Tag Archive: Story of the Year

 “If it walks like a Trump and it quacks like a Trump…”

It’s not only someone who is focused on lavish gifts, largess, and money, money, money, it is, and always will be, someone who aspires to be, and to be surrounded by the richest and most famous (to the detriment of everyone and everything else).  No, we are not implying that Donald is a Duck. We are just saying that birds of a feather flock together. In a meeting with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu the Don floated the idea of the US taking over Gaza and turning it into the “the Riviera of the Middle East”. Other initiatives that have bumped his war against inflation to the back of the bus include:

• Golfing

• Selling watches, meme coin, Teslas, face time, etc, etc, …

• Gutting costly independent government oversight and ethics office including (but not limited to) his Justice Department’s Public Corruption Unit and the FBI’s elite Public Corruption Squad

• An ushering in of his new Golden Age at home and travelling abroad to accept lavish gifts of gold! Gold! GOLD!

• Not only going to the theatre but directing its programs right down the drain (just like all those government programs his MAGA nation didn’t realize they relied on more than their MAGAnanimous dear leader).

• Establishing a Sovereign Wealth Fund (where sovereign does not mean, One that exercises supreme, permanent authority, especially in a nation or other governmental unit or maybe it does, no-one is sure because he seems to be playing the details of that scheme very close to his Epstein.

• Inviting the rich and famous to his Great Gatsby party the night before American children wake up hungry because his latest attempt to prevent the Epstein Files from being released has led to the cancellation of their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program funding.

• Building a lavish ballroom where he can fiddle with other people and ideas while the nation continues to be burned at the cash register. But hey, as far as the marionettes in his puppet party/cabinet are concerned MAGA nation can still afford twinkies (a kind of cake) so leave us to enjoy our victory dance with ones who b_rought us.

• Building a victory Arch (so everyone who is not invited to the ball can at least take a selfie to remind them of their part in wresting democracy from the unwashed masses and returning control to their Royal Heinie and his courtiers.

Related Quote: “Gaza could be better than Monaco…it has the best location in the Middle East, the best water, the best everything”.

— Donald Trump (during his election campaign in Oct. 2024 when asked if Gaza could be rebuilt)

Related Statistic: Almost one in three people who live in Monaco is a millionaire. The average home in Monaco costs $4,560 per square foot. Well over what you would pay in Hong Kong $2,859 /ft² or New York City’s Manhattan district $1,773 /ft².

“Hail to the Cling”

Still desperately seeking someone, anyone to support his cling to power, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu continued to cling to the hope that he could deftly navigate his way through politics at home enroute to dragging out what can only be described as the longest one-sided military expedition in the history of war.  Meanwhile, in America, Joe Biden’s bid to cling to power for just one more term dragged on until even his staunchest supporters could no longer forget all his gaffs and apparent symptoms of cognitive decline. Alas, he clung on too long, allowing Donald “By the Grace of God, Divinely Right” Trump to make America a Kingdom again. The list goes on with India’s PM Narendra Modi white knuckling (despite knuckling down on opposition) his way to a 3^rd term.  Vladimir Putin beheading all legitimate opposition parties and cruising to an unpresidented^[sic] 6^th term and his 25^th year as Russia’s Head of State. Not so bad when you consider only the Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible ruled the Rus longer than that.   And then there was Canada. Oh Canada!

“Palestinian terrorists save Israel’s embattled President Netanyahu.”

While Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was droning on, Hamas and a loose federation of other terror groups answerable only to “someone”  inexplicably attack Israel even as their hawkish archenemy, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government are reeling on the ropes from ongoing popular “Israeli” protests in  the street demanding he and his far right government stand down on judicial reforms linked to the expansion of Israeli settlements and further annexation of Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.  Brilliant! Netanyahu’s government dodged a bullet as the ten-month protest ended and now everyone in Palestine is dodging bullets and bombs.

In a related story:  Shortly after“someone” gave Hamas terrorists from Palestine the green light to invade Israel, the President of Iran (and de facto Puppeteer in Chief of Hamas) travelled to Moscow where he was congratulated by Putin for his country’s role in ensuring that relations between their countries “are developing very well” and “Thanks to his support, we have gained good momentum over the past year.”

 “Putin pulls a Hitler”

The world’s most dangerous psychopathic narcissist tears a page from Hitler’s playbook and invades the free state of Ukraine perhaps believing, like Hitler, that the rest of Europe (and the world) would sit back and tut.  Might have worked too but for the facts that: 1) Putin’s army was not nearly as formidable as Hitler’s; and 2) the Ukrainians kicked their ass. So far, most of Europe and the rest of the world (that is not also run by authoritarian megalomaniacs) chose to align with the right side of history and/or Winston Churchill’s dictate, “those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” On the other hand, Putin, all those old school Russian patriots, his state controlled news agencies, and a host of Fox News pundits who are continuing to enable him seem to have forgotten what happened when Hitler, yesteryear’s most dangerous psychopathic narcissist, invaded mother Russia with an army that was vastly more powerful than Putin’s.

So that happened. A megalomaniac’s attempt to turn back time and make the USSR great again (or rather to make his Russian speaking neighbors not so great again) blows up in everyone’s face. Not the least being his own and those of his own people. The good news: when Russia is called upon to pay reparations, its people will be for the most part unaffected given that all their money has always been in Putin’s pockets anyway.

Republican Mob Storms the US Capitol

Having failed in all attempts to convince the courts or any Federal or State Republican politicians to throw out the vote, the Dodder encourages a crowd of his (perhaps extremely) right minded zealots to storm congress to defend their, if not democratic, then republican right to ignore law and order in order to “patriotically” defend his divine right to dictate what is right, real, and good for everyone.

Covid-19

I could say more (and I’m sure I eventually will) but for now let’s just agree that we’ve had enough of that crap to last a lifetime (and not enough of this to last another month).

Story of the Year 2019: The Hong Kong Protests

In a year that saw widespread protests all over the planet, Hong Kong was their king. There was more than HongKing in the streets as the world watched tensions climb in KingHong, the skyscraper capital of the world.  Despite 6 months of protests and defiance, the bigger story may be the fact that 30 years after their crackdown at Tiananmen Square, there have been no tanks in the streets and the Chinese government has shown the kind of restraint the world (if not their media) wants to see from a bona fide global superpower.

“We’ve got to wake up & smell reality!”

No, it wasn’t any of those stinking news stories about walls, borders,  blockheads, rocket heads, or heads of state that we were being bludgeoned with day in and day out. It was the environmental elephant in the room that was absent for most of the year until the news feeds of the world warmed up to the idea and granted it a brief Stan Lee-like cameo appearance one day in October (before continuing their contrived assaults on our space with more of the same old bluster and hot air emissions).

Related Story: According to a WWF report, “global wildlife populations have fallen by 58% since 1970” with African elephants being especially vulnerable after having “suffered huge declines in recent years.”  Genius! As long as the climate naysayers continue to do nothing about anything, the environmental elephant in the room (and by extension climate change) could disappear in our lifetime (if not in time for the next election).