Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up

Saturday! More punditizing for the new year.

NY Times editorial: George Bush has done a few things right with health care, such as AIDS work in Africa, and letting Massachusetts experiment with universal health care. But there's still far to go to get where we need.

Ann McFeatters:

We want competence. We want adults in charge. We want an end to partisan bickering. We want the billions we entrust to our government to be handled wisely. We want our nation's credibility abroad restored. We want an end to our soldiers' returning to Iraq and Afghanistan for two, three and four rotations. We want our bridges and water mains to stop collapsing. We want our children to get educations that qualify them to take their places in the world. We want every man, woman and child who needs health care to get it without having to go into bankruptcy.

The thin shoulders of one man seem an insufficient mantel on which to place our yearning and our trust. But we've done it before this year.

Kathleen Parker:

Let me be the first in the new year to declare that the mainstream media are dead.

Now, can we please move on?

Bill Moyers and Michael Winship: The Onion is great. Examples:

$700 BILLION BAILOUT CELEBRATED WITH LAVISH $800 BILLION EXECUTIVE PARTY

GM COVERED WITH GIANT TARP UNTIL IT HAS MONEY TO WORK ON CARS AGAIN

AMERICAN AIRLINES NOW CHARGING FEES TO NON-PASSENGERS

CHINA RECALLS EVERYTHING

HOUSING CRISIS VINDICATES GUY WHO STILL LIVES WITH PARENTS

FACTUAL ERROR FOUND ON INTERNET

but nothing beats The Marx Brothers' Duck Soup for contemporary political commentary.

Gail Collins: a year end quiz, wherein the wrong answers are more right than the right answers.

DemFromCT: predictions for 2009.

Your choice of what's really going on in the Middle East. Is it

A: Hillel Schenker: This view from Tel Aviv includes nuance and Israeli politics.

B: Uri Avnery: Israel's Gigantic Blunder, or

C: Con Coughlin:

There is no excuse for the loss of life, but Israel is right to seek the destruction of Hamas

There'll be a take-home quiz next week. Please link your media references.