By Laurie Baron
January –The Russian police have alerted spectators at the Sochi Olympics to be on the outlook for several “Black Widow Terrorists, women from Dagestan whose husbands were killed by Russian anti-terrorist squads. There are posters throughout the Olympic venues informing spectators how to identify these women: If you meet a woman on the internet dating site www.iharmuandme.bom, she’s probably a terrorist. If you see her planting IED’s on the Ski Jump, she’s probably a terrorist. If she thinks dying as a martyr will guarantee her a spot on Al-Jazeera’s version of the Bachelorette, she’s probably a terrorist. If the PIN codes for all her credit cards are 911, she’s probably a terrorist.
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February –The one trillion dollar Farm Bill finally passed in the Senate with bipartisan support. It grants enormous subsidies to American agribusinesses and cuts food stamps for approximately 1.7 million poor people. Now the United States is assured of having enough of a grain surplus to make ethanol enabling Americans to power their cars but not to nourish their bodies.
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March–Russian lawmakers have approved the use of force to reinstate President Viktor Yanukovych back into power. No new legislation had to be created. They merely changed the name of the country being invaded from Czechoslovakia to Ukraine and the dates from 1968 to 2014.
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April–The Supreme Court is hearing Hobby Lobby’s lawsuit to exclude it from the provision of Obama Care that mandates health insurance cover the costs of contraception. The company foresees that the lack of inexpensive contraception will prompt women to encourage their boyfriends and husbands to take up a hobby.
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May–Now that he has been banned from NBA Basketball, Donald Sterling is looking into a new line of work. ESPN reportedly has rejected his proposal for a new program in which he would interview only white NBA players.
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June–ISIS, a brutal fundamentalist Sunni Islamic group, now occupies wide swaths of Iraq and Syria. Syria has bombed a border town ISIS holds, and the Iraqi government has approved of the Syrian action and welcomes Iranian aid in its war against ISIS. Israel has offered to help moderate Arab states suppress the Islamic insurgents, and, Saudi Arabia, which had been covertly funding ISIS, now condemns it. In an unrelated story, Mayan astronomers announced that they have rechecked the positions of the planets and stars and found their prediction of the end of the world in 2012 was two years premature.
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July–The latest GM recall is the 54th this year, thus tying it with the number of times the House of Representatives has repealed Obama Care. The two groups have been selected as finalists for the upcoming World Cup of Redundancy.
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August–Although Israel and Hamas are finally honoring a ceasefire, both still bitterly blame the other for the recent conflict. Israel accuses Hamas of tunnel vision, and Hamas castigates Israeli leaders for being blockade heads.
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September–The Koch Brothers celebrated the Senate’s failure to muster enough votes for a constitutional amendment to reverse the Citizens United decision. Political action committees funded by the brothers are now lobbying for adding a green stripe to the American flag and replacing the stars with dollar signs.
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October–As the United States faces the threat of Ebola, it lacks a Surgeon General to formulate policy to contain the epidemic at home and abroad. On the other hand, the city of Dallas has employed Service Master to remove infected bedding and garments from the apartment of the Dallas man stricken with Ebola and plans to delegate the monitoring and quarantining of potential Ebola carriers to Minute Clinic.
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November–Somewhere in hell Joseph McCarthy watched last night’s election results. Not knowing that television networks now designate Republican states as red and Democratic ones as blue, he looked at the electoral map and commented, “I warned Congress the communists would take over the United States!”
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December–Shortly before he was killed by a policeman, Michael Brown was caught on videotape stealing cigarillos from a convenience store. Stopped for illegally selling individual cigarettes from a pack, Eric Garner was choked to death by a policeman trying to subdue him. What is more hazardous to heath, tobacco products or being an African American male?
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Preview of 2015: Paying close attention to how North Korea’s demand to not screen The Interview has boosted the film’s box-office revenue, SONY Pictures plans to produce more movies that will offend foreign dictators. The first will be Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky VII: Punching Putin. Angry that Putin has squandered the goodwill between Russia and the United States generated with his fight against Drago in Rocky IV, Rocky challenges Putin to a fight and punches the pierogis out of him.
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Baron is professor emeritus of history at San Diego State University. He may be contacted via lawrence.baron@sdjewishworld.com . San Diego Jewish World points out to new readers that this column is satire, and nothing herein should be taken literally.