Category: Humor

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – December 23, 2018

(Columns will be limited from now through New Year’s Day as the Wrong family and our wrong friends gather to celebrate Christmas and the New Year. Wrongo may post a few tunes of the season, or a few photos that evoke this particular time of the year. Happy holidays and happy New Year to all who read this made-by-hand blog)

A list of Shutdown Cocktails:

Christmas shopping fails:

All the kids have Xmas lists:

 

Some people are never happy on Christmas:

Some people always say “you people”:

 A Cardinal who won’t be accused of pedophilia:

Wrongo leaves you with a rousing piece of holiday music. Here is “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” performed live in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. The entire congregation joins in the singing. It is conducted by the late John Scott:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – December 16, 2018

A seven-year-old Guatemalan girl died on December 6th in the custody of the US Border Patrol. She and her father were apprehended with a group of 163 migrants near Antelope Wells, NM.

Reportedly, she hadn’t eaten, or consumed water for several days. She began vomiting on a bus that was taking her to a holding facility at Lordsburg NM, a 90-mile trip. She was not breathing when she arrived at Lordsburg, and was resuscitated there by the Border Patrol. She was then helicoptered to a hospital in El Paso, Texas. At the hospital, the girl was revived after going into cardiac arrest, but died less than 24 hours later.

Asked if food and water were given to the child, DHS blamed the father for taking his daughter on the dangerous journey to the US. But, she didn’t die on the 3,000-mile journey. She died in the US and in Border Patrol custody. She died while she was the BP’s responsibility.

The government is responsible for the health and safety of migrants they detain. They have to do better:

Trump has promised either he gets a wall, or we get a shutdown:

Trump ran into a wall he could have avoided:

Finding what you deserve:

White House Christmas carols won’t be much fun this year:

Reality starts to dawn:

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – December 9, 2018

Saturday morning in Paris brought Yellow Vest demonstrators and police together throughout France. You can see an English language live feed here that began at 10:00 am local time. Police used tear gas and arrested hundreds. The NYT carried this picture:

This could get rough. It seems that the anger is very intense. Macron responded with too little, too late. In the live feed, most people wearing the Yellow Vests yell that they want him to step down. On to cartoons.

The George HW Bush funeral created bi-partisan agreement:

This week there was also a funeral for our 401k’s:

The American Dream has been redefined:

Trump helps paint Muller’s office floor:

Trump’s house maid admits she’s an illegal. Double standard follows:

GOP stuffed ballots in NC’s Ninth Congressional District. Election fraud is real, my friends:

Tariff Man was seen flying over the economy:

 

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – December 2, 2018

Wrongo’s not gonna say much that’s bad about the late George HW Bush today. Wouldn’t be prudent.

What the Hell…here’s a few observations. Bush was an average president who looks better than he should because we compare him to the terrible Republican presidents we’ve experienced since he left office. He was a genuine war hero, and a self-made successful businessman (to the extent that his wealthy family didn’t just hand him a Texas oil business). He was a reasonable head of the CIA.

But to become president, he engaged in race baiting, using the Willie Horton ad against Dukakis. It was openly racist, harking back to old American fears of black men raping white women. Bush can never be forgiven for this.

He brought us Clarence Thomas. Bush could have held the Reagan administration accountable for Iran-Contra. Instead, he chose to pardon everyone. Just before he left office, he pardoned Caspar Weinberger, who was just about to go on trial for his crimes, describing him as a “true American patriot.” He also pardoned Elliott Abrams and Robert McFarlane, basically ending the chance that anyone would be held responsible for Iran-Contra.

His pardons of the Iran-Contra crew allowed them to re-enter public life where they became the backbone for Operation Iraqi Freedom under GW Bush. This is his barely-remembered and negative contribution to today’s political landscape. His Thousand Points of Light idea was a non-offensive push toward nonprofits and individual acts of kindness and charity. Neil Young said it best:

We have 1,000 points of light
For the homeless man
We have a kinder, gentler
Machine gun hand

On to cartoons. The national Christmas tree looks different this year:

Trump tosses pardons for Mueller relief:

Rudy means there’s no collusion between Manafort and Cohen:

G20 meetings saw Putin working with his hands:

GM’s plant closings could create more immigrants:

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – November 25, 2018

Dems think the mid-terms mean dynamic change in DC. They’re mistaken:

Democrats seem to want younger leaders, but there’s this:

Another Trump Thanksgiving pardon:

If the Saudis can murder thousands in Yemen with Trump’s help, why get upset about one reporter?

We’ll see if new AG Whitaker pardons another turkey this season:

Some of NYC’s parade balloons are losing air at a bad time:

Turkey day should be a time for gratitude:

 

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – November 11, 2018

Possibly the best news about the mid-terms was that the long-promised youth vote was finally real.  A study by Tufts University found that: (brackets by Wrongo)

Approximately 31% of youth (ages 18-29) turned out to vote in the 2018 midterms, an extraordinary increase over the CIRCLE estimate in 2014 [when 21% voted] and the highest rate of turnout in at least 25 years.

Harvard’s Institute of Politics found that, in 2014, approximately 10.8 million young Americans voted, with Democrats preferred 54%-43%, compared to 14.7 million in 2018 (Democrats preferred 67%-32%). So the Dem’s share of the youth vote increased by 13 percentage points in four years.

The actual number of Republican votes cast by those under 30 remained stable from 2014 to 2018. So, nearly all of the 4 million increase in turnout came from those supporting Democrats.

Wrongo tried to stay away from Jim Acosta and Jeff Sessions for today’s cartoons. It wasn’t easy.

Another place where thoughts and prayers are really needed:

After the CA shooting, there was a fire, followed by a shower for the GOP:

2020 is right around the corner:

From the cartoonist, Clay Jones: After the 2014 midterms, the first major candidate to announce a presidential bid, not an exploratory committee, was Ted Cruz in March 2015. Now, that doesn’t mean we’ll have an announcement in four months…but we don’t have long.

Media madness starts on Monday:

We wouldn’t need to throw the TV out the window if the media actually covered ISSUES. You didn’t hear that last Tuesday, HHS published Final Regulations that will allow employers and universities to deny health insurance coverage of contraception to any woman based on the company’s “moral” or “religious” belief. Did anyone see coverage of this issue before it happened? Which news organizations are covering it now?

Florida, same as it ever was:

Back to the usual totally repellent ads next week:

 

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – November 4, 2018

Truthout reports:

Wall Street donors have been lavishing the Democrats in the Senate with far more money than their GOP colleagues. The top six recipients (and nine of the top 10) of Wall Street money in 2018 among senators are Democrats. Of the top 20 Senate candidates to receive donations from Wall Street this cycle, 17 are Democrats, up from six in the last midterm in 2014…

Here are the top 12 recipients of Wall Street money. Eleven are Democrats:

Screen shot from Center for Responsive Politics

Why is Wall Street supporting these Dems? Seventeen Democrats helped repeal portions of the Obama-era Dodd-Frank legislation by voting with Republicans on the Dodd-Frank repeal. Nine Democrats also crossed party lines to appoint Goldman Sachs bailout attorney Jay Clayton to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission. 37 Democratic Senators opposed his confirmation.

This is despite Pew saying in a May 2018 poll that two-thirds of Americans support laws to limit money in politics. Truthout says that for this mid-term, Wall Street has donated nearly $43 million to Senate Democrats, compared with only $19 million for Republicans, a departure from typical election years.

The Democrats’ dependence on Wall Street money is not new. In fact, President Obama raised more money from finance than any candidate in history in his first presidential campaign. Even though polling shows deep distrust over Wall Street, most politicians don’t seem to care.

Will taking Wall Street money be worth it? Will McCaskill, Tester and Heitkamp hold on? If voters really want this to change, they’ll have to stop electing politicians who represent Wall Street. On to cartoons:

Will Tuesday bring nightmares?

Tuesday’s choice:

Shouldn’t we be more worried about the gerrymandering, the crooked voting machines, the $ billions in corporate money, and the slander and attack ads?

Trump’s parade:

And a yoga class. The home of the brave has become the fortress of fear:

Keeping out the criminals:

It’s getting tougher for the GOP to keep using terrorism as their rallying call:

 

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – October 28, 2018

Having a vanifesto doesn’t mean Trump had anything to do with it:

From the cartoonist Clay Jones:

This guy was at the rallies with you. He was standing among you chanting “lock her up,” and “build the wall.” He believes all the conspiracy theories Trump sells. He thinks the media is “fake news” and the “enemy of the American people.” He believes Mueller is on a witch hunt. He believes Trump got something from North Korea and Putin. He believes we’re winning the tariff war. He believes there were millions of illegal voters in 2016. He believes there’s an impending invasion from a caravan of refugee women and children that’s a national “emergency.”

A toxic recipe:

Trump’s iPhones aren’t secure, but there’s no irony:

When you need it scarier, think Mexicans:

MAGA men think of themselves as “tough” when maybe they’re not:

Mitch’s plan to gut social security and Medicare depends on winning the midterms:

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – October 21, 2018

You knew it would turn out to be this:

The Saudi government acknowledged early Saturday that journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed while visiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, saying he died during a fist fight.

The announcement, which came in a tweet from the Saudi foreign ministry, said that an initial investigation by the government’s general prosecutor found that Khashoggi had been in discussions with people inside the consulate when a quarrel broke out, escalating to a fatal fist fight.

And who would ever doubt the House of Sawed?

They came, they sawed, and they concocted a story, after two weeks of trying. Trump was correct, it was “Rogue Killers” who did it. Trump told reporters he thought the explanation from the Saudi foreign ministry of Khashoggi’s death was “credible”. He’s one of the few. Wrongo sees very little downside to never again reporting a single word he says.

The Trump Kabuki play rolls on:

We’ve lost the moral high ground:

Another reminder that we’ve lost the moral high ground:

Times change, and nobody’s running on tax cuts in the Mid-terms:

How some people overthink election day:

Sadly, no Republican sounds like a Democrat:

Voter suppression has become a core competency:

 

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – October 14, 2018

Last week was dominated by an emerging Republican narrative about Democrats: Dems are socialists. They are an angry mob. They frighten ordinary people. The framing by Trump is that the mid-term election is “patriots vs. socialists”.

And Trump said this on Friday night in Cincinnati:

A vote for a Republican is a vote to reject the Democratic politics of hatred, anger and division.

The Democrats’ closing argument for the mid-terms is considerably more nuanced, and it may not be heard clearly. They are against Trump, and all that he and his party stand for, but they talk about wanting a chance to provide a “check and balance” against Trump’s (and the GOP’s) worst instincts.

Sure, some will vote for that, but will enough turn out to vote for it to take the House?

The Democrats haven’t recovered from the public’s disapproval of their demonstrations against Kavanaugh after his swearing in. A reasonable minority of Dems don’t understand that most Americans are uncomfortable with demonstrations. Amy Chua has an astute observation in her book, “Political Tribes” where she quotes a South Carolina student:

I think protesting is almost a status symbol for elites. That’s why they always post pictures on Facebook, so all their friends know they’re protesting. When elites protest on behalf of us poor people, it’s not just that we see them as unhelpful; it seems that they are turning us…into the next ‘meme’. We don’t like being used for someone else’s self-validation.

On one side, we have the GOP, who can apparently say anything, offer insults and tell lies. On the other side, we have the Democrats who can’t do much of that without the mainstream media taking umbrage. Dems allow the media and the Right to write their story. The GOP and the media have made the Democrats the party of identity politics, the PC party, one that is so busy protecting the big tent that it’s unable to govern.

Trump’s Traveling Nuremberg Rallies will continue until the mid-terms, and Dems must decide what messaging will be successful in 2018. It’s going to be tough, because since the dawn of time, no one has truly figured out how to deal effectively (and conclusively) with authoritarian and anti-democratic ideas.

But, Dems have to do just that, or else remain a fringe party.

In American politics, it seems like it’s always 1968. Republicans are the law-and-order party. Democrats are the party affiliated with the demonstrators in the streets of Chicago, even though those demonstrators were radicals, not Democrats. The demonstrators were furious at the Vietnam War, which was led then by Democrats. And today, that viewpoint persists.

Both parties think the other is appalling, so you don’t have to like your own party, you just have to hate the other one. And one thing the Kavanaugh mess has done, it’s made both sides feel the other is appalling.

How it all turns out 22 days from now is anyone’s guess. Let’s hope the Democrats fight hard for the issues that really matter. On to cartoons.

It’s football and election seasons, and it’s always tough to pick the winners:

It’s laughable to think back to the days when the US sent observers to other countries to ensure fair elections:

Nikki Haley resigned. Kanye went to the White House. What to expect next:

Hurricanes have become like school shootings, so many of them, and all so devastating. We treat these events the same, with thought and prayers, but no plan to deal with the causes:

What Trump and Fox want the campaign trail to look like:

Trump sprang into action after Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance. He said we shouldn’t jeopardize our arms sales to Saudi Arabia:

 

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