7

Obama's Really, Really, Really Good Year

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For a long time, Obama's 2008 campaign promise of "Hope" looked like it was going to be a little bit off the mark. Bipartisanship is worse than ever. Obamacare has faced challenges its whole existence -- at this very moment, it's looking at the prospect of skyrocketing costs. America's drone strikes kill unintended targets 90 percent of the time. And clowns now roam the streets without fear.

Oh, and Prince died.

But that's maybe being a little too negative. A 2015 poll of political science scholars ranked Obama as 18th-best out of 42 presidents. That's not too shabby, even if it is a little premature, since he still has a couple months left to take all our guns. And he's currently on track to keep 77 percent of his campaign promises. This is all solid B-student stuff. Essentially competent.

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Not, like, doctor material, but you'd let him fix your car.

And despite the endless congressional gridlock he's faced, Obama has had a number of legislative successes this year. He ended No Child Left Behind with a bill which seems to have involved actual, mythical bipartisan compromise. He signed a two-year budget bill which allowed the country to avoid defaulting on its debt. And he signed a bipartisan bill addressing the ongoing opioid crisis (more on this later).

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It's a doozy. Buckle up.

6

The Media Totally Ignored Two Giant Protests

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In North Dakota, thousands of people have been protesting the construction of an oil pipeline which cuts through land sacred to the Standing Rock Sioux, and the destruction of burial and cultural sites that construction is causing.

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Look for it on page 12 of most newspapers.

Along with the threats to cultural sites, the protestors are also concerned about the typical environmental risks massive pipelines are known to have. And rightly so, seeing as how the project was approved by the Army Corps of Engineers only after they brushed aside concerns from the EPA. If you're wondering why the Army Corps of Engineers is involved, it's because the federal government owns part of the land, although we'd like to think no one could talk about "owning land" with Native Americans while looking them in the eye.

5

The Slow March Of Progress On Government Diversity

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4

Fucking Bears, Bears Everywhere

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In 2016, Russian scientists were trapped in a weather station by polar bears. This is a not unheard-of problem for Russian scientists -- it happened last year, for example -- but it does seem to be increasing in regularity. The culprit is climate change and the rapid drop in sea ice. The bears used to hang out on other islands during the summer, but they couldn't make it this year. Lacking their normal hunting grounds, the bears often evidently decide that a weather station full of Russian scientists looks appetizing.

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The food chain is an unforgiving thing for meteorologists.

But lest you think this is a late-developing Cold War ploy launched by the CIA, know that bear sightings in the U.S. have climbed dramatically as well. Some bears apparently aren't even hibernating anymore because the climate is so different. Japanese bears have been affected as well. At least four people were killed in Japan in 2016 -- half of the total deaths from bear attacks between 1979 and 2015.

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Still only a fraction of Japan's giant-lizard-related deaths, but a troubling trend nevertheless.

3

Another Banner Year For Drug-Related Price Gouging

Kaleo Pharma

Opioids are a powerful family of drugs which includes both illegal forms like heroin and prescription painkillers like OxyContin or Vicodin. They are a huge and growing problem; 2014 saw quadruple the number of opioid overdoses that occurred in 2000.

VladimirSorokin/iStock
Here we are. We hope you're ready.

This, sadly, isn't news. It's an ongoing, well-known problem. What is news is the fact that the standard treatment for an opioid overdose, the drug naloxone, has gone massively up in price. Every form of the drug, generic or otherwise, has gone up, but one noteworthy example is an auto-inject version of the drug (like an EpiPen) called Evzio. Made by Kaleo Pharma, it used to cost $575 a dose. Now it costs an absurd $3,750. This for a drug which in its generic form only costs pennies in other countries. Well, probably not pennies. Whatever other countries use.

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Seashells?

2

Shooting The Caretaker

WSVN

There have been so many high-profile police shootings in 2016 that it's difficult to keep track of them all. But here's one you may have missed: the shooting of Charles Kinsey. Kinsey was the caretaker of a severely autistic man. He was shot by police during a confrontation with that man. At the time of the shooting, Kinsey was pleading with the man to cooperate with the police -- lie down, put his hands up, that kind of thing. At the same time, he was also shouting at the police not to shoot anyone.

So they shot him.

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We're being purposefully glib to hide the growing fear that we -- all of us -- are looking into a bottomless chasm which we're about to fall into.

The cop was aiming at the autistic man, if that helps, which no not really. The officer claims he thought the suspect had a gun (it was a toy truck), but even that doesn't really make a ton of sense, because after shooting, missing, and hitting another guy, that "gun" should still be an issue, right? But the officer stopped shooting. According to the cop's attorney, it's because "he thought the threat was gone," which, at minimum, calls into question the officer's threat-identification skills. Incidentally, this is an officer who had once been arrested for petty theft, and also once had a psychological review which described his "lack of tolerance." Not exactly Supercop material, then.

1

Oklahoma Discovered It Didn't Know What Rape Is

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Oklahoma discovered this year that it was legal to rape someone orally if they were blackout-drunk and incapable of giving consent.

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There it is again.

Here's the terrible story: A 17-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl were drinking in a park with some friends. The girl blacked out, and the boy took her home. When she woke up, she was in the hospital, nurses performing a sexual assault examination on her. They found the boy's DNA on her leg and around her mouth, and charges were soon filed.

But a judge threw out the case! And an appeal court ruling upheld the decision! And they were probably legally in the clear to do so!

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The road to the bottomless chasm is paved with good intentions.

The problem was with Oklahoma's rape laws. Although sex with an unconscious person is definitely recognized as rape there, those laws didn't apply in this case, as it only involved oral sex. Forced oral sex is covered under a different statute, which has language which somehow doesn't consider the possibility of being drunk or incapacitated. Even legal experts who disagree with the ruling in theory agree that it was technically correct, given the antiquated wording of the state's laws.

There is some good news in this awful story: Lawmakers quickly amended the legislation to close this loophole. Obviously, this comes too late to matter in this case, ex post facto laws being what they are. But if any of you had any ideas about doing something especially heinous in Oklahoma, well, don't.

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Don't do that anywhere.

Incidentally, Oklahoma isn't the only state with this kind of surprise lurking in its legal books. For example, spousal rape, although illegal in all 50 states, is handled differently in a few of them, which can make it almost impossible to prosecute sometimes. And Mississippi has no laws limiting rapists' parental rights, meaning rape victims can be forced to share custody with their rapists.

Which brings us to the larger point: Most of these laws never get fixed until another horrible crime happens. Which means some more heart-breaking stories like this are all but inevitable.

So bring on 2017.

Nimby Smith suggests looking up the laws in your state, and writing to your local representatives if you find them lacking. The RAINN hotline for sexual assault survivors is 800.656.HOPE (4673).

Also check out 24 News Stories Too Hopeful For The Media To Report Them and 5 Creepy News Stories That Aren't Getting Enough Attention.

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