Last year, I vowed the following:

I resolve to avoid insulting my political opponents.

Oh, I may very well insult their views.  There are indeed members of the Tea Party that believe in absolute nonsense.

Here’s a picture of Groucho Marx to cheer you up.

I need to refrain from saying “That idiot twit Sarah Palin believes that taxes have gone up under Obama!”  I can attack her views without attacking her personally. There is enough ammunition for pointing out her mistakes without having to point out the person behind the mistakes.

I should have resolved to lose weight or something, because that would have been easier.

But seriously, it is just tremendously difficult to do what I tried to do, especially if you want to be sarcastic or humorous.  Sometimes a well placed insult can carry more of an argument than a simple argument.  And sometimes people really are idiot twits.

I have refrained from insulting people’s looks — while I admittedly can laugh at the Chris Christie fat jokes, I don’t think it adds a thing to a debate and is as irrelevant to his political views as is his race or sex, yet people who would never think of insulting a politician’s race see nothing wrong with insulting his or her looks.  I have at least refrained from stooping that low.  (Now watch — someone will pull up some old post from last year where I did just that.  I’m not perfect.)

Anyway, Happy New Year everybody.  Forget resolutions about yourself;  Make resolutions about how you will treat other people.  Even if you don’t meet them, you can try and as human beings that’s the best we can do.