Back To Politics
Now that the Royals are out of the playoffs...
The Royals lost to the Yankees 3-1 last night and are now out of the playoffs and this morning a story from the Kansas City Star said the Royals bats failed them, like Gerrit Cole’s pitching had absolutely nothing to do with it.
We tend to view sports from a limited perspective and if our team wins it’s because they played well and if our team loses it’s because they played poorly, so it’s like the other team wasn’t a factor and you know if the Royal had won that game 3-1 the article would be about the terrific Royals pitching.
In any case, that’s over and it’s time to move on, but before we do I want to point out that going from 106 loses last year to the playoffs this year is a terrific turn around and you don’t have to win a World Series to have a good season.
So thanks, Kansas City Royals, you made October a lot more interesting.
And now, however reluctantly, back to politics.
The cartoon you just looked at was inspired by a column in which the author called Donald Trump a “carnival barker” – the guys who try to sell tickets by badgering passersby and they look like this…
But for whatever reason my mind pictured a circus ringmaster and they look like this…
About the same time I read a column about the current state of the Republican Party and how it’s now filled with people who won’t admit their guy lost in 2020 and believe the weather is being controlled by Jewish space lasers and you shouldn’t get vaccinated during a pandemic and the column’s author concluded that if a rock-solid Republican like Dwight Eisenhower came back from the dead, he’d look at what his party had become and ask:
“WTF?”
Which is odd because I don’t get the impression that Dwight used much profanity, although who knows what Dwight got up to privately because it’s widely believed that during WW2 he had an affair with his driver, Kay Summersby, and one of the people who believed it and put it in a book was Kay:
Hubba, hubba.
So where were we?
Right, talking about the Republican Party and how Donald Trump has made it jump through hoops and made it look ridiculous and that circus image is the one that came to mind.
And Now Some Research Into Animal Abuse
So I had that ringmaster image ready to go, but needed to write the caption and wanted to know if circuses were still being accused of abusing animals and the answer is yes and some people consider riding a horse abusive.
That got me interested so I continued reading and turns out, the people who consider horse riding abusive feel that way because the horse hasn’t given its consent.
OK, interesting position.
Because unless horses start talking we don’t know how they actually feel about being ridden and the only talking horse I’m aware of was Mr. Ed and now that I think about it, I don’t remember ever seeing Wilbur sitting on Ed’s back.
BTW: I got curious and wondered how they made Mr. Ed appear to talk and turns out they originally attached a piece of fishing line in his mouth and pulled on it and the articles I read avoided saying just how that fishing line was attached in his mouth and the horse – actually named Bamboo Harvester so I can see why they stuck with Ed – didn’t like it much and eventually learned to move his lips whenever Wilbur stopped talking.
A skill many of us have learned to emulate in marriage.
(No idea what the fuck you just said because I stopped listening to you about two decades ago, but I get the sense it’s my turn to say something so I’ll offer something neutral like “interesting” or “if you say so” and hope that satisfies you so I can get back to watching this playoff game.)
OK, so if riding a horse is animal abuse because you didn’t get the horse’s consent I’m guessing anything we do with animals — own them, eat them, make shoes out of them, put them in bad TV series — is also animal abuse unless those Double Quarter Pounders I’ve been consuming came from suicidal cows.
I did find an essay written by a vegan named…wait for it…Taylor Slaughter and she rides horses for a living and made the point that horses are huge animals that weigh a thousand pounds and if they don’t want to be ridden they probably won’t be.
But then I thought “What about rodeos?” but my next thought was; if you can stay on a pissed-off horse for eight seconds they give you a big-ass belt buckle and my next inconvenient thought — I have a lot of them — is they use “bucking straps” to make the horses buck and I always assumed they strapped them around some tender part of the horse, but rodeo advocates claim the straps do not cause pain, they only “tickle and irritate” the horse so I guess they interviewed Mr. Ed’s grandson to get that insightful information.
BTW and I didn’t make this up: Google’s AI (the soon-to-be killer-robot-once-it-gets-smart-enough that sums up what’s on the internet) seemed confused about my use of the words “bronco” and “bucking strap” when asking my question and offered me a picture of a Ford Bronco and said bucking straps were used to prevent the horse from kicking the dashboard.
So if AI is our future, we may be in trouble.
Moving on: according to this article from some website I never heard of quotes an equine expert I also never heard of and she claims horses buck primarily because they’re in pain and bucking was originally learned as a method of getting predators off their back which once again is an awful lot of information being extracted from an animal that can’t speak:
Anyway…
Ms. Slaughter (yeah, we’re talking about her again) also pointed that some vegans think it’s unethical to profit off horses which she found ironic because most humans – including her – have someone profiting off them and if she released her horses into the wild, like some vegans advocate, the average domesticated horse couldn’t survive and wouldn’t form a commune with all the other freed horses and start a small business selling hand-crafted candles.
But some animal-rights activists still think you can’t do jack shit with an animal unless you get its consent or convince it to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement so it doesn’t write a tell-all book like Kay Summersby or go on 60 Minutes to talk about what an asshole you are.
Now here’s an article from someone who believes it’s time for us to give up our pets and turn Fluffy the Kitten back into the Wild where I’m guessing Howard the Hawk would have her for breakfast.
But if Howard eats Fluffy that’s perfectly OK because it’s natural and part of the food chain, a position that makes me wonder aren’t we part of the food chain and every once in a while some idiot proves it by diving with sharks, so why is it wrong when we do it and OK when a Howard the Hawk does it?
Discuss.
And while you’re discussing this stuff, it turns out PETA is OK with owning cats or dogs as long as you treat them well and provide weekly visits to a licensed therapist, but I’m guessing those cats and dogs didn’t sign notarized consent forms either so PETA’s position comes across as:
“The animal stuff we want to do is OK, but most of us don’t ride horses so fuck that and the horse it rode in on.”
The people who think owning an animal is abusive seem to be all over the place about where to draw the line so feel free to make your own decisions and the only thing I’m 100% sure of is you shouldn’t make an elephant balance on a ball and if you do I’m voting for Kamala.
During the Vice-Presidential debate JD Vance refused to admit Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and when he was asked about that refusal and given another chance to admit the world was round and the earth rotates around the sun and that sun also rises in the East and sets in the West he once again ducked the question and said in part:
“The media is obsessed with talking about the election of four years ago. I’m focused on the election 33 days from now.”
Y’know who else is obsessed with talking about the election of four years ago?
Donald Trump.
His claim that he was cheated is a big part of Trump’s 2024 campaign and he brings it up all the time which JD Vance chose to ignore because JD was trying to weasel out of answering an uncomfortable question which would be a lot like me getting stopped by a cop and having him search my car and then asking:
“Isn’t that a dead body in your trunk?”
And me replying:
“The police are obsessed with dead bodies, but the trunk’s behind me and I’m focused on driving the car and what’s in front of me.”
And now that I write that I can’t believe somebody hasn’t asked me to run for office because I’ve definitely got enough bullshit to swing it.
Anyway…
As we choose who to vote for it’s a bad idea to focus on promises about the future because focusing on actions of the past gives us a much better idea of how someone will behave in the future and refusal to admit the obvious is not a good sign.
Because if you can refuse to admit something obvious like losing the 2020 election you can also refuse to admit climate change is happening and income inequality is out of control and Black people get a worse deal from the cops and starting a runner on second base in extra innings is a bad idea.
I thought of the cartoon you just looked at weeks ago, but was reminded of its existence by a New York Times News Service story that said the United States had sent weapons to the region including aircraft carriers, guided missile destroyers, amphibious assault weapons, fighter squadrons and maybe one of those Star Wars Death Stars assuming we have one they haven’t told us about and also planned to send a “few thousand more troops” to protect the troops already there and that’s pretty much how you get sucked into a war you didn’t start.
A Pentagon spokesperson said they wanted to achieve “de-escalation of the situation through deterrence and diplomacy” but other less-diplomatic Pentagon officials worried that providing more force might actually encourage Israel to be more aggressive because they know they’ve got the U.S. backing them up which is a lot like talking shit in the high school cafeteria because your Big Brother is there.
Now the UN is saying Israel fired on some of their peacekeepers in Lebanon and if we think we’re controlling Israel I thought it fair to point out they’re on a pretty long leash.
And finally…
This cartoon occurred to me when Florida got hit by two hurricanes in a row with a few tornadoes in-between and when I sent it to the people in Florida who distribute my cartoons I got an automated email back that said they were shut down and headed for higher ground.
So the cartoon is so timely it can’t be used and if any of those Florida people get to read this, good luck.
It's my fault. I was cheering for either a Phillies-Royals matchup or Phillies-Orioles. If it's Yankees-Dodgers I'm going to be praying for a earthquake to swallow whatever stadium the game is in.