2025

Happy New Year from Sweet Merciful Zeus!

A very happy 2025, everyone!

The artwork above is courtesy of my friend Janet Burroff. Eight years ago, I asked Jan if I could feature a New Year’s image of hers in my 2017 New Year’s Day post, and we have kept up the tradition every year since, first at Patriot Retort and now at Sweet Merciful Zeus.

What a mad year 2024 has been.

We started the year with Joseph Robinette Biden running virtually uncontested in the Democrat primaries and capped it off with Joe on permanent vacation while Kamala Harris lost every swing state to Donald Trump.

Like Hillary Clinton before her, Kamala refused to face her supporters after the race was called for Trump. Instead, she sent a campaign adviser out on stage to instruct them to go home.

When Kamala finally emerged the following day, there wasn’t a dry eye in the crowd. Even her running mate, her husband, and her surprise guest Harry Potter were inconsolable.

To borrow a phrase from our absent president: Here’s the deal, Jack: Trump won the election on that day in July when he defiantly rose from the stage after surviving an assassin’s bullet.

The photo by Associated Press photographer Evan Vucci of Trump’s fist raised as the Secret Service escorted him off the stage isn’t just the greatest image of 2024; it is probably the most iconic image of presidential politics in more than a generation.

How could Kamala Harris, a woman terrified to take questions from reporters, compete against that image of defiance and strength?

Vucci also gave us my second favorite photo of 2024, which I like to title “Joe’s Revenge.”

I don’t think Joe Biden has ever looked happier, do you? Not even a dozen 8-year-old girls in red velvet dresses and Mary Janes could put a smile that big on old Joe’s face.

You can see why many suspected that Biden was secretly delighted that Trump beat Kamala like a redheaded stepchild.

And Trump did, without a doubt.

Donald Trump outmaneuvered Kamala Harris at every turn, despite the corporate media doing everything they could to spin political shit into gold.

The former president exploited every Kamala weakness to his advantage, sometimes with hilariously memorable results:

While I do not doubt that Joe Biden would’ve lost if he remained in the race, swapping him out for Kamala friggin’ Harris after that disastrous debate performance was a tremendously bad idea.

It astounds me that the Democrats in Congress (and Barack Obama) thought that shoving Joe aside in the eleventh hour and replacing him with the even less popular Kamala Harris was a good idea.

It will be remembered as the worst political decision in US history — one that could have been avoided if only Jill and her narcissistic, deluded husband hadn’t insisted on running for reelection.

2024 will also be remembered as the year the American corporate media was caught colluding in the worst presidential scandal in the nation’s history.

For more than four years, the media pretended that the decrepit, senile old man we could see and hear for ourselves wasn’t decrepit or senile, and those suggesting such a thing were peddling “conspiracy theories” and “cheap fakes.”

But then Joe Biden collapsed like a soufflé in the CNN debate, and the same media that shielded him from scrutiny since 2020 pretended to be shocked (SHOCKED, I tell you!) that Grandpa Joe was a decrepit old crock who couldn’t string a sentence together without getting tangled in the words.

It was rather galling in recent weeks to see clips on Twitter of reporters pretending that they were bamboozled by the White House. Who are they kidding? They weren’t taken in by a conspiracy to hide Biden’s infirmity. They were part of it. It is up to us to ensure that they don’t rewrite history to hide their role in this scandal.

I can’t say that this past year has been a laugh riot for me. I lost my job to artificial intelligence, and while I found a part-time administrative job to replace it, the reduction in income has been quite a blow. On top of that, my health has been a challenge. Then again, I’m getting older, and getting older is always challenging, even without Lupus.

I rarely, if ever, indulge in New Year's resolutions. The last resolution I made was in 2009 when I decided to quit smoking (16 years and counting!). But for 2025, I resolve to defy Lupus by improving my health through proper eating and exercise. It isn’t strictly a New Year’s resolution since I started the proper eating bit nearly two months ago. But let’s not quibble over technicalities.

There is always a sense of hope for the New Year — especially when it brings with it the end of a miserable, unpopular presidency. Donald Trump has definitely benefited from that sense of hope. According to Real Clear Politics polling average, a majority of Americans approve of the president-elect’s transition, no doubt because they are looking forward to a change in Washington.

But when you get down to brass tacks, the first of January is just another day on the calendar. The year laid out before us still arrives one day at a time, and it is up to each of us to decide what we will make those days as they come.

May we all choose peace and purpose in each day of this new year.

If you haven’t yet, take a few minutes to read Dianny’s Ten Most Tiresome People of 2024. It’s always worth a laugh or two.