The Muppets — Auld Lang Swine/For She’s A Jolly Good Porker, from episode 502 of The Muppet Show.

So it’s that time of year, at long last — the time when bloggers run out of ideas and resort to making lists we reflect thoughtfully on the past year and make resolutions to improve ourselves in the next one.

Friend of FDL Ryan Grim says, “I’m thrilled that they picked my book as one of the five readers can pick with a donation and glad to do anything I can to help the salon grow.”

When the Christmas Snowpocalypse hit, Mayor Booker ran himself into the ground trying to singlehandedly dig out everyone in Newark. Governor Christie went to Disney World.

FDL was absolutely right about student loan reform. Good on us!

Please support FDL and victories like “Students, Not Banks” with a tax-deductible contribution to the FireDogLake Writers Foundation – even $25 will go a long way.

Sadly, the actions of politicians in Washington are often more about ripping off the public to benefit a handful of well-connected and extremely wealthy donors while having little to do with any form of actual ideology or governing philosophy. In fact, nearly identical schemes to enrich large corporations at the expense of the public are used by both parties. The parties then take turns pretending this policy design is an outrage against conservatism or liberalism.

I’m interested in the Ivory Coast story because of a) the past inability for a peaceful transition of power on the African continent, which is a serious foreign policy problem, and b) the potential for mass death. Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary General of the UN, raises the threat of the second.

So here we are on the last day of 2010. Because New Years Day is on Saturday this year, a lot of people have the day off, joining all of us who are members of the long term un/underemployed in watching the world go by. But I can’t let the day go without highlighting a couple of end of the year news dump articles in today’s NY Times.

It’s worth mapping out what will be the biggest stories to chronicle in 2011, what I’ll be looking toward. I’m not at all surprised that this list includes only one actual set of legislation from Congress; the action will occur elsewhere next year.

So here’s the list of 10 (plus one), in a sort-of descending order of importance.

FDL readers have been working collectively on a Citizen Journalism project to transcribe interviews relevant to Wikileaks, Adrian Lamo and Bradley Manning. The transcripts have been compiled on one page, which is available now:

Wikileaks-Manning-Lamo Interview Transcripts