First, The Good News

So Donald Trump goes to Mt. Rushmore on the Fourth of July and after saying a few nice things about America (or at least the parts of America that voted for him) Trump goes after Democrats (especially the ones that beat Trump-Approved-Republican Candidates in elections) and says those Democrats are “hardcore, godless Communists” trying to turn America into a Communist country, but then assures the crowd that America will never be a Communist country.

No shit.

To show how far this country has swung to the Right in our lifetimes:

Guess what Commie Pinko President created the Environmental Protection Agency, passed the Clean Air Act, helped desegregate Southern schools, lowered the voting age to 18, imposed Wage and Price Controls, recognized China, signed nuclear arms agreements with the Soviet Union and if you’re starting to think that sounds an awful lot like Richard Nixon, congratulations, you just won a Kewpie Doll.

Timeout for Some Kewpie Doll Curiosity

According to the occasionally-correct internet; “kewpie” is a variation on “Cupid” and Kewpie Dolls came from a comic strip in the Ladies Home Journal.

Kewpie Dolls had infantile features and little wings and were depicted as “mischievous little Cupids who did good deeds” although to me, they look a lot more like something that would become demon-possessed at 3 AM and start spouting profane Latin phrases and inform you what your mom’s been up to since her funeral.

Kewpie Dolls were also symbols of women’s suffrage and if you’re wondering how the hell that happened: I’m guessing any woman who had one of these scary little bastards in her bedroom probably suffered stress, nervous exhaustion and sleepless nights.

Also…

Turns out there’s something called the “Kewpie Doll Effect” and that’s the tendency to give cartoon characters childish features like gigantic heads and big eyes and stubby fingers which is supposed to arouse our sympathy and affection, although all it arouses in me as sudden urge to find a couple Catholic priests to drop by the house and perform an exorcism before this doll’s head can do a 360 and spray pea soup around the room.

Timeout for A Just What’s Wrong With People Rant

OK, so I’m looking for a picture from The Exorcist to illustrate this section and Google Images offers me “Exorcist Doll” which makes me wonder just what kind of freakin’ idiot would give this doll to a child and are they going to pay for the therapy that child is clearly going to need for the rest of their lives.

Anyway…

We seem to have gotten way off track (which makes it sound you’re partially responsible for my short attention span) but according to the following story Richard Nixon was as Conservative as he could be and as Liberal as he had to be and agreed to some of those liberal proposals because if he didn’t, the Democrats might pass something even more liberal. Either way, it demonstrates how things used to work (nobody got everything they wanted and politicians compromised) and just how far this country has swung to the Right, which is what inspired today’s first cartoon.

https://millercenter.org/president/nixon/impact-and-legacy

Far be it from me—a baseball fan—to criticize a sport for being boring, but apparently not too far from me because I’m about to do it.

World Cup soccer games theoretically last 90 minutes, although I’m not sure if they stop the clock (which for some god-forsaken reason counts up not down) when one of the players gets a harsh look from an opposing player and immediately flops on the ground and writhes in pain while the rest of the players walk around looking pretty unconcerned about the health of whatever method actor is pretending to be injured.

And if you’re the opposing player who gave Sir Laurence Olivier an excuse to put on his one-man play, you can get a yellow card or a red card (two yellow cards is the same as one red card) and the yellow card allows the offending player to stay in the game (but they keep a close eye on you) and a red card means the player is ejected and his team has to play a man down for the rest of the match and the player is automatically suspended and can’t play in his team’s next game.

Unless it’s a FIFA game.

FIFA is widely considered the most corrupt sports organizations in the world (Jesus, they beat out the WWF?) and the President of FIFA gets a call from Donald Trump saying the US team’s best player shouldn’t have to serve his one-game suspension and the President of FIFA says okey-dokey.

Although…

The President of FIFA says Trump’s phone call had absolutely nothing to do with overturning the player’s suspension, but as you may or may not recall, this is the same ass-kissing dipshit who cooked up the first ever FIFA Peace Prize and gave it to Donald Trump because His Orangeness was pouting because nobody (and that might include Melania) thinks he deserves a real one.

Overturning the player’s suspension didn’t help and the US lost 4-1 to Belgium which, in the exciting world of soccer, is like losing a baseball game 22-1 which the Kansas City Royals managed to do recently and I gotta admit that wasn’t very entertaining either.

Having made such a roaring success out of fucking up the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, Donald Trump decided to continue his remodeling of the White House and this time he’s adding a new helipad which will allow him to use a bigger helicopter and I just can’t wait until Trump tells his buddy Elon Musk he can launch one of his rockets from the South Lawn which will no doubt wind up being a pay-per-view event on Netflix.

In any case…

I started thinking about what new feature Trump could add to the White House and first thought “miniature golf course,” but that would require more horizontal room than I had available in the cartoon, so I needed something vertical that could loom up behind the White House and my next thought was “roller coaster” but screw that because I’d wind up with way too many support timbers to draw and the Royals were playing a day game.

And Now a Few Fun Facts About Ferris Wheels

I first became aware of this by reading The Devil In The White City which was a true story about a serial killer stalking patrons at Chicago’s 1893 World’s Fair which cemented my vow to avoid crowds unless it’s a World Series game and then you could tell me Charles Manson was running wild with a McCulloch chainsaw on the stadium concourse and I’d still take my chances.

Turns out…

The Eiffel Tower was a big hit during the 1889 World’s Fair and we needed something to rival it so they got a guy named George Ferris to come up with the Ferris Wheel and the first one was 264 feet tall and passengers were stuffed in cars that held 50 people each.

It was incredibly popular and other people started building Ferris Wheels and I came across this somewhat disturbing fact while doing the minimal amount of research that informs my work:

You cannot ride a Ferris Wheel alone because they’re afraid you’re going to do something stupid which seems counterintuitive because the vast majority of stupid things I’ve done in my life were suggested by friends, prefaced by the magic phrase:

“You know what would be funny?”

Also, a single rider can throw off a Ferris Wheel’s balance which ought to alarm the shit out of all us because we’d like to think they’re a little more stable than that.

You want to scare the shit out of yourself sometime?

Show up early and take a gander at the sketchy crews putting together carnival rides like a Ferris Wheel or The Hammer or The Zipper and I unintentionally did that once (they were setting up a half-assed carnival in a shopping center parking lot) and I saw a bunch of guys I wouldn’t trust to change my car’s oil, much less make sure all the bolts were tight on The Octopus.

And if that sounds like too much work and you still want to be scared shitless, buy a Kewpie Doll and put it on the night stand next to your bed.

As you may have already noticed, people from other countries also think Donald Trump’s a dick and since he has trouble with commitments and promises (he’s been married three times) he doesn’t like NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) which—according to the internet—is “widely considered the most successful military alliance in history.”

NATO is generally given credit for preventing the Soviet Union from invading Western Europe, but Donald Trump thinks it’s too expensive, although I gotta think having a war is going to cost way more than stopping a war.

OK, just looked that up and we give NATO $800 to $900 million annually and the Iran War is costing $1 billion a day in military expenditures and shoots up to $2 billion a day if you count all the crap we’ll need to rebuild and hospital bills and replacing military equipment.

Nevertheless…

Trump’s pissed off that the NATO members haven’t supported his war in Iran, although NATO is a defensive alliance—if one member is attacked it’s considered an attack on all its members—and it only applies to unprovoked attacks on a member nation, but Trump didn’t seem to understand that and decided to play offense and NATO is under no obligation to support a member country’s aggression.

You know how you can tell when someone isn’t really all that smart?

When they constantly tell you how smart they are.

If someone’s really smart they just shut the fuck up and do smart shit behind the scenes and nobody sees it coming and we don’t have to look any further and/or farther than The Godfather because the smartest guy in that story let everyone underestimate him because how far do think Michael Corleone would’ve gotten if he told all his enemies I hold a grudge and I’m going to get each and every one of you before I’m through.

Today’s Lesson

This country has swung way to the Right and eventually we’ll swing back to the Left although I wouldn’t mind spending a little more time in the middle, don’t buy your kids scary-ass dolls and if someone keeps telling you how smart they are, they aren’t that smart because if they were that smart they wouldn’t tell you.

Now go forth and enjoy the weekend.

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