Apple Roller Of The Year, 2019

THIS WAS A TOUGH ONE.  SO MUCH HAPPENED THIS YEAR!

There was CONSTANT CONTROVERSY all over the planet: 

>> Syrians are spilling over the borders of any other country they can get to, in the attempt to escape all the discord back home.  Even Turkey, which has already taken in nearly 4 million desperate people, finally closed its borders, leaving I know not how many more to freeze, starve, or both.  

>> Speaking of Turkey, their president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is still going by all 3 names in the press, as if he were a serial killer, and indeed the UN is calling for an investigation into what they see as his war crimes.  

>> Speaking of war crimes: far-right, even fascist political parties are moving into the spotlight all over the planet.  You're even hearing about it in places like Germany and Italy, where they REALLY ought to know better.

>> Also speaking of war crimes, I give you 2 words:  Uighur genocide.  Even the COVID-19 epidemic hasn't slowed that shit down.

>> And the weather!  Polar vortices, bomb cyclones, wildfires, hurricanes, droughts, floods, glaciers cracking up!  Never a dull moment!

>> Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin is working to consolidate his power so he never needs to run for office again, and just run the country forever, as Russians fill the streets, protesting to the point where I start to wonder if the worm has finally turned over there in Moscow.  

>> Putin's girlfriend, Donald Trump, has continued to do whatever the random fuck enters his head, proclaiming far and wide that anything he does is absolutely legal -- yeah, just the way Nixon used to talk.  He did of course get himself IMPEACHED last year but is blithely campaigning for a second term in office after the Senate really, really outdid themselves.  THEIR big apple roll of the year was refusing to hear any testimony against their beloved leader, then citing that as apparent proof that there IS no evidence against him, and electing to keep him in office without so much as looking at his tax returns.  Why?  Apparently this is an attempt to wreck the GOP's longstanding reputation as stodgy law-and-order conservatives.  Well played, boys, well played.  It's teamwork that makes the dream work!

>> The mayhem over Brexit never let up for a second; indeed it continues as I write this. Theresa May stepped down as PM, in tears.  Then Prince Harry and his wife stepped down from the royal family, shocking everyone and his hamster.  They didn't even discuss it with anyone before announcing it.  As far as I know, nothing of the sort has ever happened before.  I don't count l'affaire Wallis Simpson because King Edward VIII abdicated so he could marry her.  In the case of Harry and Megan, they were all married and accepted into the royal family and THEN they stepped down because they just didn't want to be royals.  I love it. 

Where do I even start on all this?  

After hours of sober consideration -- actually, a whole year of it -- I have to award the Apple Roller of the Year to the U.S. Senate.  Not only did they betray themselves and every American citizen by refusing to hear the evidence following Trump's impeachment -- undoubtedly so they could continue to put pieces of paper in front of him that he will sign without reading them -- but they are actually backing him as the 2020 presidential candidate, even though the guy is musing in public about making himself President for Life as if he were, gosh, Vladimir Putin.  This is tantamount to unleashing Chaos on the planet on a level we have never before seen.  This should be an interesting election year, all right.