Juneteenth, Jackie Chan and heat waves; all part of a larger picture…kinda

According to a column in the Kansas City Star, all but 14 House Republicans voted to make June 19th a national holiday and the vote would have been unanimous if those 14 Republicans weren’t busy attending a Klan rally.

A fact I just made up, but seems true, which generally speaking has been enough for many occupants of the Oval Orifice.

As Eugene Robinson’s column in the Star pointed out, supporting the creation of Juneteenth (a holiday celebrating emancipation of enslaved people in the U.S.) gives Republicans the chance to claim they’re not racist even though they’re trying to change election laws to make it harder for Black people to vote.

Which kinda, sorta brings us to the subject of today’s rant, but those of you who are regular readers know I can start talking about returning to the office in person and wind up talking about what Fred MacMurry (the dad on My Three Sons) would wear to a wife-swapping party.

Inquiring minds want to know.

And if you’re thinking I have all this planned out before I start writing you have another think coming, which reminds me that I just recently heard someone say “you have another thing coming” and then saw it again in a book which presumably had an editor to catch that stuff, but didn’t, which grates on my nerves almost as much as someone saying, “I could care less” which means the exact opposite of what I think those people think they are saying.

Clean it up, people.

Anyway…

One of the cartoon techniques I like to use is taking one news event to springboard into another news event and the herd of rogue elephants rampaging through China gave me the opportunity to comment on the herd of rogue elephants rampaging through our election laws.

Which now brings us to…

Our fifth ocean

So the people at the National Geographic Society took a break from photographing half-naked natives and decided we now have a fifth ocean.

Once again I took one news event (the newly-created fifth ocean) and used it to comment on another news event: the recent report about all the income taxes rich people don’t pay.

According to ProPublica, a non-profit organization that investigates abuses of power (so I’m guessing they’ve got their hands full), Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man, paid no federal income taxes in 2007.

Bezos also paid no federal income taxes in 2011. Elon Musk, the world’s second-richest man, paid no federal income taxes in 2018. Michael Bloomberg, Carl Icahn and George Soros also had years when they paid no federal income tax.

And it was all legal.

Short version, assuming there is one: if you have enough money to afford good tax lawyers and you can keep your money in areas that aren’t taxed (like Scrooge McDuck’s money bin) you can get away with this, but most of us can’t afford these tax avoidance schemes because we need to spend our money to pay our bills.

So much for the “trickle down” theory; it’s people in the middle and on the bottom who actually pay their taxes and spend money and keep things going.  

If you want to read the specifics of how you pull this off just in case some unknown relative dies and leaves you a bajillion dollars (my current retirement plan) here’s a link to that article:

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax

But wait, there’s more.

They analyzed the tax data for the 25 richest Americans and by the end of 2018 they were worth $1.1 trillion-with-a-T dollars. And just to give you an idea just how much money that is, it would take 14.3 million ordinary American wage earners to equal that same amount of wealth.

And the personal federal tax bill for the 25 rich people in 2018 was $1.9 billion; the tax bill for the ordinary people was $143 billion.

If you want to quibble with the cartoon (and I really wish you wouldn’t or we’ll be here all day) you could point out that those taxes aren’t “unpaid” because due to tax laws that favor the rich they aren’t actually owed, but let’s face it, they ought to be.

The heat wave

Just the other day I saw a map of the United States and it showed which parts of America are suffering a heat wave and it reminded me of the beginning of a science fiction movie where they show trees bursting into flames and people running for their lives and crocodiles attacking zebras while a voice-over explains how Tom Cruise wound up living on a space station.

(Sorry, I just watched Geostorm which made no sense whatsoever, but starred Gerard Butler an actor I like, but I think they spent all the money on CGI and none on the script, but that’s Hollywood these days.)

Barely-related story alert

I have a personal vendetta against CGI (computer-generated imagery) because it ruined Jackie Chan’s career when he found out he didn’t actually have to leap off cliffs onto hot air balloons or slide down the side of skyscrapers which was part of the thrill of watching those movies.

Jackie was really doing that shit.

For instance: Michelle Yeoh was in a Jackie Chan movie and they wanted her to jump a motorcycle off a hill onto a moving train and if she missed and slid off the train (which she did more than once) they had a pile of cardboard boxes for her to land on.

One more time: a pile of cardboard boxes.

Here’s a clip of outtakes from that movie and you should watch it because it shows what those people went through to make action movies in Hong Kong.  

Incredible, right?

On the other hand, I’m just realizing it makes me somewhat of a dick because I enjoy those movies which means I’m enjoying someone else’s pain and also means I’m a just a small step away from being a Roman Emperor and going to the video store (like those still exist) and asking if they have anything with Lions and Christians.

On the third hand…if Michelle and Jackie are going to beat the living crap out of themselves to entertain me, shouldn’t I honor their sacrifice and do my part by sitting on my couch drinking a Bud Light while eating microwave popcorn and watching Michelle bounce off the hood of a sports car and land in the middle of a freeway?

Which gets us into the “what came first, the chicken or the egg” conundrum and I don’t know either, so it’s time to move on and not a moment too soon.

Back to our heat wave

Accompanying the heat wave map was an article explaining how to avoid over-heating and once again I used one news event to comment on another and this time it was Fox News and their proclivity for crying wolf and trying to make sure their viewers are pissed off and upset and glued to their TVs to hear about the next outrage.

Which is a little unfair, because to some degree everybody is doing the same thing; making sure you’re upset and worried because they think that’s the secret to getting you to click on their article or watch their show.

Now if you’re asking why pick on Fox if everybody does it, my answer is Fox does it more than everybody else and if you think being just a little unfair to Fox News bothers me…

You’ve got another thing coming.

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