Humor – Page 30 – The Wrongologist

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – May 28, 2017

In Saudi Arabia, The LA Times’ Molly Hennessy-Fiske reports that Donald Trump is now called “Abu Ivanka”. Abu means “the father of”. Apparently Saudi Arabia is fascinated with Ivanka Trump, and thus, The Donald gets a new title.

The Saudi Pipeline:

In his speech, Trump called Saudi Arabia the country that contributes more to peace than any other Muslim country. Really? The Saudis?

Trump got the arms deal with Saudi Arabia. Now, he plans to sell off half the US oil reserve so we can once again be dependent on OPEC oil:

Trump is impressed by Wailing Wall:

When Donny visited the Pope, he received a copy of the Pope’s Climate Encyclical:

His Assholiness gives the Pope a religious education:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – May 21, 2017

On Friday night in Cologne Germany, Wrongo and Ms. Right had the chance to see a great young female duo who play classical music. Sophie Moser (violin) and Katja Huhn (piano) played selections for a mostly American audience. They perform under the name Duo Moser-Huhn. Here they are playing the Romanian Folk Dances by Bartok, composed in 1915. Sophie was a child prodigy, and plays an Amati violin built in 1743. They have few YouTube performances, so hopefully, you will enjoy this:

On to cartoons. Der Donald is on his first overseas tour as president. He is in Saudi as this is written, before his big speech on Islamic Terrorism. So you will already know just how well that was received by the 50 or so heads of state in the audience.

Trump prepares for landing:

Opinions on his Middle East visit vary:

John Fugelsang called Trump’s meeting with the Pope “His Holiness meets His Assholiness”:

Trump hints at having secret tapes of Comey:

Will Trump be dropped?

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – May 14, 2017

(Wrongo and Ms. Oh So Right are heading to Europe today. We will be gone for 10 days, so blogging may be sparse. Please keep America great while we are away.)

Happy Mother’s Day to all. A few more thoughts about BLOTUS (Big Liar of the US): Not only does he have the worst approval ratings of any president at this point in his term, but he’s also incapable of moving the needle of public opinion toward his positions. Ironically, for all of Trump’s sycophants’ talk that Trump’s words ARE his actions, his tweets and public pronouncements are making his positions more unpopular.

What matters most to Wrongo is his non-adherence to basic rules and norms, and here, there’s a lot to be concerned about. His fear of an investigation into possible Russian influence, and his refusal to release his tax returns probably mean he’s hiding something. Now we learn that Trump’s law firm, Morgan Lewis, which wrote a statement saying Trump’s tax returns showed no significant business ties to Russia, itself has extensive ties to Russia, and received a “Russia Law Firm of the Year” award in 2016. The swamp is reaching flood stage. On to cartoons.

Trump wanted a different dog:

Comey’s resume shows poor reviews by former employer:

McConnell plans to protect The Donald:

Trump thinks any negative story about him is made up:

Trump creates new versions of the truth faster than his team can spin them:

Trump hears from a guy inside the White House that he doesn’t know:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – May 7, 2017

The House Republicans’ passage of the Trumpcare Bill dominated the news last week. Sometime later today we will learn the results of the French presidential election, but the hacking of Mr. Macro’s servers and emails sounds depressingly familiar.

America’s “unsolvable problem” with health insurance led us to Obamacare, and now, to the botched GOP effort to replace it. We should remember that this unsolvable problem has already been solved in dozens of countries.

Trumpcare is an event of domestic terrorism:

GOP will need a different pitch to the public:

How the GOP defines “pre-existing”:

Preexisting conditions also include political health:

GOP thinks health insurance is only for people who make good choices – like being born rich:

Stay unhealthy my friends:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – April 30, 2017

It only took 100 days for Donald Trump to reduce the office of the presidency to the point of near-zero credibility. Unfortunately, it appears as though his base and Republicans in Congress remain very accepting of him as president. In Twitter speak, #So Sad.

Back to the administration’s one page tax plan: The plan works if we assume 6% annual GDP growth for the full 8 years of a Trump presidency. Since the end of the Great Recession, annual GDP growth has been about 2%. More to the point, we now have a 3.5% (of GDP) budget deficit, and we are at the top of the current business cycle, with a 75% debt-to-GDP ratio.

Republicans used to refer to that as being broke.

Mostly, what has been accomplished in the last 100 days are a blizzard of executive orders and proclamations. We all remember when executive orders like Trump’s were considered tyranny by Fox News. On to cartoons. The GOP walks out on its long-term companion, the deficit hawks:

Trump’s first 100 days did NOT include tons of winning:

The clown show about trickle-down economics continues:

Trump explains his new tax brackets:

Arkansas needs help after botching another execution:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – April 23, 2017

Sorry for the lack of columns; Wrongo has an acute case of Trump Fatigue. It is difficult to: a) think of anyone or anything else, and b) when writing a column, everything seems linked to every other thing, and none of you want to read a thousand-word rant. On to the rich harvest of cartoons.

Le Pen’s ballots in today’s election in France may be enough to force the big box to open:

The March for Science, unsurprisingly, has opposition:

It isn’t enough to just think about the planet on Earth Day:

Fox replaces O’Reilly with another loser:

Why do we still call it the Presidency when the differences are so stark?

Why would millions of people willingly watch a real-time murder?

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – April 16, 2016

(There will not be a Monday Wake Up column this week, as Wrongo continues to deal with getting the Wrong family tax return fininshed by Tuesday)

Why won’t the Syrian tar baby let us go? Why can’t we quit Syria? Some clues from Robin Wright in the New Yorker: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Henry Kissinger made twenty-eight trips to Damascus—fourteen in a single month—to deal with the fallout from the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. He finally brokered an agreement with Assad, in 1974, to disengage Syrian and Israeli troops along the Golan Heights.

Jimmy Carter met Assad in Geneva, in 1977, to explore prospects for a U.S.-Soviet conference on Middle East peace. Assad was unyielding. He demanded the return of territory seized by Israel.

Tensions between Ronald Reagan and Assad turned openly hostile after Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, where Syria had thousands of troops deployed.

Between 1993 and 1996, Secretary of State Warren Christopher made almost thirty trips to Damascus, to broker a deal on the Golan Heights.

In 2007, the C.I.A. corroborated Israeli intelligence that Syria, with North Korean blueprints and technicians, was building a secret nuclear reactor in the remote city of Deir Ezzor. Israeli warplanes attacked the site.

The New Yorker article’s headline calls the Assad family “The Nemesis of Nine US Presidents”. It assumes that this is a one-sided story, but it seems that it is also about America’s little nuclear-armed apartheid partner on the Mediterranean, and the weeping sore of its occupation and annexation of Syrian territory. And we wonder why Russia and Iran have insinuated themselves in the Shiite Middle East.

On to a shortened version of cartoons. The Easter Egg Roll, which takes place at the White House on Monday, is one of the WH’s biggest annual events. Last year, more than 35,000 people attended, but about 20,000 are invited this year. It has been an annual event since first lady Dolley Madison started it in the early 1800s. Trump is at Mar-a-Lago for Easter weekend. There’s an Easter hunt there too:

Steve Bannon isn’t getting the message:

Bannon was “volunteered” to give up his seat on AF One:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – April 9, 2017

There are two inescapable conclusions in the aftermath of Trump’s missile strikes in Syria. First, the US can no longer focus only on destroying ISIS. Now, we are in the position of having to also burn calories dealing with the fallout from those strikes with Russia, Syria and Iran.

Second, we can no longer keep our previous distance vis-à-vis the Syrian civil war separate from our relations with Russia. Before Trump’s Tomahawking, it was possible to argue that Russia’s involvement in Syria was peripheral to our goals in Syria, and certainly not central to overall US/Russian relations. Now, the US has put at risk the limited cooperation we have had with Russian in Syria regarding ISIS.

And for what? Apparently, Trump’s missile strikes didn’t change much on the ground in Syria. In fact, the Syrian air force just used the same air strip that we blasted with 60 tomahawk missiles (at the cost of $1million a copy) to again bomb the same city that suffered the sarin attack.

Doubtless, Trump will call this a “victory” but, if you use $60 million to disable an airbase, shouldn’t it be disabled? Again, the question is: What was Trump trying to accomplish? He has taken a dangerous situation, and seemingly made it more dangerous. To Wrongo, it looks like Trump got nearly nothing from his attack. Does this remind anyone of Trump’s attack on Yemen?

Since the Syrian fly-boys are back in the air, bombing the SAME city, Trump looks like a fool. Want to bet that he will feel the need to correct that impression? On to Cartoons!

Who/What was Trump aiming his tomahawks at?

We tipped off Putin that the tomahawks were coming:

Trump meets with China’s Xi and learns something:

Negotiations with Xi weren’t as easy as Trump thought:

Mitch McConnell, wrecker extraordinaire:

Invoking the nuclear option made things much easier for the GOP:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – April 2, 2017

Lots of news this week, and the cartoons can speak for themselves.

North Carolina’s bathroom ban wasn’t really repealed:

Trump’s climate change order isn’t popular everywhere:

Trump’s executive order adds jobs:

Trump has lost more than his ball:

How did the GOP blow it with Trumpcare?

Devin Nunes repeats (some of) what he hears:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – March 26, 2017

From the NYT: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

33 Republicans stopped the [Trumpcare] bill. 15 were from the “Freedom Caucus,” 10 were “moderates” mostly from the Northeast (the “Tuesday Group”), some of whose districts went for Clinton, and 8 were miscellaneous (“One said he was concerned about its changes to Medicaid expansion, another preferred a full repeal and a third said he was worried about the bill’s impact on treatment for opioid abuse”).

Republicans control 237 seats of the 435 seats in the House. It requires 218 votes to pass a bill. When Paul Ryan and Donald Trump lost 33 Republican votes, the bill couldn’t pass, and had to be withdrawn. That means the GOP really doesn’t control the House, and that’s unchanged since John Boehner was Speaker.

The Republicans have majority control of the House and the Senate. They also have the self-proclaimed greatest deal-maker sitting in the Oval Office. They have been talking about repealing Obamacare for seven years since it was signed into law, and they couldn’t get their own party to fall in line.

But Trump isn’t a deal maker, he’s a salesman.

And that’s a huge difference. Savvy business people seem willing to buy whatever he is selling. He seems to have the charisma and persuasiveness that in his prior life, made him a top earner as a real estate mogul.

But there’s a difference between making a sale and making a deal. Deal making is hard; you have to build trust, you have to establish real relationships, you need a mastery of your deal points and those of the person on the other side. It can be slow, grinding work.

Trump doesn’t do that, he’s never done that. His entire career is a lurch from one deal to the next, and his Presidency is no different. Trump closed the sale with the American people, but once elected, his job is to make deals.

On to cartoons.

A funny thing happened on the way to the Obamacare execution: