And Now Fighting Out of the Blue Corner

So Donald Trump is now King of the Universe and Joe Biden’s got COVID and according to a poll that may or may not reflect reality, two-thirds of Democrats want Biden to drop out of the race although they don’t seem to have a clear idea who would replace him.

The top candidate appears to be Kamala Harris which is kind of ironic if by “ironic” you actually mean “desperate” because before all this happened some Democrats had suggested she be dropped from the ticket because she’s made a fairly bad impression on much of America with bizarre and irrelevant stories about coconut trees.

Much as a I hate to admit it, the Republicans seem way more organized and unified than the Democrats, which sounds like a compliment until you remember the Fascists and Benito Mussolini got credit for making the trains run on time.

Which turns out to be yet another lie because it didn’t actually happen that way and here’s a link to a fact-checking article all about that:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/loco-motive/

While being “unified” tends to get good press, the Republicans have been “unified” by a pathological liar and convicted felon and it doesn’t say much for their party when they can’t come up with anyone better and nominate Donald Trump three times in row.

Anyway…

The Republicans seem highly-organized in a series of bad causes and the Democrats seem poorly-organized in a series of good ones and every time I think of the Democrats, their organizational skills and ability to follow through on their ideas, I’m reminded of this scene from Monty Python’s The Life of Brian:

Some people might say the Democrats are not on the same page which is an unfair expectation because it looks like they’ve been reading totally different books.

According to the following article, the White House staff knew Biden was slipping and tried to hide it. Cabinet Meetings were scripted – “The President’s going to ask you this question, how will you respond?” – to conceal the fact that Biden was no longer quick on his feet or any other part of his anatomy and they held fewer meetings so people would have less chance of seeing Biden’s decline.

But they couldn’t hide his debate performance.

After Biden’s debate disaster, one top Democrat told CNN: “There’s this general sense of just, unbelievable holding your breath every time he does an event, every time he’s with people. This is going to get worse.”

The Democrats outside Biden’s inner circle that didn’t know how bad things had gotten are now pissed off that Biden’s staffers hid the extent of the problem and if you think reelecting Donald Trump would be a disaster, you should be pissed off, too.

Staffer remoras are attached to politician sharks and share their fate and while we were being told how incredibly important this next election is, Biden staffers decided it was more important to keep their jobs in the White House.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/11/politics/joe-biden-age-decline-democrats-angry/index.html

Semi-recently CNN posted an article about the Republican convention and mentioned some of the party members who had to pledge loyalty to Donald Trump and labeled them “ring kissers.”

As the above cartoon demonstrates, I think it goes deeper than that.

Nikki Haley, who in the past called Donald Trump “unhinged” and “diminished” and “not qualified,” saw the error of her ways and endorsed Trump and so did a bunch of his former critics which is one of the many reasons we think so highly of politicians and if things had gone badly during the Battle of the Bulge I’m guessing a number of American politicians would have started finding good things to say about our future Nazi Overlords and learning the words to the Horst Wessel Song.

Timeout for History

I just made another one of my obscure references and this time it was about Horst Wessel who was a law school dropout, joined the Nazis, became a Stormtrooper and was living with an ex-prostitute when someone broke into his apartment and murdered him.

World Champion Opportunist Joseph Goebbels saw a chance to turn Wessel into a martyr and a poem Horst had written was put to music and it became a Stormtrooper marching song and unofficial national anthem of Nazi Germany and here’s one of the verses which clearly shows Robert Frost didn’t have much to worry about:

Gangway! Gangway! Now for the Brown battalions!

For Storm Troopers clear road o’er land!

The Swastika gives hope to our entranced millions,

The day for freedom and for bread’s at hand.

I’ll give the Horst Wessel Song a 34 because even though it’s got a good beat it’s hard to dance to unless you like goose-stepping and that’s yet another obscure reference, this time to American Bandstand and its “Rate-A-Record” segment in which teenagers were asked to rate a record from 35-to-98. Apparently Dick Clark pulled those numbers directly out of his ass to reflect his belief that no song was so awful it deserved a really low score and no song was perfect, beliefs that indicate Dick never heard the Horst Wessel Song or Eight Miles High.

And just in case you’ve forgotten how great that last song was, here you go:

BTW: 

I watched one of the Rate-A-Record segments in which a 16-year-old boy who had just listened to A Hard Day’s Night and I Should Have Known Better suggested that the Beatles should not overstay their welcome and this was 1964 which is yet another example of why 16-year-old boys are so rarely asked to become Supreme Court Justices or negotiate peace treaties and at 16 I bought a 1966 Ford Fairlane 500 that had been in a wreck and I painted it bright yellow and then hand-lettered “Screaming Yellow Zonker” across the trunk because 16-year-old boys tend to be fucking idiots and I was no exception.

Also…

Eight Miles High takes its title from a jet airplane trip the Byrds took to London which is the “rain grey town, known for its sound” mentioned in the song and “sidewalk scenes, black limousines” refers to the crowds that met them and thank God Horst Wessel wasn’t in the Byrds because he probably would have asked if they could work in a verse about swastikas and hating Communists.

Every so often I’ll be writing one of these essays and make a point that should be turned into a cartoon and you just looked at an example.

As I wrote in a previous post, if Joe Biden and the Democrats are responsible for the attack on Donald Trump are Donald Trump and the Republicans responsible for the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband?

BTW: Could that bandage on Trump’s ear get any bigger because if his ear got clipped by a bullet you’d think a regular old band aid would do the job, but they used one the size of an International House of Pancakes waffle and I’m guessing they did that so it could be seen in the last row of whatever Brown Shirt Rally Trump chooses to attend.

And now it’s become a MAGA Republican thing to wear one although if they covered both ears it would be more accurate because I’m pretty sure these people don’t plan on listening to anyone.  

Hurricane Beryl hit Texas and according to the Associated Press, knocked out power to nearly 2.7 million homes and businesses and I used that news event to comment on another news event – Biden’s debate performance – which knocked out power to just one house, but it’s white.

Today’s Lesson

If you’ve got a problem it’s better to deal with it than hide it, Horst Wessel was a shitty poet and being unified has its drawbacks when you’re being unified by a con man.

Hang in there because apparently Biden’s inner circle is now admitting he should drop out of the race and the Democrats will use the time-honored scissors/paper/rock system to choose a replacement and I’ll leave you with a famous quote from former Kansas City Royals manager Buddy Bell:

“I never say it can’t get worse.”

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