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Happy New Year, everyone.

You guys (and ladies) get a load of G.W.'s New Year's Resolution? (h/t Firedoglake)

My thoughts are with the troops as we head into 2007.

People always ask me about a New Year's resolution -- my resolution is, is that they'll be safe and that we'll come closer to our objective, that we'll be able to help this young democracy survive and thrive and, therefore, we'll be writing a chapter of peace.

Seriously, he can't do anything right. Not a thing. He can't even give a proper New Year's Resolution.

See, the whole principle here (which isn't all that complicated), is that you change something negative about your own behavior, to make the next year more pleasant for yourself and those in your immediate vicinity. A common example would be resolving to lose weight, or to eat more nutritiously, or to get a better job, or to go back to school.

The President's had such a lousy, miserable year of fuck-ups and boondoggles, he doesn't really have to aim high to improve his 2007 behavior.

How about resolving not to molest fellow world leaders?

How about resolving not to continually violate the Constitution by arresting, holding and torturing alleged terrorists without due process?

How about resolving to be a better role model as a father, to teach respect for other people by example?

How about not telling the public little white lies all the time, designed to make you look more intelligent and capable.

Those would be some reasonable George Bush New Year's Resolutions, though I think we'd all like to see him resolve to no longer be President, along with Vice President Mammon Cheney.

But, no...Any of those would require even a teensy bit of self-reflection, of which the President has repeatedly proven himself repeatedly incapable. He can't analyze his own actions. Something about this fundamentalist mindset of his, or perhaps simply the pressure of being an authoritarian president in a republican nation. His staff dissuades him from publicly airing any doubts or uncertainty, and so over time, he has eradicated these very concepts from his conscious mind.

So instead, he does something perfectly ludicrous and resolves to do things over which he has absolutely no control. I mean, even if you think President Rock Strongo has made only correct decisions and has reshaped the Middle East for the better...you still must admit that he cannot personally keep the troops safe or enable them to succeed in their mission.

If such a thing were still possible (no, it's not), that would still be more in the hands of the troops, their leaders and the so-called insurgent enemy (really just the residents of these neighborhoods). Not George W. Bush, who will continue to look out upon the war, as he always has, from the Owner's Box.

There's a conspiracy theory brewing out there, by the way, that Bush used a storm system around Crawford to sneak out of the country and attend Saddam's funeral. There seems to be about a half-day in there that's totally unaccounted for, when Bush and few key members of his inner circle could have snuck over there to blow Saddam one last kiss and savor that sweet, sweet post-execution high. Who knows? Although they've certainly managed to sneak over to the Middle East without anyone knowing about it before...Recall those "surprise" visits to the troops?

But anyway, I think this is a terrific idea for improving the notion of New Year's Resolutions. Instead of steeling yourself to make difficult lifestyle changes, you should just dictate the future behavior of wide swaths of people over whom you have no real authority. So, instead of resolving to, say, read more in the following year, a typical American would resolve to track down all the Lost Tribes of Israel!

As for me, I like to keep my New Year's Resolutions nice and simple. My resolution is, that Ameican physicists will finally devise a Unified Field Theory. Or, failing that, at least solving the riddle of Cold Fusion. I will consider anything less a personal failure.