Top 10 blog posts of 2017 — Thanks #ActualFlatticus, Ted Rall, others

Here's the list of the top 10 blog posts of my last year. The last spot changed a couple of times in the last few days of the year, but this is where we are at as of noon Jan. 1.

1. My long blog post on the life and death of Twitter groupie guru "ActualFlatticus," known in real life as Christopher Chopin. (And, don't worry, people who want more skinny on him, I've got at least one blog post for the new year based on skimming through his Twitter archive.)

2. Thanks to Ted Rall exhibiting either incredible obtuseness or something similar about how anti-SLAPP lawsuits, and other aspects of civil law, work, and the help of Ken White, aka Popehat, I did an in-depth takedown of Rall's bloviation.

3. A post from the start of last year gained steam whenever New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker got mentioned as a possible neoliberal Democratic presidential candidate in 2020 — my take on pharmaceutical reimportation and Booker having a snootful of Big Pharma.

4. Ken Burns' Vietnam War TV documentary, almost certainly his worst ever, led me to write up a long takedown not just of it, but of his whole history, based on an old blog post that said watching him was like the stereotypical result of eating Chinese food.

5. Phat Albert, Albert Pujols, slumping to new lows in 2017, led to me wondering how close he was to the end of the playing line, seeing him approach the Pete Kozma line territory, detailed here.

6. Donna Brazile's new book, a mix of running over Hillary Clinton and Debbie Wasserman Schultz with the bus, on the one hand, and a mix of gloryhounding, CYA and Bernie Sanders suck-up on the other, led me to throw all three under the bus.

7. Bullshit about who was gassing whom in the Syrian Civil War, a bullshit largely spread in America by the same people peddling Putin Did It, led to this explainer of what we didn't know, and what we actually did know that undercut the bullshitters, about that tragic conflict.

8. Are attempts to kill Obamacare dead? It appeared that was the case this summer, as Mitch the Turtle McConnell couldn't get 50 votes. However, in the GOP Tax Scam and elsewhere, Republicans later in the year continued to chip away at the edges, with Schmuck Talk Express John McCain, "normalized" by #TheResistance for his Obamacare stance, making a mockery of that.

9. The possibility of the St. Louis Cardinals getting Giancarlo Stanton from the Miami Marlins for a major roster boost led to my speculations on trade cost before Marlins owner Derek Jeter did a bunch of shenanigans to trade him to the Yankees. And, Jeets now says the Marlins will be profitable this year.

10. Sneaking in at No. 10, a Chris Tomlinson column on CEO pay led me to further speculation about that and related issues, including the old "don't bite the hand that feeds you."