The New Year. We're home with the RSI daughters watching Matthew McConaughey in Sahara. As always, McConaughey's depth and range as an actor is beyond praise. What a profound entertainment. Even better than Fool's Gold.

Mrs. RSI is in Florida with her mom and I took the girls to a party with lots of live music and good conversation with a tuba player.

The year 2008 was not a great year.

On top of the severe recession, the on-going American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Israel's attack on Gaza, our friend Nancy Peterson died from breast cancer.

But Mrs. RSI is in grad school, I'm on sabbatical and the RSI girls are thriving.

Plus, the world's a better place because of the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States. Whatever progress the incoming Obama administration can make, the world's a better place because the American right has been separated from the levers of power. As long as George Bush was in charge, the American right was the most dangerous source of instability in the world.

With Obama's election, that danger has abated and there's some hope for improvement.