MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 29 Dec 20 - 11:29 AM

Countdown to the most important date in our near future: the 46th president.

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Donuel
Date: 29 Dec 20 - 12:06 PM

2 million seconds...whimper

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Rapparee
Date: 29 Dec 20 - 08:48 PM

Important Date? Nonsense! My birthday isn't for 44 days yet!

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Donuel
Date: 30 Dec 20 - 06:38 AM

All the world is a mothered BS thread and all the players upon the stage have fault within themselves. The fault is from the stars in violent gamma ray Nova storms. From chaos the threads of life in the most violent regions, must reproduce ferociously and often. Where calm, near imortality may reign. To burn twice as bright and hot or cool and still is the ancient response of life. We can not choose our region of birth. Feel fortunate if it is Earth.

cosmic pond

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Rapparee
Date: 30 Dec 20 - 12:48 PM

Nonsense! I decide upon Life, the Universe, and Everything! And for your information, the last two digits of pi are (in decimal notation as used on Terra) 42.

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Donuel
Date: 30 Dec 20 - 01:01 PM

I always suspected it was an even number. Peace is restored. This is not one of those odd cosmos afterall, you know, one with an odd god.

There is news, just now, that they are going to close the restaurant at the end of the universe.

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Rapparee
Date: 30 Dec 20 - 06:37 PM

No, but masks are required and so is social distancing. In this case, six parsecs.

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 01 Jan 21 - 07:25 PM

Now it's only 1,615,068 seconds. And it's 2021. And Trump is pissed about so many things here's hoping he blows an aneurism soon and puts us out of our misery earlier. Different idiot in the Oval Office for a couple of weeks, but soon . . . very soon . . . Trump will face the courts for all of his dirty dealing for years. The floor show of 2021 will begin (though it will waste time and distract from important business, so we need to ration the amount of time we spend watching that dog and pony show.)

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Donuel
Date: 02 Jan 21 - 10:50 AM

To have a vaccinated population we have to inoculate about a million people per day to be ready for NEXT Fall.

We are not even close because there is no national response to pandemic issues. It is left to the states and hospitals which are already overstretched with too many victims to respond to.

Operation 'Warp Speed' is delayed by the Trump adminisration who still have the parking brake on and can't move.

Human error, waste and theft are a given but this problem was ignored from the beggining.

How many are we vaccinating per day? I decline to be the bearer of this bad news.

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Rapparee
Date: 02 Jan 21 - 09:26 PM

It is estimated that we'll get ours in (roughly) mid-February. Of course, there are fewer people in Idaho that in Howard or Montgomery Counties, Maryland. There are NOT fewer nut jobs, they're just better camouflaged back East.

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Jan 21 - 10:47 AM

In the vaccination race Isreal is in the lead with 13% done and the US is just over 1%

Arkansas Has 20,000 doses but they lost the directions and no on was listening when it was explained.

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: keberoxu
Date: 03 Jan 21 - 01:03 PM

Rapparee has a valid point.
Idaho has become notorious for the, er, "eccentric" people.
But he's right --
in other places camouflage and concealment is the way to go,
but Idaho's reputation is that
the Armageddon freaks can let their freak flag fly free out there.

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of nAll BS [annex]
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Jan 21 - 02:51 PM

Old man Potter wanted to eat the tiny Baily Savings and Loan
Old man Walgreen devoured Rexall and Rite Aid it's told
Old man Sam ate Mom's and Pop's by the truckload
Now Wall mart-green will dispense vaccine
that got too warm and is way too old.
There's another hunger of the poor and cold
They've been down so long they wish death upon everyone
Armageddonist vs anti armeggeddonist is the civil war to come
Race wanrs and Face wars have police on the run
Amid disease we forgot about having fun
I didn't notice the poet write his very last one.
Or the homeless eat the last palm oil nutrition free crumb.
The wealthy have their island and can still luxuriate in the sun

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Jan 21 - 04:41 PM

edit

Old man Potter wanted to eat the tiny Baily Savings and Loan
Old man Walgreen devoured Rexall and Rite Aid it's told
Old man Sam ate Mom's and Pop's by the truckload
Now Wall mart-green will dispense vaccine
that got too warm and is way too old.
There's another hunger of the poor and cold
They've been down so long they wish death on everyone
Armageddonist vs anti armeggeddonist is the civil war to come
Race wars and Face wars have police on the run
Amid disease some forgot to have fun
I didn't notice the poet write his very last one.
Or the homeless eat the last palm oil nutrition free crumb.
The wealthy have their secret supply and can luxuriate in the sun
Only the newly dead are perfectly mum all except for a hiss
Earth has its revenge as thriving life is kissed
DNA has a trick to again and again
take the ultimate risk
that a mutation is
an adaptation

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Rapparee
Date: 03 Jan 21 - 08:21 PM

My Mother’s Rosary

It takes an old-time love song
To keep this old world young
Each heart must have a love song
Tho’ some are never sung
Some people worship money
The song of clinking gold
But mother’s song at twilight
Brings you right back to the fold

Chorus:
There’s an old-time melody, I heard long ago
Mother called it the Rosary
She sang it soft and low
Without any rhyme, without any prose
I even forget how the melody goes
But then baby fingers and ten baby toes
She’d watch them by the setting sun
And when her daily work was done
She’d count them each and every one
That was “My Mother’s Rosary”

One day we may be happy
Next day we may regret
Some things that we remember
We wish we could forget
Sometimes you may be lonely
In darkness you may roam
But mother’s song at twilight
Keeps telling you to go home.

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Rapparee
Date: 04 Jan 21 - 12:42 PM

I had a dear old mother,
And dearly she loved me
And when I was in trouble,
She took me on her knee.

One night as I lay sleeping,
Alone upon my bed
An angel came and whispered
And told me she was dead.

Next morning when I woke up
I found the words were true
My mother was in heaven
Above the sky so blue.

So obey your mother children
No matter big or small
For when you lose your mother
You lose the best of all...

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Rapparee
Date: 04 Jan 21 - 12:43 PM

"That Silver Haired Daddy Of Mine"

In a vine covered shack in the mountains
Bravely fighting the battle of time
There's a dear one who's weathered life's sorrow
It's that silver haired daddy of mine

If I could recall all the heartaches
Dear old Daddy, I've caused you to bear
If I could erase those lines from your face
And bring back the gold to your hair

If God would but grant me the power
Just to turn back the pages of time
I'd give all I own if I could but atone
To that silver haired daddy of mine.

I know it's too late, dear old daddy
To repay for the heartaches and care
But dear mother is waiting in heaven
Just to comfort and solace you there

If I could recall all the heartaches
Dear old daddy, I've caused you to bear
If I could erase those lines from your face
And bring back the gold to your hair

If God would but grant me the power
Just to turn back the pages of time
I'd give all I own if I could but atone
To that silver haired daddy of mine...

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Donuel
Date: 04 Jan 21 - 01:53 PM

Pages can turn backwards in time but 'you' can't.

Antimatter is in every precise meaningful sense matter moving backward in time. The notion of "moving backward in time" is nonsensical in a Hamiltonian formulation, because the whole description can only go forward in time. That's the definition of what the Hamiltonian does--- it takes you forward in time a little bit. So if you formulate quantum mechanics the Hamiltonian way, this idea is difficult to understand (still it can be done--- Stueckelberg discovered this connection before the path integral, when field Hamiltonians were the only tool).

But in Feynman's particle path-integral picture, when you parametrize particles by their worldline proper time, and you renounce a global causal picture in favor of particles splitting and joining, the particle trajectories are consistent with relativity, but only if the trajectories include back-in-time trajectories, where coordinate time ticks in the opposite sense to proper time.

Looked at in the Hamiltonian formalism, the coordinate time is the only notion of time. So those paths where the proper time ticks in the reverse direction look like a different type of particle, and these are the antiparticles.

Sometimes there is an identification, so that a particle is its own antiparticle.

Precise consequence: CPT theorem
The "C" operator changes all particles to antiparticles, the P operator reflects all spatial directions, and the T operator reflects all motions (and does so by doing complex conjugation). It is important to understand that T is an operator on physical states, it does not abstractly flip time, it concretely flips all momenta and angular momenta (a spinning disk is spinning the other way), so that things are going backwards. The parity operator flips all directions, but not angular momenta.

The CPT theorem says that any process involving matter happens exactly the same when done in reverse motion, in a mirror, to antimatter.

The CPT operator is never the identity, aside from the case of a real scalar field. CPT acting on an electron produces a positron state, for example. CPT acting on a photon produces a photon going in the same direction with opposite polarization (if P is chosen to reflect all spatial coordinate axes, this is a bad convention outside of 3+1 dimensions).

This theorem is proved by noting that a CPT operator corresponds to a rotation by 180 degrees in the Euclidean theory, as described on Wikipedia.

Precise consequence: crossing
Any amplitude involving particles A(k_1,k_2,...,k_n) is analytic in the incoming and outgoing momenta, aside from pole and cut singularities caused by producing intermediate states. In tree-level perturbation theory, these amplitudes are analytic except when creating physical particles, where you find poles. So the scattering amplitudes make sense for any complex value of the momenta, since going around poles is not a problem.

In terms of mandelstam variables for 2-2 scattering, s,t,u (s is the CM energy, t is the momentum transfer and u the other momentum transfer, to the other created particle), the amplitude is an analytic function of s and t. The regions where the particles are on the mass shell are given by mandelstam plot, and there are three different regions, corresponding to A+B goes to C+D , Cbar + B goes to Abar+ D, and A + Dbar goes to C+Bbar. These three regimes are described by the exact same function of s,t,u, in three disconnected regions.

In starker terms, if you start with pure particle scattering, and analyticaly continue the amplitudes with particles with incoming momentum k's (with positive energy) to negative k's, you find the amplitude for the antiparticle process. The antiparticle amplitude is uniquely determined by the analytic contination of the particle amplitude for the energy-momentum reversed.

This corresponds to taking the outgoing particle with positive energy and momentum, and flipping the energy and momentum to negative values, so that it goes out the other way with negative energy. If you identify the lines in Feynman diagrams with particle trajectories, this region of the amplitude gives the contribution of paths that go back in time.

So crossing is the other precise statement of "Antimatter is matter going back in time".

Causal pictures
The notion of going back in time is acausal, meaning it is excluded automatically in a Hamiltonian formulation. For this reason, it took a long time for this approach to be appreciated and accepted. Stueckelberg proposed this interpretation of antiparticles in the late 1930s, but Feynman's presentation made it stick.

In Feynman diagrams, the future is not determined from the past by stepping forward timestep by timestep, it is determined by tracing particle paths proper-time by proper-time. The diagram formalism therefore is philosophically very different from the Hamiltonian field theory formalism, so much so Feynman was somewhat disappointed that they were equivalent.

They are not as easily equivalent when you go to string theory, because string theory is an S-matrix theory formulated entirely in Feynman language, not in Hamiltonian language. The Hamiltonian formulation of strings requires a special slicing of space time, and even then, it is less clear and elegant than the Feynman formulation, which is just as acausal and strange. The strings backtrack in time just like particles do, since they reproduce point particles at infinite tension.

If you philosophically dislike acausal formalisms, you can say (in field theory) that the Hamiltonian formalism is fundamental, and that you believe in crossing and CPT, and then you don't have to talk about going back in time. Since crossing and CPT are the precise manifestations of the statement that antimatter is matter going back in time, you really aren't saying anything different, except philosophically. But the philosophy motivates crossing and CPT.

There is a maximum speed limit for causality and that sis the speed of light which is what the speed o ligh actually is. Jus sayin...

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Donuel
Date: 04 Jan 21 - 04:44 PM

I just want to know why the transformation of maximally entangled states under the action of Lorentz transformations in a fully relativistic setting can not be used as FTL messeging when entanglement is optimal? By explicit calculation of the Wigner rotation, we can describe the relativistic analog of the Bell states as viewed from two inertial frames moving with constant velocity with respect to each other. Though the finite dimensional matrices describing the Lorentz transformations are non-unitary, each single particle state of the entangled pair undergoes an effective, momentum dependent, local unitary rotation, thereby preserving the entanglement fidelity of the bipartite state. The details of how these unitary transformations are manifested are explicitly worked out for the Bell states comprised of massive spin 1/2 particles and massless photon polarizations.

SETI might be barking up the wrong cosmic tree with the eletrodynamic spectrum of radio waves when entangled receivers are at work and can never be hacked or deciphered.

Well I kinda know why FTL entanglement communication doesn't work but the answer still pisses me off. Whadu I hafta do, use neutrinos instead of electrons.....EUREKA

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Donuel
Date: 04 Jan 21 - 07:41 PM

One more impossible thing.

In my thirties I found myself beneath a Bodhi tree meditating.
I was inside a complicated life thinking simple thoughts.
Now in my den I am in a simple life thinking complicated thoughts.
Between conscious innerspace and cosmic space I forsee a changed Earthly society despite the reptillian ignorance of the liars. By their camoflage you will see them. By their lies you will know them.

This winter beside a stair step stream, an icicle from an over hanging branch traced a wide spiral dripping as it grew like a spring. It is a mystery to me like myself. Why is it here, how did it form? The small mystery humbled my complicated questions. There has to be an explanation. There is only one explanation. Its just one more impossible thing I've seen in my life. One of them is you.

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Rapparee
Date: 04 Jan 21 - 09:34 PM

There was a young fellow named Fisk
Whose fencing was exceedingly brisk.
So fast was his action
The Fitzgerald contraction
Turned his epee to a disk

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Rapparee
Date: 06 Jan 21 - 08:34 PM

Mother MOAB! You get yourself up where you belong, and don't give me any of your sass!

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Donuel
Date: 06 Jan 21 - 11:20 PM

uk version

There was a young fellow named Buck
Whose thing was exceedingly Fucked.
So fast was his action
The Fitzgerald contraction
made his pepee almost get stuck

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Donuel
Date: 06 Jan 21 - 11:25 PM

trump theme
"killing me softly, with his saw"

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Rapparee
Date: 07 Jan 21 - 08:46 AM

Here is an action photo of the Idaho Legion's nifty keen Backatcha Mechanism in action! When the GO's forces attacked yesterday and tried to Destructoray Washingon, DC the Legion's Space Corps sprung into action, launched the new Mark XXXIV Scout ship, and reflected the Destructoray back at the Galactic Overlord's Super Cruiser. The day was saved!

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Donuel
Date: 07 Jan 21 - 09:34 AM

Horatio the fault is in ourselves not the galactic overlords.

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Donuel
Date: 07 Jan 21 - 12:52 PM

The backatcha reflecto metal made of nickel tungston selenium and propriatory elements delivers inertia back at 90%
Its unique double punch some say defies conservation of energy.

When Ford made a pick up truck with a backatcha unibody it totaled Toyota, Dodge and Chevy Trucks while it sustained only broken headlights.

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 07:04 AM

One of two Space X's Dragon cargo ships were docked with theISSalong with with three Sovus space craft early this year. To make room for another cargo ship they brought one home.One isway back the astronauts heard an impact behind them. Finding no apparent damage they continued to proceed through the atmospere. A difficulty trimming the ship in the lower entry orbit caused only a momentary concern.

Back on Earth a diagnostic was done and it was discovered part of the main engine exhaust cone was dented and feeder pipes had a residue and damage apparent. After 2 days it was determined that at least 22 kilos of frozen poop from the ISS had impacted the rear of the ship.

Missions in the future will take these discharges into account to safely have emmission orbits decay and burn up in the atmoshere.

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 11:57 AM

dark matter black holes?
well its my guess anyway

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Jan 21 - 12:33 PM

5 in a row is a record.

Betelgeuse farted! toward bottom of page

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 10 Jan 21 - 07:44 PM

I think the political miasma has sucked all of the normal BS energy out of the atmosphere. We'll just bid our time till the Trump methane cloud gets hit by a spark. Be prepared to duck when that happens.

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Rapparee
Date: 10 Jan 21 - 08:30 PM

He can always check in to the NYCFTTS.

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 11 Jan 21 - 12:55 PM

I couldn't remember what NYCFTTS stood for and when I Googled it the top result were a bunch of Mudcat threads. :-/

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Donuel
Date: 11 Jan 21 - 02:03 PM

I found a number of diamonds beneath the ping pong table where people had hit their rings on the edge while playing and dislodged their setting. The true gem is far beneath.

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: keberoxu
Date: 12 Jan 21 - 05:38 PM

The important thing is that
Rapparee is still checking in,
so that ultrasound ordeal must be hopefully past.

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Donuel
Date: 12 Jan 21 - 06:56 PM

The average fundamental vibration of the universe is a very deep B flat and the averaged visible light spectrum of the universe is beige.

With different alien senses it would probably be a different color.

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Rapparee
Date: 12 Jan 21 - 09:06 PM

The doppler ultrasound showed good blood flow in the carotid arteries (both right and left). They said I can do whatever I feel up doing, within reason. My speech, especially with S-sounds, remains a trifle problematic but I have a speech therapist and we're working on it. Saying something like, "Sue sold Susie a slew of slaw" would be come out as, "Shoe shold Shushie a shlew of shlaw" -- or at least that's what I hear and others say my speech is fine. That is why I'm not speaking at the Inauguration next week.

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Rapparee
Date: 13 Jan 21 - 09:08 PM

C₂H₆O.

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Jan 21 - 10:58 AM

It was time for Shane's audition. Sirely he was nervous, but this was his shot at becoming famous. He was a talented musician and singer. The audition was his chance to play at a well known nightclub Shooting Star in Los Angeles.

His wish was to produce his own album, but he needed this job to help him make the money to do it. Shane's type of music was unique. His music was a combination of pop and hip-hop music with an Irish twist. He had been born in Ireland and his family moved to the United States when he was very young.

Shane had practiced for many hours for his audition. He had polished and perfected the shitty songs he would play for the nightclub owners.

He stood in front of the owners with his guitar in hand. He began to play. His songs were shaping up nicely and the owners seemed to like it. Everything was going smoothly, when all of a sudden...Crash! A shower of glass flew past him.

A large stage light had fallen and shattered on the stage he was auditioning on. For most people this would have been a huge shining distraction, but this was Shane's moment to shine. He kept playing and didn't miss a beat.

After finishing his songs, the owners gave him a standing ovation.
Even drunk patrons gave him a shtanding ovation. They loved Shane's songs so much, they thought he planned for the light to crash during his song. Shane assured them that he had not planned it.

The owners offered him the job. "Yes!" Shane said. He started that Saturday and couldn't wait to shine at the Shooting Shtar club.

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Rapparee
Date: 14 Jan 21 - 06:04 PM

Was this Shane McBride of Blind River, Ontario??

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Jan 21 - 06:45 PM

Yep the pandemic and bar closures cleaned him up real good.

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 15 Jan 21 - 06:01 PM

I see your C₂H₆O and raise my single malt Scotch in salute (though lately I've switched to a nice 12-year-old blended Scotch that's pretty good).

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Donuel
Date: 15 Jan 21 - 08:38 PM

Is Sparkling Pineapple wine any good?

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Rapparee
Date: 15 Jan 21 - 09:12 PM

Only if it's brewed in the toilet.

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Jan 21 - 09:46 AM

C11H15NO2 + (1 hour later) C12H16N2 - any monoamine inhibitors = cure for trump syndrome

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Rapparee
Date: 16 Jan 21 - 09:31 PM

Welcome, Noodles. I'm in Pocatello,ID. You have found the Annex to MOAB -- not Utah's MOAB, but the Mother Of All BS threads. Perhaps Stilly (our very own moderator) can make you a link to the original MOAB -- something better than 50,000 posts. Stilly has deep roots in the Seattle scene, even though now she lives in Texas.

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 17 Jan 21 - 01:04 PM

Noodles put his introduction in the wrong thread - I'm going to find a better place to move it so more people will see it. Rap was correct. :)

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: Rapparee
Date: 17 Jan 21 - 05:04 PM

Of COURSE he was correct! Are you implying I could possibly make an error?

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS [annex]
From: noodles_incident
Date: 17 Jan 21 - 06:59 PM

Whoops! Thanks for sorting that out, Stilly :)

Subject: RE: MOAB - Mother of All BS year in review
From: Donuel
Date: 18 Jan 21 - 08:02 PM

If, however, you wish, for some sick reason, to re-experience 2020, now is the time to put on your face mask, douse your entire body with hand sanitizer and then — to be safe — don a hazmat suit, as we look back at the unrelenting insanity of this hideous year, starting with…

January
…which begins with all of Washington, as well as parts of Virginia and Maryland, gripped by the gripping historic drama of the impeachment of Donald Trump. Remember that? How gripped we were?

To set the stage: Back in mid-December, the House of Representatives passed two articles of impeachment, after which Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in accordance with the U.S. Constitution, handed out souvenir signing pens. Everyone expected that Pelosi would then send the articles to the Senate.

But as of early January the Senate has not received them. People are wondering if Pelosi, what with her various official duties and hairdresser appointments, simply forgot to send the articles. Or maybe she tried to send them, but because of a bureaucratic snafu they wound up at a different federal entity, such as the Coast Guard.

Eventually, however, the articles arrive at the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch “The Undertaker” McConnell promises that the impeachment issue will receive full and fair consideration.

He is of course joking, but this is not obvious, because even when Mitch is in a jovial mood he looks like a man passing a kidney stone the size of the Hope Diamond.

Meanwhile in other political news, all eyes are on Iowa as it prepares for the caucuses, which are closely scrutinized because they are the first opportunity for a tiny group of unrepresentative voters to engage in an incomprehensible and deeply flawed process by which they anoint presidential candidates who traditionally go on to fail.

This year, in an effort to modernize the caucuses, the Iowa Democratic Party has upgraded from its old-fashioned manual reporting procedures to a modern, state-of-the-art “app” based on the same software used in the Boeing 737 MAX airliner.

In international news, the big story is a U.S. targeted drone strike, ordered by Trump, which kills Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani, thereby triggering World War III and forcing the U.S. to reinstate the military draft, at least on Twitter. Iran responds — this is a good indicator of what kind of year it will be — by shooting down a Ukrainian airliner.

Elsewhere abroad, Chinese news media report that a man in a city named “Wuhan” died of a mysterious new virus. This is not considered a big deal in the U.S., since it has nothing to do with either impeachment or the Iowa caucuses.

A much bigger international story concerns Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, who announce via Instagram that they are sick and tired of being part of the British royal family and want to just be regular normal everyday hardworking folks making millions of dollars solely because one of them was born into, and the other one married into, the British royal family.

This plunges Great Britain into a crisis the likes of which it has not been plunged into since “Brexit.” The crisis finally ends when, after a royal summit meeting with Queen Elizabeth II described by participants as “frank and heartfelt,” Harry and Meghan are beheaded.

In sports, Major League Baseball is rocked by scandal with the release of a report concluding that the Houston Astros engaged in an elaborate multi-year cheating scheme, which critics charge enabled the team to win the 2017 World Series as well as six congressional seats in the 2018 midterm elections.

By way of punishment, the league — sending a clear message to future would-be cheaters — rules that all players involved in the scheme will continue to play baseball in exchange for enormous amounts of money.

Speaking of scandal, in…

February
Washington and its immediate suburbs remain gripped by the U.S. Senate’s historic impeachment trial of President Trump, with Democratic prosecutors arguing that Trump illegally pressured Ukrainian leaders to benefit himself politically, while the Republican defense team, employing an alibi strategy, claims that Trump was playing golf at the time.

Under the watchful eye of Chief Justice John Roberts, who is kept from nodding off by a law clerk armed with a pellet gun, everyone, in accordance with Senate rules, repeats everything 127 times, after which the Republican majority, to the surprise of anyone who has the IQ of sponge cake, acquits the Republican president. Washington and its suburbs immediately start looking around for a new historic thing to be gripped by.

In the midst of the impeachment drama, Trump delivers the State of the Union address, an awkward affair that begins with Speaker Pelosi refusing to use the traditional “high privilege and distinct honor” introduction; then Trump refusing to shake Pelosi’s hand; then Pelosi tearing up her copy of Trump’s speech; then Trump hocking a loogie onto Pelosi’s suede pumps.

OK, the loogie part did not happen. As far as we know.

In other political news, Iowa Democratic Party officials sense that there may be a problem with their new “app” when it declares that the winner of the state’s caucuses, with 43 million delegates, is Walter Mondale, followed by the Houston Astros (who also win the Super Bowl). This fiasco does not sit well with the other Democratic candidates, who realize they have wasted an entire year trudging around Iowa eating fried objects on sticks and pretending to care about Iowans.

Things go more smoothly for the Democrats in the New Hampshire primary and Nevada caucuses, with Bernie Sanders emerging as the clear front-runner, which only seems to make him angrier.

A new challenger emerges in the form of charisma-impaired billionaire Mike “Mike” Bloomberg, who uses his personal fortune to hire a vast army of consultants to supply him with a powerful arsenal of focus-group-tested policies, retorts, memes, jokes and humanoid personality traits. Nevertheless he struggles in the debates, the low point coming when Elizabeth Warren, during a heated exchange about non-disclosure agreements, pulls the waistband of Bloomberg’s underpants over the top of his head, a debate tactic known as the “atomic wedgie,” first performed by Lincoln on Douglas in 1858.

Despite all these exciting political developments, the number one concern of the American public, based on the amount of passionate debate it generates on the internet, is the burning issue of whether it is, or is not, OK to recline your airplane seat.

Remember? Those were good times.

As February draws to a close, 2020 seems to be shaping up as a typical election year, in which the political-media complex is repeatedly engulfed by raging apocalyptic dramas that the regular human public pretty much ignores.

And then, unfortunately, comes…

Marpril
…which starts off calmly enough, as the Democratic Party, desperate to find an alternative to 132-year-old white guy Bernie Sanders, settles on 132-year-old white guy Joe Biden, who cruises to a series of primary victories after replacing “No Malarkey” with a bold new campaign slogan: “Somewhat Alert At Times.”

Biden is endorsed by most of his Democratic opponents, including “Mike” Bloomberg, who spent more than $500 million on his campaign, which seems like a lot of money until you consider that he won the American Samoa Caucus, narrowly edging out Tulsi Gabbard, who spent $13.50.

And then, sprinkled in amid all the political coverage, we begin to see reports that this coronavirus thing might be worse than we have been led to believe, although at first the authorities still seem to be saying that it’s basically the flu and there is no reason to panic.

But all of a sudden there seems to be no hand sanitizer for sale anywhere, which makes some sense although there is also no toilet paper, as if people are planning to be pooping for weeks on end (ha) and then we learn that Tom Hanks — Tom Hanks! — has the virus and now they’re saying it’s a lot worse than the flu and we need to wash our hands and not touch our faces and maintain a social distance of six feet and use an abundance of caution to flatten the curve (whatever “the curve” is) but they’re also saying we don’t need face masks no scratch that now they’re saying we DO need face masks but nobody HAS any face masks but hey here’s a funny meme about toilet paper but ohmigod look at these statistical disease models WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE but Trump says maybe this hydroxysomething medicine will work no it won’t work yes it will work no it won’t and now they’re saying there won’t be enough ventilators or hospital beds or PPE and Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx are saying everybody has to shelter at home or else WE ARE ALL DEFINITELY GOING TO DIE hey here’s another funny toilet-paper meme but seriously what is PPE and is that different from PPP and where will we get the ventilators and there won’t be enough hospital beds and there is still no hand sanitizer and I keep touching my face and they just canceled the NBA can they even DO that wait now they canceled ALL the sports and closed all the schools the colleges the stores the restaurants the bars the theaters the hair salons the parks the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and now they’re saying we need to stay at home for HOW LONG what about the toilet paper I can’t stop touching my damn face are you seriously telling me all this is because somebody ate a freaking bat maybe Amazon has toilet paper ohmigod they’re sold out too WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH THE TOILET PAPER not another Zoom meeting I am so tired of shouting at people in little boxes maybe I should take a shower but what’s the point hey here’s a bunch more funny memes ohmigod look at the Stock Market the price of oil maybe I’ll just take a peek at my 401k oh NOOOOOOOO and WHAT ARE PEOPLE DOING WITH ALL THIS TOILET PAPER and how long do we have to keep being abundantly cautious what did Trump say about the ventilators and what did Dr. Birx and Dr. Fauci say about what Trump said about the ventilators and what did Trump say about what they said about what he said about the ventilators ventilators ventilators LOOK AT THESE MODELS WE ARE STILL GOING TO DIE but do we really want to go on living in a world where there’s no toilet paper and every single TV commercial sounds like “as we navigate these difficult times together, the National Association of Folding Chair Manufacturers wants you to know that we are committed to running these TV commercials with a somber narrator voice telling you how committed we are” and WHY WOULD SOMEBODY EAT A DAMN BAT these memes are getting old hey do you think that Carole Baskin woman actually fed her husband to a tiger maybe we should order pizza tonight wait I think we had pizza last night are you sure it’s Tuesday because it feels more like Thursday no please God not another freaking Zoom meeting stop already with the memes if the tiger ate her husband shouldn’t there be a skeleton somewhere are we flattening the curve yet Dr. Fauci Dr. Birx because we’re in a recession no wait maybe it’s a depression look at the unemployment numbers we are never going to recover from this if the virus doesn’t kill us we will starve to death we need more money from the government we need billions no we need trillions no we need MORE trillions where is this money coming from we have to open the economy up but if we do WE WILL ALL DIE hey I found some toilet paper oh no it’s one-ply which is basically the same as using your bare hand thank God I also found some hand sanitizer and speaking of good news Bernie Sanders is endorsing Joe Biden so apparently they’re both still alive if I see one more meme I am going to puke in my facemask I’m afraid to get on a scale my thighs are basically two armadillo-sized wads of pizza dough hey Dr. Birx Dr. Fauci when will we have a vaccine when will we have herd immunity when can we go outside when can we go back to work what is the “new normal” good lord what did Trump say about disinfectants DON’T INJECT CLOROX YOU IDIOTS what about the food chain what about reinfection what about the second wave hey they’re showing the NFL draft and Georgia is opening the tattoo parlors and holy crap now it’s…

May
…and we are, as a nation, exhausted. We are literally sick and tired of the pandemic. But amid all the gloom, there is a ray of sunshine: As we go through this harrowing experience — affecting all Americans, in both red states and blue states — we are starting to realize that our common humanity is more important than our political differences.

Ha ha! Seriously, we hate each other more than ever. We disagree about everything — when to reopen the economy, whether to wear masks, whether to go to the beach, whether it’s OK to say “China” — everything. Each side believes that it is motivated purely by reason, facts and compassion, and that the other side is evil and stupid and sincerely wants people to die. Every issue is binary: My side good, other side bad. There is no nuance, no open-mindedness, no discussion.

On the other hand, there is starting to be more toilet paper.

President Trump continues to provide leadership during the crisis by repeatedly pointing out that he knows an incredible amount about viruses — more than most medical doctors! — and is frankly doing a terrific job.

For its part, the White House press corps, seeking as always to be fair and objective, asks the president many probing questions, all of them variations of “why are you so despicable?”

Somewhere in here the president goes on Twitter to suggest, without evidence, that MSNBC anchor Joe Scarborough committed murder, but we have reached the point where this falls into the category of “ho-hum.”

Meanwhile, in a basement somewhere in Delaware, Joe Biden and his campaign team have managed to procure a “webcam,” which they intend to use to “log on” to the “internet” so that Joe’s campaign message can go “viral,” just as soon as Joe decides what it is.

In scandal news, the justice department moves to drop all charges against former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Outraged Democrats claim this is a travesty of justice; outraged Republicans claim it is proof that the Deep State tried to stage a coup. And thus we are back to arguing about the 2016 election, which we are going to keep arguing about until everybody involved has been dead for 50 years.

On a more uplifting note, America cheers the first manned space launch from U.S. soil in nine years as the commercially built SpaceX rocket, carrying two NASA astronauts, blasts off for the International Space Station, only to discover, upon arrival, that it has been closed since 2014.

Here we should at least mention the arrival of the Asian murder hornets. In any other year they would have been a huge story, comparable to famous celebrity pests of the past, such as the killer bees, or the cast of “Jersey Shore.” But in 2020 there is simply too much competition, and the murder hornets end up living in a cheap motel near the Canadian border, their dreams of fame shattered.

In sports, Major League Baseball tries to come up with a plan to salvage the 2020 season, a task that becomes more urgent each day as the Houston Astros already have won 137 games, all of them no-hitters.

The National Football League also is trying to adapt to the pandemic, exploring the possibility of a season with no fans, no coaches and no players.

“We’re thinking of just showing 60 minutes of referees throwing penalty flags and peering at replay monitors,” says NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. “So it won’t really be much different.”

Meanwhile the National Hockey League admits that it stopped playing games in 2003, but nobody noticed.

Toward the end of the month the economy is starting to open up, the virus numbers in many places seem to be improving and people are starting to venture out of their homes. For a few minutes, the nation seems to be groping its way, an inch at a time, toward relative calm. And then…

WHAM, 2020 strikes again, this time in Minneapolis, where the horrendous killing of George Floyd at the hands of police ignites a protest movement that quickly spreads across the nation, sometimes mutating into violence. In the past, such movements tended to lose energy, smothered under a thick cloud of politicians’ platitudes, but this one has legs, and as we enter…

June
…the protest movement grows in size and passion with frankly not a whole lot of social distancing. In Washington, D.C., large crowds gather in front of the White House.

President Trump, angered by reports that at one point he retreated to an underground bunker, states that in fact he was merely inspecting the bunker, this being a responsibility explicitly assigned to the president by the Constitution, right after where it says he’s in charge of foreign policy.

To demonstrate that he is not the kind of leader who hides in bunkers, the president courageously goes outside (after the protesters have been cleared away) and personally walks several hundred feet to historic St. John’s Church, where he holds up a Bible. Or possibly it is a thesaurus. The important thing is that it is a serious-looking book and a strong visual, at a time when what this wounded and divided nation needs, more than ever, is strong visuals.

For their part, the Democrats, fed up with the longstanding pattern of systemic racism and police misconduct in major U.S. cities, vow to bring about real reform, just as soon as they can figure out who, exactly, is in charge of these cities.

One much-discussed reform proposal is defunding the police, which is clearly defined by its proponents as “taking the funding away from the police” as well as “not taking the funding away from the police.”

Meanwhile COVID-19 cases are rising alarmingly, especially in the South. President Trump, having apparently decided that the best way to deal with the pandemic, as chief executive, is to occasionally tweet about it, focuses his efforts on getting re-elected. He holds a rally in Tulsa, where, addressing an issue of concern to all Americans, he explains in detail that the ramp he had to walk down at the West Point graduation ceremony was slippery AND steep. The president gets a big hand from the crowd when, displaying leadership, he drinks from a water glass with one hand.

During this period the Biden campaign focuses its energies primarily on being in Delaware.

Also during this time important news events are occurring in Europe, Asia, Africa, South America and possibly even Canada. But we frankly do not have time to think about these places.

In sports, Major League Baseball owners and players, faced with the very real threat that the Houston Astros will win the World Series unopposed, reach an agreement to hold a shortened season, with a few COVID-related rule modifications:

The “batter’s box” will be an actual plexiglass box completely enclosing the batter.
To minimize airborne saliva droplets, umpires will call balls and strikes by shouting into their elbows. Also players must limit infield chatter to fewer than 10 syllables.
Unacceptable: “HeybatterbatterbatterbatterSWING!”

Acceptable: “ HeybatterbatterbatterSWING!”

In the event that a batter gets on base, all players on both teams will immediately be tested for coronavirus.
At the end of nine innings or one week, whichever comes first, the team with the fewest positive tests will be declared the winner.
Speaking of positive tests, in…

July
…COVID-19 cases continue to rise sharply in some southern states, accompanied by what the World Health Organization describes as an “alarming” spike in smugness in some northern states, notably New York, where Gov. Andrew Cuomo unveils a poster, for sale at $11.50, commemorating, in a cartoony manner, New York’s pandemic experience. Really. It is as if the White Star Line sold whimsical souvenirs of the Titanic.

On July 4, despite all the bad news and the gloomy outlook, Americans pause to celebrate the independence of their nation by reducing entire neighborhoods to smoking rubble with illegal fireworks.

In a decision that outrages Democrats, President Trump commutes the federal prison sentence of his longtime friend and political operative Roger Stone. The White House states that imprisoning the 67-year-old Stone would be inhumane because he has a medical condition that requires him “to roam free at night seeking fresh human blood.”

Meanwhile in Delaware, Joe Biden’s team continues to ponder the question of who should be Joe’s running mate, the goal being to find somebody who (a) is a woman and (b) has a name that Joe can remember.

Kanye West announces that he is running for president, representing the Birthday Party. In any other year this would seem ridiculous, but in 2020 a lot of people are like “why not?”

In other political news, the coronavirus continues to disrupt both major parties’ convention plans. The Republicans, having already moved Trump’s acceptance speech from the Spectrum Center in Charlotte, N.C., to the VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville, Fla., announce that they are now considering the Roll ‘n’ Shoot Bowling Alley & Gun Range in Elwood, Okla., contingent on the availability of “a long enough extension cord.”

The Democrats also have downsized their convention, which originally was to be a four-day event at the Wisconsin Center in Milwaukee but is now going to take place mainly on Instagram.

On the diplomatic front, the Trump administration announces that, after tense high-level negotiations, it has reached a peace agreement under which U.S. troops will be withdrawn from Portland, Ore., where for many weeks protestors have been seeking social justice via a combination of peaceful demonstrations and arson.

By far the month’s most disturbing event occurs on July 15 when Twitter, responding to a cyberattack, temporarily suspends many verified blue-check accounts. Within minutes emergency rooms in Washington and New York are overwhelmed by media thought leaders whose brains are literally exploding from the pressure of unreleased insights.

Meanwhile in the rest of the nation, non-elite Americans wander the streets aimlessly, with no way to know what they should think. Fortunately this situation lasts only a few hours, but it highlights the urgent need for a federally maintained Blue Check Media Emergency Tweet Reserve, similar to the National Helium Reserve, but more gaseous.

In sports, the Washington Redskins, bowing to mounting public pressure, announce that they are changing their name, which critics say is insensitive. They will henceforth be known as the Pittsburgh Redskins.

In Major League Baseball, the teams begin a shortened season with stadium seats occupied by cardboard cutouts representing fans, except in the case of the Houston Astros, who use live human snipers.

Speaking of threats, in…

August
…President Trump escalates his attacks on TikTok, a Chinese-owned social-media app that threatens our national security by causing millions of Americans to learn stupid dances while Chinese people are making useful products to sell to Americans. The president wants to force TikTok to be sold to Microsoft, apparently in the hope that Microsoft will render it unusable by means of “updates.”

In other foreign-policy action, Trump brokers a historic Middle East peace agreement, which, along with the estimated 45 previous historic Middle East peace agreements, brings the Middle East one step closer to potentially being on the verge of reaching the brink of what could some day become a stepping stone to lasting peace, although you should not hold your breath.

Meanwhile at home, the nation’s mood increasingly is tense and angry as Americans are bombarded all day, every day, with a constant stream of news about protests, boycotts, disruption, despair and rage. And that’s just on SportsCenter.

California, as it traditionally does at this time of year, bursts into flames. Adding to the citizens’ misery are rolling electrical blackouts, possibly related to the fact that the state legislature has banned all sources of electricity except windmills and 9-volt batteries.

In politics, controversy swirls around the U.S. Postal Service, which until now most Americans have viewed as a non-sinister agency whose function, as authorized by the Constitution, is to faithfully, rain or shine, deliver vast quantities of bulk mail to us so we can discard it unread.

But now there are reports of USPS mailboxes mysteriously disappearing from the streets, which Democrats charge is part of a sinister Trump administration plot to sabotage mail-in voting, the theory being that voters, having no place to deposit their mail-in ballots, will give up in despair and, we don’t know, flush them down the toilet or something.

While this alleged conspiracy is being debated, Steve Bannon, a former influential Trump aide with the uncanny ability to always look like he just woke up in a dumpster, is arrested by increasingly — this cannot be a coincidence — agents of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.

Bannon is charged with fraud in connection with a GoFundMe project called “We Build the Wall,” which is supposedly raising money for President Trump’s largely imaginary wall between the U.S. and Mexico, although according to prosecutors a better name for the project would be “We Basically Keep the Money.”

In other legal developments, Trump pardons Susan B. Anthony, calling her, in impromptu remarks delivered as aides hustle reporters away, “a terrific person who I look forward to inviting to the White House.”

In election news, Joe Biden makes history by choosing Kamala Harris as his running mate; if elected, she would become the first U.S. vice president whose name can be rearranged to spell “I Alarm A Shark.” During the Democratic debates Harris leveled some harsh criticisms at Biden, but a Biden campaign source says that “Joe has forgotten all about that. Literally.”

For his part, Trump dismisses rumors that he might change running mates, telling reporters “I’m very happy with whatshisname.”

Because of the pandemic, both parties hold their conventions virtually, which means that instead of endless hours of repetitious blather, the TV broadcasts consist of endless hours of repetitious blather but without the entertaining visuals of delegates in stupid hats.

The Democrats adopt a sweeping platform filled with bold policy initiatives that nobody will ever look at again. The Republican platform consists of, quote, “whatever was in the president’s most recent tweet.”

Speaking of principles, in…

September
…the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg triggers a classic display of Washington-style ethical consistency as both political parties, addressing the issue of when the vacancy should be filled, passionately embrace positions diametrically opposite the ones they passionately embraced in 2016.

Trump nominates Amy Coney Barrett to fill the seat, arguing that she is “perfectly qualified” for the high court because she is “a woman, but not like super hot.” Critics allege that Barrett belongs to a dangerous religious cult that subjugates women by forcing them to become Supreme Court justices. Everyone prepares for a cordial and informative confirmation process.

In other political news, the New York Times, in a politically devastating career-ending bombshell report, reveals that an analysis of Trump’s tax records shows that pretty much his only major success, as a businessman, has been playing the part of a successful businessman on a TV show.

Coming on the heels of two politically devastating bombshell reports earlier in the month — one alleging that Trump mocked the military, and one that he lied about the seriousness of the coronavirus — this brings to an even 500 the total number of times Trump has been devastated by bombshell media reports.

Joe Biden leaves Delaware briefly to give a campaign speech in Philadelphia, where he makes the following statement: “If Donald Trump has his way, the complications from COVID-19, which are well beyond what they should be — it’s estimated that 200 million people have died — probably by the time I finish this talk.” Then it’s back to Delaware for Joe.

The biggest political event of the month is the much-anticipated Trump-Biden debate, a lively affair featuring a frank and open exchange of sentence fragments highlighted by a heroic but ultimately unsuccessful attempt on the part of moderator Chris Wallace to silence the president with a taser.

Biden inspires his supporters by appearing, most of the time, to be fully aware that he is participating in a debate. For his part, Trump displays presidential leadership by firmly yet calmly reassuring an anxious nation that the election will be a complete fraud.

When it’s over both sides declare victory as Chris Wallace retreats to his dressing room to ingest Xanax pills through a funnel.

In other domestic news, there are these alarming developments:

The federal deficit reaches $3.3 trillion, as the government continues its unchecked descent into horrendous, unsustainable levels of debt, with neither political party even seriously acknowledging the danger, let alone taking meaningful action to prevent future generations of Americans from being permanently screwed.
The Kardashians decide to stop making “Keeping Up With The Kardashians.”
Meanwhile as fires continue to devastate the West, the California legislature, meeting in emergency session, votes to ban lightning.

Abroad, the Middle East moves a step closer to eventually being on the verge of approaching the threshold of what could some day become a pathway to lasting peace as the Trump administration announces yet another historic agreement, this one involving Bahrain, which the president says “is apparently a country over there.”

In other foreign-policy action, the president orders an air strike on TikTok.

In college sports, both the Big Ten and Pac-12 vote to resume playing football, citing the improving COVID-19 situation and the fact that the Houston Astros are leading both conferences with a combined 179-0 record. Conference officials say they will implement strict medical protocols to insure that the athletes can safely resume violently injuring each other.

The pandemic continues to dominate the news in…

October
…when the White House announces that President Trump is infected with the coronavirus, as are the first lady, White House staffers and others who have been near the president at events where many people did not wear masks or observe social distancing. This seems to suggest, crazy as it sounds, that the virus — Who could possibly have known this? — is an infectious disease that you can catch from other people.

In an effort to keep the nation informed on the president’s health without creating confusion, the administration employs a two-pronged communications strategy:

Prong one: The president’s doctors hold a press briefing in which they say that the president is doing fine.

Prong two: Immediately thereafter, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows tells reporters that the president’s vital signs are “worrying.”

While hundreds of certified Twitter users without medical degrees offer their insights on this situation, the president begins a course of treatment at Walter Reed that includes an antibody cocktail, an antiviral drug, a steroid and — this really happened — a motorcade ride around the hospital. Trump’s doctors describe the motorcade as “a totally standard medical treatment that is not insanely irresponsible at all.”

Meanwhile the virus continues to spread through the White House, eventually infecting everyone in the executive branch above the rank of custodian. But never mind those people: The important thing is that the president recovers quickly and announces that COVID-19 is frankly no big deal for anybody who has a large team of doctors, 24/7 access to a world-class medical facility and a helicopter. Then, having learned an important lesson from his experience, the president resumes holding massive rallies where many people do not wear masks.

The Senate confirms Amy Coney Barrett after she successfully completes the traditional Judiciary Committee hazing ritual, in which she must answer questions for three consecutive days without saying anything.

Joe Biden enters the final stretch of the campaign with a schedule that sometimes has him doing as many as one appearance per day. Also taking a brutal toll on the former vice president is the fact that he must repeatedly, day after day, deal with the grueling physical strain of not telling reporters what he thinks about packing the Supreme Court. At one appearance, when asked about this, Biden says (this is an actual quote): “the moment I answer that question, the headline in every one of your papers will be on the answer to that question.” While reporters wrestle with the Confucian profundity of this statement, Joe is whisked back to Delaware.

In other political action, vice presidential candidates Mike Pence and Kamala Harris square off in a debate, and the only thing anybody remembers about it 10 minutes later is that a fly landed on Pence’s head.

Two weeks later Trump and Biden have their second debate, during which Trump accuses Biden of wanting to force Americans to have “little, tiny, small windows” and Biden says “Come on!” roughly 200 times. They say many other things as well, but at this point none of it makes any difference.

In social-media news, Twitter blocks a New York Post story about incriminating emails allegedly found on Hunter Biden’s laptop, on the grounds that the story is of questionable origin. This is of course a violation of Twitter’s extremely strict accuracy policy, under which every single tweet that Twitter does allow to be published is 100 percent vetted and legit.

In sports, the coronavirus causes major disruptions in the fall football schedule, the result being that on a single afternoon the New York Jets wind up losing to both the Kansas City Chiefs and Vassar.

On a happier note, the World Series, for the 11th consecutive year, does not in any way involve the New York Yankees.

The month comes to a close with Halloween, a spooky, scary time when the nation is haunted by a relentless onslaught of political TV attack ads in which basically every candidate for public office is depicted as a hideous bloodsucking ghoul. Voters universally detest these ads and the toxic political climate they create, but highly paid campaign consultants continue to produce them, for a sound, data-derived, poll-tested reason: These consultants are scum.

With October finally over, a divided, weary nation trudges into the crucial month of…

November
…when finally, after all the politics and the platitudes, the debates and the demagoguery, the rallies and the riots, the allegations and the alliteration, it’s time for the American people to do what they have done since the founding of the republic: Eat all their leftover Halloween candy. There’s a lot of it this year because there were few trick-or-treaters, leaving many Americans with no choice but to snork down the weight of an adult male cocker spaniel in mini-Snickers. But we do it, because we are Americans, dammit.

Then, at last, it’s Election Day. Millions of voters lurch to the polls, unless they already voted, in which case they remain on the sofa, burping up chocolate fumes and anxiously watching the cable-TV network of their choice.

Political experts are confidently predicting an easy Biden win, possibly a landslide, based on input from professional pollsters armed with conclusions derived from sophisticated statistical analysis of data obtained via surveys of the seven Americans still willing to answer the telephone.

But the actual race turns out to be much closer, and several days pass without a clear winner as the various states count ballots via their individual methods under our quirky, zany Electoral College system.

Florida, which has totally screwed up in previous elections, surprises everybody by reporting the vote count almost immediately, thanks to an executive order by Gov. Ron DeSantis to “just go ahead and re-use the results from 2016, since we counted those already.”

But the process is much slower in states such as Pennsylvania, which uses the base 17 numbering system, and Arizona, where by law votes must be tabulated on cowhides.

It is not until Saturday that the news media call the election for Biden. President Trump accepts the defeat with the calm, mature grace and dignity that have become his trademark as leader of some imaginary nation that we are fantasizing about in this sentence.

In reality Trump claims that he won the election BY A LOT, but it is being stolen from him via a vast, sophisticated, malignant and purely hypothetical vote-fraud scheme. To combat this fraud, the president forms a crack legal team headed by former sane person Rudy “Rudy Three i’s” Giuliani, who presides over what future scholars will view as the single greatest event in the history of America, if not the world.

This occurs when the president announces via tweet that his lawyers will hold a news conference at “Four Seasons, Philadelphia.” Everyone assumes he means the Four Seasons Hotel, but in fact — and here we have definitive proof that there is a God, and He or She has an excellent sense of humor — the event takes place in the parking lot of a company called Four Seasons Total Landscaping, which is located across the street from a cremation center and down the block from Fantasy Island Adult Books and Novelties.

We are not making this up. Nobody could make this up.

The Four Seasons event turns out to be a good indicator of the competence of the Trump legal team, and it eventually becomes clear to everybody not living in the White House that Trump will not successfully challenge Biden’s win.

But it is also clear that, just as in 2016, the media elite greatly underestimated support for Trump, who somehow got more than 74 million votes despite the fact that the media elite doesn’t personally know any Trump supporters, and in fact has devoted four solid years to declaring that anybody who doesn’t hate Trump as much as the media elite does has to be a racist idiot.

So who on Earth could these 74 million Americans be? It’s a mystery that probably will never be solved, at least not by the media elite.

Meanwhile on the coronavirus front, there is good news and bad news:

The good news is that several drug companies announce that they have developed promising vaccine candidates, while Budweiser reports “significant progress” on a hard seltzer that also can be used as hand sanitizer.
The bad news is that the number of cases, in what feels like the 37th wave, is spiking once again, and American consumers are once again creating shortages of toilet paper by buying enough rolls per household to wipe every butt in Denmark for a year. Many states impose tough new COVID restrictions, most notably California, which bans “all human activity not personally involving the governor.”
Speaking of states taking action: On Nov. 12 the nation pauses to observe the 50th anniversary of the date that the Oregon state highway department attempted to dispose of an 8-ton dead whale on a beach by detonating a thousand pounds of dynamite under the carcass, the result being that vast quantities of putrid whale flesh were blasted into the sky, and then, because of gravity — which apparently nobody had told the Oregon state highway department about — it came back down all over the crowd of spectators gathered to watch. Historians agree that this was the greatest thing that ever happened in the world prior to the Trump legal team press conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping.

In arts and culture news, Guinness World Records announces that the most watched video in YouTube history, with over 7 billion views, is “Baby Shark Dance,” which was created by a South Korean company called “Pinkfong” that for some inexplicable reason we never took out with a nuclear missile even though the entire world would have thanked us.

President Trump, carrying on a cherished White House tradition, pardons turkeys named “Corn” and “Cob” and a former national security adviser named “Michael Flynn.” “Corn” and “Michael Flynn” were convicted of making false statements to the FBI; “Cob” was serving a four-year sentence for tax evasion.

Joe Biden, preparing for a historically difficult transition to a presidency that will be confronted with a daunting array of critical challenges both at home and abroad, fractures his foot playing with a dog.

As the month draws to a close, Americans celebrate Thanksgiving as the Pilgrims did, by gathering with their loved ones for a communal meal in the basement with the lights off so as to avoid detection by the authorities.

And then, at last, the finish line of this wretched year looms ahead as we stagger into…

December
…which begins with good news and bad news on the economy:

The good news is, holiday retail sales are strong.
The bad news is, most of these sales are online purchases of Four Seasons Total Landscaping T-shirts.
The other hot holiday wish-list item is the coveted Sony PlayStation 5 gaming console, which is nearly impossible to find in stores due to the fact that it does not, physically, exist.

“We made a bunch of cool commercials for it,” states a Sony marketing executive, “but as for an actual device that you can plug in, nah.”

Long-term, the economic outlook remains troubling, with the U.S. economy being kept afloat mainly by consumers making monthly payments to Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Disney Plus, CBS All Access, HBO Now, Peacock, HBO Max, Discovery Plus, Starz, Chickadee, Eyeballz, Amazon Super Deluxe, HBO Medium Rare, Chickadee Plus, Disney Extra Special, Amazon Supreme Unleaded, HBO Gluten Free and a bewildering array of other streaming services that consumers rarely watch but keep paying for because they can’t figure out how to cancel their subscriptions.

“These people are pumping millions of dollars a month into the economy,” states Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. “God help us if they ever remember their passwords.”

In other national news, President Trump, faced with soaring coronavirus cases and a congressional stalemate over a desperately needed relief package, devotes his energies, as chief executive, to tweeting approximately once per hour that the election was RIGGED. The Trump legal team, alleging that there was a massive organized conspiracy to commit vote fraud, files multiple lawsuits, but achieves basically the same legal outcome as Hamilton Burger, the stupendously ineffective district attorney on the “Perry Mason” TV show, who went to court week after week for many seasons and almost never won a case, WHICH ONLY PROVES HOW MASSIVE AND ORGANIZED THIS CONSPIRACY IS.

While the president continues to insist that he was re-elected, members of his staff quietly prepare for the transition by updating their resumes and conducting a search for the briefcase containing the nuclear launch codes, believed last seen in the back of a golf cart in Bedminster, N.J.

As the curtain gradually descends on the Trump administration, it becomes Joe Biden’s turn to take center stage and face the harsh scrutiny of the Washington press corps. Leading the way is CNN, which broadcasts a hard-hitting two-hour special report on the incoming Biden administration, featuring a panel of eight journalists who unanimously agree that if George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln were alive today, they would definitely fracture their feet playing with dogs.

In business news, Amazon pays $237 billion in cash to acquire Four Seasons Total Landscaping.

In the arts, Rolling Stone magazine declares that the number one song of 2020 is “WAP,” which is an abbreviation for something that we cannot publish in a family newspaper, but suffice it to say that if any year deserved to have this declared as its best song, that year would be 2020.

Finally, after 12 nightmarish months, 2020 draws to a close, and…

…and here we must interrupt our narrative to let you, the reader, in on a little secret: Because of newspaper deadlines, we have to turn in our year-in-review in mid-December, before the year is actually over. Normally this doesn’t matter, because the holiday season tends to be a slow news time.

But this is no normal year, and I'm nervous. We worry that something major, by which we mean bad, will happen after our deadline — something involving the election, or the virus, or some awful thing we cannot even imagine. Like for example, maybe astronomers will announce that because of the human race snacking at historically high levels during the pandemic lockdown, the Earth has gained a huge amount of mass, which has slowed the planet down in its orbit around Sun, and as a result, to make the calendar work out, we have to add an ENTIRE MONTH to 2020. This month would of course be called…

Pandember
…which you probably think can’t possibly happen, right? What a crazy idea!

As crazy as masked Americans fighting over toilet paper.

The point is, what could have happened this year, includes the murder of Nancy Pelosi and the lynching of Mike Pense like a scene out of Hannibal.. I'm just hoping that next year is nothing like this one. In that spirit, we’ll close with the wish we survive to see the agonizing holocaust.