What’s Up With Greenland?

More than you probably think...

The Chinese have been accused of human rights violations and stealing technology and predatory business practices and cyber intrusions and trying to take over the world in general and the Russians are invading other countries and assassinating enemies and committing war crimes and conducting sabotage and cyberattacks, so with all that happening we decide to get tough with Greenland.

What’s up with that?

According to the internet, the idea of taking over Greenland started with Silicon Valley Tech Bros (a category of humans that are now making the rest of us pay for the fact that they couldn’t get dates in high school) because Greenland has minerals they want and temperatures that would be just right for their giant-ass heat-generating server farms and it’s isolated at the top of the world so when climate change turns the Continental United States into a Radar Range they’ll be at just the right temperature and they also think, “Wouldn’t it be great if we controlled our own country?”

Multi-billionaire Peter Thiel – an associate of Elon Musk’s and Jeffrey Epstein’s – wants his own city in Greenland and it’s going to be called Praxis (a group of lions is called a “pride” and I’m pretty sure a group of pricks is called a “praxis”) where the fabulously rich get to make all the rules and if you put people with the moral standards of a Great White Shark in charge (and a group of Great White Sharks is called the U.S. Senate) there’s no telling what those rules might be.

Turns out, the rich are interested in building their own cities based on laissez-faire principals (which is French for “fuck the poor”) and the Pricks of Praxis (which would be a great name for a Rolling Stones album) claim they already have 87,000 Praxians as part of its current “internet-only state” and they consider themselves “warrior kings” and talk about power flowing from “divine order” (God gave me a shit ton of money, so clearly I should be in charge) and building Praxis would be a stepping stone to colonizing Mars where hot scantily-clad chicks would do their bidding (sounds like they got a lot of their ideas from Dune) and just in case you think I made all this up because it certainly sounds batshit crazy, here’s an article all about it:

https://www.insidehook.com/internet/peter-thiel-praxis-next-great-city-greenland

Almost Forgot, They Also Want To Live Forever

Now here’s an article about multi-billionaires like Thiel and Jeff Bezos who are pissed off that they’re going to die (just like the poor people they abhor) and are trying to buy their way out of Death through genetic research, but they’re facing government regulations and ethical questions about that research, so if they owned Greenland – and Elon Musk has suggested buying it – they could do whatever the fuck they want and test out their genetic ideas on us non-billionaires first:

https://nypost.com/2025/01/07/health/behind-the-billionaire-backed-longevity-business-and-the-quest-to-live-longer/

The multi-billionaires are trying to portray this Live Forever Research as a benefit for all humanity and they admit it will be incredibly expensive at first, but eventually it will “trickle down” to the rest of us which is the same crap they told us about tax breaks for the rich and how’d that work out?

One small problem: if everybody lives longer lives and fewer people die, that means more strain on the environment and as a critic remarked, living longer on a dying planet is pretty much pointless.

But don’t worry, the Rich People who currently run things won’t give homeless people shelter or hungry people food or sick people medicine and according to the internet the most expensive prescription drug in America is Zolgensma which helps children born with a fatal disease – spinal muscular atrophy – which goes for about $2 million a dose, so if they won’t give dying children life-saving drugs unless those children happen to find $2 million in dimes and quarters between their family room couch cushions, I’m thinking it’s really unlikely they’re going to be handing out some Really Expensive Live Forever Drug along with our Food Stamps.

Anyway…

Donald Trump will listen to anyone who kisses his ass so he’s all hot about Greenland because some Tech Bros want to establish an Oligarchy of 300-Year-Old Billionaire Mummies Ruling the World.

Next subject?

Effective Altruism

Google “what is effective altruism” and you’ll be informed that it’s a 21^st Century philosophy and social movement that advocates impartially calculating benefits and prioritizing causes to provide the most good to the most people which sounds like it might be OK right up until you hear one of its major advocates is (and you’re going to enjoy this):

Sam Bankman-Fried.

Effective altruism advocates have argued that if a building were burning and you had to choose between saving a child or a Picasso painting, you should save the painting, sell it and save lots of children, a position that makes it abundantly clear why they don’t put effective altruists in charge of fire departments.

“Yeah, we lost the twins, but here’s that Ming vase you were worried about.”

Turns out, the Fucktards in Silicon Valley (and my computer just accepted “Fucktards” as a real word so I guess I’ve worn down its standards too) latched on to this idea and mixed in “longtermism” (which my computer doesn’t think is a real word, probably because it isn’t) and the key principle in this movement is future people matter just as much as people alive today, therefore…

If I do something that looks really bad today like stealing all your money or sucking blood out of my 17-year-old son (more on that in a moment) but it benefits future people, I’m not a criminal or a flaming asshole, so shut the fuck up and give us Greenland.

And Now A Message For Any Republicans I Haven’t Already Driven Off

Bryan Johnson is one of the I Want To Live Forever Because I Deserve It Billionaires and used his own 17 year-old son (who he apparently calls “blood boy”) for “young blood” transfusions (apparently the sludge us old guys have in our veins is like motor oil with 100,000 miles on it) and took a liter of blood from his own kid and if you google “is a liter of blood a lot to lose” the answer is:

“Fuck yes.”

OK, I added the profanity, but the AI overview said a losing a liter of blood (about one fifth of what you have in your body) is too much and can be life-threatening and lead to shock, so if this Billionaire Vampire is willing to do this to his own kid, imagine what he’d be willing to do to you.

If you voted for Trump and like what Elon Musk is doing and are currently thinking:

“Great, it’s us against you Liberals!”

Think again because I sincerely doubt Multi-Billionaires consider you part of their posse and if you suddenly burst into flames on the 17^th tee at Mar-A-Lago, Donald Trump wouldn’t even bother to piss on you, he’d just yell “Playing through!” and tell his caddy to have some minimum wage clubhouse attendant come out with a rake and bucket to clean up your ashes.

You are not part of their clique and if sucking your blood or taking your job or letting your kid die because you can’t afford the right drug advances their personal interest one-sixteenth of an inch, they’ll fuck you over and not lose a minute of sleep.

As a number of now-unemployed MAGA voters have discovered, the people currently in charge aren’t loyal to anything or anybody but themselves, which I believe people were telling you before you voted to put these self-centered assholes in charge.

I’d say live and learn, but that’s not always the case and if you’re enthusiastic about a third Trump term, enjoy being a sex slave (if you’re hot) a blood boy (if you’re not) in Greenland.

One More Thing Before We Go

Here’s a quote from an article about Bryan Johnson and his quest to Live Forever:

“As well as blood transfusions, Johnson follows a strict daily routine that includes monitoring his body fat, heart rate variability, blood, stool samples, and the number of erections he has per night.”

The part that caught my eye and probably yours was the monitoring of night time erections, which makes me wonder just how this is done: does Johnson wake up and put a checkmark next to “Nocturnal Stiffies” or does he pay someone else to watch his dick (and men seem to think other people are way more interested in our dicks than has proven to be the case) and I think the point here is all these Nerd Billionaires are really weird dudes that have infantile fantasies based on comic books and pornography.

OK, wait…I just described me.

But the difference is I don’t have a bajjillion dollars or a group of encouraging sycophants that allow me to act out all my weird fantasies and I’m guessing Candace Parker, Helen Mirren and Roy Roger’s horse Trigger are pretty happy about that and as interesting as all that is, maybe we should finish up by getting back to today’s subject:

Infantile Billionaires with Poor Social Skills being in charge and all the weird shit they’ll drag the rest of us in to, so if you’ve been wondering “What’s Up With Greenland?” now you know.

http://kingfeatures.com/comics/editorial-cartoons-a-z/

Everything You Never Wanted to Know About Kauffman Stadium

Part 2 (it's got pictures of Farrah Fawcett and Zoe Kravitz)…

Today, let’s start here…

The people who build ballparks often neglect to talk to ballplayers before they build them which is how the Minnesota Twins (another one of those politically incorrect teams named after “people” and I can’t believe we haven’t heard from the Twins of America lobby) wound up playing for 27 years in the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, a ballpark with a white ceiling with little round white lights that looked just like baseballs.

And if you’re thinking, “Man, those Minnesotans sure are dumb” stop thinking that because we were getting ready to make the same mistake here in KC.

When the Star’s Editorial Board was invited to the architects’ offices to look at drawings of that rolling roof they wanted us to build, the roof was white. When I asked if the roof was going to actually be white if we built the rolling roof, apparently none of the people involved had considered that or thought it might be a problem.

(Trust me, if they ever convince us to build a new ballpark they’re going to fuck it up somehow, which is another column I’ve already written.)

Which brings us to…

The Kauffman Stadium Field Level Scoreboards

In baseball’s never-ending quest to put advertising everywhere and make us much money as possible, the Royals eventually added field-level scoreboards (the ones built into the outfield wall) and apparently it didn’t occur to anybody that at night those brightly lit scoreboards would blind players, coaches and umpires and make it hard to tell if a fly ball had been caught in front of one.

A visiting third base coach described the problem:

When that right field scoreboard is lit up like a Vegas billboard advertising Wayne Newton and the All-You-Can-Eat-But-Don’t-Really-Need Buffet (and turns out, Wayne is still performing) third base coaches have a hard time seeing whether a ball is caught and smart coaches depend on the home crowd noise (cheers for a home team outfielder’s catch, groans for a miss) to know what happened.

So if you’re ever sitting in the outfield above those scoreboards and can organize everybody to have misleading reactions when the visiting team is batting you can help the Royals win a game and I can’t believe the Royals aren’t paying me to suggest this.

The Bullpens

The right field bullpen is considered the better bullpen by pitchers and when I asked a Royals relief pitcher why, he said because you can get back to the clubhouse from the right field bullpen without going on the field, but when you’re in the left field bullpen you’re stuck and the only door out there is the door to the restroom.

The Royals had their bullpen in left field for a while and the reliever I talked to said he hated it and when I asked why, he said:

“No drunk girls from Rivals.”

Rivals is the sports bar at the top of right field and when you see a player sign a ball and toss it to a female fan, it would not be totally surprising if it had the player’s hotel room number on it, which is more likely to happen on the road because that’s where most of the ballplayer hijinks take place and is one of the main reasons teams play worse on the road and better at home.

As a perceptive coach once pointed out to me:

“Did you ever notice the Chicago Cubs didn’t win shit until they got lights?”

No lights meant all day games and every night off in Chicago and a bunch of Cubs playing with hangovers.

And while we’re talking about Baseball Hijinks, a member of the Royals grounds crew told me that some teams (he assured me the Royals didn’t do this) make sure the visiting bullpen mound is different—higher, lower, steeper or more shallow—than the game mound because maybe it will take an opposing pitcher a few pitches to adjust to the new mound and if you see an out-of-town reliever come in and get whacked on the first couple pitches, that might be part of the reason.

As far as I know—and these days I don’t know very far—nobody checks the bullpen mounds and makes sure they match the game mound and speaking of things that aren’t uniform…

The Warning Track

It seems insane (which describes any number of our current National Policies) but there is no standard width for a Big League outfield warning track.

When the Royals had tall outfielders like Lorenzo Cain and Alex Rios and Kamikaze Outfielder Alex Gordon, they widened their warning track and all tracks are different, so outfielders have to remember what city they’re in and how many steps they can take on the warning track before slamming into the wall and if you make me Commissioner of Baseball (we’ve had worse) I’d fix that right after I forced every team owner to sit in the stands at least once a home stand and pay $15 for a beer.

And while we’re on the subject of warning tracks…

Some outfielders are afraid of the wall and slow up as soon as they step on the warning track and let catchable balls fall in, but the right way to play the wall is get to the wall as quickly as possible – feel for it with your throwing hand or glove – and then come away from the wall to make the catch.

Now here’s why you might not want to boo an outfielder who doesn’t do that.

When I first started covering baseball I had an amateur’s point of view: players should give the mathematically improbable 110% on every play.

But careers and seasons can be ruined by injury and do you really want your All-Star outfielder diving into the stands when your team is down by 10 runs in a game that doesn’t matter?

Which means players need to know when to back off and when to dive into dugout suites and here’s Mike Moustakas making the right choice in a 1-1 game against Baltimore in the American League Championship Series.

One last thing about watching outfielders: when the ball goes up, don’t watch the ball because people think routine pop flies are going to be homers. Watch the outfielder instead and he’ll let you know if this is going to be routine play or an ESPN highlight.

The Grass

When you’re looking at the field some parts look dark and some parts look light and when I asked why, I was told the blades of grass are bent different directions by the mowing and the light parts are reflecting the stadium lights or sun and the dark parts are bent the opposite direction and casting shadows.

No idea how they get it so geometrically precise (I was going to spend a day working with the ground crew, but the Star fired me first—not that I’m bitter or anything) and the part that should interest you is this:

A bouncing ball slightly changes direction every time it hits a different section (you can see that if they show the ball in slow motion) and that’s called “snaking” and I’ve seen a playoff game lost when an outfielder didn’t anticipate the ball changing direction on its final bounce.

A checkerboard pattern will have more “snaking” than a sunrise pattern (more opportunities to change direction) and I don’t know how this information improves your life, but I feel confident you’ll eventually repeat it to someone who cares just as little as you do.

Grass length is also a huge deal and grounds crews will cut it shorter if they have a young athletic infield (it makes the infield faster) and longer if the infield can remember disco, once wore platform shoes and ever had that poster of Farah Fawcett on their bedroom wall.

A grounds keeper told me he balked when he was asked to make the grass short on the right side (the team had a young first and second baseman) and longer on the left side (and an old third baseman) and they also have tricks for making the ground hard or soft in front of the plate (depending on whether the home team likes to bunt, which is happening less and less often) or overwatering the area around first base if the visiting team likes to steal and when the Royals were stealing a lot of bases in 2014 and ’15 every time they played the Chicago White Sox the area around first base looked like the Okefenokee Swamp.

The Dirt

Everything You Never Wanted to Know About Kauffman Stadium

Even if you’re not a baseball fan you should still read this (I included jokes)…

Baseball has cranked back up again and this is going to be one of those essays that some people love and other people hate because it’s about Baseball and watching games in Kauffman Stadium and how different ballparks change what we see.

It has long been my position that the more you know about Baseball the more interesting Baseball becomes, but not everyone agrees and if you hate Baseball you’re not exactly dead to me, but you do have one foot in the grave and the other one on a roller skate and a nagging cough which might turn into something more serious.

But hang in there and maybe you’ll learn something that makes Baseball slightly more interesting than mowing your lawn which I’m guessing you don’t want to do anyway.

It’s a Huge Ballpark

Kauffman Stadium has one of if not the biggest outfields in the Big Leagues when it comes to square footage (according to the internet, only Coors Field is bigger, but I don’t totally trust the internet on this subject or the number of single women in my area who want to meet me) but what this means to you the fan is you need to quit complaining about how few home runs the Royals hit—the park’s just too big.

When we were all still employed in Baseball, I asked Royals GM Dayton Moore how many home runs he thought Adam Dunn would hit if he played for the Royals and Dayton said:

“Adam Dunn would never play here.”

Because Adam Dunn made a living hitting home runs and Kauffman Stadium would cut down the number of home runs Dunn hit which would not help Dunn’s career so the Royals would have to overpay to get Dunn to come to KC and then they wouldn’t get the home runs they paid for.

The Royals were 20^th in home runs last season – which is better than average, they’ve often been last – but because of those huge dimensions, once a ball splits a gap it’s going to roll for a long long time which explains why last year the Royals were 12^th in doubles and 3^rd in triples.

So forget fly ball hitters, they won’t play well in Kauffman; you want line drive hitters who can scamper after they hit one.

And Now A Word About Triples

Triples are mostly hit to right field because that’s the field furthest and/or farthest from third base and that’s also why right fielders need strong arms and Kauffman Stadium makes triples even more likely by having rounded corners.

The rounded corners means a ball that gets under the outfield pads acts like it’s in a pinball machine and shoots out by the bullpen gate. Any outfielder who chases a ball directly into the right field corner is making a mistake because he actually needs to run to the right field bullpen gate and wait there.

I know this.

People whose original language is Mandarin know this.

If there are UFOs and space aliens who like to conduct anal probes on hillbillies, the space aliens and hillbillies know this.

And yet…

The Royals lost their Opening Day game when the Cleveland Guardians Kyle Manzardo (at first I wrote the Cleveland “Indians” because Cleveland Guardians is lame and we all think “Cleveland Indians” anyway and bullshit if you deny this) hit a ball down into the right field corner and Royals right fielder Hunter Renfro ran to the wrong spot—directly into the corner—and turned a double into a triple which should never ever never happen to a Royals right fielder because those corners are famous.

Renfro’s got no excuse because he played 120 games for the Royals last year and I should not know more about playing Kauffman’s right field corner than he does and I’m guessing he’s been told this repeatedly, but forgot in the heat of the moment and more on that before we’re through.

Now Back To That Huge Outfield

Just in case you haven’t been paying attention to Our Theoretical National Pastime (Our Actual National Pastime is bitching about things on social media, including people who bitch and social media) Baseball is currently way too in love with home runs which is kind of like watching your daughter date a Young Republican because I’m pretty sure that’s how Eva Braun and Hitler started out.

And because Baseball is Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs when it comes to the homers, teams are willing to play horseshit defenders if they hit enough of them.

And now a word about that…

The people who measure everything in numbers don’t take defense as seriously as offense because it’s hard to measure defense (you’re trying to count things that don’t happen) and as more than one ballplayer told me: “If the numbers guys don’t know how to measure something, they ignore it and pretend it doesn’t matter.”

But a run kept off the board matters just as much as a run put on the board and if you don’t believe me, do the math.

OK, so now you’ve got some horseshit defenders playing the outfield in Kauffman Stadium and horseshit defenders think it’s easier to come in on a fly ball than go back on a fly ball (probably because it is) so those horseshit defenders play too deep.

And here we’re going to quote outfield guru Rusty Kuntz who taught me pretty much everything I know (which isn’t much, but still more than average) about outfield positioning.

Straight-Up

• Walk from first base to second base, keep going for 70-to-75 steps and that’s the “straight-up” position for left field.

• Third base to second base, 70-to-75 steps and that’s “straight-up” in right field.

• Home to second, 70-to-75 steps and that’s “straight-up” for center although centerfielders can’t play true straight-up because they’d be looking at the pitcher’s back, so to see home plate they’re positioned off to one side or the other.

All positioning is supposed to be done in relation to second base because it’s always in the same place in every ballpark while outfield walls vary, but insecure outfielders position themselves five steps off the warning track no matter what park they’re playing in and that includes Yellowstone which as I understand it is another park it’s hard to hit a ball out of.

Which means…

We see a pitcher get blooped, bleeped, dinked and doinked to death and think it’s the pitcher’s fault when actually it’s the outfielders who are too scared to play shallow.

And if you’ve never been around humans and think just because a coach tells someone to do something (like play shallow or don’t chase a ball into the corner) that the person involved will listen and do exactly what he’s told, I can tell you—once again everybody involved is no longer in Baseball—the Royals had a hard time getting Nori Aoki to play where they wanted him to play because once they positioned Nori he’d subtly move back to where he wanted to play.

Just because someone tells you to do something it doesn’t mean you’re going to do it, and can I get an “Amen” from all the married members of the audience?

Positioning Cards

But the safe move is to play where the coaches tell you to play because then if a ball falls in, it’s their fault, not yours. And these days they tell players where to play with “positioning cards” and if you look for “baseball positioning cards” on Google Images the picture below is the first image you’ll see and that’s my hand holding a Royals outfield card which would seem to indicate no other baseball reporter was that interested in the subject – before or since – not that I’m bitter or anything.

Anyway…

You start from the straight-up position and if the outfielder looks at his card and it says G1 that means one step toward the gap and L1 means one step toward the line.

So players and coaches have to know where straight-up is and (no idea of they still do this) but outfielders would walk off “straight-up” and drop a handful of sunflower seeds on that spot so they could find it again without counting.

The Magic Touch

Assuming you’re not in a medically induced coma (an option you might want to consider for the next four years) you’ve probably heard that former FOX news contributor, accused Binge Drinker and Secretary of Defense (a trifecta of qualifications rarely seen in Cabinet members) Pete Hegseth accidentally sent plans for an air strike to the Atlantic magazine’s editor-in-chief.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt proved they picked the exact right person for the job when she said: “no classified information was posted” which means one of two things:

A. Karoline Leavitt is a big fat liar liar, pants on fire, her nose is longer than a telephone wire, or…

B. The Trump Administration thinks the exact timing of warplane launches and bomb drops doesn’t need to be classified.

To make this screw-up even more ironic (or in this case, maybe I actually mean mo-ronic) apparently they’d been worried about leaks at the Pentagon before they started putting up billboards and texting the town crier and sky writing the details of our plans for upcoming military attacks and if Pete Hegseth had been in charge of the Normandy Invasion he probably would have shared those plans with Hedda Hopper and I sincerely hope the World War II motto still holds true:

“Loose lips sink shits.”

I may have that quote “technically” wrong—your call—but had the information gotten into the wrong hands (and Hegseth was being extremely sloppy with that information), accidentally publicizing attack plans before the attack took place might have allowed the targets to escape or, even worse, get ready for the attack and guess what; the Houthis have missiles.

So by being an Enormous Dumbass, which seems to be a fulltime occupation, the Secretary of Defense endangered U.S. pilots.

This is what happens when you put unqualified blockheads in charge and we’re going to see a lot more of this before we’re through.

The people who are screwing up just about everything they touch (a thought that led to the cartoon at the top of this post) have now announced they’ve got some great ideas about conducting elections and just in case you haven’t been able to keep track of their wide assortment of excuses and rationales for the bullshit they get up to:

They argued that the Department of Education should be disbanded because clearly, the individual states should get to decide just how dumb they’d like their residents to be, which, by the way was the same reasoning that allowed slavery to exist:

“Hey, if the Great State of Alabama thinks it’s OK to own other humans, who are we to disagree?”

But when it comes to elections, suddenly the states are incompetent knuckleheads and the federal government needs to step in and fix things because whenever Donald Trump or One of His Minions loses an election the only way that could possibly happen is through election fraud.

A while back I had at least two readers get angry that I occasionally draw cartoons criticizing Democrats and one of them called me a “right-wing asshole” and both implied it’s people like me that got Donald Trump elected.

At this point, several things occur to me:

First:

I totally agree with “asshole” part of that accusation and think that of myself several times a day, but “right-wing asshole” seems wildly inaccurate because actual “right-wing assholes” think I’m a “left-wing asshole” and in this rare case I agree with the “right-wing assholes.”

Second:

I am not and will never be a Democrat and don’t feel responsible for promoting their agenda, assuming they can ever figure out just what their agenda is. I criticize Democrats less often because I agree with them more often, but Democrats aren’t perfect and they’re giving a pretty convincing demonstration of that right now.

Third:

Refusing to admit your faults means you can’t grow and change (why would you, you’re already perfect) and then you keep making the same mistakes.

Refusal to admit Joe Biden was having problems led to a poor debate performance which led to a hastily thrown together Kamala Harris campaign (and up until then, she was seen by many as a campaign liability) which led to Donald Trump getting elected.

Here’s an article about what a hot mess Kamala’s brief 2020 presidential campaign was:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/harris-2020-campaign-was-mess-ended-ticket-time-lot-different-rcna162737

Just in case you didn’t read the article and odds are extremely good you didn’t, here’s what a Harris campaign staffer had to say about that 2020 campaign:

“Campaigns have highs and lows, mistakes and miscalculations. But because we have refused to confront our mistakes, foster an environment of critical thinking and honest feedback, or trust the expertise of talented staff, we find ourselves making the same unforced errors over and over.”

Sounds a lot like me about five paragraphs ago.

Refusal to admit mistakes also meant Kamala couldn’t publicly criticize the by-then deeply unpopular President Biden and when she was asked what she would do differently than Joe, Kamala said:

“Not a thing comes to mind.”

Which the Republicans immediately jumped on:

“Hey, if you don’t like how things are going under Joe Biden, a vote for Kamala is a vote for more of the same and by the way, our candidate is promising Peace in Our Time, Pot In Every Chicken and Flying Cars just like they had on the Jetsons.”

The Democratic Party has largely abandoned the working class and unions (if you don’t believe me, just ask Bernie Sanders) in favor of sucking up to rich donors and Barack Obama and Joe Biden didn’t get the minimum wage raised even though they had 12 years to do it. And if you’re not going to offer economic reasons to vote Democratic (and economics are the one issue that will unite Whites and Blacks and Men and Women and Gays and Straights and Michigan and Ohio State) then all you’re offering are supposedly moral reasons like:

“Vote for our candidate, she’s a woman and bi-racial!”

But don’t be surprised when the country you keep saying is sexist and racist is in fact sexist and racist.

It’s obviously possible for a Black man to become president once every 249 years, but when it comes to winning elections—in many cases—women and minorities have to swim upstream and while that’s definitely unfair, it’s also true.

But when it comes to winning elections versus being politically correct, all too often the Democrats would rather be politically correct which is how you wind up running Hillary Clinton, a person with an uncanny ability to irritate the living fuck out of everyone and that may include people she’s married to.

So if you’re looking for someone to blame for Donald Trump’s presidency, feel free to blame a few cartoons among my avalanche of anti-Trump drawings, but I’d save some of that finger-pointing for the Democrats who would rather blame voters than admit they ran flawed and unpopular candidates and blew off their natural supporters (blue-collar people and unions) and when those people think they have more in common with a billionaire who lives on a golf course than the Democrats, the Democrats may need to adjust their message.

But in far too many cases the Democrats are happy to sit on the sidelines and tell everybody how awful Donald Trump is and by the way, send us some money so we can continue to jack shit about that.

(Man, I sound bitter, don’t I?)

Probably because if the Democrats don’t admit their mistakes and get their shit together Donald Trump is going to suspend the Constitution and run for a third term or have one of his moron sons run in his place or maybe it’ll be Vice President and Maybelline eye-liner spokesmodel J.D. Vance and while any of those options would provide me with great cartoon material, I kinda feel bad for the rest of you.

Today’s Lesson

When the Democrats screw up don’t expect me to ignore it, considering what they’ve accomplished so far don’t expect the Trumpers to “fix” elections and as that great philosopher Forrest Gump often said: “Stupid is as stupid does” and if you Google what the hell does that mean (which I just did) the AI overview says:

“A person’s actions and behavior ultimately reveal their intelligence or lack thereof, rather than their appearance or claims.”

So it’s pretty clear President Forrest Gump would not have made Pete Hegseth Secretary of Defense and President Forrest Gump sound like a big improvement on what we have now and if you’re currently thinking, “But Forrest Gump is a fictional character” I have a question for you:

Donald Trump isn’t?

As always, hang in there.

http://kingfeatures.com/comics/editorial-cartoons-a-z/

The War on Education

If you’re a Devout Christian hang on to your halos because today I’m going to talk about my religious upbringing which was filled with warnings that I’d go straight to Hell and burn in a Lake of Fire forever and ever and the sound track would be an out-of-tune Mitch Miller sing-along and Devils that looked like Ernest Borgnine’s less attractive brother would poke me in the butt with pitchforks with one hand while holding ice cold mojitos just out of my grasp with the other and all this was sure to happen unless I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and spent the rest of my Life bugging other people to do the same thing.

Also…

Reading comic books would lead to demonic possession because they were filled with people who could fly and shoot heat beams out of their eyes which could only happen if witchcraft were involved (a position which had the unintentional side effect of making witchcraft sound awesome) and if you read about Superman or Spiderman too often, pretty soon you’d be spitting pea soup on priests and your head would be doing 360s and you’d hover a foot-and-a-half above your bed and I never thought about it until just now this minute, but maybe that’s why my favorite Superhero was Batman.

No superpowers.

One of my favorite moments in the approximately 8 bajillion superhero movies Hollywood has churned out was when someone asked Batman what his super power was and Batman said: “I’m rich.”

So if Superman and Batman ever really got in a fight, Batman would just buy the Fortress of Solitude, tear it down and put up condos, because to my knowledge Superman never bought the land, got a building permit or signed a lease.

OK, I feel like we’ve strayed from today’s topic which is Education and the fact that I was also warned that too much of it would “give me ideas” and put my soul in jeopardy (apparently they were holding Black Masses at the local Community College) and until I got just a little bit older and started reading on my own I didn’t understand religion’s animosity toward formal education, but eventually I developed a theory.

And to demonstrate my theory, we’ll talk about Joshua and the Israelites.

Joshua was the leader of the Israelites (he took over after Moses, although some Conservative Israelites claim he stole the election with the help of rigged voting machines) and Joshua was trying to take Canaan by force (which all things considered seems pretty Un-Christian) and they’re having a Big Battle and things are going Joshua’s way, but the sun’s going down and Joshua wants to keep fighting while the fighting’s good and he doesn’t want the Slaughter Called on Account of Darkness so he prays to God (who apparently plays favorites, just ask a Christian) to stop the sun in the sky so Joshua has time to win the battle.

And while God apparently doesn’t mind letting little kids die of cancer or earthquakes bury people alive or volcanoes fuck up Pompeii property values no matter how much people pray, He stops the sun in the sky for Joshua, probably because He bet heavily on the Israelites using His FanDuel app because sports betting was a Big Deal even back then and if you don’t believe me, just ask Russell Crowe.

(You can read the boring version of the sun-stopping incident in the Book of Joshua, Chapter 10; verses 12-14.)

As a small child I didn’t question the Joshua story because grown-ass adults were assuring me it was true, but then I later attended school and semi-paid attention and discovered the sun doesn’t actually rotate around the Earth like they thought it did in 1370 B.C. when the Book of Joshua was theoretically written.

Copernicus shared his heliocentric theory in 1543 so to be fair, my mom and the local preacher only had 417 short years to catch on and by the way, the Catholic Church initially said the theory was heretical and his book “On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres” was banned along with Issues #3 through #27 of The Green Lantern.

Anyway…

If Copernicus was right (and he was) if the sun appeared to stop in the sky, in reality the Earth stopped spinning.

And the Earth spins at about 1,000 miles an hour, rotating from West to East (counterclockwise when looking down from above the North Pole) so if the Earth suddenly stopped spinning, Joshua and the Israelites (which would be a great name for a soul band and, yes, I stole that gag from Dave Barry) would go flying and wind up somewhere in China and surf would be up in Omaha, Nebraska.

Speaking of sudden stops…

Before they had seat belts and were still building car dashboards out of metal adorned with rocket-shaped radio knobs and your mother had to hit the brakes because she was focusing on lying her ass off about Joshua and didn’t notice the light had changed (a Beatles reference), she’d shoot out her right arm and try to keep you from impaling yourself on the radio or launching through the windshield which was the best automobile safety system available in the early 1950s.

And still safer than a Cybertruck.

OK, so the lesson here is education makes you question other people’s bullshit or I’m definitely going to hell—take your pick.

Which At Long Last Brings Us to Donald Trump and Education

Numerous studies have shown that the more educated you are, the more likely you are to vote Democratic and generally speaking Republicans are also pissed off at colleges and universities for being breeding grounds of Liberal Ideas like:

• Whites aren’t intrinsically superior to Blacks…

• Men aren’t intrinsically superior to Women…

• And maybe the best way to balance the budget isn’t giving rich assholes yet another tax break.

Attend a college or university, spend time reading and learning and being around people you might not associate with otherwise and maybe you’ll decide it’s not OK to sexually harass women or use the N-word when explaining why your All-Caucasian high school basketball team got its ass handed to it last Friday night, all of which is highly inconvenient for the people who want to keep right on doing those things.

If people are full of shit (con men, religious authorities and politicians make the list) but still want you to believe what they say, education is their enemy.

All of which led to the cartoon you just looked at.

Now here’s an article about how college graduates voted in the last presidential election:

https://www.axios.com/2024/11/07/college-degree-voters-split-harris-trump

The cartoon you just looked at was inspired by me and my reaction to a Newsweek article headlined:

“How Conor McGregor Could Become President of Ireland”

Just like the character in the cartoon, I got about three syllables into the thought: “That’s ridic…” before remembering we elected a con man and reality game show host president, the Secretary of Education is a wrestling promoter’s wife, the Secretary of Defense is a FOX TV personality, the Secretary of Health and Human Services is a vaccine conspiracy theorist, the guy Trump picked to oversee Medicare and Medicaid is a TV celebrity doctor who has been accused of neglecting to pay over $400,000 in – waaaiiit for it – Medicare taxes and the guy making government more efficient totally fucked up Twitter.

So where do we get off (and yes, I just drug you into it) thinking it’s ridiculous that a boxer/MMA fighter/Whiskey Salesman who was successfully sued for rape can’t be President of Ireland?

Today’s Lesson

The more educated you are the less likely you’ll be to buy into other people’s bullshit (including mine, the Catholic Church never banned Green Lantern comic books…it was Dr. Strange) and you don’t need to know jack shit about a subject to be part of the Trump Cabinet (probably a “knob”) and if I’m wrong about all that Joshua and the Israelites stuff, when I arrive at Heaven’s Gate I’ll by greeted by Ricky Ricardo who will tell me:

“Lee, you got some ‘splainin’ to do.”

http://kingfeatures.com/comics/editorial-cartoons-a-z/