Dave Barry Explains 2008

If that is even possible. At least Dave Barry does his best to try & do so. & he comes as close as anyone can to succeeding in doing so.

1 thing that is certain is that 2008 was a weird year.

"How weird a year was it?
Here's how weird:
• O.J. actually got convicted of something.
• Gasoline hit $4 a gallon -- and those were the good times.
• On several occasions, Saturday Night Live was funny.
• There were a few days there in October when you could not completely rule out the possibility that the next Treasury Secretary would be Joe the Plumber.
• Finally, and most weirdly, for the first time in history, the voters elected a president who -- despite the skeptics who said such a thing would never happen in the United States -- was neither a Bush NOR a Clinton."

& that was the good news. As Dave goes on to say:

"Of course not all the events of 2008 were weird. Some were depressing. The only U.S. industries that had a good year were campaign consultants and foreclosure lawyers. Everybody else got financially whacked. Millions of people started out the year with enough money in their 401(k)'s to think about retiring on, and ended up with maybe enough for a medium Slurpee."

Thankfully we have Dave Barry to put the past year in perspective. About the only other person who could have done so might have been Rod Serling & even he might have rejected 2008 as even too weird for an episode of The Twilight Zone.

So what really happenned in 2008. Here are a few of the hilights as only Dave could explain them.

In order to do so we need to go back, way back to last January: "which begins, as it does every four years, with presidential contenders swarming into Iowa and expressing sincerely feigned interest in corn."

"On the Republican side, the winner is Mike Huckabee, folksy former governor of Arkansas or possibly Oklahoma, who vows to remain in the race until he gets a commentator gig with Fox. His win deals a severe blow to Mitt Romney and his bid to become the first president of the android persuasion."

"On the Democratic side, the surprise winner is Barack Obama, who is running for president on a long and impressive record of running for president. . . . .Some people become so excited that they actually pass out. These are members of the press corps.
Obama's victory comes at the expense of former front-runner Hillary Clinton, who fails to ignite voter passion despite a rip-snorter of a stump speech in which she recites, without notes, all 17 points of her plan to streamline tuition-loan applications."

Naturally:

"The instant the caucuses are over the contenders drop Iowa like a rancid frankfurter and jet to other states to express concern about whatever people there care about."

& we get our 1st clue that the economy may be in trouble when "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac invest $12.7 billion in Powerball tickets."

On to February ". . . when, amid much fanfare, Congress passes, and President Bush signs, an ''economic stimulus package'' under which the federal government will give taxpayers back several hundred dollars apiece of their own money, the idea being that they will use this money to revive the U.S. economy by buying TV sets that were made in China."

Fast forward to April where: ". . . tensions run high in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary, which all the experts agree is extremely crucial. Barack Obama gets into trouble with rural voters for saying that rural Americans are ''bitter'' and ''cling to guns or religion.'' Responding to charges that this statement is elitist, Obama responds: ``You are getting sleepy. Very sleepy.''"

"Seeking to capitalize on Obama's gaffe, Hillary Clinton starts channeling Annie Oakley, tossing down shots of whiskey and talking about her love of guns and hunting. After one particularly long day on the trail, she grabs a Secret Service agent's pistol and attempts to shoot a deer; instead she wounds a reporter, thereby sealing her victory in the Pennsylvania primary."

"In economic news, the price of gasoline tops $4 a gallon, meaning the cost of filling up an average car is now $50, or, for Hummer owners, $17,500. Congress, responding to the financial pain of the American people, goes into partisan gridlock faster than ever before." (Like that is a bad thing.)

"The economic news is also gloomy for the U.S. automotive industry, where General Motors, in a legally questionable move aimed at boosting its sagging car sales, comes out with a new model called ``The Chevrolet Toyota.''"

In May we turn our eyes to the Middle East. It was then that ". . . the International Atomic Energy Agency releases a report stating that Iran is actively developing nuclear warheads. In response, Iran issues a statement asserting that (1) it absolutely is not developing nuclear warheads, and (2) these are peaceful warheads. The United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia and China convene an emergency meeting, during which they manage, in heated negotiations, to talk France out of surrendering."

As we head into Summer we reach July where "the economic news continues to worsen with the discovery that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have sent $87 billion to a Nigerian businessman with a compelling e-mail story."

"Also troubling is the news from Iran, which test-fires some long-range missiles, although Iranian President Wackjob Lunatic insists that Iran intends to use these missiles ``for stump removal.''"

But there is good news on the environmental side when "the government of China, in an effort to improve air quality for the Beijing Olympics, bans flatulence."

August is a busy month. In politics the "Democratic Party gathers in Denver to formally nominate Obama, who descends from his Fortress of Solitude to mesmerize the adoring crowd with an acceptance speech objectively described by The New York Times as ``comparable to the Gettysburg Address, only way better.''"

On the Republican side "McCain stuns the world, and possibly himself, by selecting Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a no-nonsense hockey mom with roughly 114 children named after random nouns such as ``Hamper.''"

"In yet another troubling economic indicator, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac rob a liquor store."

& over in Beijing the Olympics get off to a spectacular start when "even the critics are blown away by the spectacular opening ceremony, which features the entire population of Asia performing the Electric Slide."

September brings us back to the economic woes of our country. "The federal government is finally forced to take over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac after they are caught selling crack at a middle school. But that is not enough, as major financial institutions, having lost hundreds of billions of dollars thanks to years of engaging in practices ranging from questionable to moronic, begin failing, which gives the federal government an idea: Why not give these institutions MORE hundreds of billions of dollars, generously provided by taxpayers?"

But it isn't until October when "Congress passes, and Technically Still President Bush signs, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, and everyone heaves a sigh of relief as the economy stabilizes for approximately 2.7 seconds, after which it resumes going down the toilet. As world financial markets collapse like fraternity pledges at a keg party and banks fail around the world, the International Monetary Fund implements an emergency program under which anybody who opens a checking account anywhere on earth gets a free developing nation. But it is not enough; the financial system is in utter chaos. At one point a teenage girl in Worcester, Mass., attempts to withdraw $25 from an ATM and winds up acquiring Wells Fargo."

"As the crisis worsens, an angry Congress, determined to get some answers, holds hearings and determines that whoever is responsible for this mess, it is definitely not Congress."

"In non-economic news, a Las Vegas jury convicts O.J. Simpson on 12 counts of being an unbelievable idiot. He faces more than 60 years in jail, which could end his relentless quest to find the killer of the people he stabbed to death in 1994."

Then there is November & things just keep getting worse.

"The stock market plummets farther as investors realize that the only thing that had been keeping the economy afloat was the millions of dollars spent daily on TV commercials for presidential candidates explaining how they would fix the economy. As it becomes increasingly clear that the federal government's plan of giving hundreds of billions of dollars to dysfunctional companies has not fixed the problem, the government comes up with a bold new plan: give more hundreds of billions of dollars to dysfunctional companies."

Then we have"the troubled ''big three'' auto makers, whose chief executives fly to Washington in three separate corporate jets to ask Congress for $25 billion, explaining that if they don't get the money, they will be unable to continue making cars that Americans are not buying."

America's problems even reach outer space as "NASA's woes continue when an astronaut attempting to repair the troubled multibillion-dollar international space station accidentally lets go of a special $100,000 space tool bag, which drifts away, taking with it the special $17,000 space washer needed to fix the station's special, but troubled, space toilet. NASA announces that it will now have to send up a special space plumber, who charges $38 million an hour."

Meanwhile there is the Presidential election. "Barack Obama, in a historic triumph, becomes the nation's first black president since the second season of 24, setting off an ecstatically joyful and boisterous all-night celebration that at times threatens to spill out of The New York Times newsroom. Obama, following through on his promise to bring change to Washington, quickly begins assembling an administration consisting of a diverse group of renegade outsiders, ranging all the way from lawyers who attended Ivy League schools and then worked in the Clinton administration to lawyers who attended entirely different Ivy league schools and then worked in the Clinton administration."

We finally reach December & the hope that Christmas gift buying will improve the economy. Instead the economic news just gets gloomier "with retailers reporting weak holiday sales as many shoppers pass up pricier gifts such as jewelry and big-screen TVs in favor of toilet paper and jerky." & "the National Bureau of Declaring Things That Make You Go ''Duh'' declares that the nation has been in a recession since December of 2007. The bureau also points out that, according to its statistical analysis, ``for some time now, bears apparently have been going to the bathroom in the woods.''"

Despite all these problems, there is 1 place where things are normal, Illinois. There it is politics as usual when "federal authorities arrest Democratic Illinois Gov. Rod ''Rod'' Blagojevich after wiretaps reveal that he was . . . OK, that he was being the governor of Illinois."

It's politics as usual in Minnesota as well when "the recount in the extremely tight Minnesota Senate race between Norm Coleman and Al Franken is thrown into disarray with the discovery that more than 13,000 of the ballots were cast by residents of Palm Beach County, Fla."

"As the year draws to a close, the president's Council of Economic Advisers warns that the current recession ''could spiral downward into a full-blown depression,'' leaving the U.S. with ``no viable economic option but to declare war on Japan.''"

"Adding to the year-end gloom is a congressionally appointed bipartisan commission on terrorism, which releases a troubling report asserting that there is an 80 percent chance that within the next two years, a major U.S. city will be struck, with devastating consequences, by ``an 18,000 mile-per-hour tool bag from space.''"

Well, that was 2008. We can all breath a sigh of relief that it over. But we still have 2009 to look forward to. Be afraid, be very afraid.

Should we make it to 2010 hopefully Dave Barry will be arround to help us put it into perspective.

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For the rest of 2008 go to Dave Barry Year in Review: Bailing out of 2008