The Expiration Date

An essay about Black people, White whales and a lot of stuff in-between...

I could take Pro-Lifers way more seriously if they showed the same concern for the kids who have been born as the fetuses that haven’t. But – unfortunately for the kids – the same people who think women should be forced to give birth because abortion is a killing a child, don’t seem to mind starving those kids or denying them adequate medical care or a quality education after they arrive.

A hypocritical attitude which resulted in the cartoon you just looked at.

When Mitch McConnell is considered the voice of reason in your party, your party may have gotten out of hand.    

Note of possible interest:

I once went on a police ride-along for a story and one of the things we had to do that night was break up a wild party and all the cops met in a cul-de-sac to discuss how they were going to do it and turned out the key was leaving an escape route so the kids had somewhere to go once the cops showed up and started telling everyone to leave. I put in my two cents’ worth (which is wildly overstating the worth of my advice) because none of the cops involved wanted to call in an air strike.

Man, spend one night with the shoe on the other flat foot and you won’t look at cops or the public screw-ups they spend 98% of their time dealing with in the same way.

In any case…

News that Mitch was stepping down from his position as Grand Wizard and Imperial Dragon of the Senate Republicans was reported in stories that also said McConnell was a “traditional conservative” which indicates just how far the Republican Party has veered to the right.

Mitch isn’t the only “traditional conservative” to decide he’s had enough when it comes to dealing with Far-Right Crazies who think Jewish Space Lasers are responsible for starting wildfires, the pandemic was a hoax, there was a child-sex-slave ring being run out of the basement of a pizza parlor that doesn’t actually have a basement and it’s a really great idea to run Donald Trump for president three times in a row. 

And it seems those Far-Right Crazies were just as sick of Mitch.

That’s because McConnell was willing to deal with Democrats to keep the government from shutting down and also because he thought Donald Trump was responsible for the January 6^th Shit Storm, which is how it will be referred to in future history books if I have anything to say about it, so it’s probably a good thing I don’t.

So take away a leader who was at least loosely tethered to Reality and turn things over to Professional Fuck Weasels like Josh Hawley who are willing to stir up a mob and then run from that stirred-up mob like his Underoos are on fire and we’re in for a wild ride…

And a hard turn to the right.

In one of the more stunning examples of unconscious racism (and I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt when I say “unconscious” because if he actually thought it through and then said what he said, that’s even more dicked up) Donald Trump said Black people like him because he’s been indicted so often.

First problem: generally speaking Black people don’t like him.

According to a column in the Kansas City Star, which quoted a Roper Center for Public Opinion Research survey, in the 2016 election Trump got 8% of the Black vote and in the 2020 election it was 12%.

When you see getting 8% to 12% of the Black vote as meaning Black people like you, then you’re using the same wishful thinking that Jim Carrey employed in this scene from Dumb and Dumber:

(It still makes me laugh every time I see the sly joy on Jim Carrey’s face when he thinks he’s receiving a message that wasn’t ever sent.)

Anyway…

Just in case you hadn’t heard and don’t know what I’m going on about, in a speech at a Black Conservative Federation event, Trump said his multiple indictments were why Black people liked him so much.

He reasoned that Black people must like him because they’ve been discriminated against and now he’s been discriminated against, but in my experience and probably yours, Rich White Guys don’t get discriminated against unless they fuck up so badly or so continuously the Establishment has a hard time ignoring it.

If Donald Trump was a Poor Black Man and had the same track record of abusing women, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t still be living in a Florida country club.

Trump also claimed he was being indicted for the Black population (if you figure out the logic behind that one, leave a comment which I promise not to read) by “sick, sick people” which is kinda ironic because here’s the woman that indicted him:

So apparently not all Black people like Donald Trump.

According to the Associated Press, in the last two years Donald Trump has spent $76 million on legal fees which led me to draw a cartoon that suggests lawyers like Trump even more than Black people do.

And now we go from talking about people who like Donald Trump to people Donald Trump likes.

As I’ve said before and am clearly about to say again: the worst things we know about Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Donald Trump come from Republican Insiders who knew them best and then decided to cash in by writing Tell-Some Books.

I didn’t use the term “Tell-All Books” because I don’t think anyone tells everything; they tell the parts that make them look good or moral or a lonely beacon of decency surrounded by a sea of avarice and greed and if my previous diatribe is to be believed, Professional Fuck Weasels.

I learned a lot about Tell-Some Books when I read one about a presidential campaign and a newspaper editor friend of mine was mentioned and came off looking pretty good, but when I said that to him he gave one of those smiles people describe as “rueful” and said:

“I was a source.”

So there’s a lesson for you: if somebody plans to write an expose about the White Slavery Ring you were part of, offer to be a source and backstab all your fellow White Slavery Ring coworkers before they backstab you. Word to the Not-Yet Wise, if someone comes off looking like a hero in a story, they just might be the ones telling the story which goes a long way in explaining why I have a blog.

Anyway…

The people who worked closest with Donald Trump have said he envies dictators and their powers and clearly has a Man Crush on Vladimir Putin and would like to emulate Vlad’s bare-chested ride on a horse, but Anheuser-Busch has refused to loan Trump a Clydesdale until he loses 50 pounds.

(And I only made up one of those facts so this essay is more accurate than usual.)

In no particular order, over the decades, Republicans of one sort or another (hang on, I’m almost done with my qualifiers) have been wrong or lied about:

• Barack Obama not being a U.S. citizen.

• The pandemic being a hoax.

• Climate change being a hoax.

• Women enjoying being second-class citizens.

• Tax Cuts for the Rich trickling down to everybody else.

• Easy access to guns making us all safer.

• Donald Trump getting cheated out of the presidency.

• As previously mentioned, Black people liking Donald Trump.

• Gays teaching our kids to be homosexuals by being overly fabulous.

• Immigrants ruining America by doing the shitty jobs the rest of us don’t want to.

• The Super Bowl being fixed (no clue how they got the 49ers’ kicker to miss that extra point) immediately followed by Taylor Swift accepting Joe Biden as her Lord and Personal Savior and endorsing him as the Next Big Deal on America’s Got Talent Even Though Most Politicians Prove That It Really Doesn’t.

That being the case…

When it turned out that former FBI-informant Alexander Smirnov had totally made up a story about a Ukrainian energy company paying Joe and Hunter Biden $5 million each (a story that led over-eager Republicans to start an investigation into impeaching Joe Biden) I figured the Republicans would know how to handle the situation because they have an extraordinary amount of experience in being caught telling lies.

According to the Associated Press, after 14 months of investigation, dozens of interviews and collecting 100,000 pages of documents, the Republican still have no direct evidence of misconduct by President Biden which I’m guessing won’t change a thing because they’re still claiming Donald Trump got cheated out of the presidency because otherwise they’d be like Captain Ahab admitting to the crew of the Pequod there actually is no white whale.

(Shit…now I’ve got to turn that into a cartoon.)

And now back to work assuming I can get anyone (including members of my immediate family) to accept the theory that drawing exaggerated pictures and making fun of people is work.

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