Clueless

Which is either a movie or a president and quite possibly both...

So I’m looking at a friend’s Facebook page and she had posted a snippy comment about Trump’s $45 million birthday parade and a bunch of people responded and one of the responses was from a woman who said shouldn’t we honor our military personnel, but a military veteran responded to that response by asking wouldn’t it be better to honor them by spending the $45 million on taking care of our military veterans instead of holding a birthday parade while firing 80,000 VA workers.

I thought “that needs to be a cartoon” and now it is.

Another person pointed out that only the Army was being honored because the Air Force, Marines and Navy didn’t have the foresight to be founded on Trump’s birthday, which made it clear that the Big Deal was Trump’s birthday, not the founding of the Army. Which was another great cartoon idea I didn’t get around to drawing and it’s pretty clear you readers have some great points to make and thank God you can’t draw because I really don’t need the competition.

Moving on before you realize that last sentence was a little insulting…

People (and I’m using that term loosely) who want to manipulate you will offer you false choices like:

A. Spend $45 million on a parade to honor the Army or…

2. Admit you’re a Godless Communist who spits on the flag on a daily basis and makes monthly donations to Al Qaida and refuses to remove his hat when someone who apparently thinks it’s an American Idol audition butchers the national anthem by adding high notes they couldn’t reach with a step ladder.

When the real choice is what’s the best way to spend $45 million in tax dollars and if you’re actually serious about saving money (and Trump clearly isn’t) a birthday parade won’t be on the list.

According to the New York Times, Saturday’s “No Kings” protests (which took place at the same time as Trump’s birthday parade) were organized by the American Civil Liberties Union, Indivisible and 50501 which is either “50 states 50 protests 1 movement” or the makers of the best blue jeans ever.

Just like the “Hands Off!” protests, the Democratic Party appears to have had no part in organizing the events.

Trump’s been president since January 20^th and six months later the Democrats are still trying to figure out how to respond to a guy who is working overtime at becoming a dictator and I hate to be the one to break it to the Democrats (actually, I don’t, but it seemed like the appropriate cliché) you only try to run out the clock when you’re ahead.

Trump is such a whirlwind of bad ideas, tantrums and ill-advised 5 AM-sitting-on-the-toilet-social-media posts that Elon Musk taking his ball and going home seems like it happened in another century, preferably the 19^th because then maybe we’d be over all the damage he’s caused.

I delayed posting this cartoon because I had my hands full dumping on the idea that Trump’s supporters are “patriots” who just happen to hate much of what’s in the U.S. Constitution, but as Abraham Lincoln didn’t say: “Mediocre kind-of-out-date things come to those who wait.”

Also according to the New York Times, the bloom started coming off the pose in the Trump/Musk bromance when Trump found out the guy he nominated to run NASA (a pal of Elon’s) had donated money to prominent Democrats.

Trump was not mollified (which is what happens when you take Ecstasy) when he was told the donations weren’t “political” which seems to mean the guy wasn’t actually supporting the Democrats or their causes, the donations were more in the nature of legal bribes, AKA: “campaign contributions.”

Musk wanted his pal to run NASA because then his pal would be in a position to help SpaceX blow up a lot more rockets which tells you exactly how serious these guys are about saving money and making government more efficient.

To be fair (as previously stated, a temporary policy) they do want government to be more efficient when it comes to giving them money and tax breaks and holding military parades in their honor, but I feel the narrative thread starting to fray, so let’s get back to Trump and Musk deciding to stop going steady.

As someone predicted (OK, it was my son who has more political opinions than me and/or I which me didn’t think was possible) those two egomaniacs would never share the spotlight for long because anytime one of them got attention the other one would be insanely jealous.

Turns out, Trump withdrawing the Musk pal’s nomination to run NASA left Musk “feeling humiliated” because what’s the point of being the president’s BFF if you can’t get cronies put in charge of departments that benefit you and Elon started saying Trump should be impeached and in response Trump said maybe he should cancel government contracts with Musk’s companies and next Musk said Trump’s name was mixed-up with Jeffrey Epstein’s and then Trump wondered out loud whether Musk’s bizarre behavior was linked to drug use, but then added he never ever thinks about Elon and they both claimed the other one was a lousy kisser and so far that’s the only thing I’ve made up.

Time Out for Some Drug Use Information

Elon has admitted to taking ketamine which has been used as a fucking horse tranquilizer (I believe they give it to celibate horses as well) and in humans it causes hallucinations and according to the DEA has been used as date-rape drug and it’s also used to alleviate depression and the people who promote ketamine call it a “versatile” drug that can be used to calm down Sea Biscuit or have a good time at a party or drug an intended rape victim or relieve depression and according to the following article from The Nation magazine Musk also uses LSD, cocaine, Ecstasy, mushrooms and Adderall which sounds like just the guy to be in charge of making government more efficient.

Frankly, I wouldn’t trust that idiot with the car keys on a camping trip.

And if you want to read more about drug use among right-wingers (also left-wingers) and how it exacerbates some already fucked-up beliefs, here you go:

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/elon-musk-drug-use-ideology/

Anyway…

Apparently Musk started worrying about Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill and how it would wipe out the savings of his Department of Government Efficiency, a point I made in the following cartoon which might be the first and last time Elon Musk and I see eye-to-highly-dilated-eye on anything:

So Musk and Trump have been busy pissing on each other’s shoes on social media which is what you do when you don’t have the balls to meet in a Steel Cage Death Match which sounds way worse than it is because according to the internet nobody has actually died in a Steel Cage Death Match so if you ever bought tickets to one and left feeling disappointed, I think you have a good case for a false advertising lawsuit as long as you’re willing to admit you bought tickets hoping to see someone die.

Which I’m not totally against, depending on the participants.

RFK Jr. got rid of his old Vaccine Advisory Committee members and brought in some new ones who are best known for being vaccine skeptics and believing it’s possible to fall off the edge of the world or at least reality and just to let you know how well things are going, the CDC reports there are now measles outbreaks (which we previously had eradicated) in “35 jurisdictions” which apparently means “states and whatever planet RFK Jr. is currently living on.”

And now…

Clueless

Here’s one of my favorite true stories about being clueless, told to me by an NFL reporter and it starts with a star college football player being drafted by an NFL team, playing his rookie season and then in the off-season, for the very first time in his life, taking a trip that wasn’t organized by a football team. He landed at the airport, took a cab into town, checked into his hotel, went to his room, looked around and then called the front desk to ask:

“Where the hell are my bags?”

He didn’t realize the rest of us are responsible for collecting our bags and schlepping them to our hotel room and right about here I feel like we should thank the Jewish people for adding immeasurably to our vocabularies with words that capture an idea or emotion perfectly and as soon as I finish writing this I’m going to have a schmear on a bagel because I’m in need of a nosh and if I don’t get one soon I’ll be verklempt.

(My Dell computer is telling me “verklempt” is not a word which seems kinda antisemitic and the logical conclusion is my 15-year-old computer hasn’t kept up with the times and will probably soon advise me to stop capitalizing “Black” and start writing “colored folk.” Apparently my computer is a racist idiot and last night my phone’s autocorrect changed “Juneteenth” to “June teeth” so don’t be surprised if my laptop and phone join the KKK, buy MAGA hats and start voting Republican.)

Anyway…

I was reminded of the NFL rookie story by Donald Trump’s apparently belated discovery that farms and hotels use illegal aliens as workers because they work cheap and can’t complain about shitty treatment and are willing to do the crappy jobs the rest of us won’t.

Turns out the farmers and hotel owners have complained about the ICE raids and Trump told ICE to back off because he doesn’t want to piss off Rich People which means he never really gave that much of a shit about illegal aliens taking American jobs, he was just playing to an audience and then found out he was playing to the wrong audience.

How the hell did Trump not know who was making the beds in his hotels?

This is what happens when you’re Stinking Rich and you get insulated from how things actually work and don’t realize somebody making minimum wage put that mint on your pillow or picked that tomato or carried your bags from the airport to your hotel room, so let’s be thankful we’re not Stinking Rich, although if somebody wants to give me one “beeeellion dollars” I’ll be happy to accept and then write heartbreaking essays about what a nightmare my life has become.

Today’s Lesson

Don’t accept false choices (make up some false choices of your own), you probably shouldn’t take ketamine unless you’re really depressed or have been entered into the Belmont Stakes and beware of our racist and antisemitic appliances because we’ve got enough of that going around already.

Enjoy June teeth, everybody.

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