President Trump Puts His Foot Down

Just in case you haven’t read up on this; a “Continuing Resolution” is stopgap legislation that allows Congress to fund federal agencies until they pass regular appropriation bills and right now the government’s shutdown because the Democrats (most of them anyway) won’t vote for one.

Because…

The Democrats want the bill to extend expiring tax credits that make health insurance cheaper for millions of Americans and they also want a reversal of Trump’s cuts to Medicaid, a healthcare program used by millions of elderly, disabled and low-income people.

Meanwhile…

The Republicans would like to use that money to give yet another tax cut to some people who really don’t need one.

So hard to choose a side and if you think the Republicans have a good point, you might want to have your heart checked to find out if you still have one, but do it soon because medical insurance rates are set to go way way way up.

The Republicans say they want to negotiate the health insurance subsidies later, but the Democrats think that in the past they’ve given in way too often and way too easily (being reasonable with an unreasonable opponent leads to a give-and-give relationship) and while the Republicans are saying there’s plenty of time to negotiate this issue, open enrollment started on November 1^st so people are having to make health care decisions right now.

As you may have noticed, Insurance Companies (AKA: Spawns of Satan) are raising rates while simultaneously reducing what they’ll cover and I’m under the impression that in 2026 I will have to be drawn and quartered before my insurance company will step in and reimburse me for some super glue and duct tape as long as I make sure to use one of their “super glue and duct tape providers” and keep my receipts.

Now here’s an article that that goes into more detail:

https://www.npr.org/2025/10/12/nx-s1-5570849/shutdown-aca-health-care-tax-credits

OK, so there are the two sides and you can find reasons to criticize both of them (these people got elected to compromise and reach deals that piss off both sides equally), but the one thing it’s hard to dispute is what a Titanic Asshole Donald Trump has been while trying to get the Democrats to cave in and if you want to read more about that, you’re in luck:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crrj1znp0pyo

Since Trump thinks the only time government should step in and help is when some Rich White Dude needs a second home in Palm Beach because his Bitch of a Wife is divorcing him and taking his New York Townhouse, Trump threatened to use the shutdown as an excuse to fire federal workers if the Democrats didn’t cave in.

They didn’t and he did.

OK, so firing workers didn’t work, how about starving poor people?

The Trump administration announced that due to the shutdown they would stop funding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP; the people who provide food stamps) on November 1^st even though they had enough money to keep it going for another month.

Despite their hastily-thrown-together list of excuses, the real reason is they don’t want to keep it going; they need poor people to starve and pressure the Democrats.

That being the case, they claimed there were rules and regulations that were really really complicated and they wanted to make sure they crossed every “i” and dotted every “t” before disbursing any funds because they don’t want to break any rules unless they’re destroying parts of the White House to build a ballroom so Donald Trump can show off that fucked-up dance of his.

Next up, local officials who aren’t complete assholes and nonprofits that want to feed poor people went to court and asked that the courts make the Trump administration fund food stamps during the government shutdown and two courts agreed and said Ebenezer Trump had to keep funding food stamps, but we all know how Trump treats court decisions he doesn’t like.

And when you’re a sexual assaulter of women, a tax dodger who doesn’t pay his bills and commits felonies whenever the mood strikes him, Donald Trump has a lot of court decisions he doesn’t like.

So Trump decides he won’t obey the court orders and if you Google “who enforces court orders against the president?” turns out it’s the U.S. Marshals and guess what branch of the government the U.S. Marshals are part of and if you said anything other than “The Executive” it’s $5 down and the questioning goes to Kitty Carlisle.

(If you’re old enough, that’s a fabulous joke and if you’re not old enough to get that joke you’re clearly a “snot-nosed whippersnapper” and if you ever lose your baseball in my yard I won’t give it back.)

Anyway…

The U.S. Marshals report to the Attorney General and the Attorney General reports to the President and this is the kind of bullshit that happens when you elect a Flaming Asshole to the Oval Office.

Trump Bullshit Update

So I wrote all that after Trump said he wouldn’t fund food stamps until the Democrats caved in and apparently that was a little too direct and made it a little too clear that Trump is willing to starve poor people to get his way.

That being the case, White House spokesliar Karoline Leavitt said “these are not the ‘droids you’re looking for” and added we must’ve misheard Trump and they are going to fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, but it will be difficult and take some time because the Trump Administration has to calculate just how much foot dragging and cutting of benefits they can get away with and Karoline then blamed the Democrats for what the Trump Administration is doing.

Which is a favorite rationalization of the kind of people who beat their spouse: “See what you made me do?”

(Man, how has that cross she’s wearing not burst into flames?)

If you want to read more about this, here’s a CBS News article, but I’ll warn you up front CBS does not provide gratuitous profanity which might explain why their ratings are down:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-snap-food-stamps-government-shutdown/

So Trump is willing to fire federal workers and starve poor people to put pressure on the Democrats and if that doesn’t work I can only assume J.D. Vance will go to the top of the Washington Monument and throw off baskets of kittens until the Democrats give in.

Look deep into his mascara-encrusted eyes and you might conclude J.D. would enjoy that:

If you think about it (I have and you should) the Trump Administration is using hungry people as hostages and saying:

“You know we don’t give a fuck about poor people, but you do, so you better give in.”

BTW: I also Googled “Trump ignores court order” because I wanted to read more about this Food Stamp Fiasco and the internet offered me “Trump ignores court order” articles from:

• February 14, 2025

• March 5^th, 2025

• April 16^th, 2025

• July 21^st, 2025

• October 7^th, 2025

That’s just from this year and I could have hit “view all” but thought I already had enough evidence that our Law & Order President only obeys the Laws & Orders he likes and if you want to do the same thing and get away with it, I would strongly suggest you acquire $5.1 to $10 billion and a team of lawyers while simultaneously losing any sense of shame or responsibility.

Richard “Dick” Cheney (seen here thinking about that J.D. Vance/kitten scenario) was widely seen as the architect behind the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq which lasted 20 years and killed approximately 7,000 US soldiers. It also ended with the Taliban back in charge of Afghanistan and according to the internet “numerous wars, corruption, and civil and ethnic conflict in Iraq have made it difficult for a stable democratic government to emerge.”

And once again, according to the internet…

52,763 US soldiers were injured—some catastrophically—and the wars cost $4-to-$8 trillion give or take a few hundred billion and Dick was also A-OK with “enhanced interrogation” (AKA: “torture”). Dick also claimed the Iraqi people would “greet us as liberators” and wouldn’t admit he was wrong about that and just about everything else.

Add Dick to the long list of Old Men who never served in the military or fought in a war, but had no problem sending less fortunate young men to their deaths.

Because Dick couldn’t admit he was wrong, the wars drug on and on and had to be ended by Barack Obama and Joe Biden and after all that misery and money Dick still claimed he was right and if given another chance, said he would do it all over again in the exact same way.

So on the solemn occasion of his death, I’d just like to say: “Fuck Dick Cheney.”

(I sound bitter, don’t I? Which means I’ve done a good job describing how I feel this morning.)

And as long as we’re discussing “dicks”…

Today’s Lesson

Let’s start with an easy one: you shouldn’t starve poor people to win a political fight and if you do, people like me will draw cartoons like this one:

That’s a sketch of the cartoon I really wanted to draw, but I’m not sure America’s newspapers are ready to call Donald Trump a “dick”—a reluctance I clearly don’t share—but I’ll save the sketch because if Tuesday’s results are any indication (and let’s hope they are) we’re getting there.

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

Divided We Stand

It’s October 26^th, 1985 and I just watched Game 6 of the World Series. The Kansas City Royals beat the St. Louis Cardinals 2-1 to force a Game 7, which I’m convinced the Royals will win because the Cards had been up 3 games to 1 and there’s no way the Cardinals want to play a Game 7. When you don’t want to do something, but do it anyway, generally speaking you do a shitty job and if want an example, just ask me to trim your hedges.

(I was right, the Royals blow the Cards out 11-0 in Game 7 and I was there, sitting about 30 rows away from the field and once the Royals started pulling away and it was obvious they’d win, Kauffman Stadium turned into a giant party, but I’m getting ahead of myself and we will now return to Game 6 and its aftermath.)

An incredibly exciting walk-off win, but unfortunately I’m watching Game 6 at home all by myself. We had a baby four months earlier and it says a lot about me (none of it good) that I remember my first son was born in 1985 because that’s the year the Royals won the World Series.

If I were a better father I’d use my son’s birth to remember what year the Royals won the Series, but it’s the other way around and I have two more sons, but I’m a little vague on exactly when those two were born because the Royals didn’t win the World Series in those years.

So now I’m jacked up about the Royals winning Game 6 with no one to talk to (or to be more precise, no one who cares) so I leave my house and drive to the Grand Emporium on Main Street—it used to be one of my favorite bars back when I had favorite bars—and find some people who are just as jacked up about Game 6 as I am and we talk baseball until they turn the lights on and make us go home.

The 2014 and 2015 World Series

Same deal.

The Royals go to the World Series both years and you could start a conversation with absolutely anyone in Kansas City at any time of day in any location by asking: “Did you see the game last night?”

And if you asked a guy who was mugging you the same question, he’d say: “Ohmigod, did you see Moose dive into the dugout suite to catch that foul pop up?” and then add, “Now give me your wallet, keep that shitty Timex, nice talking to you and GO ROYALS!”

So that’s sports at their best.

They bring people together in a common cause and it’s good to hang out with people different than you because it’s way easier to be a racist when you don’t know any Black people, easier to be antisemitic when you don’t know any Jewish people and easier to be homophobic when you don’t know any Gay people.

And Now A Word About That Dugout Suite

During Game 3 of the 2014 American League Championship Series, Mike Moustakas dove into a dugout suite to catch a foul pop up and Royals fans then caught Mike before he could land head-first onto some very firm concrete and it’s seen as a great play and someone giving his all to make it (which is accurate) and then the community coming together (which is not totally accurate) to keep a player from breaking his neck.

A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I read an article that said one of the great things about baseball was how it brought people together; a bank president could wind up sitting next to an auto mechanic and they’d share the same experience and argue about managing moves or umpire calls, but deal with each other as equals which would be a good thing for both of them.

But then someone somewhere came up with the idea of “luxury boxes.”

And as is so often the case, the motivation was money because you can charge more for a luxury box than a seat in the grandstands and now bank presidents can avoid sitting next to auto mechanics and surround himself with people just like him which makes sure nobody is going to learn anything new about anybody else.

Fast Forward to 2025

This year’s World Series goes seven games and it’s exciting and filled with great and awful plays and two games go extra-innings and Game 3 went 18 innings, and my son in California (one of the sons foolish enough to born in a non-championship year) and I are texting and calling each other because we’re both watching the game alone and want to share the experience with someone, which is once again, a very good thing.

But if you watch 18 innings of baseball on TV you’re going to see a lot of commercials and some of those commercials were promoting sports betting and pointing out how much more exciting the games would be if you had money riding on them.

And…

You don’t have to bet on a team winning or losing, you can bet on how many strikeouts a pitcher will have or how many home runs a team will hit or how many total runs a team will score and then any play can be a winning play and even though your team lost you’re still a winner because you bet the over on how many times the pitcher would scratch his nuts.

On the other hand (and the commercials did not point this out):

Your team could win and you’d still be a loser because you over-estimated the pitcher’s nut scratching.

(BTW: When you see a ballplayer do this, odds are he isn’t scratching himself; he’s adjusting his protective cup because those things are incredibly uncomfortable and we’ll now get back to my main point before I forget what it was.)

If you listened to those commercials, now you’ve got bets on all sorts of different outcomes and you might not be excited about “your” team winning if they didn’t cover the spread.

So fuck the World Series and the Dodgers and Blue Jays; what happens to them is no longer important, it’s what happens to you and your $20 bet on crotch scratching.

Now you’re not having a shared experience because you and the person next to you care about different things and sports betting is just another wedge that drives us apart and these days you can play video games with someone in a different country or put on 3-D headgear and play basketball without having to go outside and find someone to play basketball with and my kids will say they were “talking with a friend” and I’ll eventually realize they mean texting or direct messaging with someone they’ve never actually met.

Each of these things separates us from other humans and makes us feel more alone, but don’t worry, Corporate America—the people who would sell their grandmothers to sex traffickers if they could find a buyer and turn an acceptable profit—have a solution.

Meet Your New Chatbot Friend

Along with those sports-betting commercials I saw plenty of TV ads that encourage us to think of AI Chatbots as “friends.”

And we should pour our hearts out to our new “friends” and ask them for relationship advice and let them plan our vacations or suggest first-date menus and try to forget that these are just computer programs that might have some serious bugs in them, like your new Chatbot “friend” suggesting suicide as a permanent solution to your problems.

If you Google “have chatbots suggested suicide?” the AI Chatbot that answers questions for Google and will eventually suggest I kill my family, will answer yes and give you a partial list of people who killed themselves after it was suggested and/or encouraged by their Chatbot “friend.”

There are many great things about the internet—this isn’t one of them.

And neither is the internet’s policy of showing you more of what you’ve already looked at because someone somewhere thinks that’s the right way to keep you glued to your computer screen, so if a Liberal searches “what caused the government shutdown?” they’ll get a totally different answer than a Conservative.

So now we no longer have real friends or care who wins the World Series and walk around with a different set of “facts” and that isn’t helping much either. The pandemic kept us apart for two years and now the internet and sports betting are taking up the slack.

People Who Need People

I’d be the first to admit, people can be a pain in the ass and I avoid many of them, like the ones who show up at my doorstep carrying clipboards and want me to sign their petition or spend 20 minutes listening to their sales pitch about why I need new window frames, so if I look out one of my completely adequate window frames and see them holding a clipboard, they’ve got zero chance of me answering the door.

There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that requires me to answer my door just because someone knocked on it.

But some people are good to be around and right now I’m thinking of my Conservative Texan friend and we definitely don’t agree on politics, but make each other laugh on a whole range of other subjects and I think it’s good for us to hang out together which is why we’ve been doing it for the past 46 years.

If for no other reason than spending time together makes us both think, “Well, maybe not all Conservatives and/or Liberals are complete assholes.”

(Political Disclaimer: That last sentence does not apply to Donald Trump or anyone who works for and/or enables that complete asshole.)

OK, so clearly you need some standards for who you’ll hang out with and who you won’t (if you have a swastika neck tattoo you can stand outside with that guy and his clipboard), but requiring that everyone you associate with be exactly like you and have the same color skin and worship the same God and have the same sexual preferences is actually bad for your brain and that brings us to…

Neuroplasticity

(Don’t look at me; I’m as surprised as you are. Up until a few weeks ago I didn’t know this word existed.)

I’ve told this story before, but I’m clearly on the verge of telling it again: my 100 year-old mother semi-recently announced “People are all the same” and I said the only reason she thought people were all the same was she currently knows about six people who are still alive, all of them White from the same geographic area and socio-economic background and if she ever left her house and took a walk down San Francisco’s Castro Street she wouldn’t keep saying people are all the same.

Don’t hold me to this because I’ve spent about as much time researching neuroplasticity as my mom has spent on Castro Street, but apparently our brains have neural pathways (chains of neurons that connect different parts of the brain) and the pathways we use a lot get stronger and the ones we don’t use as much get weaker which means I’m a lot better at word play than I am at balancing my checkbook.

I actually find it uncomfortable to think about math and I avoid it whenever possible and after reading about neural pathways and neuroplasticity, wondered if that’s how my mom feels when confronted with some new experience like meeting a Black, Jewish, Gay person who votes Democratic because then she’d have to start thinking about things she doesn’t like thinking about and use her less-efficient neural pathways so all things not considered it’s better to sit in front of Fox News 10 hours a day and never hear anything that might make her uncomfortable.

I once got her to watch an Eddie Izzard stand-up performance (Eddie considers him/herself “gender-fluid” which sounds like it would require some clean up) and my mom laughed all the way through it and if Eddie knocked on my mom’s door after she watched that stand-up performance, I’m guessing my mom would have invited Eddie in and offered Eddie a cup of coffee because she/he/they is/are pretty entertaining.

(Man, we gotta figure out this pronoun situation.)

The point being: based on her religion, my mom might dislike gay/transgender/bi/cross-dressing people in general, but would like Eddie if she met him in person and if she thought about why she liked him, that would force her to use a neural pathway less traveled.

(BTW: If you think I’m being pretty hard on my mom, don’t worry. She can’t see for shit and will never read this, so she won’t know what I wrote unless one of you tells her about it and if you do, that’s on you, not me.)

Anyway…

To grow and get better at pretty much anything, requires you to be uncomfortable at the beginning and a lot of people aren’t willing to do that so they stay stuck in the same place with the same thoughts and don’t get any better or smarter or any more empathetic to people not like them and we’ve got way too much of that going around these days.

Today’s Lesson, Assuming There Is One

It might seem hypocritical coming from me, but every couple years I write a piece saying that when I draw a Republican elephant or a Democratic donkey they don’t represent all Democrats or Republicans and I’m well aware that a lot of Republicans don’t agree with what Donald Trump is doing.

(I’m also well aware those Republicans need to speak the fuck up.)

As previously discussed, there are limits to this policy, but I think of politics like ballplayers think of baseball: I’ll try to run over your ass to score a run, but after that we can go get a beer together.

Today is Election Day and if you really think he/she/they are the best candidate, it’s OK to vote for someone from the other party or say hi to the guy holding the sign you disagree with and let’s try to get through today without screaming at anyone, but for God’s sake…

Don’t bet on the outcome.

Let Them Eat Hors d’oeuvres

So Donald Trump lies and says he won’t touch the East Wing to build his ballroom and then tears it down anyway and the people who would make excuses for Trump if he set an orphanage on fire, say what’s the big deal, Harry Truman did the same thing.

Now here’s the correct response to that argument:

According to the New York Times, Harry Truman only decided to renovate the White House because it was in such crappy shape that the upstairs floor sagged six inches and “moved like a ship at sea” and the leg of Margaret Truman’s piano fell through the floor of the family living quarters so Harry decided we better fix this place up before it falls down around our ears.

But unlike Donald Trump...

Harry worked with both the House and the Senate and appointed a six-person bipartisan commission (and I’m stunned that in 1948 six people in government publicly admitted they were bi) to oversee the construction. The commission approved fabrics and color schemes and the funds for the project—$5 million—were only approved after Congressional debate.

So lots of people involved and the renovations were necessary to make the White House livable; Trump’s not working with anybody and building a 90,000 square foot storage locker for his ego.

The cartoon you just looked was inspired by the news that starting on November 1^st —TOMORROW—the federal government will stop feeding hungry people and the Trump Administration won’t tap a $5 billion contingency fund to keep SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) going.

According to the Associated Press, the SNAP program helps about 1-in-8 Americans buy groceries.

And according to those busy bodies at The New York Times, the Trump Administration is now in court arguing that while they have billions of dollars left over—enough to fund SNAP for the next month—there are just too many legal obstacles and rules that would prevent them from doing that and as the Trump Ballroom demonstrates, they’re sticklers for following the rules.

They admitted in court not funding food stamps would create a “difficult situation for millions of Americans” but clearly don’t give a fuck and during the shutdown have been willing to reprogram the federal budget to fund the programs they like and literally starve the ones they don’t.

According to the internet, over 42 million people receive SNAP benefits (about 12% of the population) and let’s hope all 42 million register to vote and remember which politicians were OK with them going hungry while building a $300 million ballroom.

But, wait, isn’t the ballroom being funded privately?

Lucky for both of us I have a story about that.

On the same day a bunch of employees were laid off, the Kansas City Star received a new shipment of office furniture so it appeared the company preferred having Spiffy New Chairs over Shabby Old People, a preference that did not go unnoticed by the surviving employees.

When I asked the logical question—WTF?—the situation was explained to me through the use of a metaphor and in this case the metaphor was a pair of pants:

Turned out, the New Chair money came from a “pocket” that had money in it, but the Old Employee “pocket” was empty.

To which I responded: “Who designed the pockets?”

The “pockets” only existed because the company said they existed and the New Chair money could have been directed to the Old Employees if the company really wanted to do that and after I questioned that explanation I was offered another and told sometimes you had to spend money to fix up your house and I responded that I wouldn’t fire one of my kids to finance that.

And it’s just that kind of perceptive and logical thinking that will get your name put on the list of employees to be let go when the company wants new carpeting.

The point being:

If Donald Trump really wanted to, he could have used the contingency fund or asked for private donations to feed hungry people, but he’d rather have a new ballroom and it’s just that kind of Let-Them-Eat-Cake obliviousness to peoples’ suffering that gets revolutions started.

I will now go stand out on my front lawn and wait for the ICE agents to arrive.

Assuming I get this posted today, Halloween is tonight and for newspapers to run this cartoon on a Friday, I need to get it to them on a Thursday, which means I have to draw it on a Wednesday and if that’s confusing just wait until I explain the Infield Fly Rule.

Anyway…

This cartoon was inspired by Donald Trump using the government shutdown as an excuse to fire a bunch of Democratic government workers and refuse to fund the SNAP program and I’m not 100% sure the cutline works because readers will have to know how Trump’s using the shutdown and realize just saying the word “TRICK!” means there is no “TREAT!” But I drew it anyway mostly because I wanted to draw a witch and a vampire and a cowboy so I produced it on a whim and that being the case I can’t believe Donald Trump hasn’t put me in charge of redecorating the White House.

Trust me, if I was in charge of redecorating the White House there would definitely be a batting cage on the South Lawn.

Apparently things aren’t chaotic enough because Trump also announced we’re to going resume testing nuclear weapons even though we signed a test ban treaty in 1996 (it was never ratified, but we haven’t tested a warhead since 1992) and—according to the Washington Post—each test could cost around $100 million.

So plenty of money to blow shit up in the desert, fuck up the environment and give people cancer, but not enough money to feed hungry kids.

Now here’s a 2022 story from the radicals at National Geographic about all the damage nuclear testing did to the environment and people and it’s hard to read about kids near testing sites dying from leukemia or developing bone cancer and having limbs amputated, but it looks like we’re going to make The Same Mistakes All Over Again which should have been Trump’s 2024 campaign slogan:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/us-nuclear-testings-devastating-legacy-lingers-30-years-later

And now Trump wants to start this shit up again and if you’re thinking “I don’t live anywhere near the testing sites” according to the National Geographic the first test in New Mexico resulted in fallout in New York state.

Trump’s announcement left everybody scratching their heads—why now?—and when the Associated Press tried to get answers the White House didn’t respond.

But later…

Trump talked to reporters and either conflated or confused (don’t worry, I had to look up “conflate” too and it means intentionally combining two things) testing the missiles that deliver warheads and testing warheads.

Russia and China test missiles (we do, too) and nobody seemed to know if Trump understood the difference.

Trump’s nominee to be the guy in charge of our nuclear weapons, Vice Admiral Richard Correll (and Vice Admiral sounds like he should be in charge of our Porn Industry instead) was asked at his confirmation hearing just what the fuck Trump meant and responded:

“I wouldn’t presume that the president’s words mean nuclear testing.”

To which Senator Mazie Hirono—Scared Shitless Democrat from Hawaii—answered:

“Well, that’s what he said.”

In an effort to cover his ass, Correll added:

“I’m not reading anything into it or reading anything out of it.”

Because when it comes to starting a New Nuclear Arms Race (Russia said if we start testing warheads, they will too) it’s best to be as vague as possible because it’s not nearly as important as deciding how many chandeliers the New Ballroom is going to need.

I’m under the impression Trump’s Mar-a-Lago ballroom has 17 chandeliers (it was in an article synopsis) but while the full article didn’t kill my Will to Live, about four paragraphs in I lost my Will to Read.

Today’s Lesson

When I started working at the Sacramento Union in 1976 a fellow employee pointed out that while the Union was constantly crying poverty and telling us they couldn’t afford raises or pay overtime, they always found the money to do the things they wanted to do and in the 49 years since that conversation not much has changed.

What people do is way more important than what people say because they’ll say all kinds of shit, but what they do reveals the truth.

And what the Trump Administration is doing is letting poor people go hungry so tonight be generous when you’re handing out Halloween candy because it may be all those kids have to eat come tomorrow.

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

The Patchwork Essay

During my career, on more than one occasion, someone would marvel at my ability to generate six cartoons a week (I never said they were six good cartoons because not all of them were) and I would answer that it’s harder to think of one cartoon idea a week than six.

100% true and here’s why:

When you’re only generating one cartoon idea a week you don’t spend much time thinking about cartoons and when you do think about them it’s hard to get your brain working in the right direction. It’s like having to build a bicycle every time you want to ride one. Whenever I come back from a vacation that first cartoon comes slowly and I have to remind myself that (at least theoretically) I know how to do this.

But when you’re thinking of six ideas a week you’re always thinking of cartoons—your bicycle tires are already inflated and ready to go—and the same goes for writing.

I generate a lot of ideas (once again, they’re not all good ideas, I mean just look at that crappy bicycle metaphor I came up with) and some turn into full essays and some don’t, but I save those unused bits and pieces because you never know when one will come in handy and I just now realized I’m acting like my mother.

She’s a hoarder and semi-recently complained about what a mess her house is (a mess she created) so I said why don’t we go through some of these boxes and see what can be thrown away.

The first piece of paper I picked up was a pink slip for a 1925 Ford.

Since in my entire lifetime I have never seen a 1925 Ford on the premises I said we could at least throw away that pink slip, but my mom said no, she’d have to look at it first and then offered me the latest installment in her never-ending series of complaints about her increasingly bad vision.

OK.

So we can’t throw anything away until you look at it and you can’t look at it; I believe Joseph Heller got an entire book out of this.

In an effort to not be like my mother (and those insurance ads about people turning into their parents are disturbingly accurate) I’m going to look at my literary equivalent of 1925 Ford pink slips and either throw them away or use them and we’ll start with…

Transgender Athletes

I started this one when people were losing their minds over transgender athletes here in Missouri which made me wonder how common trans-athletes are and turns out a child’s athletic career being ruined by having to compete against a transgender athlete is about as common as a child being gored by a unicorn.

Charlie Baker, President of the NCAA, semi-recently said he was aware of fewer than 10 active NCAA athletes who identify as transgender and according to an article written in September of 2023, since 2012 only nine transgender boys and four transgender girls were approved to play sports in the state of Missouri (so a whopping 1.18 per year) and according to the Godless Communists at the ACLU in 2023 only two trans athletes in Kansas were affected by a bill to stop them from playing sports.

So the odds that your child will have to compete against a superior trans-athlete are about the same as your child being struck by a meteor or eaten by an Albino Bengal Tiger or winning the state lottery and the fact that a whole bunch of people buy state lottery tickets indicates we’re not all that great at math and will continue to freak out about trans-athletes.

And while we’re not on the subject, but loitering in the immediate vicinity:

The odds that your child is going to play baseball in the Big Leagues or football in the NFL or Mafia-organized poker in the NBA are extremely low, so our kids should play sports:

A. Because sports are fun even though overly-serious parents and coaches try to take the fun out of it.

B. To learn valuable lessons like teamwork and discipline and maybe finding something in common with people who are different than them.

Transgender athletes are not a big problem in this country, lack of tolerance is.

The Government That Governs Least

We’re currently enjoying the kind of weather patterns that got Dorothy to Oz and I noticed that when a flood or hurricane or tornado strikes, I never read any stories about Republicans turning down help from the government which led to the following bit.

Henry David Thoreau (seen here proving neck beards also looked shitty in the mid-1800s) is apparently incorrectly credited with the phrase:

“That government is best which governs least.”

I say incorrectly because maybe it was said by Thomas Jefferson or John Locke or Ravi Shankar in-between sets at the Bollywood Bowl, assuming there is one of those and if there’s not, they need to get right on it, ask for some tax breaks and build that thing.

But for 100% sure the Greek poet Hesiod or the Roman comic dramatist Plautus (apparently these guys were constantly stealing each other’s material) said something like:

“Moderation in all things.”

Not to be outdone in the saying-witty-shit department, Oscar Wilde said: “Everything in moderation, including, moderation” although maybe Horace Porter or Petronius said it first.

This saying-witty-stuff-field seems to be filled with a bunch of plagiarists and reminds me of one of my favorite Woody Allen stories that happened before his personal life made us all go “Eeeewwww.”

Back at the beginning of his career Woody worked for a service where he wrote witty one-liners and celebrities would pay the service and if they said something one of the writers wrote for them and it got into a newspaper, the writer got paid for his work.

Woody was starting to have some success in other areas and was spending less time writing witty one liners for other people to say, but then Arthur Murray – the dance studio guy and service client – ran into Woody somewhere and wanted to know:

“Just what the hell has happened to my sense of humor?”

Which is a pretty good line for someone who had to pay other people to write pretty good lines for him.

So where were we?

Oh, yeah—whoever said the crap about governing least is governing best is wrong unless you’re OK with 10-year-old coal miners and turns out, some people are.

Child Labor

I started this one when people who wanted to hire children to work in their businesses were trying to get child labor laws changed.

As previously discussed (which makes it sound like I actually let you get a word in edgewise) some businesses want to roll back child labor laws to increase the number of exploitable workers available.

Now here’s a story from the ABC News that says a Labor Department investigation of McDonald’s franchises in Kentucky found 300 children working illegally, including two 10-year-olds.

According to the Labor Department, the children were preparing and distributing food orders, cleaning the store, working at the drive-thru window, working a register and one child was allowed to operate a deep fryer – which I wouldn’t want to do at any age because there’s too much hot grease involved – and the children sometimes worked as late as 2 AM, but were not paid.

A franchise owner-operator said the two 10-year-olds were visiting a parent who worked there and the kids weren’t employees, which (hold on, let me do the math) only leaves 298 unexplained child workers.

I’d be the first one to admit there are times government is overbearing and makes our lives more difficult, but some of the people who whine about government regulations whine because those government regulations prevent them from doing stuff like putting children in charge of deep fryers or sending them into coal mines.

And if government isn’t there to stop them, recent history has shown they’ll do it.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/minors-found-working-mcdonalds-franchisees-labor-department/story?id=99053558

Reading the News Online

I launched this literary boat because these days I get a lot of information online and some websites have a ton of pop-up ads that block what I’m trying to see and if I close the ad I get a message “Why this ad?” and they’ll just replace it with a different ad, like the problem is the product, not the fact that I can’t see what drew me to the website in the first place.

As I believe I’ve complained about before (which is a safe bet because I’ve reached an age where I’ve complained about pretty much everything before and if my 100-year-old mother is any indication, I’ve got decades of complaining in front of me) I prefer to read a print edition of the news because if I’m reading on-line and pause in one place too long, the more sophisticated websites tend to throw an ad in my face.

That’s because the internet mistakenly believes the best way to keep me reading (so they can show me more ads) is to give me more of what I’ve already shown an interest in, so it’s currently showing me ads for a pair of shoes I looked up on the internet and bought last summer.

At this moment in time the thing I’m least likely to buy in the whole wide world is that pair of shoes because I’ve already got them.

But in this most recent case of commercial stupidity, the ad showed me six pairs of the shoes I already own, but in six different colors – “You already own the blue pair, wouldn’t you like a pair in black? How about brown?” – and when I ignored the ad too long, the shoe images started pulsing and vibrating so it was like trying to read a newspaper while an attention-starved two-year-old screamed:

“LOOK AT ME!!! LOOK AT ME!!! LOOK AT ME!!!”

We’re being told that eventually there won’t be paper and ink versions of our local newspapers and we’ll have no choice but to get our news online which means more irritating ads being shoved in our faces while we try to inform ourselves.

Making your product annoying and difficult to use isn’t much of a game plan, but neither was giving away your product on the internet which is how newspapers got into this mess in the first place.

Today’s Lesson

Apparently, when I started this I didn’t have much of a game plan either because I’ve got no ending except to say stop worrying about unicorn gorings, don’t hire any 10-year-olds to operate your deep fryer and hold onto those 1925 Ford pink slips because you never know when they’ll come in handy.

P.S. If you liked this we’re both in luck because I just checked and I’ve got 40 more pages of 1925 Ford pink slips.

I am my mother’s son.

Don’t Hold Your Breath

The following photo is Prince Andrew with Virginia Giuffre and Ghislaine Maxwell is lurking in the background, which at this point in time seemed to be Ghislaine’s fulltime job. Giuffre committed suicide in April of this year, but not before writing a book called Nobody’s Girl about her association with Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein.

And in her book Virginia called Epstein a “master manipulator” and said Andrew was “entitled—as if he believed having sex with me was his birthright.”

According to a timeline on the BBC website:

Giuffre went to work at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort when she was just 16, but Epstein hires her as a “massage therapist” and—no surprise—at 16 she didn’t know jackshit about massage or therapy, which didn’t matter because Epstein “allegedly” abused her and trafficked her to other men and one them was Prince Andrew which he still denies, but he did reach a financial settlement with Giuffre in 2022.

OK, so there’s the CliffsNotes version of the events that led up to Andrew recently giving up his titles, including the Duke of York, member of the Order of the Garter and World Lightweight Champion, Royal Family Division.

Andrew reached this decision after a “discussion with the King” which probably means Andy got a Royal foot up his ass and in a statement Andrew said: “continued accusations about me distract from the work of His Majesty and the Royal Family.”

The announcement was incredibly shocking because up until then nobody was aware that His Majesty and the Royal Family did any work.

Prince Andrew’s announcement led me to depict the unquestionably vain hope that others who have proved to be an embarrassment might give up their titles as well, but some people don’t have the capacity to feel embarrassed and one of them is Our President.

So besides adding a couple of giant-ass flag poles and paving over the Rose Garden and building an outdoor patio based on the Sonic Drive-Ins, Donald Trump decides he also needs a $250 million ballroom (wait, I just saw a story that said it’s now up to $300 million) on the White House grounds, but pledged the East Wing wouldn’t be touched by construction. When describing his proposed ballroom, he said:

“It won’t interfere with the current building. It’ll be near it, but not touching it. And pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of.”

Now here’s how that promise worked out:

Once it became clear Trump was going to destroy the entire East Wing, he changed his tune, the key it was played in, fired the orchestra and the conductor and said this:

“It was never thought of as being much. It was a very small building.”

As his track record indicates, we should be surprised when Donald Trump keeps a promise, not stunned when he doesn’t.

According to the Associated Press, before a president demolishes part of the White House he needs to get permission from the National Capital Planning Commission which approves construction work and major renovations to government buildings because as the current resident seem to have forgotten:

IT’S NOT HIS HOUSE.

It’s our house.

A phrase that makes me think of Graham Nash and Joni Mitchell because he wrote “Our House” for her when they were living together in Laurel Canyon and thanks a shitload Graham, because you made the rest of us men and our pathetic gifts look like crap because you wrote Joni a great love song as a gift while the rest of give our significant others sweaters they don’t want, tickets to a hockey game or a monogrammed tool belt.

And now the most pleasant three minutes and five seconds you’re likely to enjoy today:

Just in case you’re now feeling like a Big Loser in the Romance Department, Graham and Joni’s relationship only lasted two years and she ended the relationship with a telegram while he was in Europe and then started dating James Taylor, I can only assume to get more songs written about her and James did write “You Can Close Your Eyes” for Joni, but it wasn’t a hit so she dumped him and started dating Jackson Browne who theoretically wrote “Fountain of Sorrow” about her.

Man, a monogrammed tool belt is starting to seem like a good gift idea, isn’t it?

Now seems like a good time to remind you: “Candlesticks always make a nice gift.”

And if any of you can remember the movie that’s from I’ll be impressed because if you put a gun to my head I couldn’t tell you my mom’s cell phone number; she’s just in my contacts as “mom” and speaking of guns and heads…

If most of us men were forced at gunpoint to write a great love song, about 82% of us would start it with:

“There was a girl from Nantucket”

(And now back to the main thread because I feel this unwanted sweater of an essay rapidly unraveling.)

Of course Trump did not get permission before he started demolishing the East Wing and when the AP asked if he even submitted plans the White House did not respond.

Trump did go on social media and claim that the new ballroom he’s building would not cost the taxpayers a dime, just like the border wall Mexico built and paid for. Trump added that the ballroom would be funded by “generous Patriots, Great Companies, and, yours truly.”

And that statement should make you wonder just who these generous Patriots and Great Companies are, and what Donald Trump was doing the day hE SkipPedD thE enGliSh claSss oN pRopEr PunCtuAtiOn.

(Yes, I’m fully aware that I don’t use proper punctuation either, which is one of the many reasons I’m not President of the United States—that and my illegal drug use during the 1970s…and early 1980s…and that one time in the 1990s.)

Just in case you don’t know and I didn’t, the East Wing has traditionally been used as a base of operations for the First Lady, but according to The New York Times, Melania disappears from view for “weeks at a time” and according to The Independent in an article dated May 8, 2025, during Trump’s second term Melania had spent less than 14 days in the White House which seems like about 13 days too many and all things considered Trump decided he’d rather have a $250 million (now $300 million) ballroom.

Which is somewhat surprising because he looks like this in a tuxedo…

Man, if I looked like that in a tux, I’d be tearing down ballrooms, not building them.

Now here’s the candlestick scene:

(When Bull Durham came out people thought this scene was hilarious and ridiculous, but I’ve heard about some of the things discussed during mound visits—including calling a meeting to alert teammates to hot girls in the stands—so this scene is way more accurate than people might think.)

Donald Trump is now using the Justice Department to punish his enemies and the latest person to be indicted is John Bolton and the claim is Bolton mishandled government documents. Which seemed like a golden opportunity to remind people this is how Donald Trump stored government documents in-between presidencies:

My favorite thing about that picture is the chandelier above the toilet.

But let’s face it, there’s really no classier way to take a dump and always remember that any outhouse, latrine or privy can become a showplace with the addition of a chandelier.

(And this is the man who is currently “improving” the White House. Donald Trump has the same sense of style as Liberace and I’m surprised it hasn’t occurred to him—Don not Liberace—to add a candelabra to the Resolute Desk and if he sees this Liberace photo you know Trump’s going to want one of those capes.)

And the above cartoon leads into the next one because Trump now wants to be compensated for the FBI searching Mar-a-Lago for classified documents and boy did they find some. Trump’s excuse was he had “declassified” the documents, but made the claim—as is his habit—without any evidence to back him up.

The case against Trump was dropped after he got reelected and not content to take a win and shut the fuck up and hope we forget the Mar-a-Lago document storage toilet, Trump now wants to be compensated for his trouble.

So Trump claims the Department of Justice owes him $230 million in compensation for investigating him on several occasions and now that he’s been re-elected he also claims he’s the one that decides if he gets paid.

The New York Times asked Bennet L. Gershman, an ethics professor at Pace University, for an opinion and Mr. Gershman said: “What a travesty. The ethical conflict is just so basic and fundamental, you don’t need a law professor to explain it.”

Unless you’re the President of the United States because Donald Trump doesn’t see the problem.

But don’t despair, if Trump gives himself $230 million he’s promised to donate it to charity and if you believe that maybe you need another look at the East Wing he promised not to touch:

Today’s Lesson

Don’t trust anything Donald Trump says, a chandelier would class up The Black Hole of Calcutta, don’t date singer/songwriters because they’re just looking for material and you might wind up having “You’re So Vain” written about you (Travis Kelce’s playing with fire) and finally…

“Candlesticks always make a nice gift.”

Enjoy your weekend.

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