According to the internet, Donald Trump’s mentor – Roy Cohn, AKA “The Prince of Darkness” – taught Young Donald Three Rules:
Always attack.
Deny everything.
Always claim victory.
So that’s what Young Donald was told to do and then Old Donald screwed up on tariffs (turned out, his billionaire buddies didn’t like them) so Old Donald put a 90-day pause on his own tariffs and the Republicans who like to kiss his ass (which at this point describes pretty much all of them) started claiming his tariff indecision was actually a brilliant plan to bring our trading partners to the table and just another example of Trump’s incredible negotiating skills.
But someone who can count did some counting and pointed out that would mean the Trump Administration needs to hammer out 150 trade agreements in the next 90 days.
So approximately 1.6666666667 trade agreements per day and we haven’t heard about a single one since he announced his pause in tariffs and he also took a night off to go to a UFC fight (you’d think he’d be up to his ass in trade negotiations) but apparently he’s not feeling the pressure even though he’s already 15. 0000000003 trade agreements behind schedule.
Don’t be surprised if Trump eventually abandons his “Tariffs Are Beautiful” position and claims victory or blames someone else for giving him bad financial advice.
I have heard a credible theory that Donald Trump doesn’t actually believe in anything except “winning” and being popular and he’s still trying to impress his dead dad and lots of kids get screwed up by their parents and spend the rest of their lives looking for approval and I must be a really great dad because none of my kids appear to give a flying fuck what I think.
(That could also mean I’m a really horrible dad—it’s a toss-up.)
In any case…
I googled “10 worst presidents” and Donald was actually number four, but that list was composed before his Tariff Debacle and I gotta believe he still has a shot at being Number One.
According to the Bible, Jesus performed a miracle and according to MSNBC, Elon Musk didn’t and here’s the story behind both statements:
Jesus is doing His Traveling Road Show and drawing SRO crowds and the event caterers screw up and only provide five loaves of bread and two fish, so Jesus starts dividing them up among the crowd and somehow everybody still gets fed which reminds me of my mother because being a thoughtless son I didn’t think anything (which if I’m not mistaken is the very definition of thoughtlessness) of inviting everyone on my softball team back to my mom’s house for dinner without telling her and somehow she fed a dozen people on short notice.
On the other hand, if you ate at my mom’s house you better eat whatever she had available and I once dropped by unexpectedly and she offered me breakfast which consisted of:
Fritos
Red licorice
And…
3. Tootsie Rolls
(Man, that Depression Generation knew how to stretch a budget didn’t they?)
OK, so that’s what Jesus and Mom did and now here’s what Elon Musk didn’t:
According to the Godless Socialists at MSNBC, before the election Elon said he could cut “at least $2 trillion” out of the federal budget, but after the election he said he had a “good shot” at cutting $1 trillion from the budget, so kind of like saying you can easily make a full-court shot, but when suddenly finding yourself holding a ball on a basketball court, revising your estimate: “Did I say full court? I meant half-court.”
Turns out Elon can’t hit a fucking free throw.
Now Musk is saying he and DOGE “anticipate” $150 billion in cuts and you do the math on what percentage of $2 trillion that is because I just got up and haven’t finished my second cup of coffee and I won’t be any better at math even after drinking it. And that reduced number is also bullshit and here’s what the Godless Socialists at the New York Times had to say about it:
“…Mr. Musk’s group tallies up its savings so far, it inflates its progress by including billion-dollar errors, by counting spending that will not happen in the next fiscal year—and by making guesses about spending that might not happen at all.”
Another NYT report said that the DOGE website has been: “riddled with errors, double-counting and other large inaccuracies.” So the people who tell the rest of us they’re busy making government more efficient are actually busy making shit up.
The Times also said that Musk had made claims about unemployment and Social Security fraud that fell apart under scrutiny and when they asked the White House for comment, turns out the people at the White House didn’t want to talk about any of this stuff.
The fish and loaves cartoon was inspired by stories about Musk taking back federal funds from programs and people and I’d ask what kind of fucked-up person enjoys giving bad news to other people, but we already know the answer.
And Now A Defense of Puns, Clichés and Sophomoric Humor
Recently I posted a cartoon about “bear” markets and here it is again:
A pun that would be clever if a sixth-grader came up with it, but I vaguely remember finishing sixth grade quite a while ago, so why am I still using what has been called the lowest form of humor? (Although whoever said that probably said it before Elon Musk tried to get laughs by waving around a chainsaw.)
But according to the internet, Mary Livingston (Jack Benny’s wife) said: “A pun is the lowest form of humor when you don’t think of it first.”
Someone did a study about how long people look at political cartoons and the answer was about 3.5 seconds which conclusively proves we do way too many studies.
Nevertheless…
I don’t have much time to get my point across and after numerous appearances showing cartoons in front of live crowds, it became very clear the quicker I made my point the better. Cliché’s are easily understood and convey a lot of information in a brief amount of time and as long as I can think of a new twist on an old cliché—like putting a broke, naked person in a barrel to describe a “bare” market—I don’t mind using one.
Also: the Royals had a day game when I drew that “bare” market” cartoon so I needed something easy to draw and whenever I think of a simple one I figure it evens things out because a cartoon like this:
Takes a long time and you should appreciate it whenever a cartoonist has to draw a crowd (that takes forever) which is the only problem I had with the Black Lives Matter protests: too many people to draw. (OK, I also wasn’t thrilled with setting shit on fire and I’m not sure how stealing a flat-screen TV ends racism.)
But if you still prefer more subtle artwork, maybe you should go down to your local art museum and stare at a Mark Rothko painting and tell me what message it’s conveying to you:
I’m getting “Sherwin-Williams Paint Sample” but as we’ve already established I’m a Cultural Visigoth and according to the internet, Rothko’s works are: “Often understood as a way to explore universal human emotions and the spiritual experience through the use of color, form, and scale. Rothko aimed to create a deeply emotional and meditative experience for the viewer, evoking feelings of awe, transcendence, and even tragedy.”
As Doctor Evil would say: “Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.”
But a Rothko painting once sold for $88.8 million dollars so clearly I fucked up when I taught myself to draw horseys and trees and poor people in barrels and if I’d gone the Sherwin-Williams Paint Sample route I wouldn’t have to do this blog or peel my own grapes.
Take this with a grain of LSD, but I’m under the impression that the most important element in modern, non-representational art is coming up with a good title and an overwrought explanation for the art in question and the first time I saw a Joan Miro painting I said that I had a drop cloth at home that looked remarkably similar.
One of Those Digressions
So I looked up Joan Miro paintings and came across an article that said Miro created his paintings by going without food and being so hungry he hallucinated, which would be a lot more believable if he had painted this:
The next painting is Constellations which – at least theoretically – signifies Miro’s “remorse for the futility of the Second War” which would have been my second guess, right after: “COVID-19 virus followed by a visit to an ophthalmologist and watching Moby Dick.”
BTW: I just misspelled “ophthalmologist” so badly, that my spell check said “no spelling suggested” which is my computer’s way of saying: “Dude, I have no idea what the fuck you’re trying to write.”
In any case…
When columnist Dave Barry was accused of producing “sophomoric” humor (probably by someone who was incapable of producing any kind of humor at all) Dave said:
“I remember laughing pretty hard as a sophomore.”
(And Dave, if I screwed up that story, my apologies and to make up for it I’ll perform with your band The Rock Bottom Remainders free of charge, an offer that probably overestimates your interest in mediocre Blues Harmonica players and my ability to achieve musical mediocrity.)
BTW: Dave’s also on Substack and has 22,000 subscribers and you could do a lot worse than making that 22,001.
Today’s Lesson
Never give up on being Number 1, Elon Musk would have made a shitty disciple and if someone calls your humor “sophomoric” you’re in good company.
Hey Lee. One of your panels was in the Star today.
I would have given Musk some loaves and a Piranhas.