Everybody Dance Now
As you may already know, Donald Trump decided to slap his name on the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts even though it has jack shit to do with him and Trump’s idea of a performing art is a clueless, fat White guy trying to dance to YMCA, as long as you’re willing to call this dancing:
Helpful Hint:
While watching a bunch of elderly White people dance, I asked my hip-hop-music-producing son who is cooler than I ever was or hope to be, what he noticed about Old White People dancing and he said:
“They’re all dancing from the waist up.”
Good point.
And now—just to prove it’s possible for an Old White Guy to dance from the waist down (and if you’ve never seen this before, you’re really going to enjoy it)—here’s Christopher Walken dancing to Fatboy Slim’s Weapon of Choice:
What did I tell you?
Anyway…
A federal judge said renaming the JFK Performing Arts Center violated a federal law that requires the building to honor “President Kennedy and President Kennedy alone” and Congress gave the center its name and only Congress could rename it.
But the Justice Department decided to get involved and argued that the name change was informal and more of a nickname—so no harm no foul—but the judge countered
that putting DONALD J. TRUMP on the building made it pretty goddamn formal and White House Spokesliar Karoline Leavitt also made a formal declaration of the name change, so their “it’s only a nickname” alibi didn’t cut it.
And right now I’m wondering why that cross Karoline occasionally wears around her neck doesn’t burst into flames when she tells yet another whopper and burn her like Holy Water burns a vampire.
Apparently the Lord also doesn’t work in mysterious ways because He seems to be taking a lot of time off work lately.
And speaking of mysterious ways…
I’m never quite sure where cartoon ideas come from, but near as I can tell, the word “center” inspired the cartoon you just looked at and while I’m not 100% sure the cartoon works as intended, I am 100% it was fun to draw.
And now I’m kinda hungry for a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.
A Reese’s Remembrance
Jim Scott was the editor who hired me and brought me to Kansas City and he was one of those Greatest American WW2 guys, but by the time of this story Jim had health problems, had to watch what he ate and was on one of those If-Tastes-Good-Spit-It-Out diets.
So one day we’re sitting in Jim’s office and for some reason talking about candy (I’m guessing Halloween was around the corner and I have pretty firm views on Halloween candy: buy the good stuff you won’t mind eating yourself and then somewhere around 8 PM turn off the lights and pretend you’re not home) and when Jim asked what candy I liked I said:
“The bite-size Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.”
With a wistful sigh and smile—like he was remembering a French girl who kissed him when he drove his tank through a liberated Paris—Jim said:
“Lee, they’re all bite-size.”
According to the following article from Politico, under Donald Trump administration FEMA’s workforce has been reduced by almost 20 percent and there are 15 vacancies in top emergency management jobs which is probably because in Trump’s opinion helping people hit by a natural disaster isn’t nearly as important as building a $1 billion ballroom for him and his pals to dance in.
A past president of the International Association of Emergency Managers (and man, we could really use some top-notch emergency management these days) said:
“There is a feeling of holding our breath, hoping for an easy season again.”
If we’re hoping to get through hurricane season based on luck, I figured FEMA probably needs to load up on 4-leaf clovers, lucky horseshoes and rabbits’ feet, although as someone once pointed out, a rabbit’s foot wasn’t all that lucky for the rabbit and he had four of them.
This one’s based on a couple stories: one about Trump using the presidency to enrich himself and the other one was about his attempt to create a slush fund for allies and we’ll deal with the second one first, but pay attention because it’s like one of those ballpark video games where they shuffle the hats around and if you lose track, you won’t know where the baseball went.
Last month the Trump administration announced the creation of a $1.8 billion fund to compensate Trump allies who believed they had been unfairly targeted by “weaponized” government agencies and yep, we’re talking about the Jan. 6th rioters who tried to overthrow the government at Trump’s request.
Trump not only pardoned them, he wanted to pay them for attacking the police and breaking into the U.S. Capitol.
The fund’s creation was part of Trump’s settlement with the IRS because he sued them when someone at the IRS leaked his tax returns.
Which raises some questions:
The IRS is part of the Treasury Department and the Treasury is part of the Executive Branch which Trump is in charge of and while the Google AI Robot claims the president does not have direct control of the IRS, the IRS agreeing to a settlement that makes the president happy is like an Amazon truck delivery driver sucking up to Jeff Bezos. (Just to clear: in that last scenario the IRS is driving a delivery truck and Trump is Bezos.)
The judge handling Trump’s IRS lawsuit said nobody checked with her to ensure the settlement was appropriate and she’d already assigned some attorneys to determine whether there was an ethical conflict because Trump was suing “entities whose decisions are subject to his directions.”
The attorneys—not wanting to state the obvious until they checked which way the wind blew—expressed concerns that the Justice Department might not be properly insulated from Trump’s influence and Jesus, do you really need a law degree to reach that conclusion?
My legal education is based on viewing numerous episodes of Perry Mason in which weak-willed murderers would break down on the witness stand under Perry’s relentless cross-examination and sob “I DID IT! I DID IT!” and the World’s Worst Prosecutor, Hamilton Burger, would lose another case and yet somehow keep his job, come back next week and arrest another innocent person.
(Just a personal opinion, but there’s no way investigator Paul Drake wasn’t banging Perry’s secretary, Della Street.)
Anyway…
The judge in Trump’s case smelled something fishy in Denmark and put the settlement fund idea on hold, pending additional arguments and even Senate Republicans thought this was a bad idea (when you misappropriate public money, for God Sake’s be cool about it and at the very least, hide it under three moving baseball caps) but on the very day I drew the Piggy’s Bank cartoon, Acting Attorney General, Todd Blanche Dubois, said the Justice Department was scrapping the fund idea and we should all forget they ever suggested it in the first place and these were not the ‘droids we were looking for.
Nevertheless…
I sent the cartoon to the syndicate anyway because it’s about a thing that did happen and people were still talking about it; also, I didn’t have any other cartoon to send them.
This is not the first time I‘ve pointed this out, but there seems to be an awful lot of shooting during a ceasefire and a recent CNN headline said: “Kuwait’s airport attacked as fresh Iran-US strike strain ceasefire”
Which is kind of like: “Gangbangs strain virginity”
Or: “Losses strain winning streak”
Or: “34 felony convictions strain claims of innocence”
Now here’s the Merriam-Webster definition of “ceasefire”:
1. A military order to cease firing
2. A suspension of active hostilities
The media has decided to accept the idea that there’s a ceasefire with Iran, even though both sides continue to shoot at each other and that last cartoon was inspired by an attack on Kuwait’s airport, which everybody thinks was carried out by Iran, although if the media is going to go along with the dubious notion that this is what a ceasefire looks like, Iran figured they could get away with blaming a malfunctioning U.S. missile.
Today’s Lesson
If you’re in a ceasefire you should stop shooting, if Perry Mason gets you on the stand, stick to your story and when you dance, try moving something below your waist. And just in case you need some more inspiration, once again here’s Christopher Walken proving that Fatboy Slim video wasn’t a fluke:
Have a nice weekend and don’t forget to dance once in a while.
According to the great Googly Moogly, Walken studied dancing way back in the day.
And at about that time, back in the day, Present Hitler was studying grifting.
White House Spokesliar Karoline Leavitt...
Every time you write this I love it.....