Deadlocked?

Theoretically, today is the day the Senate will vote for or against witnesses in Donald Trump's impeachment trial and, assuming witnesses aren't allowed, a second vote is expected to acquit the President.

Afterwards, the nation will breathe a collective sigh of relief, neighbor will embrace neighbor, old animosities will be forgotten, Congress will get back to doing the work of the people, and the news media will focus solely on important, fact-based stories.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!
Seriously, we laughed harder at that than Don Lemon laughs when watching the Special Olympics. Because Trump's acquittal will mean nothing at all in the vicious and idiotic national dialogue. Not a single mind will be changed, nor will any lessons be learned. The talking heads on TV will continue to spin like Dervishes, people living in the greatest nation on Earth at one of the greatest times in history will continue to believe Apocalypse is nigh, and many of us will continue to have night terrors after dreaming of Adam Schiff's beady peepers appearing out of the dark.

Still, if President Trump is acquitted we plan to break out a bottle of bubbly with which to toast the failure of the latest, but surely not the last, coup attempt.

 BONUS: A MINOR AMUSEMENT

Just for fun sometime, try entering DoucheNozzles.com in the URL section of your browser. It just might restore your faith in the Internet.

Fuzzy Logic

Pressure is increasing on Senate republicans to allow witnesses to testify in President Trump's impeachment trial following the revelation (by the NY Times) that in a still-unpublished book by Trump advisor and mustache consultant John Bolton, Trump is alleged to have said that he "preferred" not to free up financial aid to Ukraine until they assisted in a corruption investigation.

As much as we hate to quote Joe Biden, big f*cking deal.

We have no doubt whatsoever that Trump preferred not to send money to a government which had recently been involved in trying to affect U.S. elections...but the money got sent anyway, and no special investigation was launched. And if there's Quid but no Quo, then the Dems haven't identified "treason" but merely happened upon an outstanding example of "generosity."

Personally, we don't care whether Bolton testifies or not, as long as there is reciprocity in putting folks on the witness stand - like every member of the Biden family, Schiff, Nadler, Hillary Clinton, Comey, Clapper, and everyone else involved in the Steele Dossier/Russian Collusion coup attempt.

Because that's what Trump wanted to get to the bottom of...and what he was elected to do. We believe firmly that "the truth will set you free." Unless you're a genuinely corrupt political hack (yes, we're looking at you, Democrats) in which case "the truth will land your happy ass in a maximum security facility."

BONUS: LIP SERVICE

No matter how fraught the news cycles become, we should always be willing to take the time to appreciate the fine arts. To that end, we turn our attention to the recent Grammy awards, and the magical moment when Michelle Obama was awarded a golden trophy for the audiobook version of her memoir, "Becoming."

To honor this special accomplishment, we're sharing this cartoon and commentary from almost two years ago...

(Feb 28, 2018)

Because "Obama Sutra" was already taken by some asshole.

We're just kidding about the whole "sex manual" thing (probably) and don't actually know a whole lot about the upcoming book other than that Michelle is splitting a $60 million payday with Barry for her literary efforts.

Lest that seem like gross overpayment, the Obamas have been quick to point out that they will donate "an undisclosed but significant portion of their earnings to charity, including (wait for it!) the Obama Foundation." Once again, the left pocket won't let the right pocket go hungry.

The book is being called a "memoir" (which is French for "ghost-written) and will detail how Michelle became the woman she is today. We don't know if any of the chapters will involve hormone therapy or surgical procedures, and we're too high-minded to speculate.

An audiobook version will also be available, read by the former first lady herself, and is expected to finally wring the last useful information out of Guantanamo detainees who are forced to listen to it.

Here's Looking Atchoo!

While this promises to be a week of interesting news, none of it has actually happened at the time of this writing. So we're just letting the cartoons do the talking today...along with whatever YOU have to say in the comments section!

Making Hiss-tory

We've got to be honest and give Democrats credit where credit is due. In the face of the ongoing impeachment trial and the bizarre threats...err, campaign promises...being offered up by the leading Democrat presidential contenders, a world-cleansing plague doesn't seem like an entirely bad idea.

In this case, the possible culprit is a fast-mutating coronavirus from China which, hopefully, President Trump excluded from domestic importation in his recent trade agreement. The virus is thought to have originated in bats, after which it was passed to snakes, where it transformed into a new form which can affect humans and be passed by coughing, sneezing, or a simple House majority. No, wait - scratch that last one. We're getting our plagues mixed up.

There is additional speculation that the deadly new virus might have been transmitted to humans owing to Chinese folks in the Wuhan province dining on "bat soup" which, no kidding, is soup with a dead, still-furry, bared-teeth bat in it. By the way, be careful if you click that link, because the consumption of "bat soup" with chopsticks is something you can never unsee. We don't know if Wuhan restaurants also have waiters who come to your table and offer to top your soup with fresh-ground rat turds, but it doesn't seem out of the question.

Wait, did we say rat turds? Well there we go, thinking about the impeachment trial again...

WOW! AN EXCITING NEW FEATURE!

A Stroll Down Memories Lame

During this impeachment brouhaha (we pause briefly for the Firesign Theater fans in our readership), we've been hearing that Trump's cardinal sin wasn't trying to influence another country (as all Presidents do), but that he was doing so only for his own political benefit.

Which takes us back through the spinwheels of time to 2007 when a young man with a dream, Barack Obama, was bashing the living hell out of NAFTA as part of his campaign run for the presidency. It was a popular, pro-America position with an economy on the ropes and horrible job numbers.

The problem? Barry was lying through his teeth (no surprise) but also used backchannel methods to let Canada know he was lying and that they shouldn't actually worry about him rocking the boat to put U.S. interests ahead of Canada's. So this purely political move, for the personal benefit of one duplicitous and unqualified man, was a secret kept from American voters with the help and cooperation of (gasp!) a foreign government.

We're wondering how many on the Left would now say that this would be grounds for impeachment and removal from office? Not that we intend to bring it up with them; they don't know what happened last week, let alone 13 unlucky years ago.

Sling Along With Mitch

Mitch McConnell has officially set the rules for the Trump impeachment trial in the Senate, over the whining, bitching, and bellyaching of the entire Democrat party. Under McConnell's rules, the trial will be fast, efficient, and - particularly dismaying to those on the Left - the verdict will be at the end of the proceedings rather than the beginning.

Not that everyone needs the entire legislative branch of government to pass a harsh judgment...

Eternal charmer and definitely not a candidate (wink-wink, nudge-nudge) Hillary Clinton is teasing an upcoming four-hour documentary series called "Hillary" in which she speaks honestly and frankly about important issues like what a dung ball Bernie Sanders is.

"He was in Congress for years," Hillary sneers. "He had one senator support him. Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done. He was a career politician. It's all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got suckered into it. He should be strangled in his jail cell."

Okay, she didn't actually mention the part about a jail cell, but we all know she was thinking it. Just like we know what the Left is really thinking about the recent Second Amendment Rally...

BONUS: OUR LOVING CUP RUNNETH OVER

Huzzah! Thanks to a flurry of impassioned votes from Stilton's Place readers (thank you!), our cartoon tied for Grand Prize Winner in the "Best Cartoons of 2019" contest over at The Right Reasons!

We'd like to thank Pookie18, who tirelessly collects great conservative cartoons from all over the Internet, for the hard work that went into this event (hey, it started with 13,000 entries to choose from!)

We also want to thank all of the cartoon creators who work tirelessly (and almost universally without pay) to make life funnier for us, and more miserable for those on the Left. It's not really a competition so much as a team effort - and we're proud to be part of that team!

Our winning entry. And a nice, nasty little punchline if we say so ourselves!

Sick Day

This looks like an exciting day for news: gun protests in Virginia, final preparations for Trump's impeachment trial and, of course, Elizabeth Warren's "Martin Luther King Day" revelation that she's part black, based on family stories about the source of her widely-spaced nostrils.

Unfortunately, we can't really comment on any of those stories because we've got a distracting case of gastric distress. Nothing serious - just the same discomfort John Hurt experienced after a nice meal on the space trawler Nostromo.

So while we're carrying a stomach bug, we'll let you carry the conversational ball in the comments section. Have at it!

A Walk on the Riled Side

For only the third time in our nation's history, an American President is facing an impeachment trial to determine whether or not he will be removed from office. Such an event demands a full accounting of the facts, a deep understanding of the events which have brought us to this perilous state, and insightful, informed analysis of the trial as it unfolds.

None of which you're going to find here, Lord knows, because we're sick of this shameful sham and won't dignify it with anything resembling "work" on our part.

Rather, we will ridicule the Democrats' preposterous march to the Senate to deliver the articles of impeachment by pointing out that they reminded us of the Wicked Witch of the West's guards, the Winkies, strutting about while intoning: "Yo-ee-oh, Yo-ee-oh, Yo-eeoh, Ee-Ohhhh-ya!" These morons looked like they were carefully carrying a vial of nitro glycerine rather than multiple sheets of used toilet tissue.

Not that the idiocy started with that pinheaded procession...

In signing the articles of impeachment, Nancy Pelosi used over a dozen pens - served to her on silver platters and embossed with her own signature in taxpayer-funded gold - in order to create historic souvenirs to gift to her co-conspirators and, in all likelihood, raise a few bucks on eBay.

Despite her assurances that this was a sad and solemn chore, Pelosi grinned like a botox-enhanced Cheshire cat during the signing. Unlike the Cheshire cat, however, she failed to disappear afterwards, which was (and is) a decided disappointment.

Mainstream "news" sources described the proceedings in the most serious of terms, some calling the signing and delivery of the articles "sacramental." We, on the other hand, found the delivery to be more excremental, reminding us of nothing so much as chimps in a zoo flinging their feces just for the sheer pleasure of seeing how far they can spread their stink.

While there will surely be twists, turns, subtleties and surprises in the actual impeachment trial, we don't plan to pay much attention to it. The articles of impeachment are a partisan farce and (the latest) coup attempt. Trump will beat it handily and, we hope, win re-election in a landslide owing to a growing realization in our country that the Democrats are out of control and against our system of government, Constitutional checks and balances, justice, and basic decency.

As is the horse they rode in on.

The Candidate for the Little Guy

Bernie Sanders moved another step closer to the White House recently when he stunned his political opponents by securing the endorsement of diminutive actor Danny Devito. The impact can hardly be overstated, considering the accepted truth of the old political idiom: "As goes Danny Devito, so goes Rhea Perlman."

Unsurprisingly, Bernie is making a big deal out of the endorsement of a microscopic sitcom star because it will hopefully distract the media from the fact that, as revealed by Project Veritas, one or more of Sanders' campaign field organizers has let the cat out of the bag about the draconian, anti-American nightmare that a Sanders administration could represent.

Kyle Jurek, who has been paid around $10 grand from Bernie's coffers so far, says on videotape that "cities will burn" if Sanders doesn't win, "cops will get f*cking beaten in Milwaukee," and, as was the case in Cuba, "if you want to fight against the revolution, you're going to die for it, motherf*cker!"

Jerek went on to explain that Bernie's much touted "free education and free college" would really amount to propaganda mills and re-education camps for the "Nazis" who aren't meeting the Left's expectations, and finished his diatribe explaining that "the only thing fascists understand is violence, so the only way you can confront them is with violence."

All of this seems at odds with amiable Bernie's promises of free everything for everybody always, but falls right into place with historical accounts of pretty much every socialist revolution ever. Although Jurek, which might well be pronounced "jerk" for all we know, may represent the fringier edge of Sanders' camp, it is an inescapable truth that the kind of socialism Bernie is proposing can only end in violence, poverty, and fascistic control of our nation.

Danny Devito or not, we can't cast a vote for that.

BONUS: AT THE MOVIES (Spoiler Free)

In our ongoing attempt to fight socialphobia and embrace the modern theater-going experience, we ventured out to see the film "1917" yesterday. The reviews have been great, and it seemed like the sort of thing that deserves to be seen on a big screen.

It's a very good film and we can easily recommend it - especially on the big screen - but it's also a bit of an odd duck (which is more of an observation than a complaint).

The key concept of the movie is simple: in World War I, two young British soldiers are given an extremely dangerous mission, which will see them crossing enemy lines, with only a short amount of time to accomplish it.

Interestingly, the film is (brilliantly) shot in a way that more or less makes the entire adventure into a single, uninterrupted shot with the mission occurring in real time. The upside of this is we get a guided tour of the Hell that was the battlefield, with an abundance of disturbing and frightening detail that reminds us "this is not where you want to be."

The downside of this approach is that the film can't and doesn't explore any deeper story, nor the inner lives of the main characters. Rather, we can only see what is external and happening "right now." We aren't so much an audience as omnipresent witnesses...viscerally feeling the horrors of war.

Our best advice is to accept the film for what it is - an experience as much as a narrative. Highly recommended!

Sniff Testy

Really, John? We're all ears.

Appearing on a CNN interview, John "Swift Boat" Kerry again repeated the preposterous claim that during the Obama/Biden administration, there wasn't so much as "a whiff of scandal." Which is true in the sense that a massive cloud of stench can't really be called a "whiff."

Kerry, it should be noted, was Obama's lead negotiator in striking a "get-tough" nuclear deal with Iran which still guaranteed that the terrorist nation could build nukes, gave Iran the right to inspect its own facilities for any (ahem) treaty violations, and got airline tickets upgraded from coach to first class for the giant pallets of cash Obama sent in the dead of night.

And since Iran is very much in the news, it's worth remembering just WHY Iran wanted that $1.7 billion in cash instead of as an electronic transaction: because cash purchases can't be traced. Which is fairly important if you're planning to fund terror activities around the world, do "off the books" nuclear enrichment, or buy missiles to fire at U.S. military bases and civilian passenger jets.

But Kerry's "no whiff of scandal" claim isn't the only thing that stinks in the news...

Actress and entrepreneur Gwyneth Paltrow is selling candles called "This Smells Like My Vagina." Or we should say she was selling them, because the first run of $75 candles has already sold out, presumably to pervy customers who were no longer satisfied with their "This Smells Like Canned Cat Food" candles.

This presumably opens the door for a flood of other self-scentered liberal celebrity products: Robert De Niro's "This Smells Like My Feet" platform shoes, Joe Biden's "This Smells Like My Female Constituents" shampoo, Greta Thunberg's "This Smells Like My Stolen Childhood" lighter fluid, Stephen Colbert's "This Smells Like the Wax in My Tiny Deformed Ear" cotton swabs, Joy Behar's "This Smells Like My Loud, Sour Farts" air defreshener and, of course, Bill Clinton's "This Smells Like My Intern" cigars.

BONUS: I PUT A SMELL ON YOU

We often do multiple variations on a cartoon and then go with what we hope is the funniest one. Still, we have a fondness for today's runner-up...

Headline Noose

Yeah, it's that kind of a news cycle, with plenty of stories that just put us in a bad mood. Fortunately, there are also stories that we can genuinely celebrate, like Trump's clear victory over Iran and the reassertion of American power without the out-of-control escalation the media was clearly hoping for.

Other good news, since we so rarely report it here, includes the fact that the U.S. has just seen its largest ever single-year drop in the cancer death rate, which may or may not be due to the fact that Ruth Bader Ginsburg has just announced that she is "cancer free."

And how about the fact that the stock market is doing a happy dance following President Trump's measured remarks on the Iranian situation? That's definitely good news for the millions of Americans with retirement accounts.

Still, we've got to admit that the preponderance of "news" at the moment offers little that we can personally take cheer in...but there's a light on the horizon. On Monday, our local liquor store is having a 15% off sale on Clan MacGregor, making it roughly the same price as rubbing alcohol.

If that's not "glass half full" news, we don't know what is.

Well THIS Mega Bites

Showing considerable predictive skills, poet Robert Burns wrote, in 1785, that "the best laid plans o' mice an' men gang aft agley." And we assume that he was referring to computer mice, because that's the infernal device that has had its way with us like a brute named "Jackhammer" in the prison shower.

Oh, we began the day confidently enough, even making plans to attend a movie - an experience which is somewhat problematic for us as previously outlined in these pages. But we went anyway, reserving the wrong seats online (and dashing around at the theater to get moved to a better row). We then sensed impending trouble when the theater patron about 5 seats away started coughing phlegmatically and, when the pre-show trailers came on, guffawing loudly at the antics of some animated M&M's. Sure enough, he proved to be one of those persons who seems to believe he can affect the outcome of a film by shouting helpful advice to those onscreen.

The movie was Clint Eastwood's "Richard Jewell," a very solid and well-crafted film revolving around the events of the Atlanta Olympic bombing and the poor security guard who discovered the backpack bomb and was then blamed for it.

Eastwood handles the material fairly, and shows how the government and media can destroy an innocent person not because they're being evil, but because they're being assholes. Which, of course, we're still seeing today in a big way.

In any event, the film gets a "thumbs up" from Stilton's Place, especially if you can watch it with no Tourette's sufferers in the immediate proximity. Also, the "scope" of the film is such that it will play fine on your home television if you don't catch it in a theater.

ANYway, we got back home and prepared to write a lovely blog post and...our principle piece of software for the job was screwed beyond belief. Beyond what was even theoretically possible, bending the laws of time, space, and physics to blow a hot raspberry in our face.

We labored for hours to no avail, and decided that our only realistic course of action was to mutter an expletive, drink four (count 'em!) glasses of Clan MacGregor, and then see what we could write for today when our eyes were out of focus.

You're welcome!

Starting the Year with a Bang

We're feeling slightly ill today (this is what happens when you look at a whole year of news in too short a time), so we're going to let the cartoons do the heavy lifting today...

It's a lot funnier than when Hillary said the same thing.

"Hail, Tinnitus!"

Before attending the debate, candidates are urged to update their dental records.

Code Hearted

Joe Biden brought little joy to the nation's coal miners when, in a recent "No Malarkey and Damn Little Poppycock" campaign speech, he acknowledged the job insecurity they face owing to the Democrats' quixotic war on fossil fuels.

Fortunately, Gropin' Joe was ready to present himself as the dim light at the end of the tunnel and told the miners that getting new employment under the Biden administration would be easy-peasy if they just learn to write computer code.

"Anybody who can go down 3,000 feet in a mine can sure as hell learn to program as well," Biden enthused. "Anybody who can throw coal into a furnace can learn how to program, for God's sake!"

Yeah! And if you can chop down a giant tree, you can sure as Shinola become a brain surgeon! And if you can bench press 300 pounds in the gym, you can damn well learn to be a quantum physicist! God love ya, get off your ass!

Putting Joe's somewhat questionable logic aside, he's telling fairly well-paid miners to learn a new, difficult, and constantly changing skill in which they'll be competing with roughly half a billion people, largely from Asian nations, who will happily write first rate computer code for $3 a day, a bowl of rice, and a few fish heads.

Moreover, Joe seems to be forgetting that computers need more than code to run on. They need electricity...and if the Dems succeed in closing the mines and coal-fired power plants, computers will go just as dark as every home and business in America.

Which, granted, will finally be a chance for the miners to make some money by selling the rest of us helmets with little lights on them.

2019 - The Year in Review (Part Two)

As we continue our disassembly of a dysfunctional year, we now find ourselves (as Ward Cleaver used to say) stuck in...

JUNE



In yet another effort by the "non-candidate" to get her face on the news, Hillary Clinton announced that she, along with daughter Chelsea Hubbell Clinton, was creating a new film production company which would "plan to focus on stories by and about women," as if the Hallmark Channel hadn't already beaten that estrogen-heavy genre to death. The new production company was rumored (mostly by us) to be called "BleachBitch Productions."

And speaking of the B-word...



Nancy Pelosi broke with her expressed desire for greater civility in Washington by declaring that she wanted Trump's butt thrown in jail for no particular reason. We would assume this sudden bit of angry irrationality might be related to Ms. Pelosi's (ahem) "monthly visitor," except we're pretty sure there haven't been any such visits since the Truman administration.

President Trump, however, did have a little visitor that month...



Political leftists dropped to the ground in eye-bugging, spit-foaming, limb-wrenching paroxysms of pure joy when Trump honestly answered a hypothetical question from ABC's miniature newsman George Stuffanappleupyourass.

The President's answer was reasonable, logical, and legal...so of course, it was widely reported as prima facie evidence of treason. Nevertheless, Trump wasn't clapped into irons, which seemed to agitate some normally placid people...



Democrat front-runner Joe Biden declared war on Republicans (the quotes in the cartoon are real) during an address to the Moral Action Congress of the Poor People's Campaign. Which, apparently, is an actual thing. And Joe wasn't the only politician seeing things in militaristic terms...

Proving once again that her nitwittery has no limits, AOC tweeted "the United States is running concentration camps on our southern border, and that is exactly what they are. They are concentration camps."

As hard as it was to believe that anyone could be that ignorant of history and anti-American, AOC was quickly elbowed aside in...

JULY



Nike announced that they were releasing a special run of commemorative 4th of July sneakers featuring the original Betsy Ross American flag on the heel. This offended Nike's highly-paid Senior Vice President of Being Offended, Colin Kaepernick, who declared that any item featuring any permutation of the American flag was racist.

Nike pulled the shoes from the market, but was still getting dirty looks from Kaepernick because the company's name was an n-word. And even though no NFL team wanted anything to do with Kaepernick, other teams were being formed that absolutely thrived on anti-American sentiments...



The most shrill and strident freshman Congresswomen decided to band together since no one else would sit with them in the House cafeteria. The "squad" consisted of Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, AOC, and Ayana Pressley. Together, they accomplished what no one believed possible: proving that a group of women could actually be more more stupid and annoying than the hosts of "The View."

And speaking of hilariously bad television...



Robert Mueller gave testimony before Congress (at the insistence of Democrats) regarding his 400+ page nothing-burger report on Trump and the Russians. The Dems desperately hoped that Mueller would say something - anything - that might be twisted to support a Presidential impeachment.

Mueller's testimony was indeed damning...to himself. He was halting, confused, self-contradictory, and seemed so unaware of the contents of his report that many wondered if he didn't write (or read) the report at all, but simply slapped his name on it.  Mueller looked so bad on the stand that even an elusive Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, "just bury that poor old SOB already."

And if the intent was to bury him in BS, an endless supply was available thanks to...



Democrat debates filled the airwaves with an overwhelming stench. But the "smell test" took an even more brutal beating in...

AUGUST



Pedophile billionaire (and pimp to the powerful) Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his prison cell of apparent "suicide," following weeks of everyone in the world predicting he would be "suicided" by those who wanted their visits to Epstein's "orgy island" kept secret.

Topping the list of suspects were the Clintons, who have so much experience at cleaning up unwanted messes that the term "Arkancide" is widely accepted by medical examiners as an official cause of death.

Desperate to distract the general public from the most Obvious Murder Ever, the media desperately needed to pounce on another story. ANY other story...



Those always amusing "anonymous sources" reported that President Trump had, on more than one occasion, told his staffers to look into the possibility of dropping nuclear bombs on hurricanes to break them apart. "This is so ridiculous, never happened," Trump tweeted. "Fake news!"

And even though it would be a terrible, terrible idea to use nukes on hurricanes, the 8-year-old that lives in our brain says: "yeah, but it would be so cool!"

Unlike the month of...

SEPTEMBER



"Shotgun Joe" Biden continued fluffing Democrat voters by coming out against the "absolutely mindless" national scourge of gun magazines that "hold multiple bullets in them."  Which would be, oh, all of them.

Joe was apparently calling for a return to single shot muzzle loaders and blunderbusses, both of which worked great (in his sometimes hazy memory) when he was a young man in the wild west, guarding wagon trains from thieves, scoundrels, and raids by Elizabeth Warren's great-grandparents.

But what Biden wasn't guarding against was another candidate vying for the critically important (and huge) Democrat lunatic vote...



A poem written by Democrat flavor-of-the-month Beto O'Rourke emerged, rekindling fierce national debate about drug abuse. The poem, written in 1988 when the faux Hispanic used the pen name "Psychedelic Warlord," was widely considered to be the most preposterous and nonsensical collection of words that would ever be uttered aloud.

To which one man said, "Hold my beer..."



After an alleged (and highly suspicious) whistleblower complaint about President Trump making an inappropriate phone call offering a quid pro quo deal to Ukraine's President, Adam Schiff presided over Congressional hearings to determine whether Mr. Trump had finally, finally committed an impeachable offense.

Unfortunately for Schiff and other rabid Democrats, the President released a transcript of the call (a call monitored by multiple parties who found no wrongdoing at the time) which revealed that it was utterly harmless and completely appropriate.

Which is why Adam Schiff then opened the hearings by "reading" a completely fictitious version of the transcript, making it sound like Trump was a tough-talking arm-breaking gangster from a 30's B-movie. When later called on this historically unprecedented level of lying, Schiff claimed that he'd intended his opening statement as "parody." An evidentiary standard roughly as legitimate as testimony coaxed from a Ouija board.

Still, the Schiff Show did manage to make some believers...

 

After hearing testimony from experts who had no actual connection with the Ukraine phone call but hated Trump anyway, Nancy Pelosi announced that she was heartbroken and prayerful about aggressively moving forward with impeachment, a serious process which, we're fairly certain, requires the House Speaker to fellate Satan. Which frankly doesn't sound like a party for either of them.

And thus did the impeachment ball roll into...

OCTOBER



While a possible impeachment was the top news story, it certainly wasn't the only vitally important, politically-charged story demanding national attention...



Just in case potential voters had forgotten who was the biggest kook in the Democrat presidential race, Beto O'Rourke chose "National Period Day" to throw his support behind the Menstrual Equity Act which was, surprisingly, a real thing. We're not 100% sure what the goal of the Menstrual Equity Act is, but suspect it's intended to close the menstrual inequality gap between the poor "light day" and wealthy "supermax" tampon crowds.

With a powerful platform like that, it's no wonder that other Democrats had to up their game...



A study of black voters in South Carolina showed that many of them found "Mayor Pete" Buttigieg's sexual orientation to be problematic. Although it wasn't so much that the potential voters had a problem with Buttigieg being gay, but they did have a problem with how vocal he was about it. So it likely didn't help matters when the candidate announced a contest in which the grand prize was a trip to San Francisco (the gay Mecca) to enjoy an evening of musical theater with his husband, Chasten.

There was, however, a better show about to take place courtesy of the Trump administration...



ISIS leader Abu Bakr-al-Baghdadi found himself the target of a daring special forces operation which ended when the terror chieftain scurried down an escape tunnel and, trapped, blew himself to bits with a suicide vest.

Rather than admit that Trump had scored a victory, the media (which had lauded Barack Obama as the new "Rambo" following the death of Osama bin Laden) decided to downplay the danger presented by the ISIS leader just an itty-bitty bit...

No, we didn't make this up.

Rather than dwell on Trump's success, the media soon threw up (and we mean that literally) other distractions in...

NOVEMBER



In keeping with her "I'm not running but look at me, look at me, LOOK AT ME!" string of TV appearances, Hillary Clinton was asked by The Daily Show host, Trevor Noah, how she killed Jeffrey Epstein. This was met with shrill, psychotic, Joker-style laughter rather than, oh, a denial.

Of course, Hillary didn't really throw Noah out of a window (or hire one of her regulars to do the job for her). We only said that because we are practitioners of actual parody (unlike Adam Schiff) which requires mastering the delicate balance of truth, humor, and drinking on the job. Parody is much more than just making stuff up out of thin air which, apparently, is the job of actual "journalists"...



In this cartoon, the second panel represents "parody." The first panel represents the actual crap presented as news these days. Not that crap is the exclusive province of the news media...

Yes, every non-event in the hearings was presented as a "bombshell."

Adam Schiff returned to the airwaves with actual, honest-to-God Congressional impeachment hearings. Well, impeachment inquiry hearings...what's a word here or there when you're already wiping your hiney with the Constitution?

In the inquiry, all legal standards of what constitutes legitimate evidence were thrown into a woodchipper, and neither President Trump nor the Republicans were allowed to offer up any defense. This was because Mr. Schiff was using the playbook from the Salem witch trials - which is ironic considering that his googly eyes alone would have been enough for him to get torched back then ("Your honor, Schiff looked at my cows and they dried up, my crops withered and died, and my wife gave birth to a changeling with beady peepers!" "Guilty!")

Much more of this nonsense played out during the month, so we ignored the "news" as long as we could. Which was, specifically, until...

DECEMBER



As the Democratic field of candidates dwindled, Joe Biden maintained his frontrunner status by suckling his wife's finger at a campaign stop on his wondrously-named "No Malarkey" tour. People under Medicare-age had no idea what "malarkey" meant, although it seemed to have a cryptic connection to geriatric foreplay.

Meanwhile, yet another set of Congressional impeachment inquiry hearings was begun...

Chaired by Representative Jerry "Begging for a Heart Attack" Nadler, the new set of hearings was a fact-free cavalcade of "experts" testifying on whatever happened to be flitting through their highly partisan pinheads. No actual evidence of wrongdoing by President Trump was produced or presented.

This being the case, the House of Representatives voted on articles of impeachment and, in an entirely one-sided and partisan fashion, impeached a United States President for only the third time in history. The wholly unsubstantiated charges: "Abuse of Power" and "Obstruction of Congress," neither of which is a crime or even clearly defined.

This is when millions of cheering, dancing-in-the-streets, pussy hat-wearing liberals first learned that "impeachment" doesn't mean throwing a President out of office. It only means that the House of Representatives thinks that the Senate should hold a trial to consider removing the President.  A trial which should commence just as soon as the Speaker of the House delivers the articles of impeachment to the Senate to get things going.

Which, as the year blessedly staggers to a close, hasn't actually happened...



During the impeachment vote, almost every Democrat said words to the effect that Trump was an immediate danger to national security and all we hold dear. Yet Nancy Pelosi decided to sit on the articles of impeachment, and the House of Representatives galloped out of Washington for Christmas break, eager to see what wonderful gifts the lobbyists would put under their trees for being naughty.

If and when Trump is put on trial in the Senate, the Democrats' empty accusations will be ripped to shreds and the President will be quickly and fully exonerated. Which is why the Democrats don't actually want Trump to be tried. They just want to selfishly hobble the nation and distract voters from how good things actually are in order to win the next election.

Which makes 2019 pretty much the same as every year.