Late last year, when Barack Obama trounced the McCain-Palin ticket, a phrase kept crossing my mind" "No More Mister White Guy."

The signs and omens were all around for those who wished to interpret them. A clapped-out white war-hero and his ultra-white, know-nothing running-mate (who'd skinned enough wild beasts and shot enough wolves from her helicopter to be counted as an honorary white "man") had been defeated, indubitably and unanswerably, by a literal African-American, possessed of a Muslim moniker - not to mention a middle name he shared with a dictator who'd long loomed high in America's foreign-policy demonology over the previous decade. It could be argued that the single element that shot down McCain's hopes was the fact that he had attached his destiny and, not unimportantly, the nation's precarious and uncertain future, to a sub-literate toxic scold of a running-mate, a shrewd but breathtakingly ignorant woman who was happy to stir up the most loathsome, poisonous old ghosts in the American polity in order to rile up her white followers. Millions of moderate Republicans, who frankly should have noticed years earlier that their party had deserted them for the nuttiest fringes of the far-right, saw this as one bridge-to-nowhere too far - they could see that their own party, or the recrudescent Palin fringe thereof, now harbored voters content to call for the assassination, or worse, of the other nominee - and they voted in their droves for the black dude.

There were other signs - misleading, as it turned out - that America's long white-male nightmare might finally be drawing to a close, and not merely the statistical/demographic projection that, within 30 years, whites would merely be the majority-minority in America. White-themed shows like King of The Hill (RIP) and My Name is Earl (good riddance) were cancelled in the run-up to the November vote. Joe the Plumber couldn't open his mouth without sticking his steel toe-capped work-boot in there. Fox News's ratings were on the slide as their disgraced and tarnished hero Dubya sloped off to face the enormous condescension of posterity for the next few decades (of course, he thinks it'll all redound to his historical favor in about a century - good luck with that, G-money!). And in the economic realm, all the many chickens of the last three decades of deregulation, foxes-guarding-the-henhouse and the use of the citizenry as a defenseless and exploitable resource for greedy corporations, banks and sundry species of middlemen, came flocking home to roost. The economy bottomed out in September, and McCain screwed the pooch by "suspending" his campaign, and suddenly everyone could see that this wanna-be emperor, festooned as he long had been with all the regalia of the war-hero (instead of the overpromoted third-generation hothead and hotdog flier he was in reality) was now walking the world clad only in his shredded undies. The result? An absolute rout for the Republicans, a defeat like none since 1964.
So with all that to savor, I found myself wondering, albeit only for a blessed short moment, if maybe we would now get a break from Mister White Guy for a while, from his endless conservative, hair-on-fire hysteria and hypocrisy, and his ability to be bamboozled and stampeded into a fearful incoherent, self-destroying rage by any cynical faux-grass roots organization ginned up by the corporate right. Perhaps, I dared to dream, we might now enter a halcyon new age of reason and common sense, of calm voices and measured tones, with an end to all the screaming and name-calling.

Boy, did I get it wrong.

Since almost the moment Obama entered office, the right-wing white-faced hysteria has been louder and coarser than ever. The Moderate Republican is a vanished species and the dwindling remnant, overseen by mouth-breathing hacks and procedural fanatics risen to prominence during the long dark Republican Night, has reconstituted itself as the Party of No. And their No means No, in no uncertain terms: no to healthcare reform, no to immigration reform, no to any of the desperately needed remedies for a country that has long been crying out for its own bout of glasnost and perestroika, but isn't about to get it, thanks to these fools.
Leading the charge this year were not the politicians but the media stars of the fever-swamp right-wing. Miss McConnell and John Boner were almost as anathema to these people as any differently-pigmented Democrat or "socialist" (a word that made an unlikely comeback this year, if only as a slur). First there was Palin herself, apparently shrewd enough to see that Obama would win and thus anxious to use the scrag-end of the election period to light a fire under the asses of her brain-dead constituency of GED-bereft white bozos, thus igniting a prairie-fire of support that would prove useful in any putative 2012 presidential bid or, more likely, provide her with a fanbase for future product, like her witless autobiography. And so it has proved: almost nothing the woman does, be it resigning from the Alaska governorship because it LOOKED TOO MUCH LIKE HARD WORK, vomiting out her godawful worldview into the tape recorder of her ghost-hagiographer, or composing the single biggest political lie of 1009, the one about death panels, has been enough to raise the collective craw of her fanbase. If you like Sarah Palin and her faux-folksy, mendacious, self-pitying bullshit, then there's a statistical likelihood that you will also see nothing wrong in depicting the new President with a bone through his nose or gazing hungrily into a cannibal cooking pot filled with white missionaries. They go together like chalk and cheese.

Like clowns stumbling out of a little car, the media ass pack suddenly seemed super charged and hyper-emotional, whipping up their people with dark and scary scenarios about the president. They grew so increasingly parodic every day that it seemed anything was possible. Glenn Beck could have ridden onto his set on an elephant, showering the audience with peanuts and no on would have been that surprised. In the mad prophet of the airwaves contest, he took the top prize because unlike Limbaugh and kind of to his credit, he actually is nuts.

There was the jacked-up, dough-faced pudge-monster Glenn Beck, the boy who never grew up and never will, who became a cultural icon for the mad-as-hell Right despite having no qualifications bedsides a long and mediocre career as an itinerant drive-time shock-jock (i.e., as a professional attention-seeker, a role he has yet to shed). Somehow this guy hooked himself up to an audience of undereducated fools willing to take his every nutty conspiracy-theory (FEMA camps! Buy gold! Obama's a racist!) at face-value. And in fact, said audience, soon known to us as the Tea Party gerontocracy, was actually ginned up by Dick Armey - he of the Contract on America and other fine endeavors - and his pals at FreedomWorks, with the backing of the same Koch Industries heirs whose never-idle riches have inseminated half the excuse-making right-wing think-tanks of the last 30 years. It all had as much to do with anything truly grass-roots as Glenn Beck has to do with anything true at all. PT Barnum must be cackling in his grave right now, all his theories having been vindicated daily throughout '09 - and Father Coughlin, Joe McCarthy, and George Lincoln Rockwell are probably having a chuckle too.
And let's not forget the elder statesmen. The grand sages. Venerable old white men Anne Coulter, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh all left their nauseating, fetid slime-trail all across this year, each vying for the prize for all-round achievement in bottom-dwelling scuzziness throughout '09. Limbaugh's great advantage over his competitors may be the fact that he is literally deaf, and hears nothing, possibly including the sound of his own increasingly ridiculous and reason-free voice. A national audience of ignorant hate-filled old men exactly like Limbaugh eats up anything the man says as he panders wholesale to their basest prejudices and dislike, and the best we can hope for is that said demographic is currently marching, steadily but inexorably, out of the nation's retirement homes and into its cemeteries.
And finally, their acolytes among the public, the men and women who called healthcare reform a variant of National Socialism, who blamed Obama for Dubya's Wall Street bailout, cursed the stimulus and refused to admit it saved a million jobs, who painted Hitler-mustaches on Obama's image and favored us with pictures of corpse-piles at Belsen and Auschwitz. These were the people so blind to their own interests that they got up at Healthcare town-halls and screamed down all others, then picked fights, often lost them, only to realize belatedly that they had no healthcare with which to treat their own well-deserved injuries!
So No More Mister White Guy, which seemed so ironclad a year ago as McCain flew back to Arizona in ignominy, no longer seems like such a tonic, timely phrase. This tendency, the apparently ineradicable Know-Nothing, John Birch Society strain of paranoia and unhinged loathing in the American political bloodstream is no deader now than when it was first diagnosed by Richard Hofstrader 45 years ago (his famous book, The Paranoid Style in American Politics - http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/08/hbc-90000908 - published in 1964, still reads like it was written the day after tomorrow). It is stoked and fed by the most cynical, unpatriotic elements in our polity: think-tanks, astroturf groupings with serious money to spread around, grandstanding moral midgets like Beck and Limbaugh, and by a Republican Party under threat from both its vanishing moderate wing and its reckless, almost suicidal rightmost flank.

It's like the end of Terminator 2: as the monster dies it reenacts every last one of its stolen identities before it sinks into the vat of molten steel. But you gotta assume the thing will simply die in the end.

.....Right?

FORT WORTH, Texas — With Asher Clark and Jared Tew grinding out yards and Air Force controlling the ball for more than 41 minutes, there were few chances for Case Keenum and Houston's potent offense.

Then when Keenum got on the field in the Armed Forces Bowl, he was often under pressure or getting picked off – or both.

Air Force's top-ranked pass defense had six interceptions and Clark and Tew each ran for more than 100 yards and two touchdowns to lead the Falcons to a 47-20 victory on Thursday.

"The front three kind of got in his head, kind of got into him," said safety Chris Thomas, who had two interceptions along with his 12 tackles. "When he was on the run like that, we feel like we had the advantage."

After the Falcons (8-5) went ahead on Clark's 36-yard TD to cap the opening drive of the game, Keenum's first pass attempt deflected off his falling receiver and was grabbed by Anthony Wright, who had three interceptions. That set up Tew's 6-yard TD run for a 14-0 lead.

When it was over, Keenum had thrown a career-high six picks and was 24 of 41 for a season-low 222 yards for the Cougars (10-4). Before throwing three interceptions with five TDs and a school-record 56 completions in a loss to East Carolina in the Conference USA championship game last month, Keenum had only six picks the first 12 games this season.

"Give Air Force all the credit and I'll take all the blame," Keenum said, opening an 78-second postgame statement before walking off without taking questions. "I'm going to learn from this. You know, I'm a winner and I'm a competitor. ... We're going to take this into the offseason and we're going to use it as motivation. Look for the Cougars to do something special next year because there's a lot of guys in this locker room who have got a lot of determination. "

The junior quarterback who played his 40th career game had previously said he plans to be back next season, when the Cougars return nine offensive starters, including three 1,000-yard receivers. Keenum finished this season with a nation-leading 5,671 yards with 44 touchdowns and 15 interceptions.

"I'm not going to make any kind of generalization based on the overall numbers in the past two games for him," coach Kevin Sumlin said. "He's a damn good player. Has been, and will continue to be. ... He wasn't sharp today. We weren't sharp today at all."

Air Force ran for 402 yards and Tim Jefferson was effective through the air, hitting 10 of 14 passes for 161 yards.

"We felt that if we just kept doing what we do and the plays were called right, they couldn't stop us," said Tew, who finished with 26 carries for 173 yards. He had a 71-yard TD run with 3:32 left in the game after Keenum's fifth interception.

Clark ran 17 times for 129 yards for the Falcons, who had lost in the Armed Forces Bowl the past two seasons, including 34-28 to Houston a year ago. Air Force had lost three straight postseason games.

Houston's bowl win last year capped Sumlin's debut season and snapped an eight-game postseason losing streak that had spanned 28 years. This time, the Cougars missed out on their first 11-win season since 1979.

After Houston was held without a touchdown before halftime, Tyron Carrier returned the opening kickoff of the second half 79 yards for his fourth TD this season. He took the ball near the left sideline, then ran to the middle of the field before shooting through a gap and running untouched to get the Cougars within 24-13.

Air Force immediately responded with its first kickoff return for a touchdown since 1985. Jonathan Warzeka fielded the ball and stepped back into the end zone before running 100 yards. Five Houston players got their hands on him, but couldn't get him down.

According to STATS, it was only the sixth major college game since 1996 with kickoff return touchdowns on consecutive plays. None of them had been in a bowl game.

After the kickoff returns, Keenum threw a 10-yard TD to Patrick Edwards to make it 31-20. That gave Keenum a TD pass in 30 consecutive games , but this was the first time in that streak that he had more picks than scores.

Houston managed only 331 total yards after coming in with a nation-best 581 yards per game and averaging 44 points.

When Jefferson slipped down trying to run on third-and-goal from the 2 with 17 seconds and no timeouts left just before halftime, he quickly got the offense off the field and the kicking team got out in time for Erik Soderberg's 27-yard field goal.

"Just overall, we played terrific football today. If you want to break it down into the three phases, one by one, we really were outstanding," coach Troy Calhoun said. "Yet even above that, just the unity, the kind of team chemistry, the spirit that's part of these guys."

It's time for our annual ritual of absolution and control - otherwise known as the New Year's Resolution. If you're like most Americans, your resolution will be the same one you made last year. And again this year it'll last until Valentine's Day.

But some resolutions work - about 20% make it to the two-year point. To give your resolution the best possible chance, learn from the winners.

Here are five things that successful resolutions have in common.

A Specific, Actionable Plan
Brave but vague goals fail. One of the reasons we're attracted to the notion of New Year's Resolutions is because we know deep down we get overwhelmed by day-to-day temptations. It's easier to control our behavior if we have a plan that takes daily decision making out of play. Planning also requires thought, and the more we think about something the greater our emotional investment and consequently our commitment.

For example, more Americans than ever before have resolved to spend less and save more in 2010. The ones that have a better chance of succeeding have made a list of the actions needed to take make it happen. So rather than to just say, "I'm going to spend less money" they say thing like "I'm going to spend no more than $20 a week on lunches," or "In January I'm going to research my monthly expenses to see what I can reduce."

Do, Do, Do
With the notable exception of exercise, most resolutions involve not doing something. Eating, drinking, smoking, shopping and spending, Internet usage, the list is long. When it comes to maintaining motivation, "not doing" is always harder than "doing." "Not doing" has been known to result in obsessing and ruminating - the opposite of where you want your mind to be when you're trying not to indulge.

The key is to replace time spent eating, drinking or dawdling on the Internet with something else. Keeping a log or journal has a strong success rate with habit-breakers partially for that reason. In fact nearly every successful self-help program has activities built in. Whether it's bowling to replace smoking or a book club to replace the Internet, be sure to fill the time that would have been spent on an unwanted activity with something else.

Shake it Up
While you're reorganizing your life remember that habits are linked to cues. Anyone who has quit smoking knows it helps to avoid the coffee or bar ritual that cues the urge to smoke. Similarly, if you can't resist a bargain don't go shopping and if you always overeat at the movies switch to DVD's at home. In other words - shake up your routine and your environment. This is more than avoiding temptation, it's rewiring brain circuitry.

New Year's resolutions have a giant advantage - a lot of social support. January and February are the least hedonistic months of the year, and coming after the gluttony of the holidays austerity can seem almost pleasant. For two months society reinforces several of our most popular resolutions. Carpe diem.

Tangible, Visual Cues, Barriers and Rewards
Sometimes a few seconds of thought or momentary reminder of the big picture is all we really need to push aside temptation. Put physical barriers and cues in front of tempting situations - tape your credit card balance to your wallet each day or hang a favorite too-small outfit in your kitchen.

Tangible evidence of success is also motivating. Most resolutions have been attempted before and previous failure lurks in the back the mind. It's part of the allure of starting programs on January 1st - we mentally forgive the failures of the past year and start with a clean slate. Evidence that we've been (and therefore will be) successful is essential, especially when we've failed in the past. Jan, 39, found simulated fat in 5 pound rubber blobs on the Internet. For every five pounds lost, a new blob is displayed in her bathroom. "It's exciting to see what I've done and I can't wait to put the next blob out."

Alcoholics Anonymous chips are prized by those in recovery. Progress graphs, rewards, tokens are other "gold stars" (or fat blobs) encapsulate pride, affirm capabilities and refuel commitment.

Mastery of Mental Sabotage
The #1 slayer of resolutions is our mind. Mental games have more to do with unsuccessful resolutions than willpower or self-control. Here are three mental fallacies that spell failure:

Perfectionism - setting unrealistic goals feels virtuous on January 1st but guarantees failure. Flexibility and mini-goals rather than Herculean conquests are the tools of permanent change.

All or Nothing - setbacks should be expected and even planned for. Slip-ups are human but many give up or give in after the first slip, labeling themselves failures.

Blame - when it comes to resolutions it's all about personal accountability. There are always others and circumstances to blame. Success depends on responsibility. Which is another reason why it's truly great to have the support of others, but you have to have your own goal.

To the 75% of Americans resolved to change, best wishes in 2010.

On December 9, world leaders debated global climate in Copenhagen and Obama was in Oslo to accept his Nobel. I was sharing a glass of wine with Doug Engelbart, AKA 'father of the mouse,' in the kitchen of Mei Lin Fung, Doug's long-time friend, in Palo Alto: a potluck dinner, shoes off, sparing Mei Lin's floors. I sensed links. Half a world away, people were commemorating the world's problems while we toasted the birth of perhaps the most powerful tool in human hands.

Doug was guest of honor. His 'Mother of All Demos' on Dec 9 1968 set the standard for personal computing that still applies: Doug and his SRI team, with chief engineer Bill English, demo'ed for the first time personal computing, showing the first computer mouse, interactive text, video conferencing, teleconferencing, email, hypertext and a collaborative real-time editor.

While Obama was receiving his Nobel, the Copenhagen Climate Conference was becoming a giant prisoners' dilemma. If all cut emissions, all win. If nobody cuts, all lose. If some cut but not others, non-cutters win more than cutters. Which courageous leader will commit first? As fictional Jim Hacker, Minister of Administrative Affairs in the political satire 'Yes, Minister' says: "Courageous? I don't want to do anything courageous! That's the kind of thing that ends careers." Swedish PM Fredrik Reinfeldt's was not happy: "Who sets the speed of progress? The least ambitious."

When groups face common problems, power goes to those who must agree for anything to happen. Often their political power and the value of their 'OK' grows as they hold out--supply and demand. If the problem is bad and people want their 'OK' they say 'Well, first YOU must [insert demads here].' They may be conscientious, backed by their constituencies, so it might not seem immoral. Leaders build power, stature and wealth for their followers by gatekeeping. Some may get a Nobel, others may end up in the International Criminal Court in the Hague. The need for consensus breeds gatekeeping. That's the game.

Back to Mei Lin's kitchen. It might be closer to the solution than banquet halls in world capitals. The name 'Mother of All Demos' came later. The actual name marking the birth of real personal computing was 'a research center for augmenting human intellect.' Doug's idea was not to make computers smarter, it was to help people be smarter. Computers had been about automation, replacing but not augmenting intellect. Doug was lucky, a chosen researcher supported by J.C.R. 'Lick' Licklider at ARPA, the visionary accredited for planting the seeds of computing in the digital age. Normal funders disdained people like Doug: the ideas did not fit their funding.

Lick coined the "intergalactic computer network," a vision of computers collaborating. The Internet protocol that enabled it was invented by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn. Vint is today at Google, still reforming civilization.

Doug hosted the second node of the Arpanet, the predecessor of the Internet, at his SRI center, believing that by networking PCs humanity could improve its 'collective intelligence' and solve tougher problems: such as avoid nuclear wars, stop pandemics and solve environmental issues. Solutions via traditional multilateral agreements may be hard: they engender gatekeeping, brinkmanship and cheating on agreements.

But through improved PCs and the Internet, it is easier to innovate, to introduce game-changing novelties, that can bypass obstacles to getting things done. If gatekeepers disagree, innovate and re-design the game to work without them.

This is happening in IT, including music, entertainment and media, not the least journalism. For example, Creative Commons is an innovation of copyright in the digital age. Ester Wojcicki, Chairwoman of Creative Commons, as well as the Palo Alto High School Teacher of Mei Lin's daughter among other kids, was also with us at Mei Lin's this evening.

Voices--including Thomas Friedman's--are saying that innovation, not multilateral regulation, should drive the climate issue. The ideal: a balance between innovation and regulation. Necessary international agreements can be driven by the innovation ecosystem, putting gatekeepers at risk of being bypassed. And international agreements can enable the innovation ecosystem, through creating incentives.

Given the impact of personal computers and the Internet on humanity, I was struck by the intimacy in Mei Lin's kitchen vs. the grandeur of the manifestations of the world's problems in Oslo and Copenhagen. As Copenhagen opened our eyes to the difficulties of creating consensus in a cynical world, perhaps in 2010 meetings in kitchens and garage startups will be equally important to multilateral negotiations in large congress centers. One could leverage the other.

PS. The achievement of 'the Mother of All Demos' was astonishing. Mei Lin: "That demo was never supposed to work." It might not have if not for Bill English. Bill was there, showing his new cell phone, the day before Google gave beta versions of its own Android to selected people (Bill probably among them). Did anyone in Oslo or Copenhagen get one?

One of the victims of the economic downturn in New York is state support for mass transit. Unfortunately, this is not simply a result of the recent decline in state tax revenues, but rather a long-term trend that was exacerbated by over-borrowing for mass transit during the Pataki era.

One of the key elements of the New York City metro area's dynamism is its mass transit system. Destroy that critical infrastructure and you begin to destroy the entire region's economy. Efficient mass transit is necessitated by New York's high population density. The region's businesses need a well-functioning mass transit system to bring in workers and customers. Our environment is better served by mass transit than by personal transit, and our patterns of land use development have largely followed mass transit routes. The economic importance of New York's mass transit system is an example of the close relationship between economic development and environmental sustainability. Its presence helps make New York City the most energy efficient city in the country.

Mass transit in New York has always suffered from financial difficulties. The original New York City subway system built at the start of the 20th century was operated by private but heavily regulated franchisees. The insistence on the nickel fare and the Great Depression ultimately resulted in a public takeover of the system in 1940. The post World-War II era saw the removal of many of the remaining elevated lines including the Third Avenue line on the East Side, which was demolished to make way for the still unfinished Second Avenue subway. In the 1960's and 1970's, capital disinvestment caused the system's near collapse. According to the New York State Metropolitan Transportation Authority:

By the early 80s a third of the fleet was typically out of service during the morning rush hours, cars broke down or caught fire, trains derailed on hazardous track, and graffiti covered virtually every car. In 1982 the MTA began to rehabilitate the subways through a series of five-year Capital Programs, the largest public transportation rebuilding effort in national history. Over $39 billion has been invested since the program began.

During the 1980's and 1990's, the city's subway system came back from the brink of ruin due to the effective leadership of people like former head of the MTA and current Lt. Governor Richard Ravitch, former governors Hugh Carey and Mario Cuomo, and Mayors Koch, Dinkins and Giuliani. These leaders instituted the range of tolls and taxes now used to subsidize mass transit. Unfortunately, under Governor Pataki, the mass transit capital subsidy was sharply reduced, forcing the MTA to use more and more of their budget to pay debt service on transit bonds. Even worse, during the current $6.8 billion state budget crisis, Governor Patterson has further reduced the state's subsidy for the MTA, contributing to the transit agency's $400 million budget gap.

The MTA's response to Patterson's proposed funding reduction was the same one we often see when school board budgets are voted down by local communities. It's what I call the football team gambit: Cut the most visible and popular expenditures and hope to stimulate a public outcry that results in budget restoration. In this case, the MTA started by announcing that they would cut free metro cards for schoolchildren. For a variety of reasons, there are very few yellow school buses in New York. It is far more cost effective for public school kids to use the same public buses and subways used by other commuters. The MTA has long subsidized these fares and estimates that the subsidy costs them $175 million per year.

The next highly visible cut proposed by the MTA is to put out of service some buses and trains now running late at night and on weekends. Twenty-four/seven mass transit has long been considered an essential right in the city that never sleeps. New Yorkers know that subways that close at night are for small towns like Washington D.C., where dinner starts at 6 PM, or Miami, where early birds dine at 4:30 in the afternoon.

From the perspective of sustainability and energy efficiency, we want to do everything we can do to make mass transit safe, fast, comfortable and cheap. But in order for it to compete with the private auto, mass transit must be subsidized, and some of those subsidies should come from private autos to help raise the cost of driving and reduce the cost of riding.

Of course, all of these service cuts are merely proposals. Now, we begin the political Kabuki dance known as the New York State budget process. You can bet that New York's schoolchildren will not end up paying for their transportation to and from school. Many of these proposed service cuts will be miraculously restored. Some of the cuts will remain. The most endangered part of the budget is the long-term capital budget. The crucial dollars that are needed to keep the system in good repair and to continue its expansion will be cut. We've been down that road before, and, as everyone knows, deferred maintenance increases long-run costs even while providing short-term budget relief.

Maybe now the New York State legislature will take another look at congestion pricing for New York City's midtown and downtown business districts. A charge on vehicles entering south of 59th street could generate the funds now being cut and also traffic, energy use and air pollution. Perhaps the stark choices ahead for New York will result in some creative and imaginative policymaking after all. Of course, we could always follow California's lead and simply close the store.

Vengeance - experienced vicariously via movies or TV - is one of the purest kinds of emotional satisfaction. And the revenge flick has had something of a renaissance recently, as Stanley Fish notes in this blog post, citing Liam Neeson's memorably-delivered statement from "Taken" as a road map for the entire genre: "If you're looking for ransom, I don't have any money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career, skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that will be the end of it I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you. I will find you. And I will kill you."

If you saw the movie, or even if you didn't, you know that's exactly what he does. And the quest to save the daughter and get the bad guy's scalp unfolds with a number of plot flourishes - torture, Arab sheikhs collecting American virgins, corrupt French bureaucrats - that make it appear that Dick Cheney was hired on as an uncredited script-doctor.

Revenge fantasies are durable, reliable entertainments because they allow us to experience actions that aren't allowed in real life, and that most of us wouldn't truly want to experience even if given the chance. That would be fine if we were just talking about pop culture. But during the 2000s, the revenge fantasy escaped the realm of fiction. It came to dominate our politics and - for a while - overturned centuries of established U.S. policy and tradition toward prisoners.

Call it the Jack Bauer Decade: a strange, hopefully anomalous phase of American history, and one that America has yet to grapple with fully.

When Cheney declared that it would be necessary to go to the "dark side" following 9/11, I doubt many people disagreed with him in the abstract. I didn't. And it remained conveniently abstract for long time, thanks to the veil of secrecy around it. We found out much later that the "dark side" meant torture, secret prisons, the suspension of due process, and a notion of judicially unassailable presidential power. I don't want to rehash the question about whether "torture works" - whether it produces more useful intelligence or stops terrorist attacks more effectively than traditional methods. Suffice it to say that the efficacy of the dark side is at best debatable, the debate about it is almost never substantive, and its downside is considerable.

What gave the "dark side" political force has nothing to do with its function as government policy. The allure of taking the gloves off is in setting aside and repudiating government policy - as well as broader ethical and moral constraints. Jack Bauer operates outside the rules because the rules themselves are a point of vulnerability that put us in danger. There is a kind of nihilism about government and democracy itself lurking just beneath the political discussion of these issues.

We heard versions of this again and again during the Aughts. Terrorists deserved what they got. Anything could be justified if it kept us safe. Jack Bauer became a hero to the Right, and (as detailed in books by Philippe Sands and Jane Mayer) to people actually devising detention and interrogation policy within the Bush administration. Now, 24 is an excellent TV suspense/action drama and Jack Bauer is one of the all-time great TV characters. The show's plotlines, however preposterous, capture something about our collective state of mind. But the emotional satisfactions of the four-act teleplay are not a substitute for serious thinking about complex problems. And TV suspense/action dramas - especially those whose principal plot device is government-as-useless-hindrance - are not good foundations for effective government action in any arena. Least of all national security.

Let your agents go all Jack Bauer and they might kill a few terrorists. But there's going to be excesses, collateral damage, disastrous mistakes. And no accountability. In the movies or TV, such inconvenient fallout is airbrushed out. Not in real life. Conservatives take note: that's how bureaucracies work.

If you watch 24 with any regularity, you'll see it's not all black-and-white, that Jack Bauer inhabits a semi-complex moral universe. Systems of justice and ethical conduct remain in place. Jack is the one guy who is capable of transgressing any legal, moral or ethical rule to save America from terrorists, mysterious plutocrats, or whomever. But he pays a terrible personal price for it. Moreover, he is willing to face the consequences - trial, prison, torture at the hands of the Chinese, interrogation by pompous liberal senators - for his actions. From the torture memos to the "ticking time bomb" scenario, the political debate about torture and other "dark side" practices has been about eliminating those consequences, making the dark side not the exception but the norm.

Even with a new president who says he wants to follow tradition and the rule of law, the Jack Bauer Decade won't end with the Aughts. (Who knows - maybe we're looking at the Jack Bauer Century.) There are too many unresolved legal and political issues. And as long as terrorists are trying to blow up planes with their underpants, the American political debate will skew towards the emotional popcorn of 24, ticking time bombs and Liam Neeson's "particular set of skills."

This post appeared originally on my True/Slant blog.

Stephanie Frost missed one credit card payment and Bank of America jacked up her interest rate from 11 percent to 27 percent. In order to get the rate lowered, she ended up having to close her account.

As Ms. Frost looks forward to 2010, one of her new Year's resolutions is to "stop doing business with companies that I feel are taking advantage of me, don't appreciate my business, treat me poorly as a customer... The first place I'm starting is with my bank."

After seeing "Move Your Money," she's decided to close her account with Bank of America and move her money to a community bank. She posted this video on YouTube documenting her trip to BofA to end their relationship.

WATCH:

Damn, I hated the '00s -- a decade so crappy that nobody ever even figured out what to call it. From the recession and stolen election that kicked it off to the near-economic collapse at its tail end, and all the bullshit in between, the last ten years have been one long bummer after another. To my ears, the music of the decade didn't make things much better. Fleet Foxes and Fiery Furnaces, Lady Gaga and Lil Wayne, Jay-Z and the Jonas Brothers, Bright Eyes and The Darkness, emo and screamo, and that goddamn Autotune. Almost all of it made me go "feh," "eh," or "meh," if not all three.

But as the old saying goes, there's always good music out there, it's just that sometimes you have to hunt a little harder for the good stuff. I guess my problem was that, as a record store guy (now a former record store guy) in the age of downloads, blogs and viral marketing, I lost interest in hunting. So the ten records that made my decade may not be the most cutting-edge or most obscure or significant of groundbreaking. But they're mine, and I love 'em all passionately. Here's my soundtrack to the decade of "Mission Accomplished":

10. BRENDAN BENSON - My Old, Familiar Friend (ATO, 2009). I'm somewhat suspicious about placing a record that's barely four months old in my top ten of the whole darn decade. I'm still largely in my infatuation phase; there's no telling how it's going to grow on me, or how much I'll remember it six months from now, let alone ten years. But I can tell you that I haven't gotten such intense pleasure out of a record for one listen, let alone the hundred or so times I've probably spun it, since the Dow Jones was still around 14,000. You probably know Brendan Benson from his stint with The Raconteurs; if you were paying closer attention, you may have checked out the critically acclaimed, sparse-selling power-pop masterpieces he's been putting out sporadically for more than a decade. If you ask me, My Old, Familiar Friend is the most consistent of the lot. If the power chord-laden rockers don't get you, the ballads will. If the harmonies don't get you, the hooks will. If the Motown pastiche doesn't get you, the new wave takeoff will. There's something here for everyone, and all of it sounds dandy to me.

9. MOSQUITOS - Sunshine Barato (Bar/None, 2004). Combine a nerdy Brooklyn indie-popper with a wispy-voiced Brazilian chanteuse, and you get a warm, sunny, melodic and utterly charming album that's just about guaranteed to transport you to a breezy beach somewhere, even if you're standing ankle-deep in January slush. Sunshine Barato is a wispy album full of small pleasures which I never thought would make my end-of-the-decade list when it first came out. But every time I hear its jangling guitars, bossa-rock rhythms, and JuJu Stelbach's girlish vocals, I fall in love with it as though I'm hearing it for the first time. This was their second album -- a few years ago they put out a third one which was darker and less infectious, and they subsequently dropped out of sight. Wherever they are now, I hope there's sand between their toes and a cold glass of cachaca in their hands.

8. BECK - The Information (Interscope, 2006). One thing you could count on with Beck is that each album would sound nothing like the previous one. The wiseguy pomo hipster of Odelay morphed into the oddball bluesy-folkie of Mutations, which begat the funky party animal of Midnite Vultures, followed by the morose singer-songwriter of Sea Change. None of these records were ever less than interesting, and they were all brilliant in places, but after a while I grew tired of the gimmick. Starting with 2004's Guero, he started integrating the Many Moods Of Beck into a seamless whole, and he really hit paydirt on the followup, The Information. If you like Beck for his aural collages, his funky beats, his introspective songwriting, his dark lyrics, well, it's all here in one handy-dandy package. And in every facet of his game, he's in top form. Not only that, but you also get to make your own CD cover with a sheet of enclosed stickers, AND there's a cheap, hastily-shot DVD featuring a video for every song. What's not to love?

7. MORPHINE - The Night (Dreamworks, 2000). Morphine's leader, Mark Sandman, died onstage in July 1999, with this album having just been completed; it was released the following February. Even though there were no warning signs of the heart attack that killed him, The Night seems eerily prescient -- the music is haunted and somber, and many of the lyrics deal with mortality and abandonment. As Morphine's saxophonist Dana Colley told me, "I think a lot of people who are big fans of Morphine couldn't bring themselves to listen to it because so much of it sounds like a eulogy, in a way, or a swan song." The Night was also intended to be a beginning. It adds strings, backing vocals, a second drummer and more to Morphine's traditionally lean bass/saxophone/drums brand of "low rock." It's a tentative step in a new direction, and it's not always successful. I was disappointed with it at the time, and I still think that Morphine's next album, had Sandman lived, would have achieved everything he set out to do on this one. But I kept coming back to The Night for the entire decade, and its beauty and richness hits me anew each time. If that's not the hallmark of a great album, I don't know what is.

6. THE DETROIT COBRAS - Life, Love And Leaving (Sympathy For The Record Industry, 2001). Ever since the Beatles and Bob Dylan made the scene, the presumption has been that to be a truly Great Artist, you must write your own material. Well, the Detroit Cobras have made half a dozen killer records over the last decade which feature a grand total of, by my count, one original song. Bon Iver they ain't -- and I mean that in the best possible way. The Cobras dig up forgotten nuggets of rock n' roll and R & B from the '50s and '60s, rev 'em up, and spit 'em out garage-punk style, making them their own in the process. Sounds easy enough, but try doing a version of "Hey Sah-Lo-Ney" by Mickey Lee Lane or the Otis Redding obscurity "Shout Bamalama" that can hold a candle to the original, and you'll see just how tough it is to pull it off. Much of the credit must be given to frontwoman Rachael Nagy, whose bruising yet vulnerable vocals -- think Joan Jett meets Motown -- can caress a soulful ballad or belt out a 4/4 stomper as well as anyone on the planet. Truly awe-inspiring stuff.

5. THE LIBERTINES - Up The Bracket (Rough Trade, 2002). 2002 was a nonstop drag of a year, with its post-9/11 hangover and pre-Iraq buildup, not to mention the evisceration of the Democrat party in the midterm elections. It was also the year it became clear that music retail -- or my store, at least -- was not going to survive the MP3 wars intact. It was such an annus horribilus that I must have blocked most of it out, because a few years later, when I tried to think of some of my favorite records of '02, I couldn't recall a single one apart from this classic. The British music press annoints a new Greatest Band Ever every six months or so, but this is one of the few that lived up to the hype. Up The Bracket isn't quite punk, postpunk, or Britrock, but some attitude-laden, adrenaline-heavy combination of the three, attacking the eardrums with one infectious raver after another. How co-frontman Pete Doherty survived the decade given his pharmaceutical excesses is a mystery. The band wasn't so lucky, splintering after a good-but-not-great second album. This record, however, is a hell of a legacy.

4. WHITE STRIPES - White Blood Cells (Sympathy For The Record Industry, 2001). If there was one band in this decade that just about everyone from teenyboppers to 20-something hipsters to grizzled classic rockers could agree on, it was the White Stripes. At first they were lumped in with the rest of Detroit's lo-fi garage-rock revivalists, but if they resemble any one band to me, it's Led Zeppelin. The coolest thing about Jack and Meg White, however, is that they betray no evidence that they've ever even heard one of their records. Rather than listening to Zep and imitating them, they took their inspiration from the same country blues and folk records that inspired Plant, Page and Co., and put a 21st century Dee-troit spin on them. The result is a record that sounds like a classic without being a study in classicism. And for the record, I never thought Meg White's drumming was as bad as the kvetchers claimed.

3. THE STROKES - Is This It (RCA, 2001). It's all bullshit, of course, whenever we talk about a proverbial age of innocence in which we lived immediately prior to some awful game-changing event. But the summer of '01 does exist in my memory banks as a pretty idyllic time, especially for a New Yorker. The Twin Towers still stood, the Yankees were three-time world champs, and the hippest new band around -- the Strokes -- were NYC natives. Is This It, their debut record, didn't come out in the States until after 9/11, but my store stocked the import version, and that summer, when it seemed like CDs and MP3s could possibly coexist, I sold it by the truckload. You can pinpoint their primary sonic influence not just to one band -- The Velvet Underground -- but to one song, "Coney Island Steeplechase" (from Another View, if you're curious). But their catchy, concise and astute songs also took cues from downtown legends like Television and Richard Hell, as well as transplanted Manhattanite John Lennon. And what you get is a classic rock n' roll record about what it's like to be young and jaded and stoned, in a certain place, at a certain time, that ceased to exist all too soon.

2. NEW PORNOGRAPHERS - Twin Cinema (Matador, 2005). This band features not one but three certified geniuses (certified by who, exactly, I don't know): A.C. Newman; Dan Bejar; and Neko Case, all of whom also make records on their own. But they all bring their A games to the New Pornos' records, which magnify their strengths and obscure their weaknesses. Newman's songs are equal parts '70s pop, '80s new wave and '90s alt-rock, but always with a unique twist that sends the hooks down a slightly different path than you'd expect. Case's vocal showcases (written by Newman) prove that, as great as she sings her own mournful alt-country ballads, she's an even more masterful pop chanteuse. And Bejar, whose quirky songwriting and speak-singing can wear thin over a whole album, is perfect for a couple of changes of pace per LP. Twin Cinema, their third of four records to date, finds the whole band firing on all cylinders, cranking out 14 ebullient, gorgeous pop songs that are as close to perfect as anyone came in this godforsaken decade.

1. BOB DYLAN - Love & Theft (Columbia, 2001). Say this much for Dylan -- the man has amazing timing. This album was released, as luck would have it, on 9/11. Not knowing what else to do that morning, I showed up and opened the doors of my store for business. And wouldn't you know it, we sold every copy we had that day. "I don't care if the world's ending," one customer said, "I've gotta have my new Dylan." For weeks and months afterwards, this record was one of the things that kept me sane. Dylan had already kickstarted his comeback with 1997's Time Out Of Mind, a dark, resigned album about mortality and lost love. But what the hell was this? Rocking out like Bill Haley, making like a '30s jazz combo, cracking corny jokes, casting a lecherous eye on sweet young things -- Dylan wasn't contemplating his mortality, he was giving it the finger. Without sounding anything like his seminal '60s work, Love & Theft damn near matches it. A life-affirming album that came at the exact time when we desperately needed it.

I'm sorry, but did I miss something? Can someone please explain to me why exactly I'm supposed to be so happy?

Here's what I mean. Check out just some of these Huff Post headlines at 10:30AM (Eastern) December 29...

"Undie Bomb Photos Released" ... "China Executes British Man Said to Be Mentally Ill" ... "Glenn Beck's House On Market for Almost $4 Million" ... "Tylenol Expands Recall" ... "The Dumbest Quotes of the 2000s" ... "Charlie Sheen's Sobbing Wife Tells 911 He Has a Knife" ... "Metallica Drummer Suffers Hearing Problems from Loud Noises" ... "Bristol, Levi Custody Fight Brewing" ... "Tiger Woods Damage Totals $12 Billion" ... "The Biggest Political Disappointments of 2009" ... "U.S. - Japan Relations Chill" ... "GOP Senate Candidate Accuses Opponent of Homosexuality" ... "Rikers Guard Caught Sleeping on the Job" ... and the most miserable of all... "Which Man [Celebrity] Do You Want to Make Out with at Midnight?"

That's why they make Pristiq. And Cymbalta. Even Lexapro, Zoloft, Celexa, Luvox, Wellbutrin, Effexor, Remeron, Vivactil, Anafranil and the granddaddy tandem of them all, Paxil and Prozac. I realize it gets even more depressing just thinking about how to choose the right anti-depression meds. But be happy we at least have options, right?

This same morning, there was also a banner header on The Huff Post Media page that read "Endangered Species". Initially I thought it was going to be some blathering prattle-piece on mass media's general disregard for the widespread, ongoing extinction of species during the present Holocene epoch and the tens of thousands of species that became extinct in just the 20th century alone.

Yawn.

Luckily, the story was far more important. Beneath the header lied the logos of ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX. The opening copy exerted that these once titans now teetered on the brink of disaster - in the author's words, their "business model is unraveling". My heart raced. My breath quickened. My palms went clammy.

So I popped another Paxil.

Much better.

The article hit me like none other. That's because I've actually been suffering a slew of sleepless nights (including Restless Leg Syndrome for which I take Lunesta) knowing that "cable TV and the Web have fractured the audience for free TV and siphoned its ad dollars." What are we to do? How are we to imbibe our most critical global affairs if inglorious information infidels quash the traditional warriors of world intelligence?

Most noteworthy about the piece, however, was the sagacious Rupert Murdoch quote, "Good programming is expensive." Hear-hear, Rupert! How dare we let national beacons like "Cops", "American Idol" and Fox News leak like the Titanic.

Hold that thought. There's a new ad spot on CBS for Abilify. I gotta check it out.

Alright, sorry, I'm back, for good, I swear. (It's just that the meds kinda get me a little dumbed down or distracted... know what I mean?)

My point is, "The Big Six" (General Electric, Disney, News Corp. Time Warner, Viacom, CBS) only reap about $325 billion in revenue each year. That's less than half the damn TARP package! The least we could do is give these pour, spiraling souls a sliver of the uneaten bailout pie, right?

And while we're at it, let's talk about the personal value-add that networks so generously afford us day in and day out. For instance, let's take the millions of women indebted to ABC's "Grey's Anatomy". During regular commercial breaks, that's where they discovered the likes of Yaz, "the ONLY birth control proven to treat premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), a condition with emotional and physical premenstrual symptoms severe enough to impact your life."

So I got to thinking about the big picture. By the looks of things, I'm sure I'm not alone when I say that, without my daily dose - of network programming, that is - I wonder if I could even discern the difference between that which is of the greatest importance and that which matters little if nothing at all.

Look, there's a reason the blog site darfurdaily.blogspot.com has only garnered 1300 web hits to date. Boooooring. Even www.savedarfur.org is chock full of uninspired bytes about Sudanese women voting rights, protests against war crimes-accused leader Omar al-Beshir and 16 days of activism for gender-based violence.

Would you rather listen to that tedious, tired drivel or would you rather be forever inspired by David Hasselhoff's embrace of the human condition? Seriously, check out the power of this statement.

(And by the way, for those who might suffer from alcohol-related depression like The Hoff, there's hope in the form of Campral, otherwise known as Acamprosate.)

I cannot fathom the ignorance of folks who yap on about how insipid news is these days. How can we possibly turn our backs on a burning building with a baby inside? How can we possibly ignore the implications of the gang member who accidentally gunned down his grandmother? And how oh how can we even begin to judge whether the circumstances of Michael Jackson's purportedly prescription pill-induced death should play second fiddle to Putin's impudent disarmament demands?

The truth is, life is depressing. Fortunately, our prime-time brothers and sisters (and their ad partners) care deeply enough to parcel the pieces, protect our interests and preserve our well-being. We are forever indebted.

Disclaimer: Taking this article to heart may cause irritable bowls, interminably itchy armpits, the dreadful brow twitch or the occasional outburst at big box stores. Therefore, before you do, please consult your doctor. Or your favorite television network.

I made a New Year's resolution to try to look at things in a more positive way and now that the year is ending, I'd like to share some of the more positive aspects of 2009.

For the first time in United States history, a black man, well, half black, but that's essentially all black to many of us, became our President. Racism was finally over! The good news was celebrated around the country as gun and ammunition sales skyrocketed. Obama began having a positive effect on the economy before he was even elected as gun sales began to explode at the end of 2008, once he was elected, sales shot to record heights. "Gun salesman of the Year" is how some gun sellers referred to Obama in an overt message of gratitude for the economic stimulus he provided their embattled industry.

We all know that General Motors, Ford and Chrysler were in big trouble. Ford decided to not take the funds. GM and Chrysler needed not only the free market system, but a government bailout to help them weather the tough times. The government insisted on firm rules, regulations and a solid business plan to justify the funds. As GM emerged from bankruptcy, their CEO, Fred Henderson, a 25 year GM veteran, planned a nationwide tour to reconnect with dealers and consumers. I salute the ingenuity of GM and Chrysler: after ignoring the consumers for so many years, their biggest job isn't selling cars, but convincing people that they're still in business so they can resume selling cars. Our family supports those efforts; my wife just bought a Chevrolet which she turned into a beautiful planter.

Economic concerns actually had a positive effect on our citizens. This is the first time in almost eighty years that we've had such a large, qualified workforce available. Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, has modestly admitted that "We help companies to grow by helping them to raise capital. Companies that grow create wealth. This, in turn, allows people to have jobs that create more growth and more wealth. It's a virtuous cycle." He continues by saying he is "Doing God's work." By extension, that means that Goldman Sachs is doing "God's work", but since it was government funds that enabled Goldman to continue working, it's actually the government who did "God's work". Is God a socialist?

In the true spirit of the holidays Blankfein said, "I know I could slit my wrists and people would cheer."

Cries of socialism echoed throughout the land this past year; rather than a government takeover of the banks, the banks seem to have taken over the government. The closest we have come to socialism is the socialization of risk, which we the taxpayers undertook to give Goldman, Bank of America, Citibank and JP Morgan access to cheap money - our money. I tried to understand why all the credit card fees and loan charges have gone up since the banks didn't pay interest on the money they got, and they got it from us, why are we charging ourselves more? I guess we are all willing to sacrifice for the greater good of those who accumulate the greatest wealth.

I believe in spreading the love. We're never too busy to do that, just look at Nevada Senator John Ensign, Presidential candidate John Edwards, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer and of course, Tiger Woods. These are all very busy men, but they found the time to spread their love, despite their busy schedules, to many others. That is the true spirit of the holidays.

We are a nation that celebrates our differences. Like the tea baggers, birthers, gun toters and others who got together to show how different they could be. Nobody was going to force universal healthcare down our throats, even if the majority wanted it. Our President has prevailed on getting a bill through the Congress and the Senate that is substantially less ambitious than initially proposed, but better than nothing.

As we had our holiday dinner together, my kids asked me why billions can be spent on an expanding war with no end in sight, bailing out the auto industry and the banks, but when it comes to healthcare, people are afraid of a "government takeover".

For the New Year, I hope for a government takeover of the government.