Dec. 16, 2017: The weary soul rejoices. Or not.

When it comes to the past week, Friends, The Jourmudgeon can only turn to Charles Dickens: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” To wit:

1. Trumpist Party members in the House and Senate resolved their differences over who got to screw the poor and middle class harder and longer, and stood poised to pass a tax-cut bill that will throw the country at least another $1 trillion in debt and save President Trump millions of dollars. Reminded that they constantly railed against debt during the Obama administration, Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker Paul Ryan and others issued a joint statement: “Yeah, but he was a Democrat, and black. This benefits rich white people who gave us gobs of money, so now it’s okay. Besides, if people want to take full advantage of the tax cuts, they should get rich. Or be born that way. It’s a free country.”
2. The compromise tax-cut bill also provided for the loss of health insurance for up to 13 million Americans, and increases in premiums for millions of others. Trumpists lauded it as another exercise in free choice. “If people don’t want to die of treatable diseases, they should just choose not to get them,” one Trumpist said. “It’s a free country.”
3. The tax-cut bill, because it is about cutting taxes, naturally also includes a provision that allows oil companies to reduce vast stretches of Alaska to a toxic waste dump. “If plants and animals don’t want to try to survive around oil wells, they shouldn’t have chosen to live there,” one Trumpist explained. “Or they can follow the example of people with treatable diseases, and just die. Remember, it’s a free country.”
4. Federal Communications Commission Chairman and prominent space alien Ajit Pai led a 3-2 vote by the commission to abolish internet neutrality. Critics saw the move as another payoff to rich Republican donors, but Pai said the decision had nothing to do with that. “This will allow me to receive my orders from Mars much faster,” he said, “even on the days when I forget my tinfoil hat. If other people want to get their orders as fast as I do, they should have to pay for it. After all, it’s a free country.” A supporter of net neutrality had a message of his own for Pai: “Your orders might be originating in Mars, but your head is definitely in Uranus.”
5. Led by African Americans and the state’s 22,000 remaining Republicans who wrote in candidates because they couldn’t stomach Trumpist Roy Moore, Alabamians narrowly elected Democrat Doug Jones to the U.S. Senate. Jones is a former prosecutor who finally secured convictions on a couple of the racist bastards who killed four little girls in Birmingham half a century ago. Moore was twice removed as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court and spent his time as a prosecutor dating teenagers, one of whom has accused him of molesting her when she was 14. He won the votes of 72 percent of white men and 63 percent of white women, all of whom offered him their daughters as a consolation prize.
6. Emboldened by the popularity of their magic trick that made the Republican Party disappear, The Trumpist Party held a competition to change what GOP stands for. Early favorites included “Gone Old Party,” “Gutting Old Priorities,” “Give Oligarchs Power,” and – the leading contender — “Grab Onto Pussies.”

1. 

   Patrick Hinely says:

   December 16, 2017 at 10:45 pm

   Re #6: I’m not a Tronald Dumpist but “Greedy Obnoxious Peckerwoods” seems pretty accurate…

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2. 

   Terry kopald says:

   December 20, 2017 at 2:32 pm

   Thanks bri ! Tho there was damn little best of times?

   reply