2016 – The Year in Rebuke (Part One)

If we had to sum up 2016 in a single word, it would be…unprintable. Seriously, we’d be working hard to come up with the vilest, most appalling, utterly disgusting and likely illegal word in our rich, albeit genuinely filthy vocabulary – and even then we’d fail to do justice to this rotten collection of months.

Fortunately, we don’t have to sum things up in a single word. We have this entire page to work with, so let’s dive straight into…

JANUARY

The year hits the ground running (like an abscessed boil) when the Post Office releases a “Forever” stamp commemorating the Muslim festival Eid al-Adha, which honors the willingness of Ibrahim to slit his son’s throat after being “triple dog dared” by Allah. As part of the festival, modern Muslims are still expected to sacrifice their best farm animal…assuming they have the financial ability to first buy it an orange jumpsuit and get it to pose for a Youtube video.

And speaking of people associated with Youtube videos, Hillary Clinton stays busy denying that she ever had classified documents on her private email server. An assertion which, like everything else Hillary has ever said, turns out to be wildly untrue.

Of course, not all newsworthy events were domestic. Or even comprehensible…

John “You Rang?” Kerry comes out with the least encouraging pronouncement imaginable about the throat-cutting, suicide-bombing, allegedly non-Islamic murderers of ISIS, ISIL, Daesh, or whatever the hell other name the administration thinks likely to be unrecognized by Democratic voters.

Specifically, Kerry further downgrades our nation’s goal from “destroying, degrading, or disrupting” the maniacal killers to merely “denting” them. His goal apparently being to make Hillary look like only the second worst Secretary of State ever, just in time for…

FEBRUARY

Early in the Democratic debate process, Martin O’Malley shocks everyone by announcing that he’d dropped out of the race – which was the first time anyone knew he’d been in the race.

Following Hillary Clinton’s discovery in Iowa that she is less popular among young females than a yeast infection, Hillary asks herself what vivacious, high-powered celebrity superstar could help her reel in youthful female votes in New Hampsire, and she comes up with…

Oddly, threats of eternal damnation don’t save Hillary from a landslide loss to Bernie Sanders, causing Hillary to break out the really big gun…

But just as things get really bleak for Hillary, the entire political landscape is changed by an unexpected death…

Beloved conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia suddenly dies in bed with a pillow on his head. A local judge pronounces the death due to natural causes without seeing the body or ordering an autopsy, because Obamacare doesn’t cover those things.

In the following days, Obama decides to skip Scalia’s funeral owing to an absolutely unavoidable scheduling conflict involving a critical tee time…

The country will not see such a blatantly petty snub again until, well, a few days later in…

MARCH

“If I didn’t attend a funeral for a sitting Supreme Court Justice,” the president may well have said, “I sure as hell won’t be wasting my time going to one for some first lady. There’s nothing less important than a first lady!”

In his place, the president appropriately sends…the first lady.

And speaking of skipping commitments, seemingly unstoppable primary candidate Donald Trump has a few clearly expressed ideas on the subject…

But of course, there’s more than just an election going on. Barack Obama is still holding the reins and shaping critical foreign policy. Which is how we ended up with…

In his never-ending quest to build a legacy, the president tries to normalize relations with the oppressive communist dictatorship of Cuba in hopes of increasing the number of investment opportunities for his wealthy donors, and decreasing the number of Cuban immigrants whose children might grow up to become conservative GOP presidential candidates.

But only days later, the world is again shocked by a brutal act of terrorism – this time in a Brussels airport. Despite his busy travel schedule, Obama immediately swings into action…

Rather than doing diddly-squat about the carnage in Brussels, Obama attends a baseball game with new BFF Raul Castro, then jets off to Argentina where he performes a pelvis-grinding tango at a state dinner to prove his masculinity to ISIS.

Which brings us to…

APRIL

To help shore up support from women who just can’t seem to understand the whole complicated “birds & bees” thing, Hillary declares that “unborn persons” have no rights – making it perfectly acceptable to take viable children in the final days (or hours) of gestation and turn them into chop suey. An observation that Bernie Sanders quickly echoes, while admitting that it’s put him off Chinese take-out for awhile.

But life and death issues soon take a backseat to a far more important crisis in America…

Springsteen and other (ahem) “artists” boycott North Carolina following passage of a law which segregates bathroom privileges based exclusively on an individual’s God-given plumbing rather than their current (and sometimes whimsically flexible) gender self-identification. This kicks off a firestorm of controversy around the country as liberals try to force businesses to create new bathrooms for each of the 51 sexual genders (no, really) recognized by Facebook, or at least let anyone who enjoys peeing in front of kids do so to fight discrimination.

The country becomes so embroiled in the issue that it becomes necessary for Barack Obama to remind the nation who truly suffers from discrimination in our wretched country…

The tone deaf president assembles a group of allegedly popular rappers (including Nicki Minaj, Busta Rhymes, J. Cole, Wale, DJ Khaled, and others we couldn’t possibly pick out of a police line-up) to help with his “Brother’s Keeper” initiative which is designed to encourage young black men to avoid incarceration for undocumented acts of wealth redistribution.

Unfortunately, during the president’s remarks, rapper Rick Ross’s court-ordered ankle bracelet goes off. It turns out that the man selected by Mr. Obama to serve as an exemplary racial role model is required to wear the device until his trial date for aggravated assault and battery, pistol-whipping, and kidnapping.

Were the other dignitaries at the summit nonplussed? Based on their actual pictures below, we’re guessing not…

Meanwhile, as the primaries wear on, people finally start realizing that Trump might actually become the GOP nominee…

By the way, in case you don’t know, the cartoon above is a tribute to “Forbidden Planet,” which is the best sci-fi movie ever made. If you’ve never seen it, get your hands on it and watch it NOW while the rest of us move on to…

MAY

By a significant margin, Hoosiers go to the polls to declare that they find Trump to be the candidate who is outstanding in the field. And trust us, Indiana folk (like us!) love jokes about fields. But feeling distinctly un-loved, Cruz says “enough” and drops out of the race, practically guaranteeing Trump’s nomination.

Assuming, of course, that he doesn’t fall prey to the latest death-dealing malady inflaming the media…

In response to the dread threat hypothetically presented by mosquito-borne Zika virus, Barack Obama requests $2 billion to prevent the blood-sucking parasites coming across our southern border from wreaking destruction. The $2 billion will be used to put the young mosquitoes in good schools, settle their families in middle class neighborhoods, and give the grown mosquitoes some walking around money until they can find permanent blood-sucking jobs in government.

That is, unless someone intends to drastically reduce the number of blood-sucking jobs in government…

Donald Trump “seals the deal” when his delegate count pushes over the magic number of 1,237 with multiple states left to go to further pad his margin of victory. The people have spoken – and they’re using very short (frequently 4-letter) words as they storm into…

JUNE

Because Donald Trump’s blunt candor is generating so many news stories, Barack Obama jumps back into the erudition spotlight with a devastatingly brutal dissection of contemporaneous political rhetoric and offers wise analytical advice…

Of course, there’s no “okey-doke” going on in the Democratic primaries. Everything is honest, legit, and above board…

Bernie Sanders grows peevish when the Associated Press declares Hillary to be the overall winner of Democratic primaries which haven’t happened yet. It’s almost like a conspiracy of some sort is working against him – but that’s crazy, right?

Then without warning…

Terror returns to the United States in the form of an ISIS-inspired lunatic who kills and wounds over 100 people at a Gay nightclub in Orlando, before being sent straight to Hell by a policeman’s bullet.

Authorities struggle to discern the killer’s motives, having nothing to go on other than his actual 911 phone call in which he swears allegiance to ISIS, and shouts”Allahu Akbar” during his death-dealing spree.

Such a vile act is obviously unacceptable to the Obama administration, and they move quickly to let future terrorists know what they’ll be up against…

Frankly, all of these events are getting so overwhelming that Hope n’ Change needs a little time off – so we play hooky for a week, confident that it will be a slow period for news.

We are, of course, dead wrong…

(END OF PART ONE – JOIN US WEDNESDAY TO WRAP UP THE YEAR!)

This article is republished with permission from our friend Stilton Jarlsberg at Hope n’Change