Have A Heart

It's Take Pity on a Multi-Billionaire Day...

Google “how many federal workers have lost their jobs due to DOGE” and according to Newsweek an estimated 222,000 job cuts have been announced this year and according to CNN a stock exchange rout wiped billions from Americans’ retirement accounts and according to the rest of us the price of groceries is through the roof and if you want to buy a new car it will involve the naming rights to your first born male child and cats are marrying dogs and the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse have entered the Kentucky Derby and in the middle of our national meltdown, Donald Trump expressed sympathy for (and you might want to brace for impact):

Elon Musk.

President Trump turned the White House into a car dealership (it was only a matter of time) and displayed some of Elon’s Teslas and criticized people who criticize Elon because it’s just so unfair to boycott the products of the guy who fired you.

And if we don’t keep buying Teslas, then Elon’s going to have to limp along on the $324.3 billion he’s already accumulated.

https://www.newsweek.com/doge-layoffs-federal-government-tracker-2025-dod-cuts-2042525

And Now A Word About Buying A Tesla

According to Consumer Reports, in 2025 Teslas rank:

• 15^th in Used Car Reliability

• 17^th in New Car Reliability

• 1^st in Maintenance and Repair Costs

• But 3^rd in Owner Satisfaction.

And while that might seem (what’s the phrase I’m looking for…wait…got it) fucking illogical, I’ve heard it theorized that people buy Teslas not because they’re good cars; they buy Teslas because of what they think it says about them and what it appears to say about them is they don’t read Consumer Reports.

(Also, they don’t mind driving a truck that looks like it was designed by Bizarro Superman, which come to think of it, is a way more accurate description than I thought it would be when I started this sentence.)

An observant reader once remarked that most of my cartoons seemed to be about hypocrisy and I said that was often true because a politician saying one thing and doing another provides Top Notch Grade A cartoon material.

And in this case, Donald Trump proclaiming his great love for America and making out with the flag like they’re on their third date at a drive-in movie and then cutting 70,000 workers from the Veterans Administration (and some of those workers are veterans themselves) struck me as hypocritical.

I’ve got no idea if this is a well-thought-out plan or one of those idiot-savant kind of deals (idiot-savant is definitely trending):

But Donald Trump does so many screwed-up things and does them so fast you can’t focus on any one of them for long because just about the time you’re getting pissed-off about his treatment of Ukraine, he announces tariffs aimed at the Nova Scotia automobile industry, but then cancels the tariffs and says the Gulf of Mexico is now the Gulf of Vermont and we should consider invading the Arctic Circle and drinking straws are now going to be made out of enriched uranium and Christmas and Fourth of July are going to be combined and we’ll celebrate the Fourth of Christmas sometime in October and somewhere in there you’re thinking:

“Didn’t he say something about the VA a couple crises ago?’

Happy to remind you, yes he did, and right after he tells our military veterans “Thank for your service” he’s going call them “losers” behind their back and fire the people who help them.

So they have an outbreak of measles in Texas (Congratulations anti-vaxxers!) and according to an article on the MSNBC website, they have a cabinet meeting and National Necromancer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. misstates the number of deaths, mischaracterizes the nature of a quarantine and downplays the significance of the outbreak and did it all in under one minute and then left to go on a hike.

The article went on to say that RFK Jr. has promoted quack theories about preventing and/or curing measles (you’re going to need the entrails of a virgin goat, slaughtered at the stroke of midnight by an asthmatic Druid) and suggested getting measles might be good for you (he thinks it somehow protects you against cancer, heart disease, the rockin’ pneumonia and the boogie-woogie flu) and Bob has also stated that measles outbreaks “have been fabricated to create fear” and Americans have been “mislead…into believing that measles is a deadly disease.”

The article concludes that maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that an unqualified, vaccine conspiracy theorist is behaving like an unqualified vaccine conspiracy theorist and maybe we should be just a little pissed off at the 52 Republican senators who voted to confirm him.

Semi-recently President Trump signed an executive order that created a national cryptocurrency reserve which was widely criticized as a scheme to make crypto investors rich, a move which will be good for Trump personally because he started a business that sells cryptocurrency, so it’s a lot like starting a cumquat farm and then signing an executive order that requires the nation to create a $17 billion cumquat reserve.

Financial advisors who don’t take LSD, have multiple personality disorder or a gambling problem, generally advise against cryptocurrency investments because it’s a “volatile sector” and your investment might be worth a lot or absolutely nothing, depending on who you talk to and what time of day you have that conversation.

But maybe you don’t want to listen to me because here’s the only financial investment that makes total sense to me:

Plus, if you follow my investing advice you don’t get any interest and it fucks up your lawn, but on the up side (assuming your dog doesn’t dig it up) when you need your money it’s going to be there which might not be true of a cryptocurrency created by Tech Bros.

(I also hear good things about magic beans.)

Google the definition of “oligarch” and here’s what you’ll get:

“A very rich business leader with a great deal of political influence (particularly with reference to individuals who benefited from the privatization of state-run industries after the collapse of the Soviet Union).”

Which worked out so well for Russia, we’re emulating them here and next time they launch a SpaceX rocket maybe you should stay inside or wear a football helmet because the last two exploded and they recently had to close airports to wait for all the Billionaire Debris to come down.

In any case…

Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post a while back and when he was asked why, one of his reasons was that the Post was an important institution that had a role to play in a democracy and here’s what he said about the purchase at the time:

“When I’m 90, it’s going to be one of the things I’m most proud of, that I took on the Washington Post and helped them through a very rough transition.”

But Bezos may have to modify his list of deathbed accomplishments because not all that long ago Bezos announced the Post’s opinion pages would be limited to two topics:

1. Defending the free market.

2. Defending personal liberties.

And added that the Post didn’t need to deal with any other topics because now: “the internet does that job.” And the internet’s been doing a bang-up job of misinforming Americans since the turn of the century so let’s not get anyone sane involved.

Some people (and by “some people” I mean the ones who haven’t bought a MAGA hat or chant “USA,USA,USA!” when they win a pickleball game) saw what Bezos did as cowardly and an attempt to avoid pissing off Donald Trump and for those reasons and more Post opinions editor David Shipley resigned.

Earlier, Bezos also decided the Post wouldn’t endorse a presidential candidate (the editorial staff was about to endorse Kamala Harris) and in January their political cartoonist, Ann Telnaes, quit after an editor rejected a cartoon sketch showing Bezos and other media executives bowing down to Trump.

And if you’re still trying to decide how you feel about all this, Elon Musk thought what Bezos was doing was great and added “The culture is rapidly changing for the better” while former Post executive editor, Marty Baron, pointed out that Bezos was arguing for personal liberties and then forbidding any views but his own in the Post opinion section.

Bernie Sanders, our nation’s Grumpy Old Uncle (which definitely ought to be a permanent position, filled by a parade of pissed off senior citizens) said: “This is what Oligarch ownership of the media looks like.”

So this all happened in February and having learned (and let’s check the figures one more time) absolutely nothing, a column criticizing Bezos was recently killed and columnist Ruth Marcus – who had worked at the Post since 1984 – resigned, a news event that led to the cartoon you just looked at.

Today’s Lesson

Take pity on billionaires, treat veterans like we actually are grateful for their service and enjoy these essays before Jeff Bezos buys Substack and tells me to write glowing reviews of the free market that’s made a few flaming assholes rich.

Once again, hang in there.

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