2010: The Year In PREview

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Once again, here are our fearless predictions for the year ahead:

JANUARY: All eyes are on South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson during President Obama's State of the Union address, wondering if Wilson will stage a repeat of his ­infamous "You lie!" outburst. Unfortunately, all of the attention focused on Wilson allows rapper Kanye West to leap onto the podium, seize the mike and begin a long diatribe about Beyoncé's last album, before being wrestled to the floor by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

FEBRUARY: Orly Taitz, leader of the so-called "birther" movement, files yet another lawsuit in Federal Court challenging Obama's eligibility for office. This time, her evidence that Obama was not born in the U.S. consists of a birth certificate allegedly saying that he was actually born in 1968 on the planet Vulcan. Taitz is immediately granted interviews round the clock on every Fox News show. The other networks simply report that "questions and doubts remain" about Obama's Terran birth.

MARCH: White House party crashers Tareq and Michaele Salahi appear in an "exclusive interview" with TV host Larry King. This is unusual because the couple were not actually scheduled to be on that night. "What can I say?" King shrugs. "I was expecting Brad Pitt, but they just walked in and sat down like they owned the place. So I interviewed them."

APRIL: Tiger Woods announces that, after extensive counseling, he and wife Elin Nordegren have reconciled and that they are now "more in love than ever." Two weeks later, Nordegren buys Stockholm.

MAY: Birther Orly Taitz's suit is ­dismissed in Federal Court when it is revealed that the alleged "Vulcan birth certificate" is actually scrawled in lipstick on the back of a cocktail napkin, and furthermore that the lipstick is, in fact, Taitz's own favorite shade. Taitz holds a press conference in which she denounces the ruling as "more evidence that the entire federal judiciary is in league with the criminal and corrupt Vulcan conspiracy." Glenn Beck immediately offers Taitz a permanent co-host spot on his show.

JUNE: The House begins work on a banking regulation reform bill. No one has actually read the bill because there is as yet no bill to read, but that doesn't stop conservatives from immediately denouncing it as "a huge socialist power grab that will destroy American capitalism as we know it." Liberal bloggers, for their part, immediately denounce the bill as "a massive corporate giveaway that will turn all power over to the corporate fat cats."

JULY: Sarah Palin posts on her Facebook page that the proposed banking reform bill "will result in the strangling of thousands of puppies. And my baby son Trig, also." The next day, the White House releases a four-word statement on the claim: "That's simply not true." Fox News commentator Sean Hannity immediately brands the statement a "Gestapo-like tactic" to "stifle dissent."

AUGUST: Fox News does a seven-part series on what it dubs "Strangle-gate," with "fair and balanced" commentary by Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Sean Hannity and John McCain. When media watchers note that there are no liberals on the panel, Fox news execs indignantly assert that to them, John McCain is a liberal.

SEPTEMBER: Glenn Beck releases his latest book "AAAAAH! Obama's Going to Kill Us All! AAAAAAAH!"

OCTOBER: Following up the success of its wildly popular "Guitar Hero" series, video game maker Activision releases a flood of follow-ups including "Ukulele Hero," "Accordion Hero" and "Yodel Hero." Thousands of copies of "Accordion Hero" have to be recalled when Kanye West suddenly and inexplicably appears on the screen during the "expert" level of "Beer Barrel Polka" and begins raving about the new Mary J. Blige album.

NOVEMBER: After President Obama pardons the Thanksgiving turkey, he is immediately blasted by liberal bloggers who charge that this just shows that Obama has been "bought and paid for" by the poultry industry, while conservatives criticize the move because "Well, Obama did it, so it must be bad."

DECEMBER: The world is stunned when Osama bin Laden is finally captured by a commando team made up of Kanye West and White House party crashers Tareq and Michaele Salahi. "Bin Laden was recording one of his video messages," a Pentagon spokesman reports, "when the Salahis walked right past the guards and Kanye grabbed the mike from his hand."

The thing is, whatever actually does happen -- it's probably going to be even weirder.

Happy New Year, all! (And thanks to Stephan and Bryce Lapping for letting me steal the "Accordion Hero" joke.)