OK, so yesterday I was trying to decide whether or not to draw the above cartoon. Mitch McConnell was saying a deal on a stimulus package was right around the corner, the Senate didn’t have a minute to waste and they ought to have things worked out by lunch.
So if I drew the cartoon and the Senate reached an agreement, the cartoon could be obsolete by the end of the day.
I bet on politics and drew the cartoon.
It’s now 24 hours later, the senators are still arguing and the cartoon is still relevant.
The Republicans are saying the Democrats are playing politics and the Democrats are saying all they want to do is make sure the money gets to the ordinary Americans who need it most.
According to them there aren’t enough safeguards in the package to make sure companies don’t keep the money in their own pockets while continuing to lay off workers. They also say the stimulus package as currently written would allow Donald Trump’s real estate empire to take advantage of the federal aid.
The Republicans countered with two main arguments:
1. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain and…
2. I’m rubber you’re glue.
Which side you believe now probably depends on which side you believed when all this started.
As for me, I wouldn’t trust the average CEO as far as I could throw him unless you let me use a catapult. Come to think of it, we could turn it into a reality show, put it on TV and use it to entertain the millions of Americans currently stuck in their homes. I’m thinking Celebrity CEO Catapult Toss could be bigger than The Masked Singer.
Maybe we could combine the two, put masks on the CEOs and then let a panel of C-list celebrities try to guess which business executive we just hurled into the Grand Canyon.
Either that or we have Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer strip to the waist and fight it out in a UFC-style octagon; which I think both of them wouldn’t mind doing right about now.
I’m chock full of good ideas so if you’re a Hollywood TV producer, shoot me an email and we’ll see what we can work out.
Why listen to the experts?
Apparently there is growing sentiment in the White House that the medical experts are being allowed to set policy and those policies are hurting the economy.
Great point: during a global pandemic, why would you want to listen to medical experts?
This is the same kind of thinking that has led to polar bears treading water, the state of California catching on fire and tornadoes carrying off your loved ones to an adjacent state although that may no longer be allowed under current travel restrictions.
But as is so often the case; when it comes to making money, science is often inconvenient.
I find it hard to believe that the same people who laid off workers so they could award themselves bonuses give a rat’s behind about the average dude or dudette waiting tables; but let the stock market drop like an Acapulco cliff diver and something has to be done.
I’m no financial genius, but I’m guessing the rich tend to have more money in stocks than the rest of us who often decide to invest in things like groceries and rent.
What all this comes down to is President Trump saying maybe we can all go back to work in 15 days because without the galley slaves rowing, his pleasure barge seems to be losing speed.
The smartest thing I’ve heard so far is a plea for more testing so we know who has the coronavirus and should stay home and who doesn’t have it and can go back to work. Right now we mostly don’t know who has it and that means pretty much everybody is staying inside and that’s cratering the economy.
Until I hear a better idea, more testing seems to be the fastest way to get a lot of people back to work.
Bad teammates
As some of you have already surmised I tend to use sports metaphors to explain Life and how we should live it and that’s only because sports make a lot more sense to me than religion.
I’m not sure if there’s a God or prayer does much good, but I know if you throw four balls the batter gets first base and if you score a touchdown you get six points. As a result, I find sports more reliable than religion.
Anyway…
Here’s the point I intended to make: good teammates put their individual goals aside in order to accomplish the team goal.
Bad teammates don’t.
Right now we’re all being asked to sacrifice for the team – humanity – and good teammates will do that. Bad teammates will hoard toilet paper, rip hand sanitizer dispensers off the wall (happened at the Kansas City airport) and head to the beach so they can party with their coughing and wheezing friends.
And you know what else bad teammates do?
They can’t agree on a stimulus package.
If you wondered how close to the end we actually are, you're my main news source.
All I know is all bets are off, nothing matters anymore, and I'm just gonna go ahead and start pronouncing the "L" in salmon and the "R" in Washington.
I have to get up and dance around the room now.