Because this blog recently got hijacked by Major League Baseball Hijinks I have once again neglected to post political cartoons and today we’ll take care of that, starting with the news that some guy became the first human infected by the bird flu, which I used as an excuse to go after Donald Trump, who just in case you hadn’t noticed is not going away.
And because some other dude in Ohio got the Republican nomination to be Hall Monitor after Trump endorsed him, some people started calling Trump a “kingmaker” which we’ll get to in a minute, but first I want to know what that guy who got bird flu was doing with the bird when he got infected.
Which reminds me (and skip this anecdote if you’re squeamish, but you’ll be missing a pretty good anecdote if you do) that my high school was located in the Sierra Nevada foothills which is home to a lot of California Conservatives (like Bigfoot, they do exist) and when I recently took my son to see my old school, he burst out laughing and when I asked what was up he pointed to a sign in somebody’s front yard that would have been about the right size if you were putting up a billboard on Highway 50 and the sign said:
“FUCK BIDEN!”
After living for several years in the Overly-Politically-Correct Los Angeles Metroplex where you get a heavy fine and possibly imprisonment for using the wrong pronoun, it cracked him up that someone would put that on a billboard which every high school kid was going to have to pass on the way to school.
That’s not even the anecdote I started to tell, but this is:
Being in the foothills some of us came from down in the valley which had suburbs with cement ponds and some of us came from goat farms up in the hills (and I didn’t make that goat-farm thing up, assuming goats are raised on farms and not ranches) and eventually that political-economic split became known as Ropers & Dopers and one day one of my high school football teammates (definitely a Roper) asked me (an occasional Doper) if I wanted to know the best way to fuck a sheep.
Having a non-linear thought process, the most intriguing part about that question was the word “best” which implied my teammate had tried having sex with sheep in every position depicted in the Livestock Kama Sutra and had finally settled on the “best” way.
Which he revealed to me and it kinda made sense, but I won’t share it here because I think I’m already pushing my luck taste-wise, but if you see me in a bar, buy me a drink or three and I might let you in on the secret because you never know when it will come in handy.
(Got you wondering, don’t I?)
So Trump endorsed a guy named J.D. Vance who then won his primary in Ohio and some people with over-active hyperbole glands started calling Trump a “kingmaker.”
But I saw it differently because if one of the requirements for keeping your job is continually kissing Donald Trump’s ass, you’re hardly a king.
Also, Trump endorsed more than 150 candidates in recent elections and the main requirement for getting endorsed seems to be backing up Trump’s lunatic claims that he actually won the election and some of the Trump-endorsed candidates won and some of them lost and if I endorsed more than 150 candidates I’m guessing I wouldn’t go 0-for-more-than-150 and because I got a couple endorsements right that wouldn’t make me a kingmaker, plus I wouldn’t make you kiss my ass although I might ask you to get involved in a three-way as long as we can find a consenting sheep. I mean, I know the absolute best way, which reminds me of the Rake episode (it’s on Netflix and it’s great) where lawyer Cleaver Greene defends a client accused of having a three-way with a dog by asking if horses consent to be ridden.
Good point…or maybe I should cover my ass with a question mark and instead ask: good point?
Semi-recently the Kansas Legislature failed to pass a bill that would ban transgender athletes from girls sports, but Republicans vowed (and you know they never break a campaign promise, so head South and take a selfie in front of that Border Wall that was paid for by Mexico) to make the issue a “hallmark” of their campaigns in upcoming elections.
Which is an interesting turn of phrase because “making it a hallmark” is not quite the same as promising to pass it even though it kinda sounds like it is, which would seem to be the point of the overly vague wording, but let’s move on because we have much bigger issues to contemplate.
Kansas Representative Cheryl Helmer (pictured here looking batshit crazy alongside Kansas Representative Yosemite Sam) sent a constituent an email saying she was uncomfortable sharing a restroom with her transgender colleague, Representative Stephanie Byers because transgender people are attacking women and children in restrooms which…and let’s double check this…isn’t actually happening.
Now here’s a link to a story about that:
https://time.com/4314896/transgender-bathroom-bill-male-predators-argument/
Apparently, what is happening – although it sounds pretty damn rare – is heterosexual men dressing like women to gain access to women’s restrooms (the same kind of “straight” creeps who hide cameras in women’s changing rooms and for God’s sake, guys, knock that shit off) but that screwed-up behavior, which was happening before transgender athletes became an issue, has not increased in places that allow people to use whatever restroom aligns with their sexual identity.
And as someone who seems to have retained at least part of their sanity pointed out, assaulting women and children (and dudes for that matter) is illegal whether you’re actually transgender or pretending to be transgender so if you’re worried about that, it’s already covered.
In fact, it turns out the people who really need to be worried about being assaulted in a public restroom are the transgender people being accused of assaulting others and here’s a story about that:
Given the Republicans scare tactics and willingness to attack problems that don’t actually exist, I wondered just how many transgender athletes there actually were and according to an ESPN story, it’s probably about 0.44% of all high school athletes which still works out to about 35,000 transgender high school athletes, but as one executive director of an athletic conference pointed out, the only transgender athletes that have people upset are the transgender athletes who compete and win which the vast majority of transgender athletes don’t do.
Anyway…
I thought it was worth pointing out how many issues the Republicans have ignored to focus on an issue that barely exists.
OK, I still got way more cartoons to post, but that’s going to have to wait because I have other fish to fry and consenting sheep to locate.
Not many places you can go for wide ranging musings of this caliber. A good way to start my day.
I loved that you interrupted your anecdote with an anecdote (it reminded my wife if her husband)