Taking Stock. Two losers for 2011 -- the Brady Bunch and the Mexican people.

The Brady Bunch and other gun banners have a bad year.

The end of a year is the time to take stock of the changes wrought in the previous 365 days. There is no telling how history will view 2011. For some the result has been disappointing. Here are two retrospectives of the losers of 2011 -- The Brady Bunch and the Mexican people.

As Howard Nemerov reminds us, it has been "A Tough Year for Gun Control’s Brady Campaign." Nemerov points wryly to the triumphalism of the Brady Bunch's reaction to the election of Obama:

The 2008 election marked a major victory for common sense gun laws. Never in our nation’s history have we had an incoming President and Vice President more supportive of strong gun laws. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence strongly endorsed the Obama-Biden ticket, and for good reason. Barack Obama has consistently supported strong sensible gun violence prevention laws throughout his career, and Joe Biden has been a leader in Congress for strong gun laws. After eight years of an Administration that catered to the gun lobby, deprived gun violence victims of their rights, and turned a deaf ear to law enforcement and communities seeking to strengthen, not weaken, our gun laws, the incoming Obama-Biden administration represents an historic opportunity for this country to responsibly address our gun violence problem. The fact that Obama and Biden won — and won convincingly, even in many states with heavy rates of gun ownership — also demonstrated that support for common sense gun laws is a winning message across the country and is not a dangerous political “wedge” issue that must be avoided by politicians.

Yet, Nemerov points out:

By the end of 2009 — the latest year for which data are publicly available — Brady’s total net assets were negative $564,123. Between 2006 and 2009, Brady’s total revenues dropped from $4,636,210 to $4,004,014, including investment income and royalties. Brady began listing membership income as a separate line item in 2009. Mailing list company Consumerbase sells a Brady list currently containing 123,562 names, and reports that the average donation is $40. Collating these numbers with Brady’s tax return indicates they have about 32,000 members, plus 68,000 other contributors. (These numbers include the Million Mom March, which is now part of the Brady Campaign.) By comparison, the Texas State Rifle Association has 40,000 members, and the National Rifle Association has “nearly four million members.” Meanwhile, the Second Amendment continued experiencing a gradual recovery across America.

And of course there was the Gunwalker Scandal which may yet prove to be the shipwreck of all the gun confiscationists' hopes, perhaps for the next decade.

Yet, as badly as the Gunwalker Scandal backfired on the administration and their gun control myrmidons, we are not yet to the end, or even the middle, of the search for truth and justice in that murderous plot against the lives and liberty of the inhabitants of this hemisphere.

I was reminded of this when I asked a Mexican journalist who has worked the Gunwalker Scandal story since early on the following question: "Where do you see this story going in 2012 in Mexico?"

The reply was not hopeful, contrasting the ignorance of the likely PRI candidate with the PAN "Gunwalker? "Que es esto?" attitudes:

Oh Mr. Vanderboegh!!

My fuel deposit of hope is almost empty. I am driving with the reserve. Recently the [TV Televisa "appointed"] candidate Enrique Peña Nieto has evidenciated in a monumental act his lack of knowledge of his own culture, and of the needs of his own people... You certainly should know about this... http://www.cronicadelpoder.com/columnas/carrera-magisterial/enrique-pena-nieto-gigante-con-pies-de-barro

http://revolucionesmx.blogspot.com/2011/12/video-enrique-pena-nieto-no-puede.html

The famous Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes said about Peña Nieto: "He is a very ignorant man"

This satire is funny, it's in Mexican slang though: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHJ8oLFGxRk

But the problem are not these type of politicians (?). The problem is the puppetmasters who put them in place, that's the problem in the global theather (théâtre de l'absurde) of presidential candidates these days.

World politics has turned, in my opinion, into a theatre for the plebeius, for the poor people in the street whose script is written and controlled by their powerful $$$$$ puppetmasters from the heights of their . . . crystal palaces.

The PAN precandidates appear with a colgate smile in the newspapers. Of what are they laughing about? Of the more than 50,000 death in Mexico??

New revelations in the coming Gunwalker Scandal hearings might push it forward into the forefront of the Mexican presidential election next year, but then, maybe not.

I am increasingly reminded of the line from Terminator 2: "No fate but what we make."