Getting Past It
Today we look at Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, Al Capone and adult diapers...
While giving yet another spell-binding speech Mitch McConnell froze for 19 seconds and since Mitch wasn’t very talkative afterwards – he just said he was “fine” – people felt free to speculate about what happened and some of them speculated that Mitch froze for 19 seconds because he shit his pants.
But a solid 30 seconds of internet research seems to indicate those claims come from unreliable social media sources which were just speculating, although – speaking as an old dude – if you speculate an old dude shit himself, sooner or later you’re going to be right.
Nevertheless, there doesn’t seem to be any actual evidence that’s what occurred and this may be the first time the words “actual evidence” and “social media” have been used in such close proximity so enjoy the moment.
McConnell freezing led plenty of less-scatologically-inclined people to wonder if maybe he’s just too old to continue serving in the Senate.
Generally speaking hypocrisy is an easy target for a political cartoonist and I’m no exception, so really I don’t mind shooting fish in a barrel which – now that I think about it – sounds like an excellent way to fuck up a perfectly good barrel.
Anyway…
The Republicans say Joe Biden is too old to be in the White House, but don’t seem all that bothered by Future Adult Diaper Spokesman Mitch McConnell serving in the Senate.
Whether you’re talking about Democrats or Republicans a number of elderly people have stayed on well past their use-by-date and right here I’m thinking of Diane Feinstein and Strom Thurmond. Once you’re officially older than dirt the right thing to do would be stepping aside and letting someone younger get their turn at the plate and then starting a blog and complaining about what those younger people do with their turn at the plate.
To be honest (an impulse I’m hoping will soon pass) if the Star hadn’t “laid me off” which is what they call it when they’re desperately hoping to avoid the word “fired” I’d probably still be drawing cartoons for them and basing those cartoons on increasingly-obscure references to TV shows from the 1960s and sayings like “kit and caboodle” that nobody under the age of 60 would understand, which considering the demographics of newspaper readers, wouldn’t be a problem.
And now circling back to where we started…
I used the premise that if Mitch McConnell freezing for 19 seconds means he’s past it and ought to retire, what does that say about the Republican Party which has frozen for the past 8 years.
Despite his popularity with gullible people who seem to think a millionaire who lives in a Palm Beach country club and wouldn’t piss on them if they burst into flames is somehow “one of them,” Donald Trump has never won the popular vote in a presidential election and only made it to the White House because Hillary Clinton and the people who advise her apparently forgot about the Electrical College which sounds like a place you’d go to become an electrician, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t so I may have that name wrong which might mean I’m past it.
Either way…
Kissing Donald Trump’s ass and pleasing his Right-Wing Extremist Supporters might be a good way to keep them from being pissed off at you, but it’s also a good way to lose a general election when people who aren’t Right-Wing Extremist Trump Supporters get to vote.
The Republicans are stuck between a rock and a hard place (I couldn’t figure out how to work “kit and caboodle” into this sentence) and they have to support Trump to make sure his supporters don’t burn them at the stake, but supporting Donald Trump – at least so far – has turned out to be an excellent way to lose a general election and the GOP has had eight years to come up with a better candidate and so far haven’t come up with jack shit which I think is a fair description of Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign.
So the very same people who assure us they can handle Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un and Darth Vader should he and his Death Star decide to make an appearance, can’t handle a former Reality TV Show host.
And while we’re on the subject…
Google “why is it so hot this summer” and you’ll be provided with a number of articles that mention natural variability, climate change and El Nino, but the cartoon you just looked suggests a simpler explanation.
Donald Trump was recently indicted for the third time this year; this time for conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, namely the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory.
The indictment describes how Trump told supporters he had won the election even though he knew he hadn’t and how he also tried to get election officials, his own vice president and Congress to overturn the results.
Trump had been told by his own staff he lost, but continued to tell “prolific lies” about winning. The indictment also says: “These claims were false, and the Defendant knew they were false.”
The indictment also recounts what took place between Trump and Mike Pence.
Trump tried to get his VP to reject or delay the election results and when Pence said he didn’t have the authority to do that, Trump told Pence he was “too honest” a glaring fault Donald Trump has yet to demonstrate.
The former president has never been afraid to double down on a lie, so if I’m right about the source of hot air, don’t expect our national heat wave to end anytime soon.
Donald Trump and his Republican supporters want to impeach Joe Biden although they seem a little vague about what they would impeach Biden for.
House Speaker and Trump Handpuppet Kevin McCarthy announced on Fox News that that the House might open an impeachment inquiry into Biden, but behind closed doors (and the fact that the Associated Press had the story means someone behind those closed doors blabbed) admitted that they didn’t really know how involved Joe may have been into Hunter Biden’s screw-ups so it’s kind of like announcing you’d like to hold a hanging and then looking around for a crime to justify it.
So far the argument seems to be Joe should be impeached because Hunter is a sleazebag, a piece of logic I’m 100% opposed to because if you can get in trouble for just being related to a sleazebag, my kids are in big trouble.
In any case…
Trump has been asking why Biden hasn’t been impeached yet and because the Republicans are scared shitless of Trump Supporters they want to keep Trump happy at all costs so they’re rushing around trying to do his bidding which reminded me of the Wicked Witch of the West sending out her Flying Monkeys to kidnap Dorothy and Toto and turn the Scarecrow into garden mulch.
Although…
According to the internet the Wicked Witch never said, “Fly, my pretties, fly!” she said, “Fly, fly, fly!”
Also, Humphrey Bogart never said, “Play it again, Sam” he actually said “Play it” but we’d rather remember those quotes the way we like them so it’s kinda like that year I won the Triple Crown, Super Bowl MVP, a Nobel Peace Prize and was voted Most Likely to Grow Up and Become A Professional Smartass.
Anyway…
There’s a theory that Trump wants Biden impeached because he might get to run against him again and while Trump was impeached twice Biden hasn’t been impeached even once which in Donald Trump’s mind is incredibly unfair and a golf magazine might have explained why.
Trump is known far and wide for cheating at golf so the magazine interviewed people who had played with him and they basically said Donald Trump believes everybody cheats so he does too.
If the same attitude holds true in politics, then Trump probably believes by now Joe Biden must have done something justifying impeachment although right now this minute the Republicans can’t say precisely what that is.
Now here’s a link to an article about Devon Archer – Hunter’s business associate – and apparently the Republicans thought Archer was going to provide them with a “smoking gun” (man, you guys are lucky I don’t charge by the cliché because you’d be bankrupt) but after five hours with the appropriately-named House Oversight Committee, all they could come up with was Hunter using his dad to give the “illusion of access” to the powerful in Washington, D.C. Hunter would get his dad on the phone and his dad would say hello to whatever chump Hunter was sucking up to.
According to Archer they never talked about business and when he was asked if he was aware of any wrongdoing by Vice President Biden, Archer said no. Which didn’t stop Republicans from claiming they now had a smoking gun, while failing to mention it was at best a cap pistol.
https://apnews.com/article/hunter-biden-congress-oversight-republicans-devon-archer-1
According to the following story from the NBC website, the state of Florida got some new teaching standards that included this language: “Slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
And here I was thinking slavery was a bad thing.
The reasoning sounds suspiciously close to the rationalizations offered by wife beaters: “Yeah, I hit her, but it taught her a lesson.” (The lesson being: don’t marry an asshole.)
A statewide teacher’s union – The Florida Education Association – called the new standards “a big step backwards” for the state, but as the cartoon suggests if the current teachers don’t want to teach the amazing benefits of slavery, I’m sure Ron DeSantis can find some people willing to do the job.
OK, clearly today’s post was Donald Trump heavy and some Conservatives complain and ask when will I stop picking on him and the answer is pretty simple: when Donald Trump stops appearing in the news and doing fun stuff like getting indicted three times, which if I interpreted the Wikipedia article correctly, beats Al Capone’s record.
(Al Capone appears to have been indicted twice: – once for 22 counts of tax evasions and once for 5,000 violations of the Volstead Act and just in case you don’t know, the Volstead Act was the 13 years we “acted” like we weren’t a nation of alcoholics.)
OK, that’s it for today and I gotta quit writing now because I may have just shit my pants.
I consider my suggestion regarding term limits for legislators and judiciary authorities to be super reasonable: 12 years maximum. That's two Senate terms, six House terms. The Supreme Court is due for mucking out, too, so 12 years on it should be long enough for any justice. The ability to start your own personal grifting train and keep it going for decades is why our country is in such a mess.
Keep writing and drawing! I can’t get enough of your demographically challenged cliches!!