Well, 2013 is almost over, and we’re pretty much phoning it in until 2014. Which means now is about as good a time as any to take a look back at the top Daily Intelligencer posts of the year. Now, to be clear, “top” here refers to the posts with the most traffic, not the best ones. There’s a post about Vine Porn in here, for example, which is very mediocre, but it appealed to the large number of people who wanted to know exactly how to look at looped, six-second porn clips on their phones. But there’s a lot of high-quality stuff on here, too.
10. Today in ‘John Boehner’s Life Is a Living Hell’
If Boehner holds on to his job through the next election I’ll be surprised and impressed. The walls are closing in on him.
9. The Sarah Palin War-on-Christmas Soundboard
Daily Intelligencer purchased the Palin-narrated audiobook from a local bookstore, where it was on sale early, and listened to all four-and-a-half hours, which is technically not a violation of the Geneva Convention if you’re getting paid to do it, New York’s legal team insists.
8. The Debt-Ceiling Showdown Is the Fight of Obama’s Life
The debt-ceiling showdown has snuck up quietly on Washington and is barely registering in the broader economy. Nobody is quite sure what to make of it. A familiar Washington Kabuki dance? A white-knuckle bond market tightrope walk? A final reactionary howl at the onset of Obamacare? It may be these things, but it’s also something much larger: a Constitutional struggle, a kind of quasi-impeachment, that will test Obama’s mettle and, next to his reelection campaign, poses the most singular threat to his presidency.
7. Everything You Always* Wanted to Know About Vine Porn But Were Afraid to Ask
What is Vine Porn?
Vine Porn is a vine of a pornographic nature, perhaps involving boobs or a penis or intercourse.
6. The Facts Are In and Paul Ryan Is Wrong
The debt crisis is “irrefutably happening,” Ryan insisted recently. Obamacare, he said yesterday, will “collapse under its own weight.” Ryan and his party are so certain of these foundations his worldview rests upon that he can’t even be bothered to look down at the rubble all around his feet.
5. Paul Ryan Breaks Down Under Wonkterrogation
Here Ryan is descending into word salad, which impresses observers because he is using terms that pertain to tax policy — “statically,” “Joint Tax Committee” — but he is not using them in a way that makes any sense.
4. 21 Things Worth Knowing About Toronto’s Crack-Smoking Mayor, Rob Ford
Many Americans awoke this morning to discover that (a) the mayor of Toronto is a guy named Rob Ford, and (b) Rob Ford smokes crack.
3. Naked Man in San Francisco Subway Alternates Between Fighting People and Doing Gymnastics
We see some pretty crazy stuff in the New York subways, but this video from San Francisco’s BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) system might top them all. In it, a naked man runs amok inside the train station, alternating between attacking passengers (which can get pretty scary at times) and doing some really impressive gymnastics. (Warning: occasional penis.)
2. Meet the 28-Year-Old Grad Student Who Just Shook the Global Austerity Movement
Herndon was stunned. As a graduate student, he’d just found serious problems in a famous economic study — the academic equivalent of a D-league basketball player dunking on LeBron James. “They say seeing is believing, but I almost didn’t believe my eyes,” he says. “I had to ask my girlfriend — who’s a Ph.D. student in sociology — to double-check it. And she said, ‘I don’t think you’re seeing things, Thomas.’”
1. Questlove: Trayvon Martin and I Ain’t Shit
But Rich keeps picking at the question like a three-month-old scab: “What’s wrong?” And I’m like, “Need I say it!?” I can’t tell if he’s provoking me or not. I don’t know how to not internalize the overall message this whole Trayvon case has taught me: You ain’t shit. That’s the lesson I took from this case. You ain’t shit.
