Humor – Page 8 – The Wrongologist

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – August 28, 2022

A thought experiment about Trump’s collection of classified documents. Forget for a minute that we’re talking about Trump.

What does the US government (USG) do if it finds out a former employee took home dozens of boxes of sensitive/classified government information without authority? And then the USG finds out that the documents the former employee had taken included information on some of its foreign operations. And that the employee kept them in an unlocked closet for eighteen months?

The USG would assume that every one of those operations had been compromised, because it’s totally wrong to assume otherwise. So, the USG would move to close the affected operations down. It would pull its people and invent a cover story that the other side might buy as plausible. It would attempt to insulate its foreign operatives.

The agencies involved (CIA, DIA, AID, State Department, FBI) would lose some credibility for a blown operation, along with the budget for those operations. It would need to find the money to wind up and cover them up. They would have to lay the groundwork for replacement operations along with new budgets. That would take time. They would have to repair the damage to their networks: The foreign governments and recruited private actors, all because some shit for brains former USG employee stole classified records.

How do we estimate the costs Trump has imposed on this country, just from the activities implicated in his set of stolen secret documents? And what was his purpose? On to cartoons.

He can’t just take his sharpie and write DECLASSIFIED on it:

What the forgiveness means in real life:

Opinions differ about the value of the bailout:

How is it possible to get everything wrong?

Midterm voters now cite “threats to democracy” as their top issue:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – August 21, 2022

The GOP’s reflexive instinct to defend Trump was expected. But it’s vilification of the FBI is sickening. And this is coming from Wrongo, a 1960s radical who has always distrusted them. Garrett Graff, writing in the NYT said this about the FBI:

“Historically…the FBI has been arguably the most culturally conservative and traditionally white Christian institution in the entire US government. It’s an institution so culturally conservative, even by the standards of law enforcement, that Democratic presidents have never felt comfortable — or politically emboldened — enough to nominate a Democrat to head the bureau.”

Maybe that should change. Wrongo is old enough to remember that the FBI twice torpedoed Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016. He’s read excerpts of the FBI dossiers on James Baldwin (it’s 1,884 pages), and about its targeting of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

So, maybe Wrongo is the um, well, wrong person to defend the FBI. But that doesn’t mean their execution of a search warrant approved by a federal judge is prima facie evidence that the FBI has suddenly become a tool of the Democrats. On to cartoons.

You don’t have to be a detective to see the difference:

More hypocrisy from the GOP:

Polls are beginning to show that the GOP has some political weakness:

Teflon Don wins again:

Lindsay Graham and Rudy have to testify about the GOP’s Georgia voting mess:

Teachers leave the job in droves:

Unintended consequences of certain policies:

If Liz Cheney has political ambitions, she needs to become a citizen of a more compatible state:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – August 14, 2022

(Tomorrow’s Monday Wake Up Call will appear on Tuesday)

Let’s talk about the religions that are implicated in two news items this week.

First, the attempted assassination of Salman Rushdie in upstate New York on Saturday. He was hospitalized after suffering serious injuries in a stabbing attack. We don’t know for certain that this was someone carrying out the death threat that Iran’s then-leader Grand Ayatollah Khomeini put on Rushdie in 1989. But it seems to be the most likely explanation.

Police detained a suspect named Hadi Matar, 24, who is California-born, but moved to Fairview, New Jersey in 2014. NBC NY News reported that a review of Matar’s social media accounts showed he is sympathetic to Shia extremism and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps causes. One of Matar’s former high school classmates told The Daily Beast that Matar “was a very devout Muslim” who participated in debate and had several friends.

If religion is behind this, the attempted revenge has occurred two generations later.

Second, Polio was found in wastewater samples from New York City. Polio has been eradicated in the US since 1988. Finding it in NYC water samples follows a confirmed case of Polio in Rockland County, NY, just 35 miles north of the City. The County announced that an analysis of more wastewater samples revealed that the polio viruses have been circulating in the area since May.

Worse, the 20 positive samples detected in the two counties are genetically linked to the virus that paralyzed the unidentified man in Rockland County.

The broader context of both stories is that religions played a part in each. The Polio case in Rockland was found in a resident of one of the orthodox religious towns where a predominantly Hasidic Jewish community lives. Rockland County currently has a polio vaccination rate of 60.5% among 2-year-olds, compared to the statewide average of 79.1%. This same group had a measles outbreak (312 cases) in 2019, and low COVID vaccination rates.

There is a strong anti-vaxx mentality in this community, and that helps create fertile conditions for a formerly eradicated disease to be revitalized. Polio is entirely preventable, and yet, many parents remain hostile to vaccination.

In the Rushdie attack, we’re speculating about the influence of religion. Saying the attacker is sympathetic to Shia Islam isn’t sufficient to make it a religious attack. But Wrongo would be surprised if it turned out to be solely either personally or politically motivated.

On to cartoons. Despite the above, most of the news this week was about the FBI search.

The truth is revealed:

Trump explains:

Beach reading is different this year:

Reactions to IRS have changed:

GOP policy wonks are thinking they may need to change:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – August 7, 2022

The Labor Department on Friday reported that the economy added a seasonally adjusted 528,000 jobs in July, far more than the 258,000 economists expected to see. And the headline rate of unemployment fell to 3.5%, back to the multi-decade low we experienced just before the start of the pandemic.

With the upward revisions to the last two months, there are now 22,000 more jobs than there were just before the pandemic. Further, the mix of these new jobs skews away from the lower paying sectors toward higher paying ones. The WSJ reports that in July, there were about a million more jobs combined in the so-called goods-producing sectors—manufacturing, construction, mining and logging—plus the retail trade and warehousing and transportation sectors, than in February 2020. And there were about a million fewer jobs in the remaining service-sector industries.

Leisure and hospitality jobs, which were the most hard-hit during the pandemic, rose by 96,000, but are still -7.1% below their pre-pandemic peak. And within the leisure and hospitality sector, food and drink establishments added 74,100 jobs, but are still about 635,000, or -5.1% below their pre-pandemic peak.

But it wasn’t all good news. The number of people employed as a share of the working-age population was 60% last month, below February 2020’s 61.2%. If it could return to that percentage, there would be millions more Americans working. An interesting fact in the employment report was that there were 656,000 more people out sick last month than in July 2019. On to cartoons.

The Kansas vote dropped on the wicked witch:

What Kansas taught us this week:

Pelosi sparks a flame:

Alex Jones finally grabbed by his appendage:

The US kills another al-Qaeda leader, but nothing changes in Afghanistan:

RIP Bill Russell:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 31, 2022

Q: Why do people take an instant dislike to Justice Samuel A. Alito? A: It saves time.

Alito spoke in Rome dismissing criticism from foreign officials who he said “lambasted” his opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade. Alito spoke at a conference promoting religious liberty, saying:

“I had the honor this term of writing I think the only Supreme Court decision in the history of that institution that has been lambasted by a whole string of foreign leaders who felt perfectly fine commenting on American law…”

Alito called out Prince Harry as making a particularly hurtful comment. What Harry said at the UN:

“This has been a painful year in a painful decade….Climate change wreaking havoc on our planet, with the most vulnerable suffering most of all. The few weaponizing lies and disinformation at the expense of the many. And from a horrific war in Ukraine, to the rolling back of constitutional rights here in the United States, we are witnessing a global assault on democracy and freedom, the cause of Mandela’s life.”

Alito said in response:

“But what really wounded me…was when the Duke of Sussex addressed the United Nations and seemed to compare the decision…with the Russian attack on Ukraine…”

To quote Charlie Pierce:

“The conservatives on the Supreme Court are now not simply ruling like political animals, they’re behaving like political animals as well.”

This guarantees that Alito will be forever known internationally as a dickhead. On to cartoons.

Manchin had a surprise:

The GOP’s burning its mid-term chances by walking away from the PACT act:

And this incarnation of GOP plumbers need tech support:

The stuff of nightmares:

Change brings things to light:

DHS scrapped the effort to collect agency phones in order to try to recover deleted Secret Service texts:

Putin’s staff misunderstands:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 24, 2022

(The Monday Wake Up Call will be published on Tuesday, July 26)

Sunday is always time for a laugh along with a little outrage. Ecowatch reports that: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Pearlita Foods, a cell-cultured seafood startup, has revealed its vegan prototype for oysters made from ingredients like mushrooms and seaweed. The plant-based oysters will even come served in a no-shucking-necessary shell that is biodegradable.”

The article says that until an artificial shell is developed, they will be served in oyster shells. So they will still have to kill/eat/otherwise harvest the shells of living oysters anyway. And the company is looking to create a bio-degradable “shell.” In real life, oyster shells are already biodegradable – into sand. And the market for oysters creates a major economic reason for keeping bays and estuaries clean.

Oysters are a product of where they grow. Wellfleet oysters taste different from the Kumamoto oysters of the Pacific Northwest, or from the Belons from the Brittany region of France. On to cartoons.

The video of Sen. Hawley (R-MO) first giving a power salute to the Jan. 6 mob and later, fleeing the Capitol when the mob breached security, will live in infamy. He’s such a pathetic wuss:

Jan 6 Committee succeeds:

Trump henchman and walking triglyceride, Steve Bannon guilty of contempt of Congress:

Secret Service CYA:

According to the US Secret Service website, Tony Ornato has returned to the Secret Service after previously being Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff. He’s now Assistant Director overseeing “required training and professional development for all Secret Service personnel.”

The Secret Service agents and leaders that deleted texts must be prosecuted:

An armed guy in an Indiana mall killed an armed shooter. The day before the shooting, the killer of three was just another good guy with a gun. The next day HE BECAME A BAD GUY WITH A GUN. But at least it’s not a shut-out for the NRA’s good guys:

Be thankful that more weren’t killed, but a vigilante in a mall isn’t a cause for celebration:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 17, 2022

Joe Manchin has done it to the Dems again. After laying out his conditions for supporting a scaled-down version of Build Back Better, he decided at the last minute that he couldn’t support his own conditions.

For nearly two years, the Dems have tried to create a package that Manchin could support, including funding for renewable energy and electric vehicles. Manchin has now indicated he can’t go that far, which jeopardizes Democrats’ chances in the Midterms.

Manchin blamed inflation (now at a 40-year high). Backing a $300bn bill that offers tax credits and funding to clean energy would, he argues, push pocketbook costs higher for Americans, although economists have disputed this. From the Guardian:

“A less charitable view of Manchin is that he is dangerously conflicted due to his own investments in fossil fuels… and that his judgement has been warped by the largesse of the industry, which has donated more money to him than any other senator.”

Congress hasn’t been able to pass anything to reduce climate change, despite public opinion being clearly in favor of doing just that. We expect Congress to pass laws that reflect the public’s opinion. But finding 60 Senate votes for anything vaguely controversial isn’t likely to happen in America today. The result is a set of federal laws that do not reflect what Americans actually want. On to cartoons.

Biden’s Saudi visit went well:

The fake (not fake) very real dilemma of the pregnant 10 year-old:

Back to school clothes for 4^th grade:

Pence was nearly kidnapped by his Secret Service detail. The fly knew:

Is the Dem’s 2024 flavor appealing or appalling?

Images from the Webb telescope enter popular culture:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 10, 2022

Continue reading Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 10, 2022

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – June 26, 2022

(New columns will be light and variable for the next week, since Wrongo and Ms. Right are attending grandson Conor’s wedding in NC. Regular programming will resume on July 6.)

We’re not talking about the Supreme Court or the J6 news this morning. We’ll leave that for the cartoons below. Instead, let’s focus on an enlightening article from Curbed: “Hoboken Hasn’t Had a Traffic Death in Four Years. What’s It Doing Right?”:

“Hoboken feels downright roomy. Wander down the wide, busy sidewalks of Washington Street, the city’s main strip…and one thing becomes clear….A pedestrian doesn’t have to play the…perilous game of New York City crosswalk chicken, where you squint through the windows of a massive metal box to catch a glimpse of another speeding metal box whose driver doesn’t see you.”

“Few drivers park next to crosswalks in Hoboken because they can’t. Those spots are blocked off with bike racks or planters or storm drains or extra sidewalk space for pedestrians or vertical plastic pylons that deter all but the boldest delivery-truck drivers. Stand at a corner, and you can see what is coming toward you, and drivers can see you too, and you don’t have to step out into the road and risk your life to do it.”

This concept is called Vision Zero, a strategy that municipalities across the US and abroad have adopted that seeks to alter traffic and engage pedestrians to lessen the severity of accidents. In total, Hoboken has had three traffic fatalities since 2015.

As Hoboken’s streets get safer, the rest of America is getting less safe. Traffic fatalities in NYC were up 44% percent in the first quarter of 2022. Hoboken has empowered it’s pedestrians and every corner makes it clear they have the right of way. Hoboken’s streak of zero fatalities could end at any time, and eventually will, but that’s no reason for other cities and towns not to enable similar change. On to cartoons.

Somebody should remind the Conservative ideologue Justices that America is a multi-belief country:

It’s on the ballot in November:

Clarence rewrites the 2^nd Amendment:

Now concealed carry has multiple meanings:

The scales of justice get a Conservative makeover:

The J6 hearings have inspired criticism from Texas. The late Molly Ivins referred to Texas as the “national laboratory for bad government”:

Uvalde ,TX failures give new meaning to an old idea:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – June 19, 2022

Today is Juneteenth. It’s now a federal holiday. Here in the most Conservative corner of Connecticut, the town hall will be closed on Monday, even though Juneteenth doesn’t become an official state holiday in Connecticut until next year.

Data from Google Trends about Connecticut’s interest in searching for the word “Juneteenth” shows the holiday barely registered as a search term before 2020. In 2019, Google Trends rated “Juneteenth” only a 9 out of 100 on the interest scale in Connecticut. During the same period in 2020, the value grew to 72. In 2021, it reached 100, meaning “peak popularity” for the term. On to cartoons.

It will be years before most people observe Juneteenth: