The Broken Promise

An essay about why I shouldn't be president...

Let’s get this out of the way up front:

If one of my sons was going to prison and I was president of the United States I’d definitely pardon him and if one of my sons was already in prison I’d bake him a cake with a file inside and wait outside the prison wall he was going to climb over and drive the getaway car to Air Force 1 which we’d use to escape the United States and seek amnesty in a foreign country.

Right now I’m thinking Texas and if you’re thinking Texas isn’t a foreign country I’d suggest you spend more time in Lubbock.

And I’d do all that because you love some people without logic or reason so I’d so some illogical and unreasonable things to protect my kids and this is just one of the many many reasons you don’t want me to be president, although right now I might seem like an attractive alternative.

OK, so that’s what I would do.

What I wouldn’t do is promise I’m not going to pardon my son and then pardon him anyway.

On the other hand…

Republicans currently whining that Joe Biden is being a hypocrite (they’re right, by the way) is (what’s the word I’m looking for?) fucking hypocritical. (OK, that’s two words, but stop being pedantic or we’ll never get anywhere.)

Nobody is a bigger hypocrite than a guy who professes his great love for America and tries to have premarital sex with its flag and then – when things don’t go his way – encourages his Brain Dead Followers to overthrow the government.

And the same guy who is pretending to be appalled by Biden’s pardon of his son, plans on pardoning the Brain Dead Followers who tried to overthrow the government at his request and in his first administration already pardoned Charles Kushner (his son-in-law’s father) and Michael Flynn and Roger Stone and Steve Bannon and a number of his other criminally-inclined buddies and if you want a complete list of which cronies Trump pardoned, here you go:

https://www.newsweek.com/list-who-donald-trump-has-pardoned-1993998

And if you’ve been living in a cave somewhere in the Himalayas (which right now sounds like a pretty good choice) and don’t know what Project 2025 is, here’s another link:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-is-project-2025-trump-conservative-blueprint-heritage-foundation/

Which I’m assuming you also didn’t click on, so Bottom Line:

Project 2025 is a blueprint for the next Trump presidency and he claimed not to know anything about it even though a lot of it was written by former Trump Administration officials and according to the article you just didn’t read, at least 270 Project 2025 proposals match Trump’s past policies and campaign promises.

Project 2025 is filled with scary right-wing-maybe-the-Nazis-were-on-to-something proposals and it was put out by the Heritage Foundation and the foundation’s Oberfuhrer, Kevin Roberts, said the nation is: “in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

Which sounds a lot like: “Do what we tell you to do and maybe you won’t get clubbed in the head.”

After saying that, Kevin Roberts stepped down from his position, possibly because he wasn’t supposed to say that out loud for the rest of us to hear and while Trump acted like he’d never heard of Project 2025, here’s what he said about the Heritage Foundation before people got extremely nervous about them and their plans:

“This is a great group, and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.”

So some things considered (I thought about saying “all things considered,” but then this article would be way too long) you can see why I’m disappointed that Joe Biden hoisted himself on his own petard while simultaneously hoping Donald Trump breaks some of his more sinister promises.

And maybe next time we’ll try to figure out what a “petard” is.

According to the internet “lame duck” was originally a stock market term about people who couldn’t pay their bills and the first time it was used to describe a politician who was still in office, but about to leave, was in the 1920s and the politician was Calvin Coolidge.

And now that I haven’t explained that phrase…

After Biden pardoned his son Hunter, a number of lazy and mediocre journalists said it “tarnished his legacy” which made me wonder just what previously untarnished Biden legacy they were referring to.

• The time Biden chaired the confirmation hearings on Clarence Thomas and stood back and let the Republicans attack Anita Hill and do their best the shred her reputation?

• The time a bunch of women said Biden made them uncomfortable with inappropriate touching?

• The time Biden voted to let George W. Bush use military force in Iraq and then later claimed he was always against the Iraq War?

(Biden later admitted he misspoke when he said that – never forget, politicians “misspeak,” the rest of us lie – but said he was always against the war “internally.” So whatever bullshit I get caught doing in the future, and trust me, the possibilities are endless, let me assure you that was always doing the right thing “internally.”)

• Or how about the time Biden voted to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act which let the financial meltdown of 2008?

And finally…

• Does Biden’s untarnished legacy include waiting too long to admit maybe he wasn’t up to running for president which meant the Democrats had to run Kamala Harris?

Don’t forget that up until then Harris was seen as a liability who had outkicked her coverage and maybe ought to be replaced on the ticket, but the Democrats had to run her when Biden finally admitted he was having trouble remembering where he parked his car which I totally relate to because at least three times now I’ve tried to climb into a small, white Toyota hatchback that I don’t actually own.

Which I totally blame on the automobile industry that keeps churning out cars that look exactly alike and back when I first started driving there was no way you could mistake a Ford for a Studebaker.

Ford…

Studebaker…

So where does that leave us?

The liberal media – of which I’m member – gave Joe Biden a lot of bonus points for not being Donald Trump (which is fine, I did the same thing) but apparently we can’t handle complexity or nuance or maybe just think the public can’t, so someone has to be either All Good or All Bad, but frankly, I can’t remember an election where I wasn’t voting for the Lesser of Two Evils.

Joe Biden pardoning his son after promising he wouldn’t is just one more hypocritical act by a politician which, let’s face it, is pretty much what politicians do, even the ones we vote for.

The above cartoon was inspired by a story saying Donald Trump was bringing cryptocurrencies back and my immediate thought was that’s not all Trump is bringing back.

According to a Kaiser Family Foundation article, routine vaccinations for kindergarten children are on the decline since the COVID 19 pandemic and moronic assholes started spreading misinformation about vaccinations and scaring the living shit out of the kind of people who think the world is flat and the sun goes around the earth and Donald Trump came off the 18^th tee at Mar-A-Lago carrying a couple stone tablets.

Which is completely ridiculous.

Stone tablets are heavy and I’m sure Trump would have his caddy carry them for him, and then “forget” to tip his caddy.

The article also states that requiring vaccines have become “increasingly partisan” meaning some people (not naming names, but think “Epublican-Rays”) don’t think anyone should be able to tell them what to do which might cause problems at stop signs and red lights and is an interesting position for a bunch of people who like to call themselves the “Law & Order Party.”

According to an article in last Sunday’s Kansas City Star:

The cryptocurrency “industry” (frankly, “scam artists” seems more appropriate) raised millions for Trump’s campaign and is now expecting favorable treatment like getting the SEC to back the fuck off so they can continue to get up to their entertaining financial hijinks.

The article then went on to explain “crypto mining” which is how “new coins” are created and apparently involves “computers solving complex math equations to verify transactions in the currency” so if you do enough math, suddenly you’re holding a bag of magic beans and then a bad-tempered dwarf who won’t tell you his name turns straw into gold and takes your baby.

As someone who knows more about financial fraud than I do once said (and maybe you should write this down): Unnecessary complexity is a sign of fraud.

https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/childhood-vaccination-rates-continue-to-decline-as-trump-heads-for-a-second-term/

And this final cartoon was conceived after reading about the FBI warning people to be alert to “holiday scams” and I immediately thought: “Great, now you tell us.”

Today’s Lesson

I couldn’t take the suspense either, so I looked it up and a “petard” is a small bomb (much like Godfather 3) used to blow up doors and put holes in walls and in this case, “hoisted” means being “hoisted” off the ground, so put all that together and it means blowing yourself up with your own bomb.

Also…

I’ve changed my mind about the previous joke because Godfather 3 was a big bomb so I decided to use a really crappy movie like Leprechaun instead, but I looked it up and, Jesus L. Christ, they made eight of them, which tells us a lot about what’s currently wrong with America.

My definition of a “bomb” is a movie that’s not very good, but the greedy bastards that are currently in charge of pretty much everything, define “bomb” as a movie that didn’t make “enough” money.

For example:

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World was a terrific movie and the ending clearly set up a sequel and if the Wikipedia numbers are right, it made $211.6 million on a $150 million budget.

So it made money and you’d think that would be enough to encourage filming a sequel, but it didn’t make enough money – about 1.4 times its budget – when compared to a flaming piece of crap like Leprechaun which made $8.5 million on a $900,000 budget which is about 9.2 times its budget.

Which is probably why they’re talking about making a ninth Leprechaun movie and looking for ideas (one of them is Leprechaun in the Old West) and if that doesn’t work out, maybe a TV series.

So producing something good and making money is no longer enough and I wrote all this before somebody shot UnitedHealthcare’s CEO and as of right now this minute, that’s starting to look like a violent statement about corporate greed.

We’ll see.

In the meantime: back to Today’s Lesson and Number 1 is maybe don’t be a greedy bastard and Number 2 is don’t make promises you can’t keep and if you violated Rules 1 and 2, remember to claim you were always doing the right thing “internally.”

I know I will.

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