It’s been a wild ride in 2015 — and an unpredictable one at that. Today we begin our final-week tradition of looking back at the past year on Hot Air and the 50 most-read posts [note: based on page views], and even that list has a few surprises, including what turned out to be easily my biggest screw-up of 2015. We’ve also got gun-grabbers, empty suits, “pussies,” and even Caitlyn Jenner. The most intriguing omission in slots 41-50 is the greatest, most elegant, and yuuuuge omission of all … but don’t worry, because there will be plenty more in the top 40.
Anyway, here we go:
- #50: DHS: You right wingnuts are worse than ISIS – It’s always comforting when our government has its focus where it belongs, huh? Notably, this came a month after the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, and a few months ahead of attacks in Chattanooga and San Bernardino.
- #49: Hillary’s gun confiscation proposal is going to backfire in a big way – It’s no secret that Barack Obama wants to use his lame-duck period to push gun control. Less explicable is the fact that Democrats want to alienate voters by doing the same. It may have taken two months for this push to backfire in the wake of the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, but it doesn’t appear that the Democrats plan on letting that slow them down in 2016.
- #48: Barack Obama thinks Scott Walker is an empty suit on foreign policy Update: Walker responds – It seems like longer ago than just eight months, but at the time Walker led the early polls in the Republican primary. He faded from view over the summer, but Obama’s foreign policy hasn’t improved since then either.
- #47: Obama’s NLRB just redefined the word “employer” and it’s going to be bad – Speaking of lame-duckery, this sop to Big Labor got by most, but not by Jazz Shaw. Unfortunately, it seems to have gotten by Congress in the omnibus bill.
- #46: High horses and bull puckey: Professor Obama’s history lesson a dud – While trying to evade responsibility for the rise of ISIS and the need to do something about it, Professor Obama focused on the real problem — the Crusades. Er ….
- #45: Ralph Peters on Fox News: Let’s face it, Obama is a “total pussy”; Update: Suspended two weeks – Allahpundit thought this a bit unfair … in the use of “total.” Fox suspended him for the use of the word “pussy,” which arguably derives from the work pusillanimous, but arguably derives from another source. Peters probably still believes it was worth it. Readers more or less agreed at the time, too.
- #44: South Park takes on Caitlyn Jenner and the PC police – Did anyone expect anything different from the skewers of sacred cows across the cultural spectrum? The only surprise for C.T. Rex was the disappointing conclusion to the episode.
- #43: Uh oh: Carson campaign admits West Point acceptance story is false; Carson campaign responds: Politico lied; Update: Politico changes lede, headline; Update: My apology – Ugh. Ugh. If there is a blogging equivalent to the Mark Sanchez Butt Fumble (or the Patriots OT coin flip), this would be it. I ended up writing an apology on all the platforms on which this appeared, and for good reason.
- #42: CEO who raised workers’ minimum pay to $70K hits predictable problems – Not only did this new policy not produce a Nirvana of equality, we later found out that it might have been an elaborate revenge on his brother. So much for altruism in the corporate boardroom, eh?
- #41: PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year of 2014 falls apart only two months later – The Ebola crisis featured a lot of poor communication, but the idea that the theory of airborne transmission could be considered a “lie,” let alone the “lie of the year” was itself pretty absurd. The Washington Post reported two months later that more research “suggested … that limited airborne transmission of the Ebola virus is ‘very likely.’” Why does Politifact hate science?
Tomorrow we’ll return with the next ten in the Top 50 most-read Hot Air posts. Let’s end today’s list with this classic by Michael Ramirez on Obama’s sudden desire to relitigate wars that ended nearly a millennium ago rather than effectively fight the one in front of him now:
Ramirez has a new collection of his editorial cartoons out in bookstores now — Give Me Liberty or Give Me ObamaCare, with contributions by Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh. Also, be sure to check out Ramirez’ terrific collection of his works: Everyone Has the Right to My Opinion, which gives fascinating look at political history. Read my review here, and watch my interviews with Ramirez here and here. And don’t forget to check out the entire Investors.com site, which has now incorporated all of the former IBD Editorials, while individual investors still exist.
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