2015: The Year in Review

As we begin a fresh new year which hasn't yet stunk up the calendar, it's time to look back on 2015 and reflect on the ups, the downs, and the freaking miracle that we somehow got through it without all ending up in drug rehab.

JANUARY

The year started off horribly with the massacre in Paris of the Charlie Hebdo editorial and cartoonist staff by (surprise!) radical Islamic terrorists.  A killing which John Kerry would later describe as having "legitimacy" (for having mocked Islam) before backtracking and saying that the killers at least had a "rationale."

While world leaders met in Paris to show solidarity against terror, Obama failed to attend and refused to send any official representatives. He did, however, eventually allow John Kerry to fly folk artist James Taylor to Paris to sing "You've Got a Friend."

Later that month, Hope n' Change welcomed the first of two new female correspondents to our ranks. In this case, youthful liberal "Lefty Lucy"...

FEBRUARY

In a blatant rip-off of Lucy's look, the State Department trotted out bespectacled spokesperson Marie Harf to explain the Obama administration's latest insights about ISIS...

 

According to Harf, the way to defeat ISIS was not by killing them, but by giving them more job opportunities and "fighting them on social media."  Perhaps by the formidable, if somewhat pallid and pimply, "Tweet Team Six."

Of course, not everyone liked the idea of job opportunities...

Using his mighty pen, Obama single-handedly vetoed Keystone XL pipeline legislation, although it would have to be killed a few more times in future months to actually remain dead. Then in...

MARCH

It was discovered that as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton set up her own private email server with which to make it easier for foreign agents to hack into all of our confidential documents without having to bother getting around pesky security algorithms. 

After an initial silence on the flagrant violation of federal law, Hillary tweeted that she really, truly wanted America to see her emails, just before initiating every legal and technical means possible to keep that from happening.

But with the subject of sharing communication in the public eye, Starbucks came up with a jaw-droppingly bad idea...

Starbucks' "Race Together" program encouraged their employees to strike up meaningful conversations about race relations with poor bleary-eyed bastards who just came in for their overpriced morning caffeine fix.

The program came to an abrupt halt within days, perhaps after Hope n' Change entered a Starbucks to order a double-grande half-caff soy milk cocoa-dusted cinnamon-sprinkled whipped foam frappuccino and then asked our barista "what the hell happened with the OJ verdict, am I right?!"

And speaking of murder...

In a nightmare scenario which still sickens and terrifies, the lunatic co-pilot of Germanwings Flight 9525 locked his pilot out of the cockpit and then put his passenger jet into a death dive into the side of a mountain.

With complete sincerity, Hope n' Change wrote an editorial ("The pilot was locked out of the cockpit") which likened the tragedy to what Barack Obama is doing to our country. It proved to be perhaps our most popular and widely shared editorial ever, and you can read it here.

And in case you think the comparison was unfair, consider this: days later, the president started firming up his unilateral deal with Iran (national motto: "Death to America") to help them get their hands on nuclear weapons.

But things took an exciting turn for the better (except for the "better" part) in...

APRIL

To the surprise of absolutely no one, Hillary Clinton officially announced the launch of her obsessive, all-encompassing, Captain Ahab-like bid for the White House.

Sadly, the idea that America is overdue for "a woman's touch" in public policy was quickly tarnished following the death of a black man, Freddy Gray, in police custody - in reaction to which, Baltimore mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake handled street riots by ordering police to protect the protesters and give space "to those who want to destroy."

And destroy they did, making us all eager for the arrival of...

MAY

In response to a "draw Muhammad" contest in Garland, Texas, two Islamic "soldiers of the caliphate" ended up drawing flies after a brief shootout with security personnel.

ISIS quickly claimed "credit" for their warriors' hilariously quick transformation into Lone Star roadkill, and promised that further such attacks on American soil would be occurring just as soon as they could find new stooges and a target anywhere except Texas.

Of course, race riots and terror attacks are never enough to keep the Clintons out of the news for long...

It was revealed that the non-profit, tax-free Clinton Foundation only spends about 10% of their huge and quite possibly illegal donations on actually helping the sick and poor, and the other 90% on operating expenses and personal luxuries for the Clintons themselves.  Because it's apparently more important for the Clintons to buy a rainbow of pantsuits or a succession of "happy ending" massages than it is to send money to the African AIDS victims in whose names the money was raised.

Of course, the scandal never really got traction because Clinton scandals never do. Especially when there's exciting news like Barack Obama's declaration that the root cause of terror is "climate change"...

Specifically, Barry spoke at the commencement of the US Coast Guard Academy to tell the graduates that "climate change constitutes an immediate risk to our national security." He also said that failure to embrace liberal climate change orthodoxy amounted to negligence and dereliction of duty.

Frankly, with so much insanity in the news, we might not have made it through the month without...

Busty Ross became our second female correspondent, a delightfully patriotic conservative just bursting with so much optimism and positivity that Lefty Lucy developed a facial tic. But oddly, neither woman was destined to be voted "Woman of the Year," because in...

JUNE

Caitlyn Jenner (with "Little Bruce" still crammed into her Victoria's Major Secret boxer shorts) becomes the "Woman of the Year" because, apparently, no one with an actual vagina did anything worthwhile for the preceding 365 days. We're thinking Vanity Fair's editors should have looked a little harder, not to mention peeking inside the nominees' underpants.

And speaking of people who aren't quite what they appear to be...

Rachel Dolezal, president of the Spokane NAACP, was "outed" as being white rather than black.  However, Dolezal countered that she self-identifies as black, making it blatantly racist to say that she isn't.  Oddly enough, in a liberal world where Elizabeth Warren is a pretend Native American and Bruce Jenner is a make-believe woman, Dolezal pretty much gets away with her delusion.

But tragically, a much uglier perspective on race and dysfunction soon appears...

An insane little rat turd walked into a South Carolina church and was welcomed by the black congregants (despite his being a white stranger). After spending time with them, he pulled out a gun and shot 9 men and women to death, sparing one woman only so she could "tell the world what happened." The killer wanted fame. We still refuse to give it to him.

But we are willing to name the names of some evil-doers. Like, oh, Chief Justice John Roberts...

Roberts was the chief architect of a Supreme Court ruling that saved Obamacare subsidies and thus the entire wretched program. The ruling was so tortured and nonsensical that dissenting Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said "words no longer have a meaning."

Even Chief Justice Roberts (who at this point should be credited as the co-author of Obamacare along with Jonathan "the voters are stupid" Gruber) apparently agreed, saying "in this instance, the context and structure of the act compel us to depart from what would otherwise be the most natural reading of the pertinent statutory phrase."

But oddly, even this wasn't the most insane proclamation of the month. That honor would have to go, as usual, to a statement made by Barack Hussein Obama...

According to Barack Obama's eulogy for the victims of the South Carolina massacre,  the killer was actually being used by God to help raise awareness of a host of issues which just happened to perfectly align with Mr. Obama's political agenda and clear distaste for white people.

Interestingly, the president asserted that even when acting as a "lone wolf," the guilt should be spread to others who may (or may not) be like-minded. "It was an act that drew on a long history of bombs and arson and shots fired at churches, not random but as a means of control, a way to terrorize and oppress." In other words, radical Muslims can be "lone wolves" whose actions are not attributable to a group or culture, but not psychotic white boys.

And hopefully he's right, because in...

  

 JULY

Obama took to the airwaves to announce that our years of tough, hardball negotiations with Iran had finally paid off in a deal which forces the "Death to America, Death to Israel" terrorism-exporting, always-lying nation to not only pinky-swear that they will stop developing nuclear weapons, but - at the insistence of John "Swiftboat" Kerry - also cross their hearts not to cheat this time.

In return for all this impressive promising, Obama's tough deal gave the Iranians relief from

all economic sanctions, tens of billions of dollars with which to fund terror, allowed them to keep feverishly spinning and enriching nuclear materials in their centrifuges, supplied them with additional and more sophisticated centrifuges, and allowed them to continue development of ballistic missiles and weapons systems.

Disgusting? Sure. But not the most disgusting story of the month, which would easily be...

The first of a long, long series of hidden camera videos came out revealing the ghoulish practices of Planned Parenthood officials in dismembering, selling, and haggling like camel traders over the fetal remains of aborted infants. One such official happily munchy-wunched a salad while describing the best ways to dismember the unborn while they're alive so that their tiny, still-fresh organs can be retrieved undamaged for sale.

Liberals and pro-choicers immediately responded to the shocking videos by putting their fingers in their ears, shutting their eyes, and shouting "la-la-la-la!" in hopes that the vomit-inducing exposés would just go away.

Which they didn't, although we were all soon distracted by another successful terrorist attack on American soil...

Muhammad Abdulazeez attacked two military installations in Chattanooga, killing five service members before being shot to death himself. The act would not officially be declared "terrorism" for months - and an outraged public eventually demanded that a petulant Barack Obama lower flags to half-staff for our fallen.

Pointedly, Obama did not take the same tack he did in the South Carolina killings, linking the "lone wolf" killer to a greater movement called radical Islam. Perhaps he just didn't want to seem too political, since others would be picking up that gauntlet in...

AUGUST

In a truly stunning example of "be careful what you wish for," people who were complaining about Hillary Clinton's lack of transparency on the campaign trail were suddenly presented with the results of her medical check-up and gynecological exam.  

Which tempts us to make a "private server" joke, but we have no intention of lingering on the subject that long. Not when we have dynamic Socialist/Democrat Bernie Sanders waiting in the wings...!

On the campaign trail in Seattle, Sanders microphone was stripped away by a loud mouth representing "Black Lives Matter" who accused the alleged crowd of covering themselves in "white supremacist liberalism" and demanded four and a half agonizing minutes of silence to mark the sad one-year anniversary of violent cigar thief Michael Brown becoming a speed bump in Ferguson, Missouri. The liberal crowd did as they were told, after which the activist started berating them again.

Bernie Sanders, being an active take-charge kind of guy, drooped his shoulders and slunk away from the event without saying another word. Suggesting that if he does become president, we're all screwed if Putin ever steals his microphone.

But the smart money (or at least the unethically coerced money) is still on Hillary for the win, despite her little foibles...

Hillary finally turned over her email server - after it had been professionally wiped clean. And she changed her story from never having had any top secret or classified documents to "I never had any documents marked top secret or classified." Since then, the State Department has very, very quietly conceded that some 999 Clinton emails contained classified information (all of which were presumably hacked), and they're still counting. 

And speaking of hacking...

The sixth Planned Parenthood video showed that if a ghoulish buyer was waiting in the wings for a nice, ripe fetus in a patient's womb, the eager staff at Planned Parenthood may not add to the mother's agitation with a silly old legal form which would give her the right to choose whether or not she wants her unborn child turned into profitable baby puree. 

The story, like those that had been released previously, got virtually no attention from mainstream news media outlets. Of course, they were busy covering other big stories like...

As details on Obama's Iran nuke deal started trickling out, we learned that the "tough inspections" of Iran's Parchin nuclear weapons development site would be handled by the Iranians themselves. What could possibly go wrong?

Of course, most of the Iran deal will take place under a new president. But who...?

Rumors flew when Joe "I See Dead People" Biden met with Elizabeth "Princess Running Gag" Warren to discuss joining their political fortunes for a possible White House run. Political cartoonists across the nation pray for it to happen, but the matter remains unresolved into...

SEPTEMBER

The president journeyed to Alaska, the 57th state, in order to take credit for new oil drilling and to decry the imminent environmental disaster the world faces from, uh, new oil drilling. Say what you will about the man, but he does have a gift for hypocrisy.

While there, the president also visited a receding glacier which clearly foretells the end of life on Earth owing to climate change, and renamed Mount McKinley, America's highest peak, as "Denali" - thereby creating thousands of jobs for people in the business of printing maps and atlases.

And on the topic of renaming things...

In Irving, Texas young Ahmed Mohamed brought what appeared to be a bomb to school and was very briefly detained by authorities who, in their Islamophobic zeal, didn't like the idea of schoolkids potentially being blown to bits.

Ahmed insisted that the device was a clock which he had "invented" by, apparently, beating an existing electric clock with a hammer and dumping the pieces in a pencil case. An act which was praised online by Barack Obama who immediately invited Ahmed to the White House while scolding those bigots in Texas who believe #KidsLivesMatter enough to take security seriously.  In the aftermath, Ahmed became a liberal media darling and appeared on television shows, received oodles of techno goodies, got scholarship offers, visited the U.N. and the White House, and then filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the police and school system for his "suffering."

Small wonder that many Americans started looking for a voice of sanity...

While some may doubt that "sanity" description, there was no question that Donald Trump instantly became the loudest, least politically correct, and most popular voice among GOP presidential candidates. Political experts laughed at him and predicted his quick fall. It never happened, and he ended the year in the lead spot.

And speaking of being "on the spot"...

Planned Parenthood director Cecile Richards took to the stand to defend the federal funding of her organization, during which time she conceded that her clinics have never performed a single mammogram, nor do they have the equipment for doing so.

She stressed that her staffers do give breast exams, which we're guessing involves groping while making "wobba-wobba-wobba" sounds, and dismissed the damning Planned Parenthood videos as "doctored" and "highly edited," while ignoring the fact that the unedited videos were, and always had been, available to anyone who wanted to see the horrors perpetrated in the name of modern liberalism (and not-so-modern eugenics).

 Meanwhile on the world stage...

 Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama came to the U.N. to explain their differing approaches to the twin crises of Syria and ISIS. Putin believes in arming Syria and its murderous dictator, and combining forces with other nations to crush ISIS and then crush anyone else who doesn't like the idea of Putin taking over the world.

Obama, on the other hand, basically said that Assad is a stinker and Putin is on the wrong side of history, and that the United States - which has the most powerful military in the world - was immediately launching a "wish initiative" which consists of hoping (and hoping damn hard) that things will somehow magically "transition" in a way which benefits our national interests.

It sounds unrealistic, but sometimes wishes do come true. At least for Hillary Clinton in...

OCTOBER

At the Democratic debate, a surprisingly popular Bernie Sanders absolves Hillary Clinton of fraud, treason, lying under oath, and numerous security violations by declaring that "everybody is sick and tired of hearing about her damn emails." Hillary immediately cackles, power-shakes Sanders hand like a pump handle, and decides not to have him killed quite yet.

But not everyone is so forgiving of Hillary's email scandal...

Trey Gowdy grills Hillary over her role in the deaths at Benghazi, pointing out that via her mysterious email server, she received over 600 emails asking for more security - every one of which she ignored.

Appallingly, virtually every disturbing fact revealed during the hearing was ignored by the mainstream media, which instead simply declared Mrs. Clinton "the winner" of the encounter because she successfully spent the entire hearing looking bored.

But there was nothing boring about...

 NOVEMBER

Actually, the cartoon above needs almost no explanation. Obama claimed that the potential annihilation of Israel by a nuclear-armed Iran represented only a "narrow" disagreement between the two powers.

Then again, he was probably distracted by the racial unrest coursing through our country and, especially, college campuses...

Students demanded that campuses become "safe spaces" where they'll never hear things they don't like. The idea quickly gets complicated when, at one "safe space" rally, an Asian student said she'd been racially harassed by a black male and rescued by the intervention of a white woman. She was booed, in the alleged "safe space," when she said that blacks, like anyone else, are capable of racism and nobody should be judged by the color of their skin.

It turns out that a campus wasn't a safe space to hold that idea. And sadly, we were soon reminded that safe spaces probably don't really exist at all...

Late on Friday the 13th, a nightmarish terror struck the city of Paris. Over 100 innocents were brutally murdered by radical Islamic terrorists using guns, grenades, and bomb vests. Ironically, earlier in the day (before the slaughter began) Barack Obama was interviewed by ABC News and said of ISIS "We have contained them."

Unsurprisingly, the brutal attack in Paris caused us to look closer to home...

To help prove that Islam has nothing whatsoever to do with Islamic terror, the president doubled down on his desire to bring large numbers of Syrian refugees into the United States as quickly as possible, despite the fact that there is simply no effective means of vetting individuals to determine who might have terrorist ties.

Choosing to completely remove the issue of national security from the equation, Obama suggested that real screening amounted to religious persecution against Muslims. "That's not American," sneered the least-American president ever. Besides, there were more important things to worry about than the possible infiltration of mass-murdering jihadists into our heartland. Things like...

DECEMBER

Barack Obama gave (in his words) a "powerful rebuke" to ISIS terrorists by traveling to a climate summit in Paris and telling them that it's pretty much too late for them to do us in because western civilization is already doomed. And, unsurprisingly, it's largely the fault of stinking, greedy, energy-guzzling Americans.

Specifically, the Prophet Obama spake thusly: "I’ve come here personally, as the leader of the world’s largest economy and the second-largest emitter, to say that the United States of America not only recognizes our role in creating this problem, we embrace our responsibility to do something about it."

He would, however, prove less willing to embrace something else he'd soon be responsible for...

The biggest, bloodiest terror attack on American soil since 9/11 took place in San Bernardino, California, after the Obama administration's system for vetting people coming into our country failed spectacularly, as did domestic intelligence efforts intended to ferret out terrorists in our midst before they strike. 

In the aftermath, after his initial attempt to blame "workplace violence," Barack Obama once again bloodlessly lectured a frightened country - claiming that Islam had nothing to do with the violence  and that the steps he's already taking to protect us from terror are all that is necessary. Nobody believes him, and gun sales for personal defense skyrocket.

But not everyone wants to carry a gun, even in defense of our nation...

Bowe Bergdahl, the soldier who was swapped for five high-value Taliban members from Gitmo, the man whose release was proclaimed in a Rose Garden ceremony (during which Bergdahl's father recited an Islamic prayer), the man who was praised by the White House for serving with "honor and distinction," was officially charged with being a deserter whose reprehensible actions cost the lives of other soldiers. As if this wasn't bad enough, it turned out that of the men released from Gitmo at least three have resumed threatening activities.

Considering the year to date, it's not surprising that everyone was looking forward to Christmas. But it came unusually early for Democrats...

New (but hauntingly familiar) House Speaker Paul Ryan quickly passed a budget bill (with more Democrats than Republicans voting for it) which essentially gave Barack Obama and his cronies everything they could possibly want with no fight whatsoever. 

Cash for Planned Parenthood butchery? Full funding for the resettling of immigrants and refugees in the nation's vulnerable heartland? Taxpayer dollars to combat alleged climate change? All this and much, much, MUCH more was rubber stamped "to keep the government open," making a complete mockery of the hard fought elections which finally gave the House and Senate to Republicans under the mistaken impression that it might make a difference.

But of course, differences can still be made. Or at least, that's the threat...

In a final effort to suck the last iota of optimism out of Americans as the new year approaches, Barack Obama declared that he intends to spend the next 12 months "squeezing every ounce of change" out of our country.

True to his word, on New Years Eve he issued an executive order (bypassing Congress) to give green cards to 100,000 immigrants with college degrees so they can come here to take the few jobs that Americans apparently will do - and desperately want.

Which finally brings us to...

 

2016 is here! A year which will, at the very least, finally see Barack Hussein Obama voted out of office - and that alone is worth considerable celebration.

Thanks to all of the readers of Hope n' Change for sharing this year (and many others) with us, and here's hoping you'll stay tuned as we attempt to illuminate, and hopefully laugh at, the undoubtedly wild, weird, and challenging year which stretches out ahead!      -Stilton Jarlsberg