Happy New Year!

Voorspoedige nuwe jaar ... Kul 'am wa antum bikhair ... Urte Berri on ... Shuvo noboborsho ... Sun nien fai lok ... Xin nian yu kuai ...Stastny Novy Rok ... Godt NytÅr ... Gelukkig nieuwjaar ... Bonan Novjaron ... Onnellista uutta vuotta ... Bonne année ... Ein glückliches neues Jahr ... Eutychismenos o kainourgios chronos ... Hauoli Makahiki hou ... Shana Tova ... Boldog uj evet ... Selamat Tahun Baru ... Felice Anno Nuovo or Buon anno ... Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu ... Sehe Bokmanee Bateuseyo ... Nyob Zoo Xyoo Tshiab ... Felix sit annus novus ... Barka da sabuwar shekara ... Godt Nytt År ... Manigong Bagong Taon ... Szczesliwego Nowego Roku ... La Multi Ani si Un An Nou Fericit ... Ia manuia le Tausaga Fou ... Feliz año nuevo ... Heri za Mwaka Mpya ... Gott Nytt År ... Sawatdee Pi Mai ... Chuc mung nam moi ... Blwyddyn Newydd Dda ...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

All things considered, we're not sure just how much happiness is coming in with the sashed-wrapped New Years' baby.

And, where we write from on this new day, it's about 12-degrees, accompanied by 30-MPH winds, producing a -15-degree wind chill, so there's little happiness in walking out the front door (which is adorned with the fresh 6-inches of snow from yesterday).

It "warms up" to about 30 tomorrow.

Enough of that, today's a day of parades, bowl games, polar bear club members jumping into icy waters, Mummers Parade (you have to wait until January 18th for the classic, irreverent, Doo Dah Parade), special concerts, and, of course, for many, the nursing of hangovers.

So, whatever you are doing today, no matter how 2008 played out for you, we have, we believe, the tune that can assuage you for 2009, carrying you forward, a call to perseverance and optimism, of gratitude, and believing in yourself.

It comes via a collaboration between Joe Cocker and The Crusaders, appearing on The Crusader's album, 'Standing Tall', and was nominated for a Grammy in 1981.

Our New Years' gift to you - "I'm So Glad I'm Standing Here Today"

Enjoy! ...

And, Happy New Year!

I'm So Glad I'm Standing Here Today

{Jazz} Im So Glad Im Standing Here Today -

"We Still Had Manners" ... Barry Crimmin's Year In Review

You could go with Parade Magazine, or some other MSM fluff.

Or, you can go to the source.

What better way to ring in the New Year than with Barry Crimmin's annual Year-In-Review?

Crimmins has been doing this for so long, has been so prescient, insightful and dead-on-target, he makes Theodore White's Making-of-a-President series look like hack National Enquirer tripe.

And this year, there's no change in that status, with On the national affront: An inescapable year reaches its inevitable conclusion.

"Could 2007 somehow have been avoided? Where does one begin to recap 12 months of such willful self-parody? Isn’t it insulting to explain why, say, waterboarding is wrong, especially when one of the few people who needs this clarified is the new attorney general of the United States?

Corporate and political hoodlums spent the year doing three things: planning crimes, committing crimes, and covering up crimes. If this is news to you, no summary will bring you up to speed. So here are just some highlights of 2007, because it would be cruel and indecent to make you remember it all."

Crimmins mows down the list, from unreal real estate, to Saddam Hussein ("We still had manners"), to the cowering Congress and, of course, our pop culture pap that passes in so many outlets as hard news ("On February 8, the news-o-tainment divisions caught a break when hillbilly superwidow Anna Nicole Smith died of a drug overdose."), and, of course the ever-growing violence in our ever-growing police state ("While American children spent the year playing Russian roulette with Chinese toys, teens and alleged adults dabbled with even deadlier devices.")

Senator Larry Craig and the Bush Regime don't escape unscathed, as well as the Presidential Marathon, err , Campaign, complete with the numbing addition of the "Ewe tube"

"These confabs were sometimes said to be revolutionary because they employed the popular video-sharing Web site YouTube to collect questions from regular Americans, thus cutting out the mainstream media. Except for one thing: the mainstream media vetted the questions. So what we got were either inane stunt queries, included to underscore the Earth-shaking newness of this approach, or the same stupid questions the hacks could have asked more succinctly than some narcissist with a Web cam hamming it up on technology that produced video about two notches below Neil Armstrong’s viral “One Small Step” work in 1969."

So, ring out and shed your old, scaly 2007 skin with Barry Crimmin's Year-In-Review!

Read: On the national affront: An inescapable year reaches its inevitable conclusion

Visit Barry Crimmins website

Other Barry Crimmins on The Garlic

Bonus Barry Links

Picking up on a Crimmins post, Vanity Fair's James Wolcott's "Huckabee in the Bonnet"

Wolcott, again, quoting from Crimmin's hilarious "review" of Wolf Blitzer and his Situation Room program in his The Year of Tragical Thinking

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

Bon Année!

Feliz Año Nuevo!

Here’s to our Garlic Subscribers, Readers and Visitors ... I hope you and yours are having a very happy New Year Holiday, and that 2007 plays out to be a very good year for you.

Thank you, again, for your readership and support.

Happy New Year!

Peace

JTD