Winners and Losers

Google “a bill of goods” and the second definition you’ll be offered is: “Something intentionally misrepresented: something passed off in a deception or fraud.”

Sounds familiar.

According to the Bloomberg News, the “winners” in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill include multimillionaires (they got $4.5 trillion worth of tax cuts) small business owners, domestic car dealers, manufacturers, fossil fuel producers, corporations, defense contractors, the elderly and tipped workers (which in this economy are often the same thing) parents, telecommunications and space ($10 billion to fund projects like trying to reach the moon and/or Mars so this part was apparently written before Elon gave the Donald his letterman jacket back).

“Losers” include low-income Americans because to give multi-millionaires $4.5 trillion in tax breaks they had to cut Medicaid health coverage and food stamps and according to the Bloomberg article, on average the legislation will cost the bottom 20% of taxpayers $560 a year which means Robin Hood had it totally backwards, you should actually rob the poor and give to the rich, although you’re going to have to rob a whole lot of poor people because $560 won’t go that far when you’re renting Venice for your “wedding” ceremony.

Renewable energy was also a loser because multimillionaires don’t give a flying fuck about the environment (once they’ve ruined the US, they’re all moving to Greenland) and electric vehicles were also on the loser list (so this part was probably written after the Trump/Musk divorce) and “elite” universities got punished because they insist on educating people which cuts way back on registered Republicans and immigrants got the short of the end of the stick (unless we need them to build that border wall ‘cuz you know us White Folk won’t do it) and finally on our list of losers we have the gamblers.

Which describes everyone who voted for Trump in the last election because they thought: “Oh, c’mon, just how bad could a second term be?”

Generally speaking presidents want as much power as possible and can try to get around Congress by issuing executive orders, which works just great until someone goes to court and says the president can’t do that because it’s illegal and/or unconstitutional and some lower court judge agrees that the president can’t do that because it’s illegal and/or unconstitutional.

During the Biden administration, conservative judges in lower courts prevented the Democrats from enacting new environmental regulations, offering student loan forgiveness and modifying the rules on immigration and as I recall the Republicans were pretty much A-OK with that.

But now it’s Trump issuing executive orders and lower courts have blocked his cuts to foreign assistance, diversity programs and other government agencies and limited his ability to fire government employees and put his immigration reforms on hold and suspended his attempts to change the election process.

(Dude’s been busy.)

Then Trump tried to end “birthright citizenship” (if you’re born here you’re automatically granted citizenship no matter the legal status of your parents) with an executive order. But according to the legal experts who aren’t sucking up to Donald Trump, “birthright citizenship” is clearly supported in the 14^th Amendment so if you want to change that you need another constitutional amendment.

Anyway…

Long story, boring, the U.S. Supreme Court recently rolled over and played impotent when they limited lower courts’ power to block Trump’s executive orders like the one on “birthright citizenship” which will make it easier for him to do whatever the hell he feels like doing and if you want more details, here you go:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj9velv7z4no

Like many of you, when I was growing up my mom, my school and the church my mom forced me to attend spent a great deal of time and effort misinforming me about the world and how it worked.

Turns out, the guy who wrote “All men are created equal” owned slaves, naval hero John Paul Jones was hated by his crews (which mutinied more than once and JPJ killed one of them and ran) and the Liberty Bell is a fraud that the city of Philadelphia tried to sell for scrap as late as 1828 (there were no buyers) until a guy named George Lippard made up all that bullshit about the bell being rung when we declared our independence and now we revere a fraud and sometimes elect them to a second term as president.

And one of the many myths I was force-fed was the world admired people who stood up and fought the system when in reality the people who stand up for what’s right and fight the system get crushed by that system and if you don’t believe me here’s a CNN article about the EPA suspending and investigating 140 employees who made the mistake of signing a letter “expressing concern” about the treatment of federal employees and the Trump administration’s regulations on climate and public health:

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/07/03/climate/epa-letter-employees-suspended-investigation

They didn’t riot or burn their draft cards or walk around with signs that said “FUCK TRUMP!”—they signed a “letter of concern” which is about as mild a form of protest possible, but it was still too much for Trump.

In my personal experience we might make fun of the ass-kissers and brown-nosers (I’ve made a decent living doing so), but they’re the ones that survive and people like Liz Cheney get destroyed for speaking out.

And now that I’ve depressed the hell out of you, let’s take a moment and enjoy I Fought the Law with Predictable Results and this version’s by The Clash:

I take a back seat to no man or woman (or combination thereof) when it comes to not paying attention.

As I’ve previously stated, being “creative” means I’m walking around thinking of things like just how big to draw a cartoon character’s nose or what was the name of that actress in Animal House (it was Karen Allen) or what happened on Opening Day in 2015 and as a result I miss obvious stuff like approaching birthdays, anniversaries and holidays and in this case the holiday was Fourth of July.

Because of my Independence Day obliviousness, I drew this cartoon about Trump saying he might turn DOGE against Elon Musk.

But then realized my syndicate (the people who distribute my cartoons) would be closed on Friday the Fourth of July which dicked-up my plan to send them this cartoon about Saturday the Fifth of July which actually had to be drawn on Wednesday the Second of July and sent to the syndicate on Thursday the Third of July so it could be run on the Fifth of July and if that all sounds confusing, welcome to the club.

So because I wasn’t looking ahead the DOGE “KILL!” cartoon never got used and I really need Trump to threaten Elon again because then I’ll have a day off and can spend the afternoon watching Karen Allen be cute in Animal House.

Today’s Lesson

If at all possible become a multimillionaire (you may have to sell both kidneys), the nail that sticks out gets hammered down so go tell your immediate supervisor what a swell job she/him/they are doing and don’t dump Karen Allen to go to a toga party because she might wind up banging Donald Sutherland.

Tomorrow—whether you want it or not—more baseball.

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