The 2015 Royals v. the 2025 Royals

With numbers and everything...

Recently, a reader that we’ll call John mostly because his name’s John asked me if I’d given up on writing about the Royals and the answer to that question is no. But I’m no longer out at the ballpark and know a lot less about this current team which means I have a lot less to say and I believe there should be at least some relationship between how much you know and how much you talk and beliefs like that explain why I haven’t been offered a job on sports-talk radio.

True story: on one of my very few appearances on sports-talk radio I refused to speculate and kept batting down questions that required it and afterwards the disappointed host said, “Lee, we do a lot of speculation on this show” and I said, “I know.”

Generally speaking I was considered a shitty guest and there are people who have invited me to children’s birthday parties who share that opinion.

But the timing of John’s question was interesting because I’ve been thinking about the 2015 Royals and considering writing something about them and by “something” I mean a book’s worth and we’ll talk more about that before we’re through.

Then John asked if I’d read Sam McDowell’s article in Sunday’s Kansas City Star (I did) and whether I had a reaction (I do).

Sam’s article was interesting reading and made me think of the 2015 team because those guys played the game much differently than the 2025 team.

But First…

To understand what Sam wrote about and I’m about to write about and baseball in general, you need to know that the easiest pitch to throw for a strike is a fastball (because they’re relatively straight) but unfortunately for pitchers who throw them the easiest pitch to hit is also a fastball (because they’re relatively straight).

That being the case:

When pitchers fall behind in the count and have to throw a strike (2-0, 2-1, 3-0, 3-1 and depending on the situation, 3-2) the fastball becomes the percentage pitch and hitters know it’s the pitch they’re most likely to get so batting averages go up in those counts.

Those counts are called “fastball counts” or “hitters counts” or, if you’re a pitcher, “counts that will get you sent back to Omaha.”

Timeout for Exceptions

Unfortunately for those of us who like to keep things simple, in baseball there are always exceptions and this case is no exception which makes me think we should keep things moving before you realize I just contradicted myself.

Pitchers who can consistently throw their off-speed stuff for strikes have an advantage because then hitters can’t count on getting fastballs in fastball counts, but some pitchers can get away with throwing fastballs in fastball counts especially if their first name is “Nolan” and their last name is “Ryan.”

So as we continue, remember: there are always exceptions and there are no exceptions to that rule and with that kind of logic I can’t believe Donald Trump hasn’t put me in charge of something.

And now back to baseball.

The 2025 Royals

At the time this was written the 2025 Royals team batting average was .243, ninth-best in the American League. But if they can get into a 2-0 count, that team batting average goes up to .342.

But according to Sam’s article just 11.8% of their plate appearance reach a 2-0 count (tied for third-fewest in baseball) and only 6.6% of their plate appearances reach a 3-1 count (the fewest in baseball) and Sam I can’t thank you enough for doing this research so I don’t have to and if you really want to help out, my grass needs mowing.

The conundrum in Sam’s article is that to get to those counts you obviously have to take the first pitch and the Royals do that 71% of the time, more often than any team in the American League.

So what’s going wrong?

If you do anything 71% of the time—take the first pitch, chase sliders in the dirt, get fucked up on off days—somebody’s going to notice and take advantage and apparently opposing pitchers and their pitching coaches have picked up on the Royals passive first-pitch approach so opposing pitchers are being very aggressive on the first pitch (throw it down the middle, 71% of the time the Royals won’t swing) and no team in baseball falls behind in the count 0-1 more often than the Royals and once again, thanks, Sam, and when you’re done with the grass, those bushes need trimming.

After going 0-1 the Royals team batting average drops to .232.

And despite taking the first pitch 71% of the time the Royals are dead last in walks and they’re number two at swinging at pitches out of the zone so they’re passive on the first pitch and aggressive after that and if you want to hear a theory about how that works you could do a lot worse than listening to former Royal Wade Davis.

What Wade Davis Said About Strike One

Back when Wade was still with the Royals and I was still with the Star we were sitting in the dugout and he showed me a hitter’s heat map. Heat maps show the strike zone divided up into sections and the locations they hit well are in red and the locations they hit poorly are in blue and Wade said sometimes, depending on the hitter, he’d go right at their hot zone with the first pitch.

When I asked why he’d do that Wade said: “Because they don’t think you will.”

Passive hitters got caught flat-footed when Wade went right at them.

And once Wade got ahead 0-1 he thought a lot of at-bats were over because very few hitters are comfortable hitting with two strikes so they start chasing pitches with just one strike. With two strikes the 2025 Royals hit .191 so taking the first pitch, when everyone knows you’re taking the first pitch, is putting them in a hole they rarely climb out of.

What Jason Kendall Said About Hitting

Jason Kendall has the fourth-most hits—2,195—of any catcher in baseball history (dude really needs to be in the Hall of Fame mostly because he’d throw an insane party and I’d be invited) and one day I picked up his 2,000^th hit bat and said getting 2,000 hits was pretty impressive and Jason said: “18,000 of them were on pitches right down the middle.”

When Jason was behind the plate he wanted hitters guessing—what pitch is coming next, is it going to be a fastball, is it going to be a curve, did I remember to lock my car when I got to the ballpark—but at the plate Jason didn’t guess.

He looked for mistake pitches in the middle of the plate and if they were mistake fastballs they’d go to the opposite field and if they were mistake curves he’d pull them and it was Jason’s belief professional hitters make a living on mistake pitches:

“All that other shit is hard to hit.”

Which is a message maybe the Royals hitters need to hear because once again, according to Sam, they take “meatballs” (pitches down the middle) more frequently than league average.

And from my intermittent observation (meaning when I can get the Fan Duel sports channel to work and right now it wants me to log in again—for the fourth time) Royals hitters will foul off a lot of mistake pitches which tends to happen when you’re looking for too many different pitches in too many parts of the zone.

Try to hit the inside fastball and the outside cutter and your timing’s off when you get served a meatball.

Zone down: focus on the parts of the zone you hit well and when you get a pitch in that zone, don’t miss it. (Which sounds incredibly easy coming from a guy who struggled to hit in a Men’s Over-30 League, but I know a lot of good hitters and that’s what they told me and I believe them.)

Before we go:

Jason Kendall took a lot of first pitches, but every once in a while would hack right away because he wanted to “change the scouting report.” He didn’t want anybody getting too comfortable throwing a fastball down Main Street.

Jason was avoiding what appears to be happening to the 2025 Royals.

So What About Those 2015 Royals?

In 2015 analytics advocates were convinced walks and home runs were the keys to winning ballgames (they may still believe that, we don’t hang out in the same bars) so hitters had to be very selective and ignore hittable pitches that couldn’t be hit for a home run and for most hitters that meant pitches out over the plate that they couldn’t pull with authority.

Both Dayton Moore and Ned Yost deserve a lot of credit because according to Moneyball, managers were there to be the hand puppets of the front office which explains how a lot of them got and kept their jobs.

That was the trend in 2015, but despite the opinions expressed by non-ballplayers in Moneyball, Dayton advocated giving power away; Dayton gave it to Ned, Ned gave it to the coaches and the coaches gave it to the players.

So in an era when everyone was convinced walks and home runs were the keys to winning, Royals hitting coach Dale Sveum said fuck that: in this park we’re not going to hit a lot of home runs and if pitchers aren’t worried about home runs they tend to be ultra-aggressive so we won’t walk either and hitting in the Big Leagues is hard enough without taking hittable first-pitch fastballs.

The Royals went to two consecutive World Series while being at the bottom of the barrel in walks and home runs.

Dayton turned Ned loose and Ned turned Dale loose and Dale turned the 2015 Royals loose and while the best team average in baseball was Detroit’s—.270 with a .420 slugging percentage—when the 2015 Royals put the first pitch in play they hit .317 and slugged .491.

In 2015 Eric Hosmer said when a coach tells you to swing the bat it’s an easy sale and Royals hitters talked about having a better mindset—quit guessing and smoke the first good pitch you see.

Opposition pitchers complained that they couldn’t get ahead of Royals hitters and when I asked Kurt Suzuki (a pretty good catcher himself) what he told his pitchers before facing the Royals, Kurt said he told his pitchers to forget strikeouts. The Royals (only one team in baseball struck out less often) aren’t going to be at the plate long enough to strike out or walk.

They’re coming right at you.

Today’s Message

I’m definitely not advocating that the 2025 Royals copy the 2015 Royals because I don’t know the 2025 hitters or their personalities or what their coaches are telling them, but what I definitely am saying is there’s more than one way to skin a cat, which is a fucked-up cliché probably thought up by Joseph Mengele or Hannibal Lecter during their high school years.

Nevertheless…

One of the most irritating things about Moneyball fans (and there was a lot to choose from) was their conviction that they knew the right way to play baseball and everyone should play the same way when in reality there are a lot of ways to approach the game and the 2015 Royals proved that by zigging when everyone else zagged.

I couldn’t tell you what the 2025 Royals need to do, but I can tell you how the 2015 Royals won a World Series and it wasn’t be letting hittable first pitches go by.

P.S.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this essay I’ve recently been thinking about writing about that 2015 team because people still love those guys and it’s the 10-year anniversary.

But to do it right I’d need to post a short essay almost every day (I’d still post all the regular stuff) between now and the end of the baseball season, but a lot of funny and/or interesting behind-the-scenes stuff happened and I have a lot of stories that never made it into print and if that sounds interesting to you let me know.

And, Sam, I was going to end this essay by suggesting you wash my car—another bad joke in a lifetime full of them—but in reality you should just keep writing interesting articles for those of us who like to watch the Royals and try to understand what’s happening and why it’s happening.

I’ll take my Toyota to the car wash myself.

Not For Sale

Apparently Jeff Bezos rented Venice for his “wedding” at a cost of $46.5 to $55.6 million which pissed off the Venetians (which are either “citizens of Venice” or “people who live on Venus”) because they viewed it as an ostentatious, insensitive, over-the-top display of wealth which is kind of surprising because I’m under the impression that most Venetians are blind.

Assuming you’ve recovered from that last joke and you might want to take a minute…

I put quote marks around “wedding” because according to the following CNN article Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez didn’t actually get married despite having a wedding ceremony, which is a neat trick I wish I knew about 41 years ago.

A “spokesman” (or as we journalists like to think of them: a “blabbermouth”) for the mayor’s office in Venice said they did not receive an official request from the couple so whatever they did it was “ceremonial” and not “legally binding.”

How the fuck did I not know this was possible?

You can have a bachelor’s party and a ceremony and get gifts and drink champagne while dancing the Peppermint Twist at a reception and then walk away yelling, “Olly olly oxen free” and still be single?

Here’s a link to the CNN article about the non-wedding wedding just in case you want to read it yourself:

https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/27/style/jeff-bezos-lauren-sanchez-wedding

See?

This is another thing Rich People get to do that the rest of us don’t and that includes building rocket ships shaped like dicks so they can impress their friends by shooting them into space or holding keggers in the Vatican or having Jimmy Buffett perform at their birthday party even though Jimmy died in 2023 which would seem to mean he can’t keep performing, but if you believe that explain Keith Richards.

Rich People get to do a lot of stuff the rest of us don’t and the system is obviously rigged in their favor so they can get convicted of 34 felonies and not go to jail or be ordered to pay E. Jean Carroll $88 million and not pay a dime, but look on the bright side, as Jeff Bezos just proved…

They can’t buy cool.

Jeff Bezos is a dork…

Elon Musk is a dork…

Mark Zuckerberg is a dork…

Donald Trump is a dork…

Back to Mark Zuckerberg for a moment; while looking for a nerdy picture of Mr. Zuckerberg I came across this one in which he at least appears to be looking down Lauren Sanchez’ top which is uncool (it’s kinda like scoring a touchdown, act like you’ve seen breasts before) and doubly uncool to get photographed while doing it.

There are a couple theories behind this Insanely Rich = Flaming Dork phenomenon, the main one being that all those guys were dorks in high school and are now living out fantasies they developed as sexually-frustrated 13-year-olds and while Donald Trump might be an exception because his family probably paid schoolmates to be his friends, true friends tell you when you’re being an asshole and if nobody ever mentions you look like an idiot when you dance to YMCA, you’ll keep right on dancing like that and from the outside it appears nobody seems to actually like Donald Trump and that includes Melania.

So that was a graphic demonstration of what’s not cool, which brings us to…

A Dissertation On What Cool Is

I would never claim to be cool (that wouldn’t be cool) but I’ve been cool-adjacent and it seems to be comprised of three distinct parts:

1. Not giving a fuck.

2. Being yourself.

And…

3. Not giving a fuck.

When we care desperately what other people think we do stupid shit and I know for sure because I’ve often cared desperately what other people think and have done a lot of stupid shit.

And if you don’t follow Rule 1 you’ll screw up Rule 2 because you’ll say and do a lot of phony stuff to gain approval from others and one of my sons recently expressed an opinion about Generation Z (people born from the mid-1990s to the early 2010) and may you live long enough to hear your children complain about “kids today” because it’s hilarious.

His point (which was actually well-taken) is that Generation Z has grown up with and on the internet and they’re all having similar experiences because being on the internet in Mankato, Minnesota is pretty much the same as being on the internet in Meridian, Mississippi and because of the pandemic and living their lives online they’re socially isolated and have no idea what’s cool unless it gets “likes” from a bunch of strangers.

Which means being yourself is a bad idea because maybe you like weird movies or weird music or think Harry Dean Stanton was cooler than Johnny Depp, but don’t mention any of that, just wait and see what everybody else likes and then decide to like that, too.

(BTW: My son also think social media “influencers” are the Spawn of Satan because they’re telling kids what’s cool and what’s not cool and often taking money from businesses to promote their products—which is definitely not cool—so some high school sophomore in Missoula, Montana thinks he’s a loser because he can’t afford a pair of Nike Men’s Air Yeezy 2 Red October sneakers for the low low price of $10,238 to $29,003 which is screwed up because not having those overpriced shoes doesn’t make him a loser—listening to social media influencers makes him a loser.)

OK, so where were we before I started slamming the Zoomers?

Right, wanting to be cool, but not realizing wanting to be cool is uncool and CNN called the Bezos “wedding” the most secretive wedding of the year which is probably not true because:

A. Apparently it wasn’t a wedding.

B. I read about it on CNN.

Holding a “wedding” and inviting photographers to take pictures of you and all your celebrity “friends” (I hope when those “friends” find out it wasn’t actually a “wedding” they get their fondue sets and Tupperware gifts back) and letting Vogue magazine know what gown the bride was wearing – a custom design by Dolce & Gabbana—just seems like showing off and letting the world see just how obscenely rich you are.

Which once again isn’t cool.

Writer Elmore Leonard – who knew a thing or two about the subject – defined “cool” as being “without pretension of any kind…simply being yourself. And, of course, remaining reasonably calm.”

(You know Leonard was cool because so many people—me included—look to him to explain “cool” and he achieved this status despite going through life being named “Elmore.” On the other hand, his friends called him “Dutch” so he had that going for him.)

According to Dutch, the question becomes can you remain yourself—can you remain “cool”—when faced with hassles and distractions and insults and assholes (which would be a great name for a Guns N’ Roses album) and when that doesn’t work, still not give a fuck?

If you disagree with what I’ve said, feel free to leave a comment, but I’m going to warn you up front that if you do I probably won’t give a…

Well, you know the rest.

According to the Pentagon, the bombs we dropped had limited impact on Iran’s nuclear program which contradicted President Trump because after the bombing he immediately went on social media and said: “The nuclear sites in Iran are completely destroyed.”

He then said CNN and the New York Times (the news organizations that first reported the Pentagon’s findings): “Have teamed up in an attempt to demean one of the most successful military strikes in history.”

Actually, the Pentagon did the demeaning and they just reported it and later Trump said the Pentagon report was “very inconclusive,” but still believed the sites were demolished.

And then—in one of the more remarkable ramblings uttered by someone not sedated and wearing a strait jacket—said: “The intelligence says we don’t know. It could have been severe. That’s what the intelligence says. So I guess that’s correct, but I think we can take that we don’t know. It was very severe. It was obliteration.”

Work your way through that very shaky logic and it comes out like this:

WE DON’T KNOW = VERY SEVERE = OBLITERATION.

I’m guessing this is the same method he uses to fill out his golf scorecards:

“I wasn’t really paying attention so I don’t know, which means I did pretty well and the only logical conclusion is I just won the Masters.”

The people who survive by kissing Trump’s ass immediately started saying Trump was right despite not having any evidence that Trump was right, which is how you keep your job, but lose your soul.

According to the AI summation of what’s on the internet, the new White House flag poles are 80 feet tall, but according to the BBC they’re 100 feet tall and however tall the flag poles are apparently Trump wanted them to be as tall as nearby monuments which seems like a really weird thing to worry about right now, but remember: this is a man who thinks people are incredibly impressed by his dancing.

The BBC said that during the flag raising ceremony Trump was asked about raids on immigrants and then turned to ask the contractors if any of them were illegal immigrants.

Which is a fair question because if a job is hard and dirty we hire illegal immigrants to do it and once Trump drives all of them out of the country we might have shortage of people willing to climb on top of houses when it’s 110 in the shade and replace all the shingles.

“According to Trump” both poles were paid for by him personally, but “according to Trump” he won the 2020 election and the people that rioted on his behalf are patriots and presidents can do pretty much anything they want and if you ask the Supreme Court, they’ll tell you he got that last one right.

Today’s Lesson

I find it comforting that even after Jeff Bezos makes a bajillion dollars and rents about a third of Italy and “marries” a woman way out of his league, he’s still a dork and probably woke up the next morning wondering what people thought about his “wedding” and checked likes on Facebook which would be totally uncool because as we have already established, about two-third of being cool is not giving a fuck.

Turns out, no matter how much money you have, you just can’t buy cool.

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

A Simple Cartoon

The previous essay on this blog was called The Amateur Hour and it was mostly about us getting involved in the Israel-Iran conflict and the amateurs currently running our government, but the original title of that essay was A Weapon of Crass Destruction. The second I wrote that down I thought…wait…don’t waste it on a headline.

That’s a cartoon idea.

Pretty simple: you draw Donald Trump with that cutline and you’ve got a cartoon that says the president is: “lacking in sensitivity, refinement or intelligence” (the definition of “crass”) and you’ve also got a nice tie in with our previous misadventure in the Middle East, the search for the imaginary Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Today we’re going to examine what it took to draw that “simple” cartoon because as those of us who do it for a living already know, making something look simple is exceedingly difficult and we get a bit miffed when we tell someone what we do for a living and they assume it’s easy and after we draw one of out “little” cartoons we must spend the rest of the day fly fishing or writing one-act plays or acting as greeters at Walmart which probably would have been my job if I hadn’t made this cartooning gig work out.

And a-way we go…

Step 1. Have An Idea

This is by far the hardest part of creating a cartoon and the way I get ideas is to read the news and doodle on a sketch pad while drinking coffee, but as some perceptive cartoonist once said, the problem with our job is when we do it we look exactly like we’re goofing off.

We’re not.

We’re putting unrelated facts into our heads and waiting for two seemingly unrelated facts to run into each other and hit it off and decide to make whoopee which in this case means create a cartoon idea.

I get up at 5 AM and start reading and drinking coffee and taking notes and it doesn’t take me nearly as long as it used to—back when I still worked at the Kansas City Star I’d start at 6 AM and be happy if I had an idea by noon—mainly because I now know the kind of news item that will make a good cartoon (for me, maybe not anyone else) and the kind that won’t and I’m also much more aware of the art I’m capable of creating and the art that’s beyond my abilities.

I just don’t take as many wrong turns as I used to.

And now a word about ideas and art.

When I came to Kansas City working for the Star was still a big deal and I got a lot of invitations to speak and show my work to live audiences which changed how and what I drew. I was getting to test market my work in front of real people and see what they liked and they responded to cartoons that were simple, quick and punchy and, to be honest, cartoons that were a little mean (history has shown we enjoy seeing someone else get hit in the crotch) and one of the biggest crowd reactions to a cartoon I ever got is when Ronald Reagan had part of his colon removed and I did a cartoon that said he was no longer a complete asshole.

(See? You probably laughed at that. You can’t laugh at sophomoric cartoons and expect me to quit drawing them.)

I couldn’t get that cartoon in the paper and thank God for that or I probably wouldn’t have survived long enough to draw about Clinton, Obama, two Bushes, Biden and Trump.

But seeing a cartoon live in a crowd for a few seconds is completely different than seeing one by yourself in a newspaper and taking your time looking at it and when someone recently called me the best one-panel cartoonist ever I read that very generous remark and thought:

“Lots of people would disagree with that and I’m one of them.”

As a cartoonist I was and am, just OK.

I knew and know what I can do and make work, but the best one-panel cartoonist ever was either Jeff MacNelly or Pat Oliphant and I vote for Jeff because he was a good friend and Pat Oliphant didn’t come to my wedding or do a giant cartoon of all the participants or hand-make a toy wagon with wooden blocks for my first son to play with and Jeff did, so Pat Oliphant can suck on it.

(Still a pretty great cartoonist though.)

As you can see, Jeff was a way better artist than the rest of us and he put a lot of work into his cartoons so if he drew a sailing ship it would include all the rigging and if the cartoon was set in Merlin’s workshop every book would have a funny title and he once told me he envied my simple ideas and ability to bullshit my way through a cartoon background.

Look at that cartoon at the top again and you’ll see what Jeff meant.

The only thing that’s totally in focus is Donald Trump and the cutline, because that’s where I want you to look, the rest of the cartoon is drawn in halftones and shadows and meaningless furniture and curtain designs so you’ll accept that Trump’s in the Oval Office and then focus where I need you to focus.

The main point is punchy and quick and for those of you who enjoyed that complete asshole remark, a little mean.

Step 2. Sketch the Layout

So now you’ve got your cartoon idea, what’s the cartoon’s setting?

Charles Saxon (yet another one-panel cartoonist better than me and I have a long list of cartoonists to choose from) once explained that when he drew a cartoon he thought about the setting first—like he was staging a play—and then added the actors afterwards. Great way to think about it and after I started using Saxon’s layout method, my backgrounds immediately got better.

Here’s another thing to think about:

Americans read from left-to-right and top-to-bottom so if you have something vertical, if at all possible put it on the left – American readers will find it easier to look at because that’s the eye pattern they’re used to – and if you can think of something to put in the foreground and background and leave the point of interest in the middle, the cartoon will have more depth.

Almost forgot (jeez, I’m giving away all my tricks, but at this stage of my career, what else am I going to do with them) cartoons and newspaper are visually busy so anything solid black or solid white will attract the eye and it took me a long time to get the confidence to not draw and let the main character’s suit be a solid block of ink.

Which us brings us to color.

When I was first required to draw color cartoons I totally sucked at it until I saw the work of the French cartoonist Voutch and he’d always use a dominate color which dictated the color to be used on the main point of interest; if the cartoon was mainly blue use orange or yellow, mainly green use red or purple, mainly yellow use purple and red and if you’re completely confused, use brown because that’s neutral.

Kinda looks like shit with everything.

Step 3. Execute the Idea

Here’s the original version of the same cartoon (before I worked on it in Photoshop) and you’ll notice my original idea was to have Trump eating a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder with fries and ketchup everywhere and that leads me to one of my infamous digressions.

WHAT’S HAPPENING TO AMERICA?

So I’m drawing that cartoon and it makes me hungry for a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder so I go get one and tell the girl in the window I want ketchup with my fries which I shouldn’t have to do because it’s pretty much like Baskin-Robbins giving you a handful of ice cream because you forgot to mention you wanted a cone.

And even after I specifically asked for ketchup I didn’t find any in my bag when I got home.

WTF McDonald’s?

According to the internet, last year McDonald’s sales exceeded $130 billion and their net income was $8.223 billion so how much can forcing customers to ask for ketchup and fucking them over if they forget to ask possibly increase their profits?

Get it together, Mickey D.

OK, so originally there was going to be a Quarter Pounder on Trump’s desk, but then I realized readers might be confused and think I was saying the Quarter Pounder was the Weapon of Crass Destruction and if the way I feel after eating one today is any indication, they’re not totally wrong.

So take out the cheeseburger, leave the Coke because I liked the way it balanced the desk top with the phone on the other side.

Next up: shadows.

You’ve got to decide where the light is coming from and to be completely honest I’ll cheat like a motherfucker on this detail. If I need two suns it’s my cartoon universe and there’s going to be light from two different sources. (I bet that guy wants to take back that greatest one-panel cartoonist remark right about now.)

At first I had the light coming from the right and that’s the version you just looked at. But that looked a little bland--what if the light was coming from outside?

But I scanned the first version in case the second version looked like crap because you can’t get that ink off the cartoon if you don’t like it and that’s the kind of lesson you learn from screwing up and having to start all over again.

It’s not my first rodeo or fuck-up or even my first fucked-up rodeo which had to be the time a bucking horse suffered a case of diarrhea as he went bucking past the fans sitting in the front row and gave them more than they bargained for and I did not make that up.

It happened in Folsom which might explain why Johnny Cash got such a bad case of the blues.

So I add the shadows and like that version better, but now I’ve got to get rid of the shadow from the desk that’s on the rug because it’s screwing up the cartoon’s symmetry which is once again centered on Trump behind his desk.

Everything in the cartoon—the drapes, the picture frames, the desk, the panes of glass are visually pushing you to the center of the cartoon and Donald Trump.

Now I’ve got to do cleanup and straighten the borders of the cartoon and erase or paint over the places where the marker ink bled into the wrong area and make the black areas 100% black and then eliminate three layers of color from the cutline—cyan, magenta and yellow—and leave the black layer because if the newspaper’s color registration gets misaligned it makes it look like you have double or triple vision and if I only have black ink on the cutline at the very least, you’ll be able to read the words.

And finally…

Step 4. Make a Black and White Version

According to King Features—the people who distribute my cartoons—about 80% of the time newspapers are going to use the Black and White version because color costs more to print so even though the color cartoons are a lot more fun to draw and look at, the Black & Whiter cartoons are probably more important.

That being the case…

You’ve got to be aware that two colors that contrast nicely might look exactly the same when the cartoon’s turned into Black & White. And now the shadows become even more important because they make the scene much more dramatic.

Today’s Lesson

There are no simple cartoons or stand-up routines or groundballs or magic tricks and the only reason we think something’s simple is someone put a lot of work into making it look simple.

This was a comparatively simple cartoon and even so it took me 1,785 words—wait, make that 1,791 words and counting—to describe it.

And don’t get me started on crowd scenes.

That’s it for today and I’ve got to get going and start greeting people at Walmart. (I like to stay in practice because you never know when people will get tired of this silly trick I’ve learned to do.)

Have a nice weekend.

The Amateur Hour

Actually, it's The Amateur Four Years..

For those of you who don’t have fond memories of Black and White TVs, rabbit ear antennas with aluminum foil on the tips, your dad risking life and limb up on your roof trying to adjust that antenna while yelling, “How does it look now?,” The Ted Mack Amateur Hour was just what it sounds like; a TV program featuring show biz amateurs trying to make an impression on America with card tricks and dance routines and playing Lady of Spain on the accordion and if you’re not on Social Security and are currently thinking “Sounds really lame” kiss my ass and go watch another episode of America’s Got Talent…or The Voice…or American Idol.

Same crap, new time slot.

In any case, recent events made me think about the amateurs we currently have running things and the mistakes they’re making and now would be a good time to mention a New York Times News Service story about Elon Musk and the Social Security Administration.

The Times started their story with Elon at some politically rally and doing what he does best – pulling numbers directly out of his ass – he claims scammers are making 40% of all the calls to the agency’s customer service line.

The people who actually worked at the SSA knew that wasn’t true, so they decide to correct the record before someone took Elon’s made-up claim seriously.

Next Leland Dudek – who was moved up from some mid-level job to run Social Security because he was willing to knuckle under to Elon and DOGE – gets a call from Katie Miller (another Musk stooge) and she tells Leland: “The number is 40%.”

She wants the agency to quit trying to correct Elon’s made-up number and Katie tells Leland Trump believes Musk’s fictitious number and adds: “Do not contradict the president.”

Short version: our guy made up a number, but the president believes that number and if you try to correct our guy’s bullshit you’re contradicting the president and you probably know how well that’s going to work out for you.

According to the NYT article, Musk and his DOGE cronies spread lies (OK, the NYT actually said “false narratives,” but let’s face it…they mean “lies”) about widespread fraud at the Social Security Administration to justify gaining access to the personal information of millions of Americans, but then Musk left in a huff, took his ball and Katie Miller with him and now the people who remain at the SSA (DOGE got rid of thousands of employees) are trying to figure out just how much damage Musk and his Band of Amateurs have left in their wake.

And because Musk erroneously claimed 40% of the calls to the SSA were made by scammers, Dudek approved a policy that said the public would no longer be able to file for benefits or change their bank account information over the phone; they’d have to do it online or in person. So SSA offices were swamped and because the DOGE idiots had driven a bunch of their employees into retirement or other lines of work like setting Teslas on fire, the SSA didn’t have enough workers to handle all the Social Security recipients who showed up to get their shit straightened out.

So now cats are marrying dogs and black is white and up is down and people are running around with their hair on fire and people who get Social Security checks are freaked out and calling the agency or showing up to ask WTF? in person and more people are claiming Social Security benefits earlier than before because who knows, with these morons “fixing things” maybe it won’t be here in five years.

Despite the fact that the Trump Administration is now taking the same line as Kevin Bacon in Animal House—“All is well!”—Dudek got placed on administrative leave and a Wall Street executive named Frank Bisignano is now running Social Security and while he rejects the idea that DOGE is to blame for all the SSA chaos, Bisignano was willing to admit that Trump’s figure of 40% was incorrect.

But then, in what appears to have been a CYA insurance policy, Bisignano issued a statement that: “The work that DOGE did was 100% accurate.”

And all this was caused because Musk got worked up about Social Security after inexperienced members of his DOGE team misread government spending data which led me to draw a cartoon that said if we really want to punish the Iranians, we should drop Elon Musk on them.

I have never planned a war unless you count family vacations, but I’m guessing the people who start wars don’t sit around with their desk calendars trying to figure out what’s most convenient for everybody: “Bob, is Tuesday good for you?” or “We can’t do it on Thursday, my kids have soccer,” but even though wars probably aren’t planned for our convenience, when the shit hit the fan between Israel and Iran my first thought was, “Jesus/Jehovah/and/or Allah, don’t we have enough going on already?”

Apparently not.

According to CNN, our somewhat theoretical dog in this fight is the possibility that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon, but according to Director of National Intelligence and Cruella de Vil impersonator Tulsi Gabbard, the US intelligence community –which is somewhat surprisingly based in Washington, D.C. – has concluded the Iranians are not building a nuclear weapon.

(More on that before we’re through.)

Going with the same gut feelings that told him a guy who has blown up four rockets in a row should be put in charge of government efficiency, President Trump said: “Well then, my intelligence community is wrong.”

Right about here it might be a good idea to ask if Trump is not listening to his intelligence community, where he’s getting his information.

Meanwhile, Trump took a break from thinking about World War 3 to come out of the White House and supervise the installation of two giant-ass flagpoles on the South Lawn and told reporters: “These are the best poles anywhere in the country, the world actually. They’re tapered. They have the nice top.”

And then added: “It’s a very exciting project to me.”

Having dealt with the dangerous shortage of flagpoles in our Nation’s Capital, Trump went back into the White House without announcing exactly when the South Lawn roller coaster and slip ‘n’ slide will be installed.

Y’know for a guy who probably thinks he’s incredibly sophisticated, Trump’s got the same decorating impulses as Elvis Presley (the Fat Elvis) and thinks crushed velvet, gold lame and chandeliers are the epitome of style and here’s his Mar-a-Lago office which appears to contain Liberace’s piano.

Later in the day Trump decided not to decide what to do about Israel v. Iran and announced he was going to wait two weeks to see how things go, which is kind of like waiting until halfway through the fourth quarter to place your bet on the Super Bowl.

Lindsey Graham – who is either a Senator or a former member of Fleetwood Mac – is apparently super-excited about dropping bombs on Iran and said:

“I feel like when he says no nukes for Iran, he means it. He gave them a chance for diplomacy. I think they made a miscalculation when it comes to President Trump.”

Didn’t we all?

If you want to read more about this, here’s an article, but I’m going to warn you CNN does not place a high priority on providing jokes unless you count the one at the end of the article when Trump was asked what he wanted his legacy to be and said:

“Always a peacemaker.”

And I’m sure he’d be willing to urge his supporters to fight like hell to make that happen.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/21/politics/iran-trump-conflict-decision

Everything you just read was written before Mr. Decisive changed his mind and decided not to wait two weeks to make a decision and went ahead and bombed Iran.

After reading a CNN analysis of the situation, the guy that made the most sense to me was Brett McGurk—who sounds like a Simpsons character, but is actually a US official who has worked on the Middle East for both Democratic and Republican Administrations—and McGurk said anyone who tells us they know where all this is going…whether it’s a pessimistic assessment or a positive one…has no idea what they’re talking about.

After bombing Iran, Trump warned them not to retaliate, but that part of the world does not seem to be over-populated with people willing to let bygones be bygones or turn the other cheek or bury the hatchet unless it’s in some enemy’s head, so who knows what’s going to happen next.

Welcome to the World’s Largest Gambling Casino, everybody.

Touching Up the X-Rays

So I’m looking for a picture of Tulsi Gabbard and come across a BBC story that says even though Tulsi testified in front of Congress and said Iran was not building nuclear weapons, after Trump said she was wrong Tulsi not only changed her tune, she changed instruments, bands and concert halls and now says Iran could produce nuclear weapons “within weeks.”

Tulsi now says her March testimony has been taken out of context by the “dishonest media.”

If I’m reading the story correctly (bear in mind, I’m dishonest) Tulsi testified before Congress three months ago and apparently didn’t object to the media’s coverage or how they depicted her testimony at that time, but then Donald Trump said she was wrong so now she’s scrambling to get back on his good side assuming he’s got one and I’ve looked at a lot of Donald Trump photos over the past eight years and haven’t spotted it yet.

Tulsi’s flexibility when it comes to “facts” reminds me of the old joke about a doctor informing a patient he needs an expensive operation and the patient saying he can’t afford the operation and the doctor saying for $20 he can touch up the X-Rays.

This administration is filled with Yes-Weasels (calling them Yes-Men and/or Women is giving them way too much credit) who want to please the boss and reach any conclusion he wants them to reach which means “reality” is 100% negotiable which is the point I was making in this cartoon I drew last December:

(Y’know, some of these cartoons could be run every year and still be current.)

Today’s Lesson

So Musks says 40% of the calls to the Social Security Administration are made by scammers and Trump says the Iranians are building nuclear weapons and the people in the Trump Administration don’t believe in anything except keeping their jobs by kissing ass, so “facts” don’t matter and they’ll change their positions at the drop of a MAGA hat and all things considered I’d rather watch someone play Lady of Spain on the accordion.

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

Clueless

Which is either a movie or a president and quite possibly both...

So I’m looking at a friend’s Facebook page and she had posted a snippy comment about Trump’s $45 million birthday parade and a bunch of people responded and one of the responses was from a woman who said shouldn’t we honor our military personnel, but a military veteran responded to that response by asking wouldn’t it be better to honor them by spending the $45 million on taking care of our military veterans instead of holding a birthday parade while firing 80,000 VA workers.

I thought “that needs to be a cartoon” and now it is.

Another person pointed out that only the Army was being honored because the Air Force, Marines and Navy didn’t have the foresight to be founded on Trump’s birthday, which made it clear that the Big Deal was Trump’s birthday, not the founding of the Army. Which was another great cartoon idea I didn’t get around to drawing and it’s pretty clear you readers have some great points to make and thank God you can’t draw because I really don’t need the competition.

Moving on before you realize that last sentence was a little insulting…

People (and I’m using that term loosely) who want to manipulate you will offer you false choices like:

A. Spend $45 million on a parade to honor the Army or…

2. Admit you’re a Godless Communist who spits on the flag on a daily basis and makes monthly donations to Al Qaida and refuses to remove his hat when someone who apparently thinks it’s an American Idol audition butchers the national anthem by adding high notes they couldn’t reach with a step ladder.

When the real choice is what’s the best way to spend $45 million in tax dollars and if you’re actually serious about saving money (and Trump clearly isn’t) a birthday parade won’t be on the list.

According to the New York Times, Saturday’s “No Kings” protests (which took place at the same time as Trump’s birthday parade) were organized by the American Civil Liberties Union, Indivisible and 50501 which is either “50 states 50 protests 1 movement” or the makers of the best blue jeans ever.

Just like the “Hands Off!” protests, the Democratic Party appears to have had no part in organizing the events.

Trump’s been president since January 20^th and six months later the Democrats are still trying to figure out how to respond to a guy who is working overtime at becoming a dictator and I hate to be the one to break it to the Democrats (actually, I don’t, but it seemed like the appropriate cliché) you only try to run out the clock when you’re ahead.

Trump is such a whirlwind of bad ideas, tantrums and ill-advised 5 AM-sitting-on-the-toilet-social-media posts that Elon Musk taking his ball and going home seems like it happened in another century, preferably the 19^th because then maybe we’d be over all the damage he’s caused.

I delayed posting this cartoon because I had my hands full dumping on the idea that Trump’s supporters are “patriots” who just happen to hate much of what’s in the U.S. Constitution, but as Abraham Lincoln didn’t say: “Mediocre kind-of-out-date things come to those who wait.”

Also according to the New York Times, the bloom started coming off the pose in the Trump/Musk bromance when Trump found out the guy he nominated to run NASA (a pal of Elon’s) had donated money to prominent Democrats.

Trump was not mollified (which is what happens when you take Ecstasy) when he was told the donations weren’t “political” which seems to mean the guy wasn’t actually supporting the Democrats or their causes, the donations were more in the nature of legal bribes, AKA: “campaign contributions.”

Musk wanted his pal to run NASA because then his pal would be in a position to help SpaceX blow up a lot more rockets which tells you exactly how serious these guys are about saving money and making government more efficient.

To be fair (as previously stated, a temporary policy) they do want government to be more efficient when it comes to giving them money and tax breaks and holding military parades in their honor, but I feel the narrative thread starting to fray, so let’s get back to Trump and Musk deciding to stop going steady.

As someone predicted (OK, it was my son who has more political opinions than me and/or I which me didn’t think was possible) those two egomaniacs would never share the spotlight for long because anytime one of them got attention the other one would be insanely jealous.

Turns out, Trump withdrawing the Musk pal’s nomination to run NASA left Musk “feeling humiliated” because what’s the point of being the president’s BFF if you can’t get cronies put in charge of departments that benefit you and Elon started saying Trump should be impeached and in response Trump said maybe he should cancel government contracts with Musk’s companies and next Musk said Trump’s name was mixed-up with Jeffrey Epstein’s and then Trump wondered out loud whether Musk’s bizarre behavior was linked to drug use, but then added he never ever thinks about Elon and they both claimed the other one was a lousy kisser and so far that’s the only thing I’ve made up.

Time Out for Some Drug Use Information

Elon has admitted to taking ketamine which has been used as a fucking horse tranquilizer (I believe they give it to celibate horses as well) and in humans it causes hallucinations and according to the DEA has been used as date-rape drug and it’s also used to alleviate depression and the people who promote ketamine call it a “versatile” drug that can be used to calm down Sea Biscuit or have a good time at a party or drug an intended rape victim or relieve depression and according to the following article from The Nation magazine Musk also uses LSD, cocaine, Ecstasy, mushrooms and Adderall which sounds like just the guy to be in charge of making government more efficient.

Frankly, I wouldn’t trust that idiot with the car keys on a camping trip.

And if you want to read more about drug use among right-wingers (also left-wingers) and how it exacerbates some already fucked-up beliefs, here you go:

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/elon-musk-drug-use-ideology/

Anyway…

Apparently Musk started worrying about Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill and how it would wipe out the savings of his Department of Government Efficiency, a point I made in the following cartoon which might be the first and last time Elon Musk and I see eye-to-highly-dilated-eye on anything:

So Musk and Trump have been busy pissing on each other’s shoes on social media which is what you do when you don’t have the balls to meet in a Steel Cage Death Match which sounds way worse than it is because according to the internet nobody has actually died in a Steel Cage Death Match so if you ever bought tickets to one and left feeling disappointed, I think you have a good case for a false advertising lawsuit as long as you’re willing to admit you bought tickets hoping to see someone die.

Which I’m not totally against, depending on the participants.

RFK Jr. got rid of his old Vaccine Advisory Committee members and brought in some new ones who are best known for being vaccine skeptics and believing it’s possible to fall off the edge of the world or at least reality and just to let you know how well things are going, the CDC reports there are now measles outbreaks (which we previously had eradicated) in “35 jurisdictions” which apparently means “states and whatever planet RFK Jr. is currently living on.”

And now…

Clueless

Here’s one of my favorite true stories about being clueless, told to me by an NFL reporter and it starts with a star college football player being drafted by an NFL team, playing his rookie season and then in the off-season, for the very first time in his life, taking a trip that wasn’t organized by a football team. He landed at the airport, took a cab into town, checked into his hotel, went to his room, looked around and then called the front desk to ask:

“Where the hell are my bags?”

He didn’t realize the rest of us are responsible for collecting our bags and schlepping them to our hotel room and right about here I feel like we should thank the Jewish people for adding immeasurably to our vocabularies with words that capture an idea or emotion perfectly and as soon as I finish writing this I’m going to have a schmear on a bagel because I’m in need of a nosh and if I don’t get one soon I’ll be verklempt.

(My Dell computer is telling me “verklempt” is not a word which seems kinda antisemitic and the logical conclusion is my 15-year-old computer hasn’t kept up with the times and will probably soon advise me to stop capitalizing “Black” and start writing “colored folk.” Apparently my computer is a racist idiot and last night my phone’s autocorrect changed “Juneteenth” to “June teeth” so don’t be surprised if my laptop and phone join the KKK, buy MAGA hats and start voting Republican.)

Anyway…

I was reminded of the NFL rookie story by Donald Trump’s apparently belated discovery that farms and hotels use illegal aliens as workers because they work cheap and can’t complain about shitty treatment and are willing to do the crappy jobs the rest of us won’t.

Turns out the farmers and hotel owners have complained about the ICE raids and Trump told ICE to back off because he doesn’t want to piss off Rich People which means he never really gave that much of a shit about illegal aliens taking American jobs, he was just playing to an audience and then found out he was playing to the wrong audience.

How the hell did Trump not know who was making the beds in his hotels?

This is what happens when you’re Stinking Rich and you get insulated from how things actually work and don’t realize somebody making minimum wage put that mint on your pillow or picked that tomato or carried your bags from the airport to your hotel room, so let’s be thankful we’re not Stinking Rich, although if somebody wants to give me one “beeeellion dollars” I’ll be happy to accept and then write heartbreaking essays about what a nightmare my life has become.

Today’s Lesson

Don’t accept false choices (make up some false choices of your own), you probably shouldn’t take ketamine unless you’re really depressed or have been entered into the Belmont Stakes and beware of our racist and antisemitic appliances because we’ve got enough of that going around already.

Enjoy June teeth, everybody.

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