Humor – Page 26 – The Wrongologist

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – April 22, 2018

Last week, the nation’s six big Wall Street banks posted record, or near record profits in the first quarter. They can thank the Republican’s tax cut. The tax cut saved them $3.59 billion last quarter:

While higher interest rates allowed banks to earn more from lending in the first quarter, the main boost to bank came from the billions of dollars they saved in taxes under the tax law Trump signed in December. Combined, the six banks saved at least $3.59 billion last quarter.

Before the tax law change, the maximum US corporate income tax rate was 35%. Banks historically paid among the highest tax rates, because of their US-centric business strategies. Before the Trump tax cuts, these banks paid 28% to 31% of their yearly income in corporate taxes.

Last week’s results showed how sharply those rates have dropped. JPMorgan Chase had a first-quarter tax rate of 18.3%, Goldman Sachs paid 17.2%, and the highest-taxed bank of the six majors, Citigroup, had a tax rate of 23.7%. Bank executives at the big six firms have estimated that their full-year tax rates will be about 20%-22%. If you annualize the quarterly savings, $3.6 billion is about $14 billion a year for the six largest banks in America.

Does anybody think that the savings will go to customers in the form of reduced service fees? Or employee raises? Nope, Bank of America announced in December that they will be spending $5 billion to buy back their shares.

This is a permanent annual loss of revenues for America. If the GOP stays in power, you know exactly what they plan to cut to make up these billions. On to cartoons.

Trump’s week looked like this:

(But you can’t fix FOX.)

The two guys who were arrested had a bad day. Maybe Starbucks shouldn’t say “shot”:

Rumors that you will be fired will cause anxiety:

(Maybe John Boehner can hook him up.)

What Syrians might say about Trump’s cruise missile attack:

Dems’ leadership isn’t up to the 2018 task:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – April 8, 2018

Another week of news from the teacher’s strikes, to the unjustified shootings, to Trump’s tariffs, Pruitt’s condo deal and sending troops to the southern border, there was plenty of room for fun.

The GOP dilemma with the teacher’s strike:

Maybe the best poster from the March:

A too common a reason why Daddy’s gone:

Not everyone wins with Trump’s tariffs:

Pruitt was in bed with these guys before the condo deal:

The reasons why Trump wins with Evangelicals:

When he testifies, Zuck will try calling the kettle black:

Trump faces resource allocation decision:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – April 1, 2018

Hopefully, none of you brought any of these cute little babies home for Easter. Wrongo’s parents once brought home some baby chicks for the holiday. The family dog ended their stay very quickly. Just don’t do it!

Easter falls on April Fool’s Day. We’ve been invited to a family party. We’re hoping someone’s really home when we get there. The men’s college basketball championship is sandwiched around April 1st, and Wrongo will be watching. Sadly, the UConn women’s basketball team lost in their final four for the second year in a row.

We endured another week of non-stop foolery by our elected representatives, and this week’s cartoons show just that.

There will be new census questions, but its doubtful that these will make the cut:

The new questions come with a few new tools:

The Roseanne show reboot was cause for concern by Dan:

Trump has the best irony. Trump should pay more and so should Amazon:

We didn’t hear Bob Dylan at the #March for our lives, but Congress should have:

Trump’s legal problems actually have an easy solution:

Trump’s careful diplomatic approach will certainly win the trade negotiation with China: (from the Economist)

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – March 25, 2018

March for Our Lives in DC – 3/24/18 NYT photo by Erin Schaff

The March for Our Lives took place yesterday. High schoolers led the rest of us, marching against America’s gun culture, and against politicians who do nearly nothing to solve the slow-moving disaster that is our government’s response to mass murders in our country.

Nobody knows where this will lead. It could be part of something big that changes our society, or it could lead to nothing. But, we can be sure that nothing can change without electing a different set of politicians.

That won’t happen unless the public gets behind the demonstrators. MLK Jr. knew this. Wrongo is sure that Emma Gonzalez, and the other activists from Stoneman Douglas know this too. We must support them, and demand that our politicians actually do something about gun violence, or lose their jobs.

On to cartoons. MLK approves:

Unlike Congress Critters, these kids seem immune to cash that comes with strings attached:

Austin TX is safe, but the bomber didn’t fit the stereotype:

John Bolton’s mustache grows even more alarming:

Facebook’s mismanagement of personal information makes Zuckerberg look bad:

GOP lost gerrymander case in PA. What’s next?

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – March 18, 2018

What is most interesting about the #Enough movement is that it is well-disciplined, and deadly serious. These kids aren’t just looking for a chance to cut school. They realize what’s at stake: not just their lives, but the future of the country. Most of them will be old enough to vote in 2020.

When you think about high school kids marching, the Parkland kids are from FL, many WI kids marched, and Democrat Conor Lamb just won in a PA district gerrymandered to be very red. Total Electoral College votes if these three states switched from red to blue: 59. In other words, #Enough:

Dem surprise win in PA gets standard Trump response:

GOP debrief on PA rounds up all the usual suspects:

United’s problems transporting dogs makes Romney look good:

Steven Hawking enters the worm hole:

White House alums seem to be ok:

Monday Cartoon Blogging – March 12, 2018

Wrongo and Ms. Oh So Right have safely returned to the Mansion of Wrong after our week in warmer climes. The timing of our travel was perfect! We were away during the two nor’easters that dumped 18” of snow on the Mansion, and we are back before the next snow on Tuesday. Here is a picture of sunrise on the day we pulled out of our FL rental:

On to cartoons. Trump will try to show North Korea’s Kim the art of the deal without using his hands:

This, by a right-wing cartoonist, makes Trump look like he knows something about tariffs. That’s untrue:

Trump baffles some of the base, but others get the picture:

The GOP is still in denial about Trump’s steel tariffs:

Jefferson Beauregard Sessions redefines the “Golden Door” of American immigration:

Trump’s decision to again allow importation of elephant parts shows his character:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – March 4, 2018

We have a high surf warning here in northern Florida, and Wrongo is just a little late posting the Sunday funnies. First, a hard-to-believe-its-not-the-Onion story:

…in the Bay Area — where the nation’s preeminent local food movement overlaps with the nation’s tech elite — egg-laying chickens are now a trendy, eco-conscious humblebrag on par with driving a Tesla.

That’s right, the techbros are raising chickens:

In true Silicon Valley fashion, chicken owners approach their birds as any savvy venture capitalist might: By throwing lots of money at a promising flock…By charting their productivity (number and color of eggs). And by finding new ways to optimize their birds’ happiness — as well as their own…They keep the chicken brokers of the region busy finding ever more novel birds.

Wow, San Francisco has chicken brokers! And they are hiring contractors to build $20,000 coops using reclaimed materials or pricey redwood that matches their human homes. And they fail to realize that their chickens are eating better than the ~17% of Americans who don’t have enough to eat.

Kill them all now.

On to cartoons. Jared Kushner had a bad week:

And the son-in-law has a few new duties:

The GOP won’t let Trump go that far:

New sign at White House:

Big NCAA basketball scandal focuses on the wrong thing:

Oscars tonight. It leaves studios rethinking their marketing strategy:

March 1, 2018

The Daily Escape:

The Wrong family is at its annual temporary winter headquarters in Florida, enjoying this view. Blogging will be intermittent until March 12^th, when we will be back in residence at the Mansion of Wrong. 2015 photo by Wrongo.

A few cartoons. When will the GOP start complaining, saying “Armed union thugs are patrolling our schools”:

Trump refines his role:

US Cyber Command chief Adm. Mike Rogers said Trump hasn’t granted him the authority to disrupt increased cyber threats. Trump, no longer jumping to the rescue. He’s just the security monitor:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – February 11, 2018

We watched the time-delayed opening ceremony of the Seoul Olympics. Yesterday’s news at night.

Time seemed to move slowly, except when the cameras showed Mike Pence frowning. That guy should never get a real job in government. Wait, he has one? Ohh. Sorry.

Not shaking hands with the North Korean representatives is beneath America’s leaders. His stony behavior won’t make any friends on the global stage, and while the NoKo’s clearly are not our friends, what does not shaking hands prove?

Then there’s this: Pence skips Olympics dinner in snub to North Korean officials. Instead, he had dinner with the US team. Maybe what caused him to cancel attending the Olympic dinner was a desert, called “A Plate of Hope”. It featured a map of Korea with chocolate barbed wire dividing it. By pouring on a hot sauce, the barbed wire between the north and south melted away. How would America benefit from that?

Is it now considered appropriate to be disrespectful to your host because you don’t like his guest list? Is bailing out on the official Olympic dinner, and not shaking hands the worst Pence will do while representing us at the Olympics? Let’s hope so. On to cartoons.

A wife beater without a security clearance reading everything in the White House is the shocking part:

The Olympics hits close to home:

We’re gonna see something really special at Trump’s big parade:

Trump’s gonna see something really special at the parade too:

A Tesla in orbit gets noticed:

Our local bookstore’s display:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – February 4, 2018

A few words about the Nunes memo: We had already heard all that it contains, so there’s nothing new to chew on except today’s Super Bowl nachos. Its main argument is that somehow, super-crafty Democrats, in league with the FBI, tricked four separate FISA judges into extending surveillance on suspected foreign agent, and Trump campaign staffer Carter Page. How? By omitting that the “primary source” of the information on Page was the “paid-for-by-Democrats” Steele dossier, which is “compromised by partisanship“.

Except that the Nunes Memo doesn’t prove any of this. The initial FISA warrant against Carter Page was based on the fact that the guy was a known counterintelligence risk who was in the habit of traveling to Moscow and Budapest and mixing with Kremlin officials and spies. The Steele Dossier took independent note of this, (which speaks to Steele’s ability to uncover at least some real information), but Page’s activities were already suspect, regardless of who paid Steele.

So, no matter what the Nunes memo claims, Steele’s information wasn’t crucial to their interest in Page, who had been under FISA surveillance since 2013 for his contacts with Russian spies in NYC.

The idea that the FBI only pursued Page because certain members of its management had Democratic sympathies is ridiculous. Would Trump have traded how he was treated by the FBI in October 2016 for the way Clinton was treated?

The FBI actually told the NYT that they gave Trump a clean bill of health. They incorrectly assured the public that Trump’s campaign was not being investigated for its ties to the Russians when that was exactly what they were doing. Were they in cahoots with Democrats when they did that?

Democrats must learn to pick their battles. Why scream about releasing a memo that most people (excluding Trumpsters) can now see is a nothingburger? What exactly were they trying to keep secret? Ordinary people don’t appreciate Chicken Little behavior. And most of the time they will give equal weight to Chicken Little A and Chicken Little B, because that’s how they have learned to deal with squabbling children.

Americans SO want politics to be honorable. It’s not. It’s just war by other means, on other battlefields.

Shots were fired from the Peanut Gallery: