Three other stories -- two of them not on your standard list.

(1) The success of the Petraeus surge in Iraq, and seemingly the consequent stabilizing of Iraq as a rare working democracy in the Arab world. The long war against islamofascist terror remains a fundamental priority. Immediately following the Republican convention, McCain was making precisely that point -- and leading Obama. Then the bottom fell out of the markets and the economy -- and, election-wise, that was all she wrote. Still and all, America and the survival of liberty depend as much on our military capabilities as on our economic strength.

Mumbai reminded anguishingly that the war goes on. So does Afghanistan. So do Iran and Hamas and Hezbollah. So does "post"-Putin Russia. So does a China ambitious for hegemony in the Pacific Rim and beyond. Regarding this beloved land, "God who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet . . ."

(2) The departing year taught two telling lessons about the mainline media. (a) That it remains as leftist as ever (helping to explain (2b) below). It persisted in its hateful treatment of President Bush. It greatly favored any Democratic presidential aspirant to any Republican, and of course Obama to McCain. And in its new infatuation with Obama, it sought to eviscerate Sarah Palin. Even Time's Mark Helprin has noted: "It's the most disgusting failure of people in our business since the Iraq War. It was extreme bias -- extreme pro-Obama coverage."

The national press showed practically none of the interest in Sen. Obama's Chicago that it showed in Gov. Palin's Wasilla. And Bloomberg columnist Al Hunt provides a bias update -- regarding Caroline Kennedy's credentials for succeeding to Hillary Clinton's seat in New York: "She has all the qualities -- intellectual curiosity; a friendly, at times pointed, sense of humor; and a deferential manner (she hails her own cabs) -- that are the stuff of a good legislator."

(2b) In 2008, the mainline press may have reached the tipping point -- when newspaper circulation and advertising revenues pitched over from gradual decline into a plunge. The reasons? Massive cultural changes, the move away from the written word to the visual, and the sense on the part of growing numbers that they find either the news or the opinion -- or the opinionated news -- contained in newspapers no longer important or relevant.

Finally (3), the weather. 2008 began and ended with cold and snow toppling records across the land. So much for man's central role in global warming. But wait: Rivaling in idiocy explanations for so much else about 2008, Gorean fellow travelers are discerning in these deepening winters the religious truth that global warming actually caused them. Another possibility: In 2008, global warming overheated their brains.