Let’s hope the new one is better than the old one. We wish you and yours a safe, healthy and wingnut-free 2009.

Here at the ass-end of a particularly crappy year, it’s a time for quiet reflection and looking — however fearfully — ahead. So, casting off our usual mantle of obstreperous nonconformity, we mindlessly jump on the bandwagon of year-end cliches and offer for your edification and delight our resolutions for 2009.

We resolve to stop referring [...]

I told him I wouldn’t reveal them, so that if he ever asked for my advice again, he’d feel comfortable doing it knowing that it wouldn’t be out there for public consumption.
— President George Bush, quoted in New York magazine, on his conversations with President-elect Barack Obama

Rick Warren, the right-wing meg-achurch preacher from Orange County, Calif., who is set to give the invocation at Barack Obama’s inauguration next month, made a surprise visit last week to a thrift store in the heart of West Hollywood, southern California’s gay Mecca, that left a lot of us locals scratching our heads.
Obama’s invitation has [...]

I received an e-mail today from something called the Conservative Society for Action. There’s no telling how I came to be on the mailing list, but really, do we need another conservative screed Web site? Especially one that makes Richard Viguerie sound like a level-headed intellectual?
The site has a conservative hall of fame containing, [...]

More evidence that Californians are no longer buying what Republicans are selling:
Even with Prop 8’s coattails, California Republicans lost ground in Sacramento, where Democrats picked up one seat in the Senate and two seats in the Assembly on Nov. 4
“The California Republican Party is dead,” election analyst Tony Quinn, himself a Republican, wrote last week [...]

As bad as the incident is, in my view, it is a sign that Iraqis feel a lot freer to express themselves.
— First Lady Laura Bush, in an interview on Fox News, on an Iraqi journalist throwing his shoes at President Bush

Rallying for the ERA, circa 1972
Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two [...]

Just in time for 2009: the Sarah Palin appropriately numbered 13-month calendar, featuring Alaska’s governor and her family on every page. Think about it — you can spend every single day of 2009 discovering a different aspect of Sarah’s life, spotlighted in each of the 50 photos.
Palin pal “professional photographer Judy Patrick, a long [...]

Chip Saltsman, out standing in his field
As if it bore explaining, we get why Republicans have a diversity problem. Chip Saltsman, who announced his candidacy for head of the Republican National Committee just a couple of weeks ago, has a pretty tone-deaf sense of humor.
The campaign manager for Republican presidential candidate Gov. Mike Huckabee, [...]