According to a Newsweek article dated May 16th Donald Trump’s approval rating was “underwater” on nearly every issue (more people disapproving than approving) and I had this diving bell cartoon idea floating around (an unintentional joke I’ll give you free of charge) so the timing seemed good, but the very next day Newsweek published another article saying Trump’s approval rating had already rebounded.
So I checked some other news sources to find out what was what and turns out the approval-rating glass was either half-full or half-empty depending on which news organization you listened to.
Despite the fact that they were reporting on the same poll, USAToday described Trump’s rebound as “meager,” but FOX said Trump’s Approval Rating was “edging up” which reminds me of the line often attributed to Mark Twain:
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
But Twain attributed that line to Benjamin Disraeli and who knows where Benny got it from, so be careful who and/or whom you quote because you never know whom actually said something first and I thought there was a joke in all this when I started writing the paragraph you’re now reading, but turns out there isn’t, so I guess we’re even on that “diving bell idea floating around” bon mot I gave you for free four paragraphs ago.
Anyway…
I googled “is Trump’s approval rating up or down” and the AI robot that currently summarizes what’s on the internet, but will eventually change its name to Hal 2000 and lock Dave out of his spacecraft, said it was generally down, but had rebounded slightly which is what happens when you’re a cartoon character and fall from a great height.
You bounce.
Because everyone in the media was interpreting the numbers in whatever way made the case they wanted to make, I abandoned the diving bell idea—right up until Trump accepted the $400 million jet/bribe from Qatar.
Then I decided the idea would work if the people in the diving bell were no longer looking for Trump’s approval rating, but instead started looking for Trump’s ethical standards.
Joke’s on them…he doesn’t have any.
Which inspired this cartoon and was originally about that jet/bribe, but then other events took over and the cartoon was put on hold, right up until I read a New York Times story about Trump “monetizing” the presidency with questionable decisions like:
Jeff Bezos financing a promotional film about Melania Trump that will reportedly put $28 million in her pocket.
The Trump family and business partners collecting $320 million in fees from a new cryptocurrency.
Opening an exclusive club in Washington, D.C. called the Executive Branch and it costs $500,000 to join.
Hosting a dinner for 220 investors in the $TRUMP cryptocurrency and access was determined by how much money they chipped in to a business that personally benefits Trump.
And none of these shenanigans resulted in investigations or hearings or outraged villagers carrying torches and pitchforks because when you elect a convicted felon president, apparently everybody now accepts this is par for a very crooked course.
Also, Trump has been extremely busy getting rid of anyone who might hold him accountable for all the sketchy activities he’s involved in and has appointed ass-kissers and brown-nosers (which would be a great name for a Congressional softball team) to run the Justice Department and FBI so they won’t call him on his bullshit and meanwhile White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt (and I hope she got a really good deal when she sold her soul to Satan) added another layer of whitewash when she said:
“The president is abiding by all conflict of interest laws that are applicable to the president.”
But as the New York Times article pointed out, that’s a meaningless statement because Trump has argued conflict of interest laws are not applicable to the president, so put all that in one sentence and it comes out:
“The president is abiding by all conflict of interest laws that are applicable to the president and none of them apply to the president.”
Not wanting to let Karoline score unanswered points in the Trump Ass-Kissing Contest, others in the White House have argued it’s silly to accuse Trump of ethical conflicts because he’s so rich he doesn’t need any more money.
Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally.
If there’s one thing I can pretty much guarantee you about rich people is none of them think they have enough money and are willing to conduct human sacrifices at the Black Masses I’m assuming will be a weekly event at the Executive Branch brunches, if it means getting even richer.
For example: according to the busybodies at Forbes, Trump now has $5.1 billion.
Jeff Bezos—who has 43 times as much money as Trump—clearly doesn’t think he has enough money.
Mark Zuckerberg—who has 43.1 times as much money as Trump—clearly doesn’t think he has enough money.
Elon Musk—who has 82.6 times as much money as Trump—clearly doesn’t think he has enough money.
If they thought they had enough money they’d quit destroying other people’s live to make even more.
Ms. Leavitt, appealing to people who don’t ask questions or do research (y’know…the kind of people who show up at Trump rallies) argued that it was absurd to think Donald Trump is profiting off the presidency even though Forbes also estimated Trump was worth $1.2 billion more this March than last March, which would seem to indicate (what’s the phrase I’m looking for…wait…got it) Donald Trump is profiting off the presidency.
On numerous occasions Donald Trump promised to “drain the swamp,” but failed to add “of money.”
Masters of Their Domain
So I’m reading Carl Hiaasen’s latest novel Fever Beach and like me, Carl doesn’t mind making things up for laughs and one of his characters starts his own White Power group, “Strokers for Liberty” and the character had to do that because the Proud Boys didn’t want him because he failed to observe their no masturbation policy.
I’m almost to the end of the book and the entire time I’m thinking Carl made up that “no masturbation” deal to make the Proud Boys look like idiots and it finally occurs to me to google Proud Boys and masturbation and turns out Carl didn’t make it up and it’s even goofier than you might think.
BTW: When I mentioned this to one of my sons he said he’d known about this for years and how did I miss it and there’s a “because I was too busy masturbating” joke available right here and I hope you appreciate the class I’m showing by not using it. And now let’s get back to the Proud Boys and their “No Wanks” rule and that’s actually what it’s called.
Stands to reason if they have a rule they must have had a meeting to discuss the rule and here’s what those Proud Boy geniuses came up with:
A Proud Boy can masturbate once a month, but he must do it within one yard of a woman and the woman must give her consent and she can’t be a prostitute.
The Proud Boy Masturbation Manual is weirdly specific and now I’m wondering what woman would agree to sit next to a guy spanking it and there can’t be a lot of them available, so maybe there’s just one woman who’s willing to do that and she knits or crochets or reads Agatha Christie mysteries while it’s happening and they all share her services so on the first of every month she’s pretty busy going from Proud Boy to Proud Boy so they can relieve themselves.
The “No Wanks” policy is theoretically teaching young men discipline and preventing them from wasting their testosterone while rubbing one out because they’re going to need all that testosterone and anger to fight the Leftists and once again I’m not making any of that up.
Thank God the Proud Boys didn’t take over the country on January 6th because I can’t pass their stringent “No Wanks” policy either. As Cosmo Kramer said in The Contest:
“I’m out.”
And Now the Explanation for That Last Joke
Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld realized they could talk about absolutely any subject on prime time TV as long as they came up with harmless sounding euphemisms, so Elaine finding a guy worth banging became “sponge-worthy” and shriveled penises became “shrinkage” and finding a non-Jewish woman attractive became “shiksappeal” and abstaining from masturbation made you “master of my domain.”
In the episode The Contest the four friends have a bet about who can go the longest without masturbating and here’s the part where Kramer gives in to his urges about 90 seconds after seeing a naked woman:
As you might have already heard, many a truth is said in jest and Kramer’s relaxed demeanor after “taking care of bidness” reflects my own personal experiences and if you think about it for two seconds that means we’re not masturbating often enough because it relaxes you and relieves tension and I gotta believe if the Proud Boys had all masturbated the morning of January 6th they wouldn’t have been so pissed off and the insurrection wouldn’t have happened.
Think of all the violence that could have been avoided if guys masturbated right before they were about to do something angry and stupid; John Wilkes Booth doesn’t shoot Lincoln and Hitler doesn’t invade Poland and if he’d taken care of business in an Academy Awards restroom, Will Smith doesn’t slap Chris Rock.
Even if you find this subject in bad taste (and if you do, man, are you reading the wrong blog) you know I’m right.
Everybody does it or at least did or—if they’re extremely frustrated—only thinks about doing it, but nobody talks about it and when I run for president (and I can’t do worse than the current guy) it will be on a “Wank First” policy which should have broad appeal because even broads like to do that.
My “Wank First” policy would mean we couldn’t do anything drastic like invade Greenland or announce tariffs or appoint a semi-hot-but-dumber-than-a-bag-of-rocks woman to be Secretary of Homeland Security until after we masturbated. And if we still want to do those things then we can, but I’m guessing it would cut down on a lot of stupid male behavior and never having been one I’m not 100% what it would do for women although my guess is it would cut way down on “walks of shame” because when some idiot in a bar offers to buy them a drink, a lot more women would decline and say:
“Nah, I’m good.”
We’d have a nation of relaxed, comfortable, unaggressive citizens and admit it; you’ve definitely heard worse ideas.
Today’s Lesson
Let’s see…our president is a crook and has the convictions to prove it, don’t throw any good cartoon ideas away because they might become useful in the near future and depending on how many readers unsubscribe to this blog after today’s post, you might not want to publicly advocate nationwide masturbation.
I’ll let you know what happens.
OMG Lee, I have wracked my brain for a good comeback, but it's just not cumming to me yet.
Years ago my daughter and I found out that an echidna penis has four heads and were trying to find out if was true (it is). That search led to something called "The Church of the Whale Penis". We also found out about a penis museum in Iceland. That day we learned about Rasputin's penis. Supposedly it is in a jar somewhere. Oy.
I am the prude of the family. I swear I was adopted, but from a familiar point-of-view my mom was the odd one out. The woman collected penises! Growing up we always had the things. When we lived in the Springs the managers of Hot Topics and a similar shop (whose name escapes me-it has been almost 40 years) used to call her whenever they got new merchandise they thought she would like. Keep it mind I am not talking about sex toys, even though she probably had them. Thankfully I never saw them. No, these are the gag type gifts. My girls are the same ages of the youngest two girls of a Mormon family down the road. They all went to the same school until high school. I had told their mom about my mother and Mrs. A loved it. The family went on vacation and brought back an item for me to send to my mom. It was a coffin that when you opened it the body popped out with a boner! Mom of course loved it. Mormons get a bad rap, but overall, they seem to not take themselves too seriously.
Mom had penis-shaped everything. One year my sister took her to lunch for her birthday. Mom could barely tell me what happened due to laughing so hard. They went to an Italian restaurant. My brother-in-law had already talked to the crew there and they had prepared a "special" meal for mom. The staff had gathered around to gauge mom's reaction when she saw her meal. On top of a bed of angel hair pasta was a sausage and two meatballs. There was a drizzle of Alfredo sauce...
She absolutely loved it. I wish there had been photos. This was years before smart phones.