Starting near the beginning of the year, we had the “tragic death” of Anna Nicole Smith, which dominated news for far too long. I’ve mentioned it before in my angry ramblings: this was one of the most ludicrous examples of media misdirection I’ve ever seen. We’re in a disastrous war, but; Hey, some blonde nude model keeled over! Halt the bloody presses!

As the year progressed, we were treated with the lovely occurrence at Virginia Tech (before I continue, I should note that I refuse to mention the gunman by name. I call him Scumbag #3, #s 1 and 2 being from Columbine). This, I will admit, was truly a headline worthy event. Unfortunately, the media trotted out the same old moronic responses to this: violent video games, movies and music are to blame, and (my personal favourite idiotic response): This wouldn’t have happened if they allowed guns on campus.

We’ve had violent media for thousands of years, yet NOW they’re blaming it for acts committed by a disturbed individual? Sorry, that doesn’t fly. As for the idea of more guns being the solution: there’s a reason the phrase “caught in the cross-fire” elicits a negative image…it’s where you LEAST want to be in a gun-fight.

The solution here is simple to state, but harder to implement: know the warning signs of severe mental illness and actually enforce the saner gun laws on the books.

Larry Craig: He’s gay. Moving on.

Ted Haggard: He’s a gay drug addict. Moving on.

Jerry Falwell: He’s a dead nut-bar. Moving on.

Really, to get to the meat of the year’s news, one needs to step outside of the normal media circuit and look at what is truly important. For that, all one needs to do is take a cursory look at the world around us.

The war in Iraq is still nothing but a vastly expensive and deadly game of whack-a-mole. It needs a very different tactic, but all we were offered was more people to be used as targets, hence, 2007 has been the deadliest year there to date.

Iran, regardless of the rhetoric spouted by those in the administration and their loud-mouthed lackeys in the media, has been shown to NOT have anything even remotely close to a nuclear weapons program. This, however, doesn’t seem to dissuade those who still want to bomb the crap out of them.

And finally, most recently, Benazir Bhutto has been assassinated in Pakistan. Unlike most of my ranting in this piece, I’m not going to get too cynical on this one. The situation in Pakistan is terrible and those responsible for Bhutto’s death are also going to be responsible for the bloody aftermath of it. I won’t make a guess as to who is responsible. The facts on the ground over there are far to variable at the moment. All I can say is that I hope Pakistan survives this and those close to Ms. Bhutto can take comfort in the fact that her death came as a result of her doing what she believed in.

So, with 2008 on the horizon, I must admit to not having any kind of clairvoyance. I can only see one, truly fantastic thing on the horizon: at some point in the next year, the people of the US will elect a president who is NOT George W. Bush. Even if everything else goes to hell next year, at least we have that.