Humor – Page 20 – The Wrongologist

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – October 27, 2019

Wrongo and Ms. Right will be heading back to the US on Monday morning, so this is the last post from London. The news from America was both typical and troubling again this week. But let’s start with a UK-based cartoon from the Financial Times that drives home the point about how long it’s taking to negotiate a Brexit deal:

Meanwhile, back in the USA, the GOP Congress Critters who broke into the hearing were simply following orders:

What happens when you have the best lawyers:

New White House Ukraine strategy:

Let’s send healing thoughts to Jimmy Carter, who broke his pelvis this week:

Nice message from London:

October 2019 iPhone photo by Wrongo

It occurred to Wrongo that the diversity in England is due at least in part to being the headquarters of the British Empire, followed by being a part of the EU for what is now 47 years. With Brexit, those who voted “Leave” wish for a country that is less diverse.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – October 20, 2019

(Blogging will be light until Tuesday 10/29 as Wrongo and Ms. Right will be in London. Yesterday’s Brexit votes seem to leave things up in the air, so it should be interesting.)

Vanity Fair has an article on possible manipulation of the stock markets with advance information about big news coming from the White House. Several publications have noticed that a killing was made several times on positions taken just before news breaks, but VF lays out just how much. The vehicle was “S&P e-minis”, electronically traded futures contracts linked to the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“In the last 10 minutes of trading on Friday, August 23, as the markets were roiling in the face of more bad trade news, someone bought 386,000 September e-minis. Three days later, Trump lied about getting a call from China to restart the trade talks, and the S&P 500 index shot up nearly 80 points. The potential profit on the trade was more than $1.5 billion.”

There were several more.

On September 10^th in the last 10 minutes of trading, someone bought 82,000 S&P e-minis when the index was trading at 2969. On September 11 in Beijing, the Chinese government announced that it would lift tariffs on a range of American-made products. That same day, Trump said he would postpone tariffs on some Chinese goods. The S&P index moved up 47 points. If you were the lucky one who bought the 82,000 e-mini contracts, well, then you were sitting on a one-day profit of roughly $190 million.
In the last 10 minutes of trading on Friday, September 13, someone got lucky. That’s when someone sold short 120,000 S&P e-minis when the index was trading around 3010. The time was 3:50 p.m. in New York, but it was nearly midnight in Tehran. A few hours later, drones attacked a large swath of Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure, choking off production in the country and sending oil prices soaring. By the time the market opened for pre-trading on Sunday night, the S&P index had fallen 30 points, giving that lucky ducky a quick $180 million profit.
But these wins were peanuts. A trader, or group of traders bought 420,000 September e-minis in the last 30 minutes of trading on June 28. That was about 40% of the day’s trading volume in September e-minis. At the time, Trump was in Osaka, Japan, 14 hours ahead of Chicago, meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping. On Saturday in Osaka, after the market had closed in Chicago, Trump emerged from his meeting with Xi and announced that the trade talks were “back on track.” On Thursday, June 27, the S&P 500 index stood at about 2915; a week later, it was just below 3000, a gain of 84 points. Whoever bought the 420,000 e-minis on June 28 had made a profit of nearly $1.8 billion.

You get the picture. Traders have been watching these wagers intently since the start of the Trump presidency. The precision and timing of the trades, and the vast amount of money being made, make the traders wonder if all this is on the level. Or, is it some form of insider trading?

So far, the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) seem disinterested in pursuing what might be behind these trades. On to cartoons.

America hosts the G-7. Naturally, Trump picks his own hotel:

The Mikes try to clean up Trump’s Turkey mess:

The arguments against Brexit are stronger:

RIP Elijah Cummings:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – October 13, 2019

Trump suffered another legal setback in the federal courts on Friday over his plan to declare refugees and poor immigrants as “public charges”. The plan was to justify refusing them public services like heath care, and use that as a basis for deporting them.

“Judge George B. Daniels, of the US District Court in Manhattan, ordered preliminary injunctions Friday afternoon in two related cases against the administration’s new “public charge” rule that could have denied legal permanent residency and other forms of legal status to many immigrants in the country who are deemed likely to use public assistance.”

Daniels wrote that he found cause to grant the motion because the plaintiffs had sufficiently demonstrated that they would suffer irreparable harm if the rule went into effect:

“Overnight, the Rule will expose individuals to economic insecurity, health instability, denial of their path to citizenship, and potential deportation….It is a rule that will punish individuals for their receipt of benefits provided by our government, and discourages them from lawfully receiving available assistance intended to aid them in becoming contributing members of our society…”

Separately, the fourth Homeland Security Director resigned on Saturday. The entire DHS needs to be rethought and reformed from the ground up. On to cartoons.

This was the DHS’s “public charge” argument:

How did Rudy fall so far?

Trump’s brain trust circles the wagons:

Both sides try using platitudes to help make decisions:

His strategery rarely works out:

Another of this week’s best decisions was facilitated by Erdogan:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – October 6, 2019

Regarding the omnipresent Trump/Biden news, virtually all Republicans are on the same page:

The Bidens are guilty of something
They should be investigated
Trump committed no crime
The Democrats are out to get Trump

The right has worked with Fox State News to neutralize facts, so every issue is up for grabs, even things you know is true. Global warming? It’s undecided. Biden’s activity with Ukraine? Every newspaper has debunked it. And it wasn’t just Obama and Biden who wanted that Ukraine prosecutor gone, all of the European leaders and the head of the IMF wanted him out too.

But for Republicans, those aren’t facts, because something must have been going on. Now, Biden’s let Trump and the GOP define him. They say he should be investigated, because he must have done something wrong, everyone says so.

You’ve got to fight to win the news cycle these days. We can’t remember what happened yesterday, let alone last month.

But, once again, it looks like the Dems plan to work very slowly, sacrificing the narrative. All they have to say is, “he did it”.

Will they again grab defeat from the jaws of victory? On to cartoons. Here’s the meme of the week:

Views differ on what the Ukraine thingy means:

GOP is strangely silent on Trump’s actions:

New movie hits theaters this weekend. Most would like to wipe this horror show from their minds:

It’s more likely that Trump would say: “It would be unfortunate if somehow, he got shot in the leg“:

Rudy plans a spirited defense of whatever this is:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – September 29, 2019

Demo Memo reports that the average worker works 4.77 days a week. But 19% of workers usually work on Saturday, while just 12% work on Sunday, according to the BLS American Time Use Survey. The vast majority, 68% of workers, work Monday through Friday.

Workers without a high school diploma are most likely to work weekends: 31% usually work Saturdays and 17% on Sundays. Those in service occupations are much more likely to work weekends: 39% usually work Saturdays and 28% Sundays.

And here’s Wrongo doing a little service work on the weekend! This week, the cartoonists were understandably focused on impeachment.

Dems really, really want to believe they’ve got him this time:

The GOP will say they’ve found absolute proof even if there’s nothing:

Fall, when the Congressperson’s thoughts turn to impeachment:

Some see only what they are told to see:

Don’t be surprised if it comes down to this:

Maybe we could advance the climate discussion if the message was clearer:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – September 22, 2019

Wrongo never talks sports, but most of America has heard about the New England Patriots dropping Antonio Brown after 10 days on the job. If you don’t know about the fuss, here is a good summary. Brown apparently has yuuge issues with women, but three professional football teams so far, have offered him chances to demonstrate several times that he’s a really, really good player.

This week, Brown sent threatening and menacing texts to a second woman, and that made working for the Patriots untenable. Most think he will get hired fairly soon by another team.

The thought that Antonio Brown will have another NFL job, and Colin Kaepernick still won’t, shows that in 2019, it is better to threaten women, than to threaten the NFL’s rich white establishment.

On to cartoons. Trump may or may not have promised something to someone:

Ok, this is alarming, but on the bright side, Obama killed Osama bin Laden before Trump could fall in love and invite him to the White House. You can see his tweet now:

“I had a great meeting with Osama, he really loves his Family! Great great letter he wrote me, and wants us to be friends! He told me that some of the things people have said about him in the past are very unfair, and I agree!”

Democrats can’t decide what to do. This week, Nadler was beaten badly by Lewandowski, and Schiff couldn’t get the information regarding the whistleblower’s charges that are required by law from the Trump administration:

Whistleblowers are an endangered species in America:

Trump hates California, it’s got too many homeless, fuel-efficient cars and brown people:

On the bright side, rolling back EPA regulations will create more sick people:

The administration’s priorities bear no relation to reality:

Biden is still in charge, but not everything on the menu is appetizing:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – September 15, 2019

Wrongo says this a lot: Tough week! We keep thinking it can’t get worse, but it always surprises us by getting more terrible than the week before. We had a signal event this week, the 18^th anniversary of the 9/11 attack on New York, the Pentagon and the aborted attack that resulted in the plane crash in Shanksville, PA. Wrongo said what he needed to say here.

On to cartoons, and there were waay too many cartoons about John Bolton. Here’s this week’s favorite:

If there’s no deal with the Taliban, it looks like we’ll have trouble leaving Afghanistan:

Rudyard Kipling said it best:

“When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
And go to your God like a soldier”

Clearly, Biden needs a yuuge cup of this:

Vaping will be heavily regulated unless…

Trump decides America can live without clean water:

Nobody knows where Brexit will land:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – August 25, 2019

From the WaPo:

“The Justice Department has canceled a news-clip service for employees in its immigration review office after Monday’s edition included a link to and a summary of a blog post from a white-nationalist website that used an anti-Semitic slur…”

The Justice Department said the articles came from a third-party internet service that scanned the internet based on keywords and automatically delivered the DOJ articles from “various sources”. It wasn’t a surprise that the DOJ canceled the service, blaming the third-party.

DOJ spokesperson Kathryn Mattingly said:

“Those hateful beliefs do not reflect the views of EOIR employees and the Department of Justice.”

BuzzFeed spoke with the third-party service (TechMIS) and found out that the Trump administration has been regularly sending out articles from some far right-wing and white supremacist sites. And they’ve been doing it for months:

“Similar newsletters sent to the Labor Department, ICE, HUD, and the Department of Homeland Security included links and content from hyper partisan and conspiracy-oriented publishers.”

TechMIS sometimes included links to VDare, an anti-Semitic and racist site whose editor has claimed that American culture is under threat from nonwhite peoples. While these newsletters shared articles from local and mainstream national news outlets, they also regularly delivered content from partisan publications touting anti-immigration rhetoric and conspiracy theories. Among these publications: the Western Journal, a hyper partisan publisher whose founder once questioned if then-presidential candidate Barack Obama was Muslim.

And to say that the DOJ was blindsided by the contractor was debunked by TechMIS CEO Steven Mains:

“That’s absolutely incorrect…Mains added that EOIR {division of DOJ} was the most specific and particular of the company’s clients. The agency’s staff would review its work “down to misspellings” if there was anything wrong before sending.”

So, they reflect the beliefs of the entire administration.

Whenever you hear Trump apologists say that the Donald isn’t racist, or that the administration takes an even-handed approach to the brown and black people, remind them that White supremacists are running the government, and sharing racist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, and radical conspiracy links across the federal bureaucracy.

You would be a fool to believe that these links aren’t being approved by someone high up in the various administration cabinet departments. This is absolutely being done on purpose to radicalize the government against those people. On to cartoons:

The buck never stops at HIS desk:

Trump may have been chosen, but he’s just the Mess-iah

He did say that he wanted suspicious characters off the streets:

This weekend’s G-7 meeting will be more of the same:

Let’s hope that Justice Ginsburg is with us for some time to come:

Bidens seem nice, but they represent a time that has passed:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – August 4, 2019

Will Hurd is the third Texas Republican in the past two weeks to decide to spend more time with their families, and is the sixth incumbent GOP member of the House to go. He is the only black Republican member of the House of Representatives. Could this be why?

It’s not that surprising Hurd wants to step down; he barely beat Democrat Gina Ortiz-Jones in the 2018 midterm election, winning by less than 1,000 votes. Ortiz-Jones is running again, and has been out-fundraising Hurd.

Wrongo gave money to Ortiz-Jones last time, and will again. She joined the US Air Force as an intelligence officer and deployed to Iraq in the Bush administration. After three years of active duty, she returned to Texas in 2006, working for a consulting company while caring for her mother, who had colon cancer (from which she later recovered).

Ortiz-Jones then returned to working as an intelligence analyst for the US Africa Command in Germany. In 2008, she joined the Defense Intelligence Agency, where she specialized in Latin America. In November 2016, she moved to the Executive Office of the President (Barack Obama) to serve under the US Trade Representative. Having served under presidents of both parties, Ortiz-Jones continued in her role during the Trump administration until June 2017, when she left.

Until 2016, there were always people like Will Hurd in the GOP. And before Trump came along, it was easy to get way more than four votes from Republicans in the House of Representatives to condemn a politician’s racist comment.

Pulling out for a view from 50,000 feet, there’s now an energized segment of America that are virulently hard core right wing. They are driven by a steady flow of lies and disinformation, and they won’t disappear or even move underground assuming Trump loses in 2020. Democrats will have to win real solid majorities in both Houses if there is to be effective government in DC, And they may be able to turn a few more Texas Congressional seats blue. Ortiz-Jones deserves your attention.

The debates are over until September, but this isn’t what we’ll see when they resume:

One goal among many:

This is exactly how the media and the GOP view the Dems:

Why won’t Mitch pursue fixing our election system?

Remember when they said that plastic was far better than paper and would save the environment?

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 28, 2019

The Senate voted 53-45 on Thursday to block the Trump administration’s sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia. Then, Trump vetoed it. His rationale was “national security”. He looks a bit like the Saudi Prince’s lap dog for going against both Houses of Congress with this veto. Not selling arms to Saudi Arabia for use in the Yemen war is one of the few things that both the House and Senate have agreed on this year. This is Trump using his veto power to keep the Saudi slaughter machine going.

In another use of the “national security” argument by the administration, the Supreme Court, voted 5-4 saying that Trump can use military funds to build his border wall. The issue was whether Trump could take money appropriated by Congress for the military, and instead, use it for something that Congress didn’t authorize.

The administration’s argument to the Supremes was that they should be allowed to use the Pentagon money pending the administration’s appeal of the 9th Circuit’s ruling against Trump. The Supremes decided that Trump can go ahead and use the money while the appeal is pending, and went further, saying that the current challengers (Sierra Club and the Southern Borders Communities Coalition) “may” not be the right plaintiffs to challenge the reallocation of the funds. They seem to think it should be Congress.

Two points: These funds aren’t building a new wall, they’re replacing existing structures. Second, presidents need the power to declare national emergencies, even if they are bombastic, narcissistic muppets with bad hair. Congress may try to take away this power. But more likely, we will soon see some other hokey reason to declare a national emergency by a different president, attempting to appease a different political base. On to cartoons.

Funny how Dems were hungry 20 minutes later: