Category: Dickitude

Monday Wake Up Call – May 22, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Mountain Laurel with waterfall, Panther Creek trail, Chattahoochee NF, GA – May 2023 photo by Paula Johns

The Republican drumbeat to impose restrictions on women’s sexuality are growing ever louder. We’ve seen the Republicans pass laws to do exactly that in states where they have the legislative power to do so, regardless of local public opinion.

This Republican war on abortion, mifepristone, and contraception says that female bodily autonomy is a problem for most of the GOP (with some exceptions). It is pursued by Republican politicians from the lowliest state legislator to the Party’s representatives on the Supreme Court.

Some say that the Republican Party isn’t anti-woman, but the actions of Republican-led states and legislatures provide the best guide to what the Republican Party wants to do, and the best insight into the society it hopes to build. When Republicans call for a return to traditional values in family life, they mean returning to a legal and cultural place where women no longer have the freedom to leave bad marriages, the freedom to choose to have some or no children, or the freedom to obtain professional employment.

Jamelle Bouie had an op-ed in Sunday’s NYT about state GOPs efforts to gain cultural control over life in America. He outlined the “Republican Four Freedoms”, which are decidedly different from FDRs:

There is the freedom to control — to restrict the bodily autonomy of women and repress the existence of anyone who does not conform to traditional gender roles.

There is the freedom to exploit — to allow the owners of business and capital to weaken labor and take advantage of workers as they see fit.

There is the freedom to censor — to suppress ideas that challenge and threaten the ideologies of the ruling class.

And there is the freedom to menace — to carry weapons wherever you please, to brandish them in public, to turn the right of self-defense into a right to threaten other people.

And the Right continues to try to move the limits of control even further. Rolling Stone reports that:

“Republicans across the country are now reconsidering no-fault divorce. There isn’t a huge mystery behind the campaign: Like the crusades against abortion and contraception, making it more difficult to leave an unhappy marriage is about control.”

If you think that’s strange, more than two-thirds of all heterosexual divorces in the US are initiated by women. All 50 states and DC have no-fault divorce laws on the books — laws that allow either party to walk away from an unhappy marriage without having to prove abuse, infidelity, or other misconduct in court.

It took more than four decades to end fault-based divorce in America: California was the first state to eliminate it, in 1969; New York didn’t come around until 2010. But Mississippi and South Dakota still only allow no-fault divorce if both parties agree to dissolve the marriage.

Researchers who tracked the emergence of no-fault divorce laws state by state over that period found that the passage of no-fault divorce resulted in a 20% decline in suicide for married women in the first decade, and about a 40% decline since the first law passed in 1967. There also were dramatic drops in the rates of domestic violence, and spousal homicide of women.

Texas and other states are looking at legislation to end no-fault divorce. More from Rolling Stone:

“A…proposal is presently being workshopped by the Republican Party of Louisiana. The Nebraska GOP has affirmed its belief that no-fault divorce should only be accessible to couples without children.”

More:

“At the Republican National Convention in 2016 — the last time the party platform was overhauled — delegates considered adding language declaring, “Children are made to be loved by both natural parents united in marriage. Legal structures such as No Fault Divorce, which divides families and empowers the state, should be replaced by a Fault-based Divorce.”

It’s kinda awful that Republican males seem to think that the only way to retain their partner is to legally trap them in the marriage. The GOP effort to end no-fault divorce is becoming a key piece of their agenda.

Time to wake up America! The GOP has been captured by religious radicals and wingnut social conservatives who would be happy if they could return the country to the way society was in the 1940s.

To help you wake up, watch and listen to Gloria Gaynor perform her hit “I Will Survive”, the ultimate breakup song. Did you ever notice at weddings, whenever this is played, all the women get up and dance?

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – May 21, 2023

Top negotiators for Biden and Speaker McCarthy resumed talks Friday evening after the Republicans said the negotiations had to go on a “pause”. Roll Call reports that:

“After a nearly daylong setback, White House Counselor Steve Ricchetti, White House budget director Shalanda Young, Rep. Garret Graves, R-La., and House Financial Services Chairman Patrick T. McHenry, R-N.C., resumed talks at the Capitol shortly after 6 p.m.”

Time is running out for Congress to raise the debt ceiling. If not, the consequences are stark. Keeping the lines of communication open and giving away the store are two different things entirely. On to cartoons.

McCarthy’s toll booth:

The North Carolina legislature overrode Governor Roy Cooper’s veto  of a bill imposing a ten-week abortion ban. Will this ensure Democratic victory in North Carolina in 2024?

Texas has sued the Biden administration 29 times in a Texas Federal District Court. Now after banning mifepristone, Texas judges have new careers:

Durham’s report:

Disney’s Bob Iger asks DeSantis: “Does Florida want our jobs and taxes or not?” This is a severe kick in the balls:

Wrongo’s old enough to have seen Jim Brown play in Yankee Stadium against the NY Giants:

Trump’s one note:

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – April 23, 2023

Another busy week filled with news we didn’t want to hear. Fox’s huge $787.5 million payout in the Dominion lawsuit seems appropriate, but Lever News reports that Fox can take a tax deduction from the settlement. Ironically the financial consequences of lying are just a cost of doing business for Murdoch and Co.

Fox Corporation reported $1.2 billion in net income in 2022, so the $787 million Dominion settlement is equivalent to about two-thirds of the company’s profits last year. The Lever quotes Daniel Shaviro a tax professor at NYU:

“If your business model is to tell lies so that you’ll get viewers and have lots of advertising revenues, then, odious though this business model may be, the tax system’s job is to tax you on the profits that you actually make from it…”

Fox reported paying an effective income tax rate of 27% in 2022 (the  combination of federal and New York taxes). If Fox can write off the full settlement payment to Dominion, it could amount to an estimated $213 million in tax savings. On to cartoons.

Fox didn’t even have to do this:

Losing the lawsuit didn’t cost Fox any viewers:

Justice Sam Alito was in an especially grumpy mood after the other Justices on the Supreme Court ruled that access to Mifepristone will remain unchanged while the case continues to wind through the courts. Alito and Thomas dissented even though the underlying suit is frivolous:

Note that Thomas is drinking a coke.

That the SpaceX rocket crashed and burned was totally on brand for Elon:

Kevin McCarthy explains his position:

Dalai Lama must retire:

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Speaker McCarthy Gives FOX’s Carlson The Jan 6 Videos

The Daily Escape:

Poppies beginning annual super bloom, Chino Hills, CA – February 2023 photo by Road to Something New

Mike Allen of Axios reported on Monday that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) had made all the Capitol security footage from January 6 available to FOX’s Tucker Carlson:

“House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has given Fox News’ Tucker Carlson exclusive access to 41,000 hours of Capitol surveillance footage from the Jan. 6 riot, McCarthy sources tell me. Carlson TV producers were on Capitol Hill last week to begin digging through the trove, which includes multiple camera angles from all over Capitol grounds. Excerpts will begin airing in the coming weeks.”

Yes, it’s the same Tucker Carlson who repeatedly questioned official accounts of Jan 6, downplaying the insurrection as “vandalism.” It’s also the same guy who, in Dominion Voter Systems’ lawsuit against FOX News, was shown to be lying to his viewers about the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election.

Carlson’s producers are already going through the videos. They will be looking for footage of insurrectionists that will support the MAGA contention that the insurrectionists actually were tourists who simply had lost their way. It seems likely that Carlson’s team will selectively edit the footage to paint a picture that Jan 6 couldn’t have possibly been an insurrection. If you doubt this is his intent, Mike Allen also reports that:

 “Carlson last year called the attack an ‘outbreak of mob violence, a forgettably minor outbreak by recent standards.’”

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) a member of the Jan. 6 committee, said this:

McCarthy granted access to non-public materials about the insurrection to an amoral propagandist who constantly misrepresented the facts about both the 2020 election and the Jan. 6th insurrection.

Giving Carlson this access to the materials may be within McCarthy’s purview, but the videos actually belong to the American people. So why can McCarthy grant “exclusive access” to Carlson? If the idea is to achieve more transparency, then all news organizations (and the American public) should be able to view them, not merely a political hack like Carlson.

In one sense, McCarthy’s doing this shouldn’t be a surprise. The extremists who extracted concessions during McCarthy’s campaign for the Speakership have been calling for this almost from the start of the J6 Committee’s work.

And Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who spent time yesterday calling for the red states to secede:

She then spent the rest of her day taking credit for the video release to Fox:

Let’s repeat that: The person taking credit for pushing McCarthy to make this release, was calling for “a national divorce” (civil war to the rest of us) two hours earlier. It all sure sounds legit.

Here’s some background on how the Committee handled these videos when they were conducting investigations. Compare that to handing them over to FOX. From the WaPo:

“People familiar with the video footage say that the committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection had access to a special dedicated terminal installed in the committee office that had password- protected access to the volume of footage. The committee asked for permission from U.S. Capitol police before they used any of the footage in public hearings, these people said, as they did not want to publicly disclose the location of security cameras in the building.”

More:

“The committee cut and minimized use of the footage accordingly, these people added. ‘We used the material that we thought was most important in demonstrating findings, and we were extremely cautious in what we chose to use,’ said a former committee staffer who expressed concerns about the security risks posed by Carlson’s access to the entire trove of surveillance footage.”

So don’t say McCarthy didn’t have a choice. He undoubtedly felt pressure to release the raw footage to FOX, but he could have done that on a government server allowing all news services to comb through it, as well as the public.

He went to Carlson because he needs to satisfy his extremist Republican Congressional members.

We need to learn whether the DoJ already has copies of these tapes. We know that McCarthy’s release of Capitol Police surveillance video will have limited effect on the current J6 criminal cases because defense lawyers have already had access to the footage for months and have been using it in existing cases at trial.

Tucker is gonna tuck around.

Democrats and any other defenders of democracy had better get ahead of the FOX narrative. Like Biden just got ahead of Putin’s spring Ukraine offensive.

Because we know what’s coming.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – January 15, 2023

With all of the false equivalency about secret documents that mysteriously travel outside their protected locations, you can be forgiven for not hearing about the antics in Missouri’s state legislature. From the WaPo:

“The Republican-controlled Missouri House of Representatives used its session’s opening day Wednesday to tighten the dress code for female legislators, while leaving the men’s dress code alone.”

The state’s House-approved bill requires women’s arms to be concealed. Missouri wouldn’t force its citizens to wear masks during Covid – even with lives at risk. But Missouri is forcing women to wear long sleeves instead of going sleeveless, something that endangers no one.

Imagine if Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) was instead a member of the Missouri House. He would finally have to roll his sleeves down and put on a jacket.

Republican legislators need to become enraged to go to work — not perturbed, not irritated, not annoyed, but furious — and it’s always a made-up crisis and always someone else’s fault, most likely a Democrat’s. Take your pick: Drag queen story hour. Pedophiles in pizza parlors. Genderless potato head toys. Migrant caravans. M&M’s in a lesbian relationship. Trans takeover of sports and bathrooms. Critical Race Theory. Antifa mobs dressing up like MAGAs and attacking the Capitol. Jewish space lasers starting forest fires. Dems are coming for your gas stoves. And so, so many more. On to cartoons.

Joe’s garage finds a problem:

MAGAs want more:

Didn’t we seen this before?

And Trump’s crowds were bigger:

Santos, if that’s really your name, we have a job for you:

Spare:

It takes courage to speak about things that we’re traumatized into not speaking about. What surprises Wrongo most about this is the lack of empathy or understanding he sees by Americans toward Harry as a young boy who, as a 12 year-old had to perform as an adult at his mother’s funeral.

Now he is an adult, a husband and father. So many people in the US have scorn for him. Why does he have to dump all of this on us? Why doesn’t he simply get on with his life rather than telling this story over and over on Oprah, 60 Minutes, and in his book?

Wrongo has watched the Netflix documentary. He will not read the book. But it’s evident that Harry’s rage, and his grief, remain. He’s still trying to make sense of what happened to him after his mother died. While his Royal family may have moved on, he hasn’t.

Worse yet, he’s a male. Western society isn’t tolerant of males who show vulnerability or confusion as an adult. Worse, his own family’s expectations are to simply soldier on.

America likes big stories of family dysfunction, and we sure have a good one in the long-lived soap opera called the British Royals.

Harry deserves closure and happiness. He stood up for his wife and kids. His birth “family” treated him horribly. He’s written his book, and he may make a ton of money off it. Why should any of that make Americans angry?

 

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Saturday Soother – January 14, 2023

The Daily Escape:

A view from Shenandoah NP near Keezletown, VA – January 1, 2023 photo by One Man’s Outdoor Journey

Wrongo and Ms. Right live far enough out in the country that we have no city water, sewer, or gas lines. But the cooktop in our recently remodeled kitchen runs on propane while our ovens are electric. We have a well and septic. Our hot water is made by propane as well.

So what are we supposed to make of this week’s controversy over the Biden administration’s Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) possibly banning future sales of natural gas stoves and cooktops? The reason for this is that burning gas stoves put their partially burned fuel, including nitrogen dioxide (NO2) in the air, which causes asthma. And older stoves with pilot lights instead of electric igniters also push NO2 into the air.

On Monday, Bloomberg reported that the CPSC was considering new regulations around gas stoves, given growing concerns over indoor pollutants. Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. said:

“Any option is on the table….Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.”

The proposal by the CPSC followed a December study by scientists finding that gas ranges that burn natural gas account for almost 13% of childhood-asthma cases in the US. Advocates have long argued against gas stoves, saying the pollution they emit makes them inferior to other options, such as electric or induction ranges. But the asthma statistic breathed new life into the debate.

OK, Wrongo knows the difference between propane and natural gas, but when he first heard about the debate, it was unclear whether his gas of choice was also a health problem and had to die.

Bloomberg neglected to say that any CPSC regulations, like other proposed state and local-level bans of gas stoves, only applies to new construction. But that didn’t keep Republicans from evoking visions of a 2023 filled with government agents busting down doors and ripping out stoves. That tentative regulation conversation about how to best mitigate the health hazards of gas stoves morphed into a Right Wing campaign to convince Real Americans that the Government is coming for their gas stoves:

Rep. Ronny Jackson, (R-TX) tweeted:

“If the maniacs in the White House come for my stove, they can pry it from my cold dead hands,”

From Sen. Tom Cotton,(R-AK):

“Democrats are coming for your kitchen appliances,”

From Rep. Byron Donalds, (R-FL):

“Get your hands off our gas stoves!!!!”

From Rep. Jim Jordan,(R-OH):

“God. Guns. Gas stoves.”

God, Guns, and Gas stoves! All because one appointee in the administration discussed it. But this controversy isn’t about facts; like always, it’s about feelings. Over 30 years ago, the Clean Energy Act was easily renewed on a bipartisan basis. Since then, the environment has become part of the culture wars.

The reflex to position gas stoves as the last redoubt of traditional American life threatened by big government, is just stereotypical of the American Right wing. It’s difficult to see the fight about gas stoves as something that will move the needle since gas is far more common in cities and blue states. So, let the Republicans keep on cooking up the outrage du jour. It’s doubtful that the voters will be eating it up.

Remember their past freak-outs, like when former Rep. Michele Bachmann tried to build a political career around preserving incandescent light bulbs? Another useless freak-out.

In retrospect, it’s honestly shocking we were able in 1975 to ban leaded gasoline in America, although there were lots of dissenters at the time. And now, since we’ve gotten all their guns, it only makes sense that Democrats go after their gas stoves.

Let’s leave these partisan debates in the kitchen where they belong and embrace our Saturday Soother, that special time when we stop thinking about Biden’s secret document stash, or why Jim Jordan dresses like a gym teacher, and spend a few minutes contemplating nearly nothing.

Start by brewing up a big mug of Wilton Benitez Orange Bourbon ($19.00/8 oz.) from Wisconsin’s JBC Coffee Roasters. Apparently the coffee cherries for this variant turn orange when they ripen rather than the typical red and tend to be even more fruity than their red counterparts. The roaster says it is super creamy with flavors of candied ginger, pineapple, and cream soda.

Now grab a seat by a south-facing window to watch and listen to “Fandango” from the Guitar Quintet in D-major, G.448 by Boccherini, performed live in 2015 at the Schubertiade in Hohenems, Austria. Boccherini was an Italian composer and cellist who died in 1805. A fandango is a Spanish dance:

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Biden’s Secret Documents Problem

The Daily Escape:

Spokane in fog, Spokane, WA – January 2023 photo by James Richman Photography

Seems like Biden has handed a present to Trump and the MAGAs by taking some classified documents with him when he left the vice presidency. Republicans pounced on Biden’s gift. Others on the left are working hard to underscore how this situation is different from the investigation into Trump’s handling of classified information after he left office. CNN breaks down the differences for us:

It’s true that there are differences. When the documents were discovered in November by Biden’s attorneys in files at his former offices at Penn Biden, they were turned over the next day to the National Archives (NARA), the responsible party. NARA then made a referral to the FBI, and Merrick Garland asked a Trump-appointed prosecutor, John R. Lausch, one of the two remaining Trump US Attorney appointees to investigate the breach.

Biden’s was the textbook method that’s followed when misplaced classified documents are found. Are you surprised that Biden kept two Trump-appointed US Attorneys? Wrongo was.

In Biden’s case, there wasn’t an earlier request from NARA that was ignored, and no search warrant was required. No lawyers erroneously or dishonestly vouched that Biden was not in possession of classified documents, and there was no effort to obstruct justice.

But the question of how these documents found their way to Biden’s private office once he became a private citizen needs to be investigated. Among the purposes for getting to the bottom of this is that our laws require that classified documents must be under continuous control.

Back in the day when Wrongo had a TS clearance, someone who took a secret document from its filing place signed for it. And if/when a document changed hands, you got a receipt from the next person to prove they had it and not you. And heaven help you if you lost the receipt.

It should be a simple task to follow the chain of custody on the ten documents that were found in Biden’s old office, back to who signed them out. We may learn that it was one of his staffers who took them during the transition period before Biden was inaugurated.

This could become a serious issue if someone was found to have intentionally taken documents with them when they left the White House. Whoever took the documents should be accountable for this mistake, just as Trump should be accountable for mishandling the classified information he brought to Mar-a-Lago.

There’s no reason to excuse Biden for this. Apparently, we need a much better system for controlling classified documents when one administration transitions to another. What’s similar in both cases is that classified information was packed up along with personal items. In Biden’s case, that included documents related to his son Beau Biden’s funeral.

To Democrats, Biden’s slip up may be understandable. And if Trump had apologized for his sloppiness, and most important, cooperated in solving the problem, maybe he wouldn’t be in the trouble he’s in today.

However things shake out legally for Biden or Trump, neither Party should want our nation’s secrets to be insecure. That means we need a new process for inventorying and returning classified materials when they are signed out. But no process will work correctly when the outgoing president refuses to concede the election and instead attempts to launch a coup.

Politically, this looks like it could become a political nightmare, both for Biden and for AG Merrick Garland. Will it damage the document theft case that the DOJ has against Trump? That’s the easiest case for the DOJ to prosecute and win vs. Trump.

We can count on the Republican-controlled House to try to make the Biden document slip up the equivalent to Trump’s legal bind. OTOH, a Republican committee going after Biden on classified documents requires them to acknowledge that what Trump did was wrong, which they have refused to do.

This sets us up for 24 months of political theater. It will look similar to the 2015 Hillary Clinton Benghazi hearings held by many Republican-led House committees. Back then, there were eight Congressional investigations into the Benghazi attacks. The House Select Committee alone spent over 17 months investigating. That was longer than the Watergate hearings.

Listening to these bad faith trolls for the next two years will be exhausting. We know that the various committees that will investigate this are really designed to generate GOP propaganda. They will put the DOJ in a position where they will have to resist giving the committee answers. And on Fox this’ll become screams of “cover up”.

If there is criminal wrong-doing on Biden’s part, you can bet that the Trump-appointed DOJ attorney Lausch will find it. If Lausch doesn’t find any criminal wrong-doing, then we can be fairly sure none took place.

Buckle up.

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Griner Comes Home

The Daily Escape:

Barn before a storm, Walla Walla, WA – 2022 photo by Gary Hamburgh Photography

After 10 months in Russian custody, including time in a penal colony, WNBA star Brittney Griner is on her way home. In exchange for Griner’s freedom, Russia secured the release of Viktor Bout, a convicted Russian arms smuggler. Another American, the former Marine Paul Whelan, remains imprisoned in Russia.

CNN reports that the White House said Griner was released to US officials. From Biden:

“Moments ago I spoke to Brittney Griner…She is safe. She is on a plane. She is on her way home.”

The prisoner swap occurred in Abu Dhabi on Thursday. A joint statement from the UAE and Saudi Arabia said both Gulf countries played a role mediating the exchange between the US and Russia. By the time you are reading this, Griner should be on American soil.

But the result is a mixed bag. It’s very good news that Griner is free. But Viktor Bout is also free to rebuild his arms-dealing network. People are rightly wondering why Whelan wasn’t included in the trade. After all, he’s finishing his fifth year in Russian prison. But negotiation requires both sides to agree and the Russians would only offer Griner.

Of course, the Right-wing chattering class disapproved. First, from House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, who tweeted:

“This is a gift to Vladimir Putin, and it endangers American lives….Leaving Paul Whelan behind for this is unconscionable.”

Some Conservative mouth-breather named Jessie Kelly tweeted this:

“She’s a black lesbian who hates America. Biden is just bringing another voter back home.”

Another mouth-breather, Conservative Benny Johnson who has a show on Newsmax, tweeted this with typical Right-wing understatement:

“This is the lowest point in US foreign policy in my lifetime. Collapse of an empire.”

It can’t be a long life for young Benny. What is he, five years old?

You have to love the comments by these wingnuts each of whom say they could have brokered a better deal with their expert negotiating skills. And rather than be happy that one American is returning home, they use their oral flatulence to make comments about what should have happened, and why Biden is a loser.

Poor Paul Whelan’s family shows that most Americans still have decency and class:

“NEW from the Whelan family: “There is no greater success than for a wrongful detainee to be freed & for them to go home. The Biden Admin made the right decision to bring Ms. Griner home, & to make the deal that was possible, rather than waiting for one that wasn’t going to…”

The American people should thank Paul Whelan’s brother David for being so gracious. That isn’t something that we can say about the many Republican mouthpieces who felt it was necessary to weigh in.

People need to stop thinking about this as a trade or a prisoner exchange. The Russians kidnapped Griner and held her for ransom. She was a wonderful target, being a very tall black lesbian woman playing professional basketball in Russia. She was chosen, then convicted, and then sent to the gulag for the very purpose of being bait to spring Viktor Bout.

Does it suck that the price of releasing her was letting an odious killer go free? Of course. It shouldn’t be lost on anyone that as individuals and given their relative “crimes”, they weren’t equivalent assets. Everyone knows that Griner’s offense was simply a pretext to create a prisoner that could be traded. The initial arrest was about finding a small amount of hash oil on a Black gay woman.

Prisoner exchanges usually look like, “You arrested one of our spies and we want him back, so we arrested one of your spies. Let’s talk.” They don’t normally look like: “We plucked a random minor celebrity of yours off the street and she’s gonna do nine years.”

And when they do, it’s important to point out that it’s more like a kidnapping and a ransom than it is like an equivalent exchange.

Two closing thoughts. First, Conservatives always say: “Don’t negotiate with terrorists“. But all nations negotiate with terrorists; that’s just something governments say. Negotiating with terrorists doesn’t incentivize terrorism. It incentivizes terrorists to negotiate. The alternative is that terrorists engage in terrorism that does not involve negotiations. And that only leads to terrible outcomes.

All governments have to decide whether to negotiate or not on a case by case basis.

Second, Americans, especially conspicuous Americans, should stay the hell out of Russia until the Putin government’s current business plan is updated.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – December 4, 2022

Well, the US is out of the round of sixteen at the World Cup. Wrongo didn’t watch. It’s maybe arbitrary on his part, but he really has quite a bit of antipathy about the Gulf countries. Those countries have oil, without which they would simply be backwater places with doctrinaire religions and impossible politics.

Another thing: Last week, Edward Snowden swore an oath of allegiance to Russia and has received a Russian passport, his lawyer said Friday. The 39-year-old former intelligence contractor was granted Russian citizenship by Vladimir Putin in September. He faces espionage charges and 30 years in prison in the United States if he were to return, but he no longer faces extradition to the US. On to cartoons.

When will Trump get his just desserts?

Why was it necessary for Dems to portray the possible railroad strike as a problem caused only by labor?

With all we hear about Elon, Trump, and Bezos, why are they still glorified?

Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy is having some trouble becoming the next House Speaker:

Which is worse?

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Thursday Before The Midterms

The Daily Escape:

Candlewood Lake, New Milford, CT – October 2022 photo by Julia Turk

Thoughts on the Thursday before the midterms:

  • Wrongo is hoping to give thanks for whatever November brings, but he’s increasingly concerned about the midterms.
  • Memes about hammers are making the rounds. Let’s start with whether Paul Pelosi’s attacker was a good or a bad guy with a hammer. Wrongo guesses that depends on your political viewpoint. Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) retweeted this photo that mocks Paul Pelosi for having his head bashed in with a hammer by a MAGA radical:

Tenney won her seat in 2020 by around 100 votes. She took office a month after Jan. 6, so she didn’t vote on certifying the election results. She has now vacated her redistricted seat in the 22nd district to run in the neighboring 24th instead.

She is what Republicans have become. It’s true that victims of political violence can be found among both US political Parties, but as David Frum says in The Atlantic:

“…if both Republicans and Democrats, left and right, suffer political violence, the same cannot be said of those who celebrate political violence. That’s not a “both sides” affair in 2020s America.”

You don’t see Democratic candidates carrying assault rifles in their campaign ads. Republican candidates, on the other hand, are now more likely to pose with AR-15s than they are with their wives and kids. More from Frum:

“You don’t see Democratic House members wielding weapons in videos and threatening to shoot candidates who want to cut capital-gains taxes or slow the growth of Medicare. Democratic candidates for Senate do not post video fantasies of hunting and executing political rivals, or of using a firearm to discipline their children’s romantic partners. It’s not because of the Democratic members that Speaker Nancy Pelosi installed metal detectors to bar firearms from the floor of the House…”

Max Boot in the WaPo:

“The New America think tank found last year that, since Sept. 11, 2001, far-right terrorists had killed 122 people in the US, compared with only one killed by far-leftists. A study from the Center for Strategic and International Studies last year found that, since 2015, right-wing extremists had been involved in 267 plots or attacks, compared with 66 for left-wing extremists. A Washington Post-University of Maryland survey released in January found that 40% of Republicans said violence against the government can be justified, compared with only 23% of Democrats.”

Political violence in America is driven primarily by the far Right, not the far Left. And the far Right is now the mainstream of the Republican Party. It’s hard to see how this ends well. Maybe we should be calling them the Wrong Wing. You can’t call them the Right Wing because they are completely wrong on every issue.

With so few days to go until the midterms, Wrongo has closed his wallet for all candidates. On our local TV stations, the same ads run constantly, and seem to have little impact. Few of them are any good anyway. Most repeat some version of their national Party line.

It may be too little too late, but the esteemed Rachel Bitecofer who we’ve featured often, was participating on a podcast hosted by Jill Wine-Banks. Wine-Banks asked about better messaging for Democrats. And without hesitation, Bitecofer said:

“If Republicans win, you lose . . . .”

Doesn’t that ring true? “If Republicans win, you lose.” If that had been the Democrats’ slogan for the midterms, it would have led to some great talking points:

  • Who do you want in Congress — someone who doesn’t want to extend the child tax credit or someone who does?
  • Someone who doesn’t want to provide paid family and medical leave, or someone who does?
  • Someone who doesn’t want to protect Social Security and Medicare, or someone who does?
  • Someone who doesn’t want a $15 hourly minimum wage, or someone who does?
  • Someone who doesn’t want to deliver affordable, quality childcare, or someone who does?
  • Someone who’s against healthcare for all, or someone who’s for it?

“If Republicans win, you lose” has been true in every election since 1932. So, it’s better late than never to use it as a messaging tool.

We haven’t posted cartoons in a while. Here are a couple to get you in the mood for voting:

Voting is like driving: If you want to go backwards, you select R. To go forward, you select D.

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