What stories made the biggest splashes in 2016? In the final week of each year, we remember the 50 most-trafficked posts of the past twelve months to see what was important way back when, and how it played out by the time the New Year rolled around. We’ll list them in ascending order in blocs of ten starting tomorrow, giving us the Top Ten Most Viewed Posts list on New Year’s Eve.
Today, though, let’s step through the five that just missed the list:
- #55: Film Review: 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (1/16/2016) – This film review from our friend C.T. Rex is the most-read film review we’ve ever had — and for good reason. It’s an outstanding film told from the point of view of the men who had only themselves to defend an American outpost. “So believe it or not, Michael Bay did it,” C.T. wrote. “He not only created a movie with the potential to change how people view the events of that night in Benghazi, but one that’s a legitimately good film in its own right.” Read the review, but more importantly, see the film.
- #54: Fight for 15 update: Seattle employment craters (3/13/2016) – What happens when labor prices are artificially and dramatically escalated far past the value of the labor involved? Jazz Shaw found the answer in Seattle, where the “Fight for 15” should have been stopped in the first round.
- #53: Video: Jake Tapper fact checks Hillary Clinton on her email server claims… brutally (5/14/16) – “A reminder to all the politicians out there,” Jake Tapper concluded after this debunking of Hillary Clinton’s lies on the e-mail scandal. “You’re perfectly entitled to your own opinions. Not to your own facts.” Maybe more members of the media should have had the same approach to Hillary’s serial prevarications.
- #52: The truth about gun deaths: numbers and actual solutions (10/4/15 — see update) – No matter how many times the Obama administration misused gun-related data and the media took its cues from it, we kept pointing out the dishonesty. This particular misuse was an implicit argument for why Obama seemed more interested in gun control than dealing with terrorism, but the actual applicable numbers showed a much different picture, thanks to Jazz’ breakdown.
- #51: Team Hillary: She never ordered the Code Red that, er, is in her e-mail (1/8/16) – “If they can’t, turn into nonpaper w no identifying heading and send nonsecure.” That e-mail from Hillary Clinton on June 17, 2011 exposed the falsehood that Hillary had never asked for classified information to be sent outside of secure channels. That didn’t keep Hillary’s campaign from insisting that we should trust them rather than our own lyin’ eyes. If the information was already unclassified, as I explained at the time, there would have been no need to remove the “identifying heading” before sending nonsecure. Plus, as it turns out, this has a connection to Hillary’s official diplomatic contacts to work with … Russia. Reset buttons, anyone?
Enjoy today’s early look at Memory Lane 2016. Tune in tomorrow, when we’ll recall when James Comey thought the Hillary probe was all but over, and when he had to tell Congress it wasn’t. Also, a tisket, a tasket, a deplorable-filled basket and its historic parallel … when we return tomorrow!
Update: Jazz’ post on gun deaths was actually from October 2015 — but was still getting tons of traffic in early 2016, racking up enough page views to make it to #52. There’s another 2015 post on the list coming up, too.