Enjoy Every Sandwich
Google “what impact will tariffs have?” and you’ll be informed that they’re likely to raise prices for consumers and our trading partners might retaliate with tariffs of their own and businesses will be reluctant to make decisions until they see how things shake out which will reduce economic growth and cats will marry dogs and the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse will enter the Belmont Stakes and Vladimir Putin will be named People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive, so apparently Donald Trump didn’t google “what impact will tariffs have?” before he imposed them, because he was stunned and pissed off (which would be a great name for a Clash album) when the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that hiring was down.
Turns out, hiring over the past three months is the weakest it’s been since the pandemic.
So seeing that his tariffs are having a negative effect, Trump did the logical thing and fired the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is a lot like getting an X-Ray that shows you have a broken leg and firing the doctor who showed it to you—which might be satisfying if you have the emotional development of a sixth-grader—but you still have a broken leg.
Trump claimed without evidence (which is way easier than coming up with facts to support whatever bullshit statement you want to make) that the commissioner manipulated the figures for political reasons. He also claimed she was trying to make him look bad, which seems completely ridiculous because Trump’s doing a bang-up job of making himself look bad without her help.
He then claimed that the economy is actually “booming” which I illustrated in the following cartoon:
According to a recent poll, regular-ass Democrats agree with me and call their party “weak” and “ineffective” and say “it rolls right over” and the only thing worse than the Democratic Party is the GOP.
Respondents (or maybe that should have been “despondents”) were asked to say the first word that came to mind when Democrats or Republicans were mentioned and while I would have supplied some choice and inventive profanities, the despondents came up with words like “dishonest” and “stupid” which would be a great name for a Spinal Tap album.
(And just in case you’re wondering; yes, I totally stole that joke from Dave Barry although in his version it would be “a great name for a band.”)
Cathia Krehbiel—whose name appears to be some kind of anagram—a Democrat from Indianola, Iowa, called her party “spineless” which inspired the following cartoon:
Republicans, on the other hand, were much more positive about their party and one respondent called it “hard-working” and I couldn’t agree more because bending over to kiss Donald Trump’s ass 24 hours a day must be exhausting.
About 2-in-10 Republicans said something negative about their party, like Dick Grayson—a military veteran from Trade, Tennessee—who said he was disappointed in both parties and then Dick went back inside Wayne Manor to resume being a “ward” to Bruce Wayne and if you’re wondering what the fuck a “ward” is, let me point out that when Bruce and Alfred the Butler designed Dick’s costume they decided to make him wear hot pants.
(See? This is why you should read comic books so if your family name is Grayson you don’t mistakenly name your son “Dick.” And if your family name is Kent don’t name your son “Clark” and if your family name is Doom don’t get a doctorate, although as a kid I thought it would be funny to become a judge so I’d be Judge Judge, but I found out just how much work that lame joke would require and learned to draw big noses instead.)
If you want to read more about the obscure cities PBS decided to visit to get their quotes, here you go:
RFK Jr. who’s about as qualified to deal with science as I am to quarterback the Minnesota Vikings (wait, I’m more qualified to quarterback the Minnesota Vikings because I actually believe football exists) decided to cut funding for developing vaccines because what have vaccines ever done for us besides eradicating smallpox and helping end the recent pandemic and significantly reducing polio, measles, rubella, mumps, chickenpox, tetanus and diphtheria.
Considering how advanced RFK Jr.’s views on science are, I decided illustrate his probable views on geography.
As I say and will probably continue to say every time I criticize the government of Israel, disagreeing with what Benjamin Netanyahu is doing doesn’t make you antisemitic anymore than disagreeing with what Donald Trump is doing makes you un-American.
And now that we’ve got that off my chest.
Despite overwhelming evidence Netanyahu declared there was no starvation in Gaza and even Donald Trump—no stranger to wishful thinking—called bullshit and next Netanyahu called for a “full occupation” of Gaza which his own military warned him against and Israeli human rights groups said he was conducting a genocide and committing war crimes and if you want to read more about all that, here’s an article from the BBC:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj4w2q9k4pjo
Today’s Lesson
This is where I usually sum up whatever murky moral my cartoons have provided that day, but today we’ll talk about watching your “p’s and q’s” although in my case it would be watching my “t’s and y’s” because those are the two letters my laptop keyboard eventually refused to produce and I was reduced to copying and pasting those letters from previous articles or sending emails from my phone which I would copy and paste, but this morning I woke up and apparently an Old Priest and a Young Priest (Austin Powers joke) conducted an exorcism on my laptop last night while I was sleeping because now it’s acting totally normal and spitting out t’s and y’s like there’s no tomorrow, which considering the fucked-up weather we’re having, might be accurate.
Like everything else in Life, who knows who long this easy access to t’s and y’s will last?
Man…
You really don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone and we should all thank Joni Mitchell for pointing that out in Big Yellow Taxi back in 1970 and just in case you don’t get that reference, here you go:
This was obviously recorded when TV was less slick and more genuine and I love that Joni came out to sing and had to tune her guitar first.
OK, so where were we?
Right, appreciating what we have and it doesn’t take much to remind us that we’re lucky and should quit thinking so much about what we don’t have and appreciate what we do have and what I have right now is a laptop keyboard that will produce all 24 letters of the alphabet and I’m going to enjoy that while I can.
BTW: I found that video on YouTube and the next video was Warren Zevon doing Werewolves of London and every time I hear Warren’s name I think about what he said when he was dying of cancer and David Letterman asked what he’d learned from the experience and Warren said:
“Enjoy every sandwich.”
Have a nice weekend and enjoy all your sandwiches.
Just wanted to point out that there are actually 26 letters in the alphabet which would make my comment about enjoying all 24 letters a great joke if I'd done it intentionally. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure I could get by without "q" and "x" and if you disagree I'll thank you not to kwestion me publicly even if you're the leader of the Eks-men, Professor Zavier.
Before I even opened the email, I knew from the subject line there was a Warren Zevon reference coming. Made me smile. Thanks for that!