A story about jet lag, dreams, Dr. Seuss and the infrastructure bill
After four days on the Northern California coast I returned to Sacramento and having gotten used to falling asleep to the sound of the ocean, asked the friend I’m staying with to stand outside my open window and make wave noises all night, but apparently there are limits to friendship and I found his without sending out a search party.
I’ve acclimated to the two-hour time difference when going to sleep, but my body (which seems to have a mind of its own and available evidence indicates it’s a bit of a dimwit) still wants to wake up at 6 AM Kansas City time which is 4 AM California time, so I have to find things to do while my friends blissfully saw logs and I say that having no idea what they dream about, so that “blissfully” might be totally inaccurate.
Maybe they’re dreaming about fighting space monsters or…even worse…standing in line at the DMV…or even worser…being waited on by slow-moving space monsters in the DMV…and would welcome me waking them up, but I don’t know what they dream about so I don’t reenact Paul Revere’s ride because I’ve been staying with them for a week and I’m thinking that one more bad decision by me might be the straw that broke the camel’s lease.
And speaking of dreams…
In books people have convenient and meaningful dreams that are highly symbolic and reveal some hidden truth about the book’s plot, but my dreams aren’t like that at all: George Brett or my high school girlfriend or the offensive line of the Minnesota Vikings might make a guest appearance and the other night one of the supporting actors from the Australian TV series “Rake” showed up and in my dream it turned out he was gay and his partner was kinda unattractive and my response was: “You’re famous, you can do better than this” which is a pretty elitist dream when you think about it and even if you don’t.
I mean, who am I to judge the attractiveness of a man’s partner especially since I have absolutely no information about his actual sexual preferences? And why did my unconscious mind decide to go there and then act like a dick? (See? I told you my body’s mind was a dimwit.)
My dreams make absolutely no sense unless you’re Salvador Dali on an LSD trip and I usually wake up thinking: “So just what the hell was that about and how much therapy will be required to find out?”
Moving on.
While I wait for my friends to wake up I’m reading the news on line and see that Nancy Pelosi “faces obstacles” in her effort to get a spending bill through the House and the infrastructure bill has gotten tangled up with that effort which reminded me of all the infrastructure bill cartoons I have hanging around, collecting unemployment on my laptop.
So without further ado because it will kill time until breakfast…
President Biden’s infrastructure bill
So back in June I drew a cartoon (and I really didn’t intend for that to rhyme, for that type of nonsense I have no time) about President Biden’s infrastructure bill and took aim at Joe’s insistence that bipartisanship was not dead.
Bipartisanship might not be dead, but it does seem to be on life support.
Since I drew that cartoon in June while looking at the moon and making some people swoon (OK, that was intentional, if completely uninspired), it seems like every other day there’s a story about how they’re really, really, really close to passing the bill, but just need to iron out some minor details.
Like who’s going to get what and how much credit they can take for filling their constituents’ barrel with pork.
And now let’s take a moment and call bullshit on all the people who talk about deficit spending by the government and compare it to a household budget, because odds are the household in question has mortgage on it.
Politicians who bloviate (which means: talk at length, especially in an inflated or empty way…so I think the key syllable there is “blo” as in “why don’t you bloviate me?”) about regular people being forced to live within their means seem to forget or — as is quite a bit more likely — conveniently ignore the fact that regular people borrow money all the time.
According to a 2021 CNBC report the average American has $90,460 in debt so the idea that government should model its spending behavior on regular people and not spend money it doesn’t have is pretty much horseshit because regular people also like to spend money they don’t have.
Sooner or later almost everybody borrows money even if it’s just paying off a small part of a future credit card bill because you’ve been living like Diamond Jim Brady on a meth binge while vacationing in California.
Debt at the right time for the right reasons isn’t a bad thing, although I try to avoid it because I’m not crazy about paying interest, but I can tell you from personal experience automobile dealerships tend to look at you like Pablo Escobar’s American Cousin when you write them a check for the full price of a brand new car. (Don’t be impressed, it was a Saturn.)
In any case…
The endless delays in getting the infrastructure bill passed led to the following cartoon:
And now the bill has gone to the House where they can start arguing all over again, so I’m guessing I still have Infrastructure Bill cartoons in my future…unless I have minor surgery and need a suture…or lend some money to a moocher.
Man…maybe Dr. Seuss was on to something.
OK, gotta go because I’m pretty sure I smell bacon.