Humor – Page 8 – The Wrongologist

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – April 10, 2022

Jonathan V. Last had a thoughtful essay that asked the question, “What if Democrats do everything right and still lose?” He’s speaking about the Dems’ poor mid-term polling. Last describes polls showing that people who benefited from the Child Tax Credit passed by Democrats nonetheless favor Republicans going into 2022:

“Inside the Democrats’ American Rescue Plan was the most substantively pro-family agenda item in a generation: A child tax credit that put real money into the pocket of just about every family….The child tax credit was the ultimate kitchen-table issue. Then Republicans killed it. They own…the act of taking this money away from working families.”

Last feels that the current political moment isn’t actually about kitchen-table issues. He points to the Ohio Senate race between Democrat Tim Ryan and Republican Josh Mandel:

“The Ohio Democrat is running on jobs, healthcare, infrastructure, and national security. The Ohio Republican is running on Trump, abortion, Christian nationalist identity, guns, RINOS, the Bible, and bitcoin.”

If Tim Ryan loses this race, it won’t be because Dems are blowing off working-class voters by refusing to focus on the real, kitchen-table issues that affect their lives. It’s looking like the electorate has become entirely untethered to policy concerns and have reached a point of nihilism.

Despite this environment, let’s not impose arbitrary timelines on achieving success. Just ask newly minted Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. On to cartoons.

Same as it ever was:

Palin runs again:

Ukraine gives Putin a few new stories:

The definition of Red State has changed:

Will the Russian Army really fit in the smaller dolls?

Tiger returns:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – April 3, 2022

The latest monthly jobs report shows 431,000 jobs were added. The report marked the 11th straight month of job gains above 400,000, the longest such stretch of growth in records dating back to 1939. So far in 2022, the economy has created 1.69 million jobs. That’s in just three months. By any fair measure, it’s an extraordinary total.

We are still about 1.6 million jobs below the number of employees in the workforce in February 2020 just before the pandemic hit. At the current average rate for the past six months, it will take three more months to get back to that level.

Leisure and hospitality jobs, which were the hardest-hit during the pandemic, rose by 112,000, but are still 1.5 million below their pre-pandemic peak. They comprise most of the jobs that are still missing in the economy.

Wage growth, which averaged 5.9% in the 2nd half of 2021, was up again, now showing a 6.7% year over year gain. Aside from April 2020, this is the highest wage growth in 40 years. And aside from three months in 2019 and 2020, the unemployment rate was the lowest (or equal to the lowest) in over 50 years.

The blemish is inflation. Most likely, inflation-adjusted wages have risen by 1% or less in the last year. On to cartoons.

A brief history of recent misspeaks:

Biden tries a different way to get Putin:

Florida’s Governor DeSantis says the mouse is the real enemy of kids:

This Thomas’s dinner conversation is straight-up ok:

Fox hires Caitlyn Jenner, but there were unforeseen issues:

Free Brittney:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – March 27, 2022

The public personas of three women: the late Madeline Albright, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Ginni Thomas were on display last week. Two of them seem destined for important places in history.

You know Albright’s story: A refugee from Hitler and Stalin. A naturalized American, the first woman US Secretary of State (fourth in the line of presidential succession), and a huge influence on US foreign policy in the 1990s. The New Yorker says that she was the first “most powerful woman” in US history.

They report a great story about Albright attending a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1998. She and the then-Russian Foreign Minister, Yevgeny Primakov, performed a skit for the assembled diplomats, despite growing tensions between Washington and Moscow over NATO expansion. They did a bit from “West Side Story”, with Albright playing Maria and Primakov playing Tony. To the tune of “America,” the two sang back and forth:

Albright: “America’s nobody’s enemy.”
Primakov: “So why do you practice hegemony?”
Albright: “I want to know what you think of me.”
Primakov: “Look in your file at the K.G.B.!”

Today it’s a different world. It’s hard to imagine Anthony Blinken and Sergei Lavrov doing a skit.

It’s also a different Washington. We’ve now had several female Secretaries of State. We have a female Vice President, and a woman as Treasury Secretary. Not all that Albright advocated or was a part of were with hindsight, the best actions for the US, but she left an indelible mark on the world.

Ginni Thomas won’t ever be able to wear Albright’s shoes (or her pins). From the WaPo we learned that Thomas exchanged at least 29 text messages with then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, as both of them strategized about overturning the 2020 election result.

Shortly afterward, her husband became the only justice to dissent when the Court granted access to Donald Trump’s White House records. Ginni Thomas has also since confirmed that she attended the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the Jan. 6 insurrection. That means Justice Thomas voted against disclosing information about an attempted coup that Ginni Thomas supported.

It’s ridiculous that Ginni Thomas, who tried to directly influence Meadows and Trump, thinks that we will believe that she would not try to influence her husband. Together they are a stain on public life.

The same day the Thomas scandal broke, Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson told the Senate Judiciary Committee that she would recuse herself from a major case involving Harvard University, where she serves on the governing board. That’s what true public servants do. They respect the norms of civility. On to cartoons.

Ginni’s world:

A fair and sober hearing:

Good question:

A clown show broke out in DC:

The difference:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – March 6, 2022

A federal district court judge in Florida issued an order preventing disciplinary action against a Navy officer who refused to take the Covid vaccine on religious grounds. In the military, this is called insubordination, and is subject to many different forms of punishment. But not according to Florida District Court Judge Steven Merryday:

“The military is well aware of the frailty of their arguments in defense of their practices….The record creates a strong inference that the services are discriminatorily and systematically denying religious exemptions without a meaningful and fair hearing.”

The officer is in charge of a guided missile destroyer that is about to deploy. The warship carries 320 officers and sailors, along with missiles and torpedoes. The Navy isn’t saying where it’s headed. But now, the Navy can’t deploy its warship, even though it says it has lost trust in its commanding officer, an anti-vaxxer who has repeatedly disobeyed lawful orders.

Perhaps the craziest aspect of the judge’s ruling is that the Navy is prohibited from reassigning the insubordinate commander to a position at the same rank, pay grade etc. while the case is litigated. That’s something that the military normally has absolute discretion to do.

But the judge has overruled the Navy, along with the many senior officers who have said under oath that deploying the ship with the anti-Vaxx commander could imperil national security. Instead, the judge has ordered the Navy to keep the disobedient officer in charge of its $1.8 billion warship.

Now, the Navy and the judiciary are at a standoff. The Navy won’t deploy its warship until the commander is stripped of command. The judge will not allow it to do so. As a result, the judge has effectively commandeered a Navy guided-missile destroyer.

The issue seems to be about the limits of individual religious freedom. Military courts don’t usually decide these issues. The controlling law is the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) that requires “reasonable accommodation” for religious requirements, like for service members who must have beards or wear religious headgear. They are permitted to do so, even if regulations would otherwise prohibit them. The question is should it apply to vaccinations for commanders when the Navy says they must be vaccinated.

Another problem is jurisdiction. A US district judge shouldn’t have any jurisdiction when the dispute is between the US Military and an officer or enlisted person. Soldiers do surrender some of their Constitutional or legislatively guaranteed rights while in the military, but not all. So some actions must be resolved by civilian courts.

This is a clear example of how the band of authoritarian theocrats with lifetime judicial appointments are trashing decisions taken by both our political and military institutions. In the coming years, the center and left must decide if they’re OK with right-wing judges carrying out a slow motion religious coup under the color of law. On to cartoons.

Strongman has a new meaning:

Does love between two authoritarians amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world?

March Madness used to mean basketball on TV, not war:

Can nuclear war bring Red and Blue together for a one night stand? Nope:

Trans kids being who they are is bringing out the true nature of Republicans:

After last week’s revelations, is the tide turning for Trump? Let’s root for the undertow:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – February 27, 2022

It’s doubtful that Ukraine’s President Zelensky will remain in power, or indeed, live to the conclusion of Putin’s War. There’s a very good likelihood he will not physically survive this weekend, but he’s been remarkably courageous in the face of all this. Ukraine posted a video in which Zelensky said, when the US offered him safe passage out of the country:

“I need ammunition, I don’t need a ride.”

We knew Zelensky had guts because he stood up to Trump when Trump attempted to blackmail Ukraine into sabotaging Joe Biden’s campaign in 2020; but his strength now is at a different level. Three years ago, he was playing a president in a popular television comedy. Today, he’s confronting Russia’s military, having become his TV character in real life.

We’re so used to posturing, talking points and brand management by politicians that it’s almost breathtaking to witness actual courage, resolve, and leadership. Zelensky is rising to this moment.

Many “wise” western pundits have been saying that the guy was hopelessly in over his head. But clutch moments show us to be who we are. And there he is: Not running. Compare that to America’s former ally, the last President of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, who got the f outta Dodge at the first hint that things were going south.

Very few of us will ever face Zelensky’s situation. But we all have moments where we must face our fears and live out our principles or run. Zelensky is passing that test. On to cartoons, all about Putin.

Putin’s War has some support:

It’s hard to campaign when your leader undermines the message:

Views on what’s inexcusable differ:

What Putin wants has been clear for years:

America changes its mind about Ukraine:

GOP reacts to Biden’s nominee:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – February 20, 2022

(The hosting service for the Wrongologist is having problems with the RSS feed that sends subscribers an email version of the column in the morning. Please go to the website to see earlier columns.)

Is there a better metaphor for today’s America than this?:

“A ship carrying cars from Germany to the United States caught fire in the Atlantic Ocean on Wednesday, forcing the crew’s 22 members to abandon the vessel and leave it burning and adrift.”

So, there’s a 60,000-ton cargo ship adrift off the Azores yesterday with no crew. It’s carrying an estimated 4,000 cars, including 189 Bentleys and 1,100 Porsches. Tow boats from Gibraltar and the Netherlands are on their way to the site with three expected to be there by next Wednesday. The abandoned and burning vessel is operated by the Japanese shipping company Mitsui O.S.K. Lines.

Think about America as a ship adrift, in flames. One that its essential workers had to flee to survive. And it’s loaded with Porsches and Bentleys. On to cartoons.

Putin’s always thinking ahead:

Rumors of Russia’s pullback are deceiving:

Irrational discourse is America’s brand:

When a priest says “I baptize,” instead of “we baptize,” there’s no baptism:

Trump’s CPA walks away:

Sarah Palin vs. New York Times:

Sarah Palin sued The New York Times for defamation but failed to prove her case. In 1964, the Supreme Court in New York Times v. Sullivan, said that public figures (like Palin), have to prove a defamatory statement was made “with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.”

From Clay Jones who drew the cartoon above:

“It’s weird how Republicans claim they love the United States Constitution, refer to themselves as ‘constitutionalists’, yet hate press freedom and do everything in their power to destroy it. The Supreme Court has affirmed the right to a free press time and time again, yet Republicans like Donald Trump have argued to limit press freedom, if not outright destroy it.”

Press freedom doesn’t belong to liberals or conservatives, it belongs to everyone. Free speech is a Constitutional right and if you try to kill it because someone said something about you that you didn’t like, you’re not just killing free speech for your enemies, you’re killing it for yourself.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – February 13, 2022

Have you given any thought to the inconsistency between how Whoopi Goldberg was treated for her comment about the holocaust, and how Joe Rogan has been treated for his um, body of work? Whoopi was condemned by the left and right. She was appropriately suspended from her position as a host of ABC’s The View. She later apologized for the hurtful inference in her remarks.

With Rogan, after the flap over his COVID misinformation, it came to light that dozens of his episodes were quietly removed from Spotify because they featured Rogan using the N-word. To date, Spotify has yanked more than 100 of his episodes. But Rogan wasn’t suspended or “cancelled” by Spotify. Still, he’s held up on the Right as another victim of leftist cancel culture.

The artists who left Spotify weren’t trying to “cancel” Rogan. They just wouldn’t continue being associated with a platform that promoted him. Both the artists and Spotify are making free-market business decisions that they have every right to make.

That’s an idea that you’d think would be vigorously supported by Conservatives.

The outcry on the Right about “cancel culture” comes at a time when they are working to outlaw Critical Race Theory, overturn elections, enact legislation to deny the vote to millions of Americans, and ban books. It’s clear who’s doing the cancelling in America.

Those who defend Rogan say he’s simply providing a forum. Sure, he interviews kooks and sleazes, but he also interviews some reasonable folks. So he’s presenting “both sides“. The other side of a fact is a lie. And if you put a lie on an equal footing with the truth, you give the lie credibility. This is a cardinal sin that the media have been committing for decades. On to cartoons.

The massive self-deception the Right Wing practices while copying Nazi tactics:

Trump’s monument on the Mall:

RNC censures two of its own, says many of its own are totally fine:

Mitch the turtle takes RNC to task for its censure, also says Trump is wrong:

Russia’s about to bite off more than it can chew:

The end of mask mandates is political signaling. We’ll soon know if this calculated risk works:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – February 6, 2022

According to Worldometer data, the US Covid death toll is now at 924,000. Last year, on June 1, 2021 the US death toll was 615,000. That’s the minimum number of deaths we could have suffered prior to the widespread availability of Covid vaccines in the US.

That 600,000± pre-vaccine death toll is comparable to the deaths that occurred in the Civil War. We’ve studied the Civil War for generations, although it’s doubtful that the Republican Right wants America to study all that much about Covid. On to cartoons.

As someone (?) once said, it takes a village, and we don’t have one:

The Olympics are on TV. Should we watch? Views differ:

Supreme Court nominations of women through time:

Biden’s alternate nominating strategy:

Trump doesn’t care who knows:

Putin and Biden ridin’ around the Ukraine speedway:

The NYT said on Saturday that portions of the Russian army near Ukraine have reached full combat strength. No one knows what will happen next, but there seem to be two likely outcomes. First, that any conflict is limited to Ukraine territory or second, that it moves beyond Ukraine to other parts of Europe.

If it goes beyond Ukraine’s borders, we could quickly find ourselves again on the threshold of nuclear war, since that’s a red line for NATO. But Russia also has other cards to play. They could launch massive cyber-attacks on the US, attacking and disabling our power grids, communications systems, and/or our financial system.

We would try to do the same inside Russia.

Wrongo isn’t trying to spread fear. He’s expressing the hope that we can get past all of the hollow political posturing and take a cold, hard look at what we’re truly trying to achieve if we decide on military intervention on behalf of Ukraine.

In a sense, the world changed on Friday when China’s Xi and Russia’s Putin met in Beijing. Their joint statement is unequivocal. China & Russia are now explicitly willing to at least challenge or possibly replace, Pax Americana, in Eurasia.

Borrowing from ancient history, in 560 BC, King Croesus was considering war on Persia. He consulted the Oracle at Delphi. Famously, the Oracle’s forecast was “If you make war on the Persians, you will destroy a great empire”. Let’s hope that Biden is receiving less ambiguous advice.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – January 30, 2022

Well, this was predictable. NPR reported that China’s ambassador to the US warned that the US could face a possible “military conflict” with China over Taiwan:

“If the Taiwanese authorities, emboldened by the US, keep going down the road for independence, it most likely will involve China and the United States, the two big countries, in a military conflict.”

It isn’t a coincidence that China raises the specter of war while the US is focused on a possible threat by Russia in Ukraine. This week, 39 Chinese military aircraft flew near Taiwan, including two of China’s most advanced warplanes, their J-16D jets. Military analysts think that the J-16D has capacity to interfere with Taiwan’s defense radar systems and could make a huge difference in combat.

This is more evidence of how strategically fraught America’s legacy global policies are in a multi-polar world. Russia is threatening NATO and our Western allies, while simultaneously, China threatens our strategic position in Asia. We haven’t fought a two-theater war in 77 years, and haven’t won a war since.

It’s ironic that neither Taiwan nor Ukraine are formal mutual defense treaty partners with the US, yet US defense hawks think we should defend either or both. On to cartoons.

Surviving is difficult when you live in the wild:

Some voices on the Right support Russia:

Breyer retires, but opinions differ on who owns the right to replace him:

There seems very little Republicans can do to stop Biden from filling this seat, since there’s no filibuster for Supreme Court nominees. That was taken away by Mitch McConnell, during the nomination of Neil Gorsuch.

Mitch looks for a loophole:

The never-ending Republican hissy fit:

Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize winning book, “MAUS”, is a memoir about the Holocaust. It was banned last week by a school board in Tennessee. In the book, the cats are the Germans while the mice are the Jews:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – January 23, 2022

The Dems need to build Biden back better before the mid-terms if they expect an outcome that’s different than what the polls are currently showing.

The question is how to do it. One thing that won’t be happening is support from the mainstream media for the makeover. There’s been a blizzard of over-the-top headlines such as the NYT’s, “Biden Can Still Rescue His Presidency,” or Time’s “How the Biden Administration Lost Its Way” and Axios’s “Biden’s Epic Failures.”

These headlines could say: “Biden Fails to Fix All of the World’s Problems in a year.”

What’s driving much of this “presidency in peril” coverage is Biden’s approval ratings. Some results are truly discouraging, while CNN’s poll of polls, released Thursday, found that 41% of Americans approve of the way Joe Biden is handling his job while 54% disapprove.

Still, Biden and the Dems need a mid-course correction. On to cartoons.

Can diplomacy solve the crisis in Ukraine?