2008: The Year of the Reprieve

I'm not willing to say this was the year "change" and "hope" swept in to save us (or at least make us feel better), so I will dub the past 12 months "The Year of the Reprieve."
• We endured a grueling political campaign season full of pandering, race-baiting, name-calling and empty rhetoric until Nov. 4 put the presidential race to bed, pacifying partisans on both sides of the aisle.
• Speaking of which, half of us shook in our boots at the prospect of Vice President Sarah Palin. Now that possibility is extinguished, that same faction looks forward to worrying in 2009 about Vice President Joe Biden.
• We struggled to pay the mortgage until the federal government decided they'd help pay to lower our rates.
• We paid upward of $3 per gallon for gasoline until the price of crude fell out with the rest of the global economy.
• We worried if our respective banks would go out of business until Hank Paulson and the Treasury Department propped them up long enough for the credit markets to thaw a little.
• We worried that the Beijing Summer Olympics would end in a mess of protests, pollution and Communist subversion. Thanks, Michael Phelps, for reminding the world that America is Numero Uno, never minding the fact the Chinese won more gold medals.
• We worried about the health of America's finances until the government passed countless bailouts, rescue packages and other economic goodies for Big Business (though some of us are still quite worried, and with good reason).
• We secretly wondered if a new Cold War with Russia was brewing after the struggle in Georgia until bigger news stories made the issue slowly disappear.
• We all fretted about al-Qaida and other Muslim extremists would gain more ground in Pakistan and Afghanistan until our political leadership decided to start the Afghanistan surge early.
• A few of us expected Hillary Clinton to turn into the Incredible Hulk after losing the primary election, rampaging through most the major cities until she got enough super-delegates (remember them?) to throw the Democratic primary into complete chaos. Instead, Barack Obama helped pay down her campaign debt and found a plum position for her at the State Department.

Here's to all the problems we're carrying over into the new year and all the myriad ways we'll try (and sometimes fail) to fix them.