December 6.

"You should have seen the look on the Kennedy staffers' faces," said a Rep staffer triumphantly.  "It was a sight to treasure."

So we've got a lot to celebrate and feel good about as we look at 2007 in our rear view mirror.  And wait, there's more!  The frenzy of Global Warming may be running its course.

Today, the Washington Times ran a front page headline:  Scientists doubt climate change.  And you can read in this week's TTP about how 2007 was The Year of Global Cooling by geophysicist David Deming.

It may not be too soon to ask what leftwing crisis of global idiocy the Dems will try to foist upon us as a replacement for increasingly discredited glowarming – for you can be sure they'll invent something equally nonsensical and inimical to our freedom.

But that's for next year.  Next week we'll discuss next year.  In talking with TTP author Jack Kelly, we both agreed that the safest prediction we could make about 2008 is that we'll never run out of things to write about all year long.

Right now, just enjoy Christmas, enjoy being American, enjoy being human, enjoy being a part of this extraordinary world with which Providence has blessed us.

Merry Christmas to you all.

Ps:  Two of 2007's best highlights were the TTP Rendezvous in Las Vegas and Colorado Springs.  One of 2008's will most assuredly be the TTP Beach Party Rendezvous in Sarasota February 8-10.  Be there or be square!