The Trojan Pagers

Some weeks you’re traveling through a political cartoon Sahara, looking for something – anything – that can be turned into a cartoon and other weeks the cartoonable events are happening so fast, you just can’t draw them all.

I’ve actually been looking for the opportunity to write about something other than politics, but in the past week or so we’ve had an assassination attempt on Donald Trump, then Trump and JD Vance blaming the Democrats and their over-heated  rhetoric for that attempt, while simultaneously inspiring bomb threats by spreading false rumors about immigrant-eating pets, exploding pagers in Lebanon and I’m pretty sure I left something out that will come to me later.

In any case…

I’ve got mixed feeling about these cartoons because while I think Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorists (so does our government) and they started this current round of violence, Israel’s exploding-pagers response seems kind of indiscriminate and killed or injured non-combatants.

On the other hand…

When terrorists hide among civilians because they don’t think you’ll risk hurting them and the terrorists have used that trick for decades, I can also see eventually saying: “To hell with that, we’re going to kill us some terrorists no matter where they are so don’t be standing next to one or give one shelter or invite one over to watch Monday Night Football.”

A previous post further explained my feelings about Israel and maybe why they do what they do and if you’re extremely bored and want to read it, here it is:

https://leejudge.substack.com/p/the-final-final-four

Also, maybe we’re the wrong ones to criticize a country for going after its enemies without regard to civilian casualties because:

A. Hiroshima

B. Nagasaki

And for good measure…

C. Dresden

D. Agent Orange

E. Wounded Knee

We’ve still got 21 letters to go and would have no problem finding deplorable To-Make-An-Enemy-Omelet-You-Gotta-Break-Some-Civilian-Eggs incidents to fill them.

Anyway…

Maybe it’s a bad idea to get sideways with a country that plans so far ahead they’ll make sure you wind up with pagers containing plastic explosives and then, at a moment of their choosing, try to blow your nuts off.

As English poet John Dryden apparently said: “Beware the fury of a patient man.”

And Now The Fury of A Patient Woman

One of my younger brothers reached the age where he thought it was a good idea to give my mom so much shit, she – very uncharacteristically – tried to slap him and he caught her by the wrist before she could make contact. She then went southpaw and tried to slap him with the other hand and he caught her by that wrist and while holding both her wrists laughed in her face and said:

“What are you going to do now, mom?”

Apparently defeated, she said nothing and retreated to her bedroom until about 3 AM when she marched into my brother’s bedroom and while he slept, hauled off and slapped the living shit out of him.

She then said: “Never ask me what I’m going to do because I’ll think of something.”

When someone is willing to set an alarm clock so they can get up in the middle of the night to slap the crap out of you, maybe you’ve met your match and until this exact moment I didn’t realize just how much my mom and Israel have in common.

Sometimes two stories come together to create one cartoon and in this case it was a New York Times News Service story headlined: “Trump safe after shooting reported at golf course”

And a USA Today story headlined: “Trump claims he has ‘nothing to do’ with Project 2025. Voters don’t buy it”

Just in case you haven’t read about it (Trump claims the same thing) Project 2025 is a 922-page policy paper/wish list put out by the Far-Right Heritage Foundation and if the Heritage Foundation had its way, presidential powers would be expanded, federal agencies like the Department of Education would be eliminated, the Affordable Care Act would be cut way back, it would be even harder to get an abortion than it is now and they’d get rid of those pesky LGBGTQ+ civil rights.

And then…

Invade Poland and claim we did it because we needed “lebensraum” and get Hugo Boss to design some really cool military uniforms in basic black with skulls and crossbones because let’s admit it, despite being World Class Assholes, the Nazis were really sharp dressers.

Trump claims he hasn’t read Project 2025 and doesn’t want to and a USA Today article said that last bit about Trump not wanting to read 922 pages of pretty much anything is totally believable, but doesn’t mean he won’t try to implement Project 2025 if he gets reelected and someone explains what’s in it.

In 2022, here’s what Trump had to say about the Heritage Foundation: 

“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 Trump said these guys are going to create a Blueprint for Saving America and then, when asked about the Blueprint, says he doesn’t know what you’re talking about. Clearly, organizing your lies can be a problem when you tell so many of them. According to CNN, at least 140 people who worked in the Trump Administration also worked on Project 2025, so if you’re just not getting enough goose stepping and sieg heiling in your life, go ahead and vote Republican.

After a man was apprehended on Donald Trump’s golf course for pointing a weapon in Trump’s direction, apparently both Trump and Human Hand Puppet JD Vance suffered partial amnesia because they immediately forgot all the nasty, shitty things they’ve said about their opponents and whined that their opponents’ incendiary rhetoric was responsible for what happened.

As the cartoon indicates, I beg to differ.

After the golf course incident, Vance said calling someone a fascist could get that someone shot, but failed to acknowledge that’s exactly what Trump calls Kamala Harris. JD also said it was Democrats’ rhetoric that was encouraging assassination attempts and nobody was trying to shoot Kamala which once again ignores the fact that she had two death threats in August. 

Turns out, if your goal is to be wildly misinformed, you can’t do a whole lot better than listening to Donald Trump and JD Vance and, BTW, they’re still promoting the Right Wing Fantasy that immigrants are eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.

If you want to read more about all this, here you go:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/17/politics/jd-vance-kamala-harris-fascist/index.html

Before You Go

These days there are so many sources of misinformation that you might wonder just who’s telling the truth and I’ve often said if a news source doesn’t at least occasionally criticize both sides maybe you should question that source and while I definitely think CNN has a liberal bias, at least every so often they do stories like this one about the Kamala Harris campaign social media account that has repeatedly misled people with misleading edits and captions.

The article has eight examples and here’s one of them:

Donald Trump was speaking in Pennsylvania and at one point turned to a group and said: “Would that be OK, North Carolina?”

Which the misleading Harris campaign social media account used to suggest Donald Trump was lost and confused about what state he was in, but go back farther and/or further in the video and Trump had acknowledge a group of supporters from North Carolina so he wasn’t lost and confused, at least on this subject.

When the Harris campaign was asked about the misleading post, they refused to comment.

What jumps out at me about this incident is this:

YOU DON’T NEED TO MAKE SHIT UP TO MAKE TRUMP LOOK LIKE AN IDIOT.

There’s plenty of factual evidence to make that case and over-reaching just makes the Harris Campaign look bad. If you want to read about the other seven examples, here you go:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/14/politics/fact-check-harris-campaign-social-media/index.html

Today’s Lesson

If you’re looking for cartoon material, be patient because someone somewhere will eventually screw up, the U.S. is on thin ice when complaining about Israel killing and injuring non-combatants and for God’s Sake, don’t buy any pagers from my mom.

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