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Monday, December 30, 2019

2019 - The Year In Review (Part One)

How time flies when the world looks like a dumpster fire! 2019 is nearly behind us and a new decade beckons in much the same way that the songs of sirens lured sailors onto jagged rocks. Which is why we think Greta Thunberg should spend more time sailing her yacht around the Greek islands without a life preserver.

But the young eco-warrior wasn't the only one who would be acting childishly in 2019, as we saw beginning in the earliest days of...

JANUARY


Removing any lingering doubts that 2019 might not suck with the intensity of an immense black hole, Nancy Pelosi wrapped her claw-like talons around a ceremonial gavel (which she refers to as "my precious") as she was restored to the lofty position of Speaker of the House of Representatives.

"Let each of us pledge that when we disagree, we will respect each other and we will respect the truth," said the aging harpy who showed her respect for the President by saying that listening to him was like being sprayed with "skunk tinkle."

However, Nancy's gift for insulting tactfully was not shared by all Democrats...



Rashida Tlaib, an incoming Muslim Congresswoman from Michigan (we believe from the district of Dearbornistan) capped off her swearing in by declaring of President Trump, "We're going to impeach that motherf*cker!" despite not having any reason to do so. This is what we in professional journalism refer to as "foreshadowing."

Or perhaps Tlaib was simply offended by the "climate of hate" created by Donald Trump, which inspired horrifying acts of cultural violence like...



Kids on a field trip to Washington from Covington Catholic High School posed for a group picture which was photobombed by a tom-tom thumping Native American (and long-term liberal activist) who got in the face of a MAGA-hat wearing kid. The young man did not react other than to smile, for which the mainstream media labeled him a Nazi, and compassionate liberals on Twitter demanded the student's death.

But sadly, this brave stand against people wearing red hats failed to prevent another horrendous confrontation in...

FEBRUARY

 

Actor Jussie Smollett put on a bravura performance (and demonstrated the critical importance of scriptwriters) when he claimed that two Trump supporters (who happened to be loitering outside at 2 a.m. during an arctic cold wave) jumped him, beat him, put a noose around his neck, and sprayed him with an unidentified liquid which was possibly skunk tinkle.

Despite an entirely predictable tidal wave of support and outrage from the liberal media, it turned out that Jussie had hired two Black extras from his show to stage the mugging as a salary-boosting publicity stunt.

Still, just because one racist attack turned out to be a complete fraud, it didn't mean America should be let completely off the hook...

To ramp up his political visibility, Joe Biden traveled to Munich to disparage our nation as an "embarrassment" for our treatment of (ahem) "refugees."  He was apparently unaware that Germany has had its own problems with setting government policies to find a final solution to the problem of unwanted masses of people.

But Uncle Joe's cluelessness was like a faint, flickering light compared to the supernova of ignorance represented by another freshman Congressperson...

 

Former and future barmaid Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, likely high on energy drinks, introduced the "Green New Deal" - a comprehensive plan to save the Earth from Global Warming by destroying our nation's energy system, ending air travel, and replacing every single home and building in the country. And all for the low, low cost of just $93 trillion

Of course, instituting a plan like that would require a Democrat in the White House in 2020. A notion which kicked into high gear in...

MARCH

 

Hillary Clinton declared that she is not running for President in 2020, but said she would take an active role by working with the candidates in the crowded Democratic field. In much the same way that John McClaine took an active role "working with" the terrorists at Nakatomi Tower.

Of course, few were fooled into thinking that Hillary had really given up on her all-encompassing obsession with becoming President. Rather, they simply accepted that she wouldn't literally be "running" because, let's face it, this is a woman who pays heavily-muscled men to carry her up and down stairs when not dragging her limp body into a waiting getaway van after a public appearance.

So she wasn't really lying lying. Unlike certain other Democrats...

 

Absolutely spontaneously and with no political trickery involved, Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff announced that they had no intention whatsoever to pursue impeachment for Donald Trump. "Unless there's something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan," said the world's most partisan woman, "I don't think we should go down that road because it divides the country."

Perhaps they were sounding reasonable because they'd gotten a sneak preview of the Mueller "Russian Collusion" Report...

 

The Mueller Report showed no evidence whatsoever of Russian collusion by Trump or anyone associated with him. No evidence whatsoever of any conspiracies amongst Trump and his people. And no "objective" evidence that Trump made any attempt to obstruct justice.

All of which pretty much assured that we'd never hear accusations about Trump and the Russians again, right? What a relief! America could just go back to listening to Democratic freshman congresswomen make fools of themselves in...

APRIL

 

Representative Ilhan Omar, a ravingly anti-semitic Muslim congresswoman from Minnesota, said that after 9/11, "Muslims were starting to lose access to our civil liberties (because) some people did something." Yeah...some people did something. The same people who seem to do a lot of somethings whenever they're offended by...what's it called? Oh yeah...civilization.

Meanwhile, with the general public finally able to read a "lightly redacted" version of the Mueller Report (not that almost anyone bothered to do so) which cleared Trump of wrongdoing, Democrats and their media mouthpieces came up with a hilarious new idea about why Trump was guilty anyway...



Collusion was out, obstruction was in, and the game was again afoot (albeit smelling like an old sock). With this highly-charged political atmosphere, our nation needed the promise of a steadying hand. Even if it was a hand that was too frequently involved in creepy groping...

 

Joe Biden made it official that he was running for President in 2020, simultaneously qualifying for "least interesting news event of 2019." Especially since he had so much company in...

MAY



For the math impaired (ie, all Democrats) that meant 24 candidates were actively running for the Democratic presidential nomination. And the big problem they all had was differentiating their positions from those of their competitors. After all, they all wanted higher taxes, more government control, socialism, Medicare for all, reparations for slavery, freedom to abort babies both pre and postnatally, a "living wage" for any job which could be performed by an arthritic three-toed sloth, the banning of guns and other things that "look scary," the repeal of Free Speech, the replacement of fossil fuels with clean and affordable imaginary alternatives, official ratification that there are 732 different genders whose dignity demands specialized restrooms and glory holes and, most importantly, all of the candidates promised to feed Donald Trump in a wood chipper feet first so that Leftists could enjoy the expression on his face.

But even with so much competition, one candidate's name was on everyone's lips. Even though he did his best to muffle it...


Yes, "Gropin' Joe" Biden was leading the Dirty Two Dozen, despite credible reports from anonymous sources that he'd been spending his post-Obama years cruising near playgrounds in a battered white van with "Free Candy" painted on the side.

Not that we're judging, of course. That would clearly be insensitive of us considering the new guidelines offered in May by the World Health Organization...



The WHO (not to be confused with the greatest rock band of all time) updated their handbook, "The International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Health Problems" - a definitive resource for doctors, health insurers, and hypochondriacs who are sure that they must have something, dammit!

To make the 2019 edition special, the WHO decided to add (if not flat out make up) more "fun" medical maladies, including "compulsive sexual disorder" and "job burn out," which is defined as "chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed." Which, in our experience, pretty much describes every job we've ever held.

And while the WHO doesn't explicitly say it, we assume that they see the job-creating Donald Trump as the Typhoid Mary of stress-inducing employment.

-----------

Join us Wednesday for The Year in Review - Part Two!

21 comments:

Velveeta Processed Cheese Food said...

Bravo! I'd almost forgotten some of these "major news events," that mysteriously disappeared after the truth came out, e.i., the Omaha elder (an elderly meth addled Omaha, apparently) and the Smullet's foray into street theater. Can't wait for the rest of the year.

Geoff King said...

With all the comedic entertainment available for free in the National News this year, I imagine sources such as Pay per View, comedy clubs, theatres, and even porn sites lost a ton of revenue.

Rod said...

I saw your "Dow Watch" in the first panel and am hoping you intend to close the year out with your sharp wit on that topic... the one about how Democrats & liberal media talked all year about recession even as the S&P 500 went pretty steadily from 2510 on 2 Jan 2019 to 3240 now.

That's a climb of 29% which is the ONLY similarity to the Great Depression (which started in 1929). But they could not & will not talk the Trump market down until it needs a correction; as strong markets are prone to do. THAT maybe? will be some of the big, big, really big news of 2020 (or not); but now with tax reform too, we also have some money to use when the buying opportunity arrives

Great job on these year-end editions Stilt; Thank You & Happy New Year.. to you and to ALL. I can hardly wait until November.

M. Mitchell Marmel said...

Well, at least your mill did not lack for grist... :P

Personally, my favorite part of March was this:

https://johnnyoptimism.blogspot.com/2019/03/green.html

:D

Jim Irre said...

Nice recap Stilton! Quite a lot of fodder turned into horse-feathers in the first half. Can't wait for Wednesday!

Murphy(AZ) said...

I can't understand why your posts, comments, and cartoons aren't being published in hundreds of newspapers across the nation. Maybe if we still had hundreds of newspapers across the nation.

Sortahwitte said...

A great reminder why I loathe, detest, and hate the commies, socialists and most dimocrats.
I can't wait until Wednesday.

Fish Out of Water said...

For some unexplainable reason, the old song, 'I love my calendar girl' keeps coming up.

DennisA said...

Back in the day, Pelosi was a friend of JFK
https://www.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/comments/6r78kr/nancy_pelosi_partying_with_jfk_circa_1961/

Pat Cummings said...

See? No matter how lazy, distracted, or overwhelmed we get, come the end of the year we can count on Stilton's Place to unearth what slid by us into the dustbin of media-ignored history!

And I am including the comments, @M. Mitchell Marmel. Can't believe I missed that in March! Glad to see that "getting it on tape" worked out for you...

TrickyRicky said...

What a great compendium of the Kafkaesque first half of 2019. I can't wait for the remainder of the year's follies. I can't guess, or am afraid to guess, what 2020 will bring. Is it too much to hope for a return to sanity?

John the Econ said...

Personally, I think 2019 was a great year. Business is up. More people are working and happy than have been in decades. And as pretty much all of the above cartoons illustrate, Progressivism not only has thoroughly failed, it's driven its adherents to transparent, sheer insanity.

The only dumpster on fire is the one filled with Progressive hopes and dreams:

Nancy's 3-ring circus: A bunch of presidential candidates who are unelectable communists/socialists/fascists; A cabal of transparent antisemites; and a base that demanded impeachment which should be considered an in-kind donation to the Trump 2020 campaign.

The "Covington" incident was a transparent display of mainstream-Democratic intolerance for anyone who dares question the Progressive narrative. Suddenly, acting passively (with nothing more than a "smirk") is now a crime.

Jussie: Just more proof that the left's demand for right-wing hate far outstrips the supply, so they'll just have to supply it themselves.

Remember when we used to mock Obama's incoherence without a teleprompter? Joe Biden says, "Hold my beer".

AOC & the "Green New Steal": We owe her a debt of gratitude for settling once and for all the real purpose behind the "climate change" agenda: Progressive totalitarianism.

Hillary: As I've said countless times before here, the Clintons are political herpes. When the immune system of the body Democrat becomes weakened, they re-appear.

Full of Schiff: If Adam Schiff had all of this undeniable proof that Trump is a Russian agent, why are we wasting all of this time and energy impeaching him just for being mean to Congress?

Ilhan Omar: Another gift. More of her front-and-center please!

Two Dozen Democrats: Want to have some fun on social media? Scroll back on your lefty friend's timelines and link to all snide comments and articles they linked about the GOP candidates 4 years ago. Of course, they'll immediately delete them. Then you can accuse them of collusion.

WHO on "compulsive sexual disorder" and "job burn out": Looks like the WHO could easily be replaced by robots. Perhaps they already have been.

John the Econ said...

@Rod, here's my favorite "expert" prognostication from Nov 9, 2016:

It really does now look like President Donald J. Trump, and markets are plunging. When might we expect them to recover?

Frankly, I find it hard to care much, even though this is my specialty. The disaster for America and the world has so many aspects that the economic ramifications are way down my list of things to fear.

Still, I guess people want an answer: If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.

Under any circumstances, putting an irresponsible, ignorant man who takes his advice from all the wrong people in charge of the nation with the world’s most important economy would be very bad news. What makes it especially bad right now, however, is the fundamentally fragile state much of the world is still in, eight years after the great financial crisis.

It’s true that we’ve been adding jobs at a pretty good pace and are quite close to full employment. But we’ve been doing O.K. only thanks to extremely low interest rates. There’s nothing wrong with that per se. But what if something bad happens and the economy needs a boost? The Fed and its counterparts abroad basically have very little room for further rate cuts, and therefore very little ability to respond to adverse events.

Now comes the mother of all adverse effects — and what it brings with it is a regime that will be ignorant of economic policy and hostile to any effort to make it work. Effective fiscal support for the Fed? Not a chance. In fact, you can bet that the Fed will lose its independence, and be bullied by cranks.

So we are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight. I suppose we could get lucky somehow. But on economics, as on everything else, a terrible thing has just happened.


The Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman in the pages of the New York Times.

I generally hesitate to give out investment advice, but what I will say without hesitation is that you will never go broke betting against whatever Paul Krugman says in the pages of the New York Times.

Rod said...

@John the Econ: Yep; we're onto them. And many thanks for posting that. If one is going to pay any attention to them at all, it's best to be laughing. And when we DO have another normal "correction" (not just a deliberately created panic-dip) expect Dims & media to address it as 1929 on crack. With enough of that they really can talk it down for no good reason other than selfishness and lust for power.

igor said...

Wednesday, eh?
Second verse, same as the first. Only worse. May God help us all, Tiny Tim!

JustaJeepGuy said...


@John the Econ said:

"Full of Schiff: If Adam Schiff had all of this undeniable proof that Trump is a Russian agent, why are we wasting all of this time and energy impeaching him just for being mean to Congress?"

President Trump has not been impeached (if he has actually been impeached...) for being mean to Congress. He was "impeached" simply for winning the election.

Stilton Jarlsberg said...

@Readers- Fine comments above! And I'm behind in responding because, frankly, my head is in a fog between Christmas and New Years. And likely for several days thereafter. But it's worth noting that despite my cynical view of politics, the reality of living in America this year has actually been pretty damn good (when the "news" is skimmed out). Not that we're going to hear that expressed in any year end summaries in the mainstream media.

John the Econ said...

Read this and feel better about the real state of affairs:

We’ve just had the best decade in human history. Seriously

Let nobody tell you that the second decade of the 21st century has been a bad time. We are living through the greatest improvement in human living standards in history. Extreme poverty has fallen below 10 percent of the world’s population for the first time. It was 60 percent when I was born. Global inequality has been plunging as Africa and Asia experience faster economic growth than Europe and North America; child mortality has fallen to record low levels; famine virtually went extinct; malaria, polio and heart disease are all in decline.

Why has the left become as shrill as it has? Because Progressivism has proven itself an abject failure. They just don't want you to realize it.

This is why they now promote "Climate Change" as an existential crisis. Why? Beyond the fact that acquiescing to letting Progressives totally control your life through your carbon footprint, they wish to distract you from the fact that everything they've touched has turned to crap. Obamanomics only benefited the mega-rich. Blue cities and states have been taken over by homeless drug-addicted zombie armies while taxes go up the the middle class flees. Corruption that we were never supposed to have known about is now being exposed. Everywhere markets have been liberated from the heavy hands of government, people are moving out of abject poverty. America is actually energy independent. Snowflakes now only have imaginary crimes to be oppressed by. I could go on for the rest of the evening.

People who think these are the worst of times know nothing of history. Be grateful.

Happy New Year!

capt fast said...

Let me first say I do not consider it foul play to comment on the physical attributes of someone who is in the public domain. Nancy Pelosi is a good case in point. In our new world of fake news and even fake talking points taken as some form of reality, I find Nancy reaching new heights. Review historical photographs of Nancy while publicly speaking. the more Fake News and outright lies she utters in her speeches, the larger her breasts appear to be. Like the fictional Pinocchio telling lies to get along, Nancy appears to have something going on with her up front assets. when she lies, the tits grow. Something new going on in california plastic surgery? I believe it has a name. Fake Tits.

Unknown said...

This seems a FOX PROPAGANDA audience, so expect some shock here.
The Green New Deal is FDR's, except for the need to save our planet. Entering the Sixth Extinction, take note of the loss of bees, birds, fish, etc., i.e. factors affecting our food supply. Add geoengineering that is poisoning us, our water, the land and the air we breath.
Collusion is not an official crime. Obstruction is. Ten counts. Add one for hiding the REAL Ukraine transcript.
911 was an inside job, so Omar was protecting the ignorant who still blame Al Queda.
You seem to forget the 16 Repubs who campaigned for 2016, thus opening the floodgates. However, DNC and DINOs are doing all they can to keep Bernie from a first vote electoral majority.
High taxes? Trump gave $2 TRILLION to the rich & corps. It did NOT pay for itself. So Trump is stealing from the poor to compensate.
Socialism. Ignorance again. The military is socialism. We all pay taxes so that individuals can get a job, get paid, educated, fed, & sheltered, and only has to possibly give his/her life. So are VA health care, Medicare, Medicaid, 1-12 public education, public libraries, public roads and Interstates, police, fire, and of course, FDRs SOCIAL Security
Fetal tissue is not a baby. It is a biology of cells that grow from the mother's Energy/Spirit & nutrients. A birthed fetus becomes a human soul when its Spirit enters with the first breath. Read your Bible.
Bush handed Obama a 6000 market and a DEPRESSION. Racist Repubs cared not for their nation so their only agenda was screwing Obama, hence they would NOT provide America a jobs bill. Despite that ugliness, Obama handed Trump a market about to hit 20,000.i.e. a 14,000 point gain with NO Repub help. Plus job numbers Trump has rode but not beat. Trump's market has to hit 34,000 to match Obama -- and he has an azz kissing Senate that does nothing.
Trump is a chronic liar. He says that his economy is soaring. NO, it is collapsing. See if that wakes you up.
Trump skipped the paltry prez salary and has instead stuffed his pockets with MILLIONS of our tax dollars. $118,0000 just for golfing.
The Koch's bought 2016 for Trump, in exchange for Canadian and VZ oil. Trump has used our tax dollars to pay his debt -- ANOTHER emolument violation including the failed, but destructive coup against VZ, destroying their economy, as we did with Chavez, whose socialistic economy was the shining star of S.A. WE destroyed it. Yet Repub HYPOCRITES constantly scream, "VZ as "proof" that socialism fails. No, Repubs & corps know that a healthy, educated and decently paid person would be harder to enslave (it's called "inequality".) But note, with that short list of existing socialism, it did NOT bust our economy.
Actually, most Americans feel the nation is headed in the wrong direction, and population numbers are going down -- fewer births, more suicides.
Hope reality has not been a total shock to you.
Believe me, this list could be a lot longer, but too much reality could impact your blood pressure, or cause you to ask questions that your controlled mind can't deal with.
May 2020 be blessed, but Trump is the 911 karma, walking in GWB footsteps, and he always wants to be seen as The Greatest, even if it is trade war destruction or the Biggest war on this planet. In other words, 2008 x 10.
Save America. Vote Bernie.

John the Econ said...

That was amusing. And with the possible exception of Bush delivering the 2008 election to Obama, everything s/he said was wrong.

Nobody has given more to the rich than Obama did through low interest rates and phony "shovel ready stimulus" that went straight to Wall Street. (I know, because I was a beneficiary!)

And if s/he knew anything about Fox at all, s/he'd know that Fox and most of establishment Republicanism is almost as anti-Trump as CNN is.

The only upside to a Bernie-America is that within a decade, the economically useless like people who believe and write the above will either be in a gulag or will starve, like has happened with every other socialist revolution. Socialism doesn't have the slack to support so many useless people.