Instead, we’re being led by the nose by corporate media to chase after every last distraction this administration throws up to obfuscate the obvious: they have absolutely zero pretension of governing, never mind doing so for the common good. Instead, they only seek to maximize the amount of resources and wealth they can siphon off. And they’re not stopping until somebody or something forces them to do so. As they do so, they’re throw up as many diversions - a veritable school of red herrings - to distract us from their non-stop grifting. And, to be honest, I really don’t see anyone or anything with both the will and the wherewithal to stop.

Please don’t talk to me about the midterms and getting out the vote, because this is an administration that has shown itself to be more than willing to break the law, norms and/or whatever might have constrained previous administrations. Think about it: if Trump was willing to carry out an insurrection nearly 6 years ago, why do you think he would accept the midterm election results? Why wouldn’t he screw with the post-election certification process? What consequences would there be? Seriously?

The courts? Please. This administration has shown no hesitation in ignoring court orders or, at a minimum, slow walking their compliance without even a performative show of good faith. Add to that a fully captured and compliant DOJ run by his own personal shyster, and theres’s very little in or outside of the executive branch that is likely to get in Trump’s way of having his way, regardless of the actual results of the vote.

Let’s say there was, in fact, a “Blue Wave” shellacking of the GOP, and Trump accepted the results. Let’s hypothesize further that with a Democratic majority seated in one or even both houses of Congress, Democratic leadership manages to pry its head from its tuchus and so that it can both walk (advance their affordability agenda) and chew gum (hold the administration accountable) at the same time,

Even if the House impeaches Trump and the Senate votes to convict him, what power will the Congress have to forcibly, physically remove a demented narcissistic sociopath who has surrounded himself with advisers whose livelihoods and political lives depend on his remaining in power? What about the small army of ICE and CBP officers and agents, which now numbers more than 43,000, they have amassed? Do you think he won’t try to mobilize and deploy them to defend himself?

Who will stand up to them? The Hegseth-gutted U.S. military where christian nationalists and fascists are not longer weeded out but being promoted? The National Guard? Who’s to say red state governors won’t send contingents of their national guard to aid Trump? Local law enforcement? You mean the guys and gals who annually murder 1,000+ innocent civilians every year?

From where I sit, for nearly a decade various pundits and “experts”have been prattling on about the deterioration of the rule of law, social trust, and other “foundational institutions of American democracy.” After all this deterioration and degradation, doesn’t anyone think that we might have finally arrived at the breaking point? Heck, I remember 25 years ago hearing my boss reassure us about the resilience of those. same institutions after the sham SCOTUS chucked out the 2000 election results and decided it themselves in Bush v. Gore. Let’s just say that since then things haven’t exactly been trending in the right direction.

Remember the old nursery tale about the little boy who cried wolf. Spoiler alert: the wolf does eventually show up, and when he does the villagers, because they’re suffering from crisis fatigue, ignore the little boy’s pleas. Only this time the wolf really is there able and proceeds to eat the little boy and his entire flock of sheep with total impunity.

Sound a bit too familiar? Maybe it’s time we just send the kid home and go hunt down the damn wolf and be done with it?

I have loved reading and rereading the books so much that whatever gaps, failings, and disappointments the films might include my unconscious nerd brain injects the adjustments so that I can enjoy the films without the constant chatter of my obsessive anal-retentive brain.

And so, it should come as no surprise that I just had to produce this LOTR reference-based cartoon. What inspired me was reading in this morning’s news an article that I seem to read (and reread) every election cycle: the exponentially increasing influence of money in our political system. This particular piece focused on “dark” money in the current electoral cycle. This money represents the contributions that are made by so-called “social welfare” organizations without any legal requirement to reveal the funding’s sources (donors).

Of course, this is a direct result of the SCOTUS’s absolutely horrendous ruling, Citizens United, in which they gutted the McCain-Feingold Act, a relatively feeble, light touch bit of campaign finance reform. And that decision was all part of the “Master Plan,” per ‘s excellent reporting on the decades-long strategy by the nation’s political and wealth elites, to subvert and utterly destroy the Potemkin village of American democracy.

Well, here we are, at what seems the very precipice of institutional meltdown in the fiery chasm in Oroduin, i.e., Mount Doom. Oh, if only our national story could follow Tolkien’s more closely. I can think of any number of deserving oligarchs and assorted schmucks whom I’d love to chuck into the chasm’s lava. I guess for now I’ll just have to settle, figuratively of course, with the toon below. Who knows, though? Maybe this is one story that will turn out to be true!

“The day of what?,” Why the Half-Year Anniversary of Operation Pubic Furry (damn autocorrect!) I meant “Epic Fury,” a decision to wage war that was so ill-planned, Ill-thought through, and even more poorly executed, that it will go down in history as one of the biggest boneheaded mistakes a U.S. president has ever made.Not necessarily the most damaging or destructive, just stupid, plain ol’ shit-for-brains dumb.

Because it looks like the whole op is going as well as the naming and branding effort, which is to say complete shite. I could list all the data points in support of this assessment, but many much more intelligent and better-informed folks are already doing so on a daily basis. So, on that note and without any more hoohah or hooey, here’s the toon.

I’ll leave aside the cringey Electra complex. This is no Greek tragedy. It’s just cultish obsession with finding new ways to abase herself to a demented incontinent narcissistic sociopath. They truly deserve each other, just the MAGAts, who for him, find themselves in ever increasing misery after buying the bologna from this shambolic, barely coherent hot mess of white supremacy, white entitlement, and head smacking dumbfuckery.

Hope they all get what they paid for!

The latter are those people who find some sense of fulfillment or satisfaction in facilitating the addict’s pursuit of the next fix. No, they rarely if ever help the addict make “a score,” but do their utmost to allow the addicts to carry on with their narcissistic pursuit of self-gratification while minimizing and explaining away the ensuing damage and destruction.

Alternatively, these enablers might also try to convince you that in fact they are doing their utmost to “control” the addict or at least contain the wreckage they are generating while essentially doing bupkis.

And that brings us to today’s cartoon: the enabling of Trump by the “leadership” of the Democratic Party. I chose to focus on House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, only because recently he decided it was a good idea to meet with Jared “the Pisher” Kushner, the president’s goodwill ambassador for global grift.

WTAF???

N.B. Some of you might know Mssr. Jeffries is the top U.S. House of Representative’s recipient, beneficiary numero uno of AIPAC largesse. Just sayin’...

Soon thereafter Jeffries realized that the optics of his decision weren’t trending well, so he preemptively posted a “folksy” explanation that went something like, “Hey, you know? Just doing my job. Somebody calls me for a meeting. I took it because I’m focused on making things better for you, the American people. And by the way, I promise none of these bad hombres will get a ‘free pass.’”

Right…and I’ve got some nice Gaza Riviera beachfront property to sell you.

The metaphor political observers often use for the Democratic Party is the circular firing squad, used usually in the context of their indecision and infighting. I’d like to propose another use for it with a wee tweak to better fit the current context: the firing squad members (the Democrats) are all aiming at each other’s feet, because I’ll be damned if they don’t always manage to find new, exasperating ways to tell their constituents just how little they think of them and their actual concerns and opinions, usually right before and during a critical election. Talk about the best and the brightest…

With the bubble-butt bully doing everything to all but assure a blue tidal wave in the midterms, Jeffries and his fellow Dem leaders are once again showing their qualities by snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory. But not before snatching a little cash.

Roll the toon.

So, second, country music. It is what inspired today’s toon. I was browsing through the media I normally monitor, looking for an idea and thinking, “What to do? What to do? Iran, again? Nah. Another one on the fetid fascist’s latest corrupt exploits? Ugh.”

Then I saw it, “The Price of Diesel, the ‘Workhorse’ of Fuels, Nears Record High.”

And immediately I heard Willie’s iconic Texan baritone kick in with the chorus of one of his best known songs, the one you see at the top of your Interweb hits when you search for, “road trip music.”

So, with my slight tweak of its chorus - apologies, Willie, I know I butchered it so that it could deliver this cartoon’s message, which is pretty much “always on my mind” for every cartoon I do: greed is not good. In fact, it’s just stupid and destructive, so knock it off.

They did just that.

I’m no lawyer and I’m certainly no constitutional scholar, but I can read and nowhere in the U.S. constitution do I see anything remotely providing legal grounds for allowing the U.S. president to order the U.S. postal service to play a role in national elections. And, of course, the six-member majority dispensed with any pretense of jurisprudence or precedent by declaring that the plaintiff states’ claim had no standing, because - get this - the thing they said would cause them harm hadn’t been initiated, so they have yet to be harmed. Ergo, they have no standing to submit a complaint.

Okay, just spitballing here, but one of the major functions of governing institutions is to prevent harm from happening before it actually happens. That’s why we we have a national weather service that monitors for potentially catastrophic weather events to warn residents to evacuate in case of such an event. That’s why we have various erstwhile independent regulatory agencies, to prevent the private sector, which has never missed an opportunity to get away with harming its own customers, exploiting its workers, and trashing the environment, from - you guessed it - harming its customers. harming its own customers, exploiting its workers, and trashing the environment.

I mean, this is not the stuff of ivory tower hairsplitting esoterica. It’s pretty basic nuts-and-bolts governance 101. But not for the grifting, forever legal theory shifting denizens of the Star Chamber. Nosiree, Bob! They answer to a much higher authority. No! Not G-d, silly! Although they would have us believe that they are doing the Devine a solid by torching universal human, civil and political rights. Rather, to paraphrase their patron, the notorious P.I.G., their only limitation is “(their) own morality. (their) own minds. It's the only thing that can stop (them). (They) don't need (the constitution).”

These so-called “originalists” should be called “origami-nalists for how much they’ve twisted the U.S. constitution into some unnamed monstrosity. To hell with the paperwork, I just wish we could bundle them all up, throw them in a box, and “return to sender.”

Unfortunately, many, many people will likely suffer horribly before he (and we, as a nation) hit bottom.

So I’ll just enjoy watching Carney and Canada run circles around our demented dotard dear bottom feeder, just as the Iranians have been doing with Tacosaurus Rex, spinning him like a Cretaceous top. Fingers crossed this latest unforced error continues to nudge more people to become even more disgusted with his enablers in the GOP and, bonus, girds the loins of the utterly spineless Democratic Party leadership to actually do more than its usual performative kabuki tap dancing, which invariably sets the table for yet another run of America’s perennial fave, “Who Wants to be a Dictator?”

Who actually benefits from all of this nonsense? Why, China of course! As if wasting trillions of dollars on a useless bloated military weren’t enough to gut our nation, we’ve managed to elect not once but twice someone who is utterly hellbent on smashing the rotting foundation of our race-based empire. I guess what Mango Mussolini is doing is only hastening the inevitable. But it sure seems like a dadgum shame we’ll never get the opportunity to see what this nation could be like if it weren’t governed by either craven fascists or feckless corporate knob polishers.

So bring on the crushing (but unfailingly polite) Carneyage of the great white north. I for one am going to enjoy the show!

But let’s not be fair: Trump is a demented halfwit surrounded by a band of boot licking incompetents, so it should come as no surprise then that their collective efforts have produced the current debacle we are now witnessing.

Somewhere deep in his reptilian brain, Velveeta Voldemort has realized that things aren’t actually going so great. This might explain why he has shifted from using the full force of U.S. military power to utilizing America’s considerable economic leverage. The only problem is that (1) he’s all but depleted our stock of critical weapons and (2) he’s more likely to wreck our own economy than achieving his actual objective, the ruination of that of the Iranians.

That’s because the notion that we can inflict even more pain on a regime that has spent nearly 50 years deflecting the pain of economic sanctions, embargoes, etc. to the general population while re-engineering their economy to prepare for moments such as this one is, in a word, nuts. But this is an administration that is powered by flop sweat, chest puffery, and barely concealed deceit, so we shouldn’t be surprised when it lobs up yet another ill-fated desperate attempt to fashion a “winning” strategy. At this point, they’ve thrown so much of this sort of (fecal matter) at the proverbial all that I wouldn’t be surprised if the new White House ballroom ends up doubling as a compost processing facility.

All of which is to say that it’s all a real mess.

But don’t despair! Cadet Bonespurs has rallied the troops, those ever-so-loyal titans of corporate power. Together, they will unleash on the Iranian regime the full, awesome power of our decrepit economy - $40 trillion in national debt and counting! - to force those malevolent mullahs to their knees! Too bad the rest of us will already be six feet under.

Hooah!

And those baronial bros must be soooo smart, because who else but certified Mensa Society geniuses would send a true Man of the People, hizzonner, to Wisconsin Rapids to convince the good people there to support the construction of a massive new data center. Using all of his constituent relations skills and powers of persuasion, Adams delivered the sales pitch of the century:

“Like it or not, folks, data centers are going to be everywhere.”

I can just imagine how the audience must have responded to this opportunity of a lifetime, showering him with a healthy dollop of gooey cheesy Wisconsin love. Ooo! I can just feel it enfolding him in its soft liquid embrace, flowing all over the mayor and covering him from head to toe with all the warmth…of Wisconsin…in January.

“Not in Rapids!”

“Put it in your backyard!”

Well, so much for big badger love. More like a big badger bite in the patootie.

All in a day’s work for hizzoner, because I’m guessing that he gets paid some ungodly sum no matter what. And it probably won’t even matter, because these tech barons are very adept at, ahem, ahem, “influencing” the right people to make the “right” decisions so that they can set up shop with minimal hassle (or taxes for that matter).

Such is the state of local economic development in these United States of America where livelihood security is less about a household having the wherewithal to go beyond just meeting its basic needs so that its members can thrive. Even with all the intergalactic levels of economic growth and innovation we have achieved over the last century and change, it’s still about averting environmental disaster, avoiding catastrophic health incidents, and staying just ahead of potential economic ruin.

Ain’t we something? We are the wealthiest country the world has ever known with all the resources and then some to ensure that all of us could live healthy, fulfilling lives. But, oh no, it is far more “efficient” for the oligarchs to treat the rest of us like as so much excess useless carbon to be shed. They shower us with the same combination of ruthless exploitation and callous disregard that our nation’s corporate moguls of yesteryear once reserved for folks overseas.

Remember them? The Black and Brown people whose resources we regularly pillaged while occasionally tossing a few metric tons of spoiled sorghum or a few crates full of impregnated bed nets to ease their suffering. And when they have the audacity to show up at our doorstep, we just round them up, separate them from their babies, and then throw the lot of them in concentration camps. Occasionally we might have to murder a few every now and then just to remind’em that we meant what we said about “deterrence,” the hyper-militarized immigration policy we’ve followed since Slick Willy thought it was a good idea to out-fascist the fascists.

But back to data centers and hizzoner. It’s great to see an otherwise unemployed or unemployable crooked politician restore his livelihood security by helping the oligarchs consolidate even more power. Because by doing so, Eric Adams is reminding all of us that “it” (the economy, our government, and any system that involves the use of power by one group over another) really is rigged, it is all rigged, and only we, and nobody else, have the wherewithal to stop the oligarchs from destroying our livelihoods, pillaging our communities, and destroying our nation.

In other words, Capital One tossed the Trump Family Crime Syndicate out and told them not to let the door hit them on the way out. Even though the bank has yet to make any money laundering allegations, it noted that the Trump Organization hasn’t said how its explanation for these suspicious transactions would have changed the bank’s decision.

What to do?

Why, sue, of course! The Trump Organization’s amended complaint argues Capital One’s closures of its accounts had nothing to do with money laundering and were actually retaliation for the January 6 Capitol riot — i.e., political “debanking.” It alleges the AML rationale was invented after the fact to cover for a politically motivated decision. Not surprisingly, this same dynamic is also now playing out in a similar, JPMorgan Chase lawsuit over Trump’s personal accounts closed the same year.

Folks, I am shocked, once again, shocked I tell you, that a failed, six-times bankrupted trust fund spoiled rotten Nazi spawned brat turned con man and third-rate mafia don is getting his ginormous jiggly feces encrusted backside handed to him by the titans of the financial sector. Meanwhile, the two GOP senators who made a “show” of opposing his USAG nominee are now likely to dutifully crawl back into their little hidey holes after Todd Blanche, the acting USAG (and said USAG nominee), had the U.S. DOJ post some word salad to “prove” it would address their concerns.

I don’t know which is worse: (a) the reek of imperial decay, (b) the stench of this endemic public sector corruption, or (c) the permafunk fog issuing forth from the presidential posterior. The answer is probably (d) all of the above, because they all share the same big fat rat patooty provenance.

Like I said, better hide your wallet.

Point being, the backslap is a duck of a shot; indeed, a mighty lame duck. Just like the two old GOP cucks, I mean ducks, who are currently showboating in their opposition to the nomination of Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to become U.S. Attorney General.

John Cornyn (R-TX) and Thom Tillis (R-NC), both of whom were unceremoniously elbowed out of politics by Baron Van Shitshispants, want to see, in writing, that (1) there will be no government weaponization fund, i.e., the Traitor 401(k) Fund, and (2) there will be some really big changes to the lifetime “Get Out of Audit Free” card the IRS was going to hand to the Trump Crime Family.

But now hold on jess one minute an’ cool your dogs a spell…

As it turns out the second item - their modification of conducting no more IRS audits of Trump and Family - was just a lot of bubbemeises, nonsense. What they are insisting on is that the immunity (impunity?) would apply only retroactively and not proactively, or going forward.

In other words, all of the $2 billion plus in grifty, shifty emoluments, self-dealing and no bid contracts this lumbering, demented leaning tower of defecation has engaged in over the past ten years or so would be hands off to the Feds.

Nice job if you can keep it, which hopefully he won’t for too much longer, either by Act of G-d - PLEASE G-D, PLEASE G-D, PLEASE G-D!!! - or if members of Congress can muster sufficient gonadal fortitude and chuck his feces-plastered patootie out by impeaching him.

If I were a betting man, I would wager that at this point and through the foreseeable future the former is more likely, because as much as I despise the spineless GOP and their lay down, roll over and beg for more approach in managing Trump, I am just as fed up with the feckless Democratic “leadership.” They’re placing all their chips on winning the midterms in 3 months, even as Don Whoreleone, aka the Nod Father, has had his minions working overtime to jerry-rig the elections (trans.: steal 'em).

So…we might as well just enjoy the performance while it lasts.

Go Schmucks!

I mean, Cucks!

No, I mean, worthless witless spineless Fu¢ks!

Okay, I really meant Ducks. Go Mighty Lame Ducks!

Once you’ve picked yourself up off the floor and recovered from the shock of a lifetime but before you get too comfortable being upright, you better throw yourself right back down again. I might be a lapsed economist, but I think it’s reasonable to assume that in a few short months, after Nostra-dumbass’s forever war has led to $200/barrel oil, massive job losses, and stankflation, your 401k and wherever else you’ve socked away your retirement savings will likely have lost a 💩 ton of value.

And if you thought Fed Chair Warsh was up to the task of either mitigating the likely economic disaster or better yet, curbing the worst excesses of our Founding Farter, think again! With the Fed’s Open Market Committee voting yesterday not to do the needful and raise rates, he has already demonstrated he will not in any way be a serious counterweight to Gaseous Clay.

Hope I’m proven wrong, so watch this space and meanwhile, enjoy the toons!

It was a real tale of two allies with Vladimir Zelensky regaining the coveted BFF spot from which Bibi Netanyahu has been unceremoniously tossed. What was behind such a major shift? Wasn’t it only last year when poor little Vladie got ganged up on and smacked around by both Trump and his attack cur, VP JD, for his failure to show sufficient gratitude and elan whilst praising his patron?

Oh, but that was then and this is now. During the interregnum, Ukraine has managed (supposedly) to reverse the course of its war with Russia. With WD-40 and duct tape, they’ve managed to cobble together a new air force of killer drones. Ukraine can now finally inflict the same kind of pain on Russia behind the battle lines as Russia has been doing to Ukraine for the past four years and change.

Meanwhile, Bibi, that smooth-talking used rug merchant from the Near Orient, convinced our own Donnie Dimwit to join him in attacking Iran. “It’ll be a piece of cake!,” he assured him. “just like my bubbie used to make for Pesach!” They’d go in, zip-zip, they’d come right back out - badda bing, badda BOOM!, out with the old regime, and in with the new puppet regime. The U.S. would get access to even more of that coveted black gold, and Israel would be further along in realizing its grand objective of becoming the regional hegemon it’s always aspired to be.

It hasn’t quite worked out that way, not even close. Our pathetic, pitiful pedo-in-chief is now trapped in a war with no “off ramps,” and possibly, no exits. Is it really fair for Mango Mussolini to blame Bibi for “getting” him into this Sartresque jam? Probably not, but that’s not stopping him from tossing him aside like a rag doll. Because here’s the thing. Evidently Trump’s more worried about being labeled a “loser” by association with this failed attempt to remake the region than any loss of American standing, blood, treasure, etc. He’s being kept up at night because he realizes that the stink of U.S.-Israeli joint venture’s flop sweat is now overpowering the already eye-watering, dry heave-provoking stank that is his second term in office.

Enjoy your time, Vladie, in pole position, but be careful what you wish for.

An unrepentant warmonger, he never missed an opportunity to mete out collective punishment and wage a little asymmetric warfare. G-d help you if you were a nation that with the temerity to stand up to the U.S. and its imperial designs, regardless of whether your actions ever seriously posed a threat to our security or interests. He was a master of punching down, and he especially enjoyed doing in front of whichever powerful figure onto whom he had latched to advance his political ambitions.

Speaking at the memorial ceremony, the president of the United States, whose rump had recently been the most frequent target of Mr. Graham’s unctuous, slavish worship, described him as, “A force to be reckoned with.”

More like a farce to be ridiculed. And that is my job.

Because, besides being a warmonger and a vociferous defender of the far right’s wayward children - Im looking at you Brett agenda - he was also a closeted homosexual man. His sexual orientation was one of the worst kept secrets in this “small southern town,” and tales of his ribald adventures were many. But he was doing what any number of suppressed, mostly GOP gay, bi and queer politicos have been doing for decades: overcompensating.

No, it was never enough to take a pass on advocating for the rights of LGBTQ+ Americans. Instead, Dame Lindsey went to the opposite extreme, acting out his resentment at his perceived need to hide his true self by viciously uncorking on those who had the courage to be their true selves or, G-d forbid, throw their lives and careers behind making this country a more inclusive, just society where anyone could do so.

Rest in petunias, Dame Lindsey, I hope the blooms hold up in the heat of wherever your miserable tortured soul finds its eternal unrest. Once there, you can spend some of your time or maybe all of it - after all, time, that’s all you’ll really have - to think about every last one of the innocent lives you either ruined or ended with your over-the-top, overcompensating, manlier-than-a-man war- and hate-mongering. And, maybe, just maybe, you will finally come bursting forth out of your lifelong closet of self-repression so that you can be your true self while roasting for eternity.

Cue the cartoon.

Here in the leader of the “Free World,” we have the most expensive healthcare system in the world with, as it turns out, the worst health outcomes among industrialized nations. Why? Don’t we believe in maintaining a robust public health system?

Not so much, as it turns out. Instead, we allow Interweb-”educated” advocates to flog their half-baked pseudoscientific “theories” so that they can undermine what was already, at best, a barebones public health system, Key word being “public,” because many of these so-called advocates are being bankrolled by uber-wealthy kooks who simply do not accept the legitimacy of public goods and services as a necessity. Instead, they consciously or not hold that their wealth entitles them to force their own cockamamie notions of what American society should and should not be on the rest of us.

The upshot of all of this is that under the “leadership” of current Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a psychopathic dry drunk with a death wish for the American public, the already flimsy U.S. public health system is now unraveling faster than you can say, “Ivermectin” three times. The graph below offers a chart, summarizing measles morbidity and mortality over the past 50 years.

Time was, most parents didn’t think twice when it came to vaccinating their infant children to protect them from measles, along with other potentially deadly, highly preventable infectious diseases. Now, thanks to oligarch-bankrolled mis- and disinformation campaigns, we have a national “MAHA” movement that has helped hasten the return of levels of morbidity and mortality rates we haven’t seen in decades:

Look at the graph above. What we see is the beginnings of a steady uptick in the number of confirmed cases since the bloated mouth breathing bully first took office in 2016 with a decline only during the years during the COVID-19 pandemic when those of us who could did stay at home. And from consistently having zero or one death (2015) since 2000, we are now seeing an increased number of deaths for the past two years, since “Bobby” took the helm at DHHS.

I’ll leave it to the PhDs to prove that there is, in fact, causation underlying this correlation but for now I’ll just say this: “healthy” is the last thing any but the most privileged and wealthy of us will be during the current regime. Instead, we’ll have to wade through a fetid swamp of lies, red tape, and public shaming to access our increasingly stripped-for-parts public health care system.

The most expensive healthcare system in the world, and we’re still arguing about whether or not to vaccinate our children.

Sad

My parents love to tell the story about when, as a dinosaur-obsessed six-year-old, I corrected the tour guide during our first tour of the Natural History museum. He somehow misnamed one of the dinosaur skeletons on display, and I…could…not…would not!...let…that…stand.

All of which is to say I have some great memories of the museums, including more recent ones of visiting the Museum of African American History & Culture not long after it opened among others.

Then came the Cantaloupe Crackpot dictator and his hellbent mission to rewrite American history so that it aligned more closely with his own twisted embittered grievances and nostalgia for an era when white supremacy was the national religion. Recently, he instructed his GOP moppets in Congress to hold hearings about the apostasy currently being exhibited in the Smithsonian museums, and I am grateful to report that Smithsonian administrators essentially told him and said moppets to, “Go get stuffed.”

Never one to admit defeat and/or move on to more promising battles, the Pedodent has ordered the National Park Service to put up helpful signs in front of the museums, warning visitors about the “inaccurate information” and “divisive narratives” found therein. As with so many cartoons, this one practically drew itself, such is the bottomless depth of the pedo-in-chief’s puerile asinine behavior.

I know some might say, “C’mon, man. We got bigger issues to worry about. The war in the Middle East, continued illegal abductions and murders of migrants, plans for sabotaging the midterms…” Yes, its true, those are all other issues worthy of concern, but don’t underestimate the potential impact of allowing fascists to sanitize history to set the table for their authoritarian takeover, because it allows them to control the narrative. And as many African-American scholars have pointed out, the South may have lost the Civil War militarily 120 years ago, but they won the narrative war then and to this day, which is why we are still suffering the consequences of their victory.

Of course, his “friends” made up some cockamamie nonsense about why and how he went missing even as they returned with his keys and cellphone, on which his SnapChat app had been conveniently purged of any new photos over the previous 24 hours.

Of course, Jackson County authorities have detected no foul play, listing the cause and manner of his death as pending with no official determination as of yet.

Of course, when an when an independent autopsy was conducted with financial help from Colin Kapernick, the results, as reported by the family’s attorney were a bit different, “This pathologist cannot rule out if any intervening non-accidental factors contributed to or caused the death of Nolan Wells.”

Of course, the mother of one of the “friends” is a local judge and denied that her family interfered with the investigation, claiming that Wells chose to stay on the island and then left with a different group of friends.

And of course, that explanation doesn’t check out. The alleged person behind Wells’s supposed decision to “stay,” a young woman whom he met on the island, informed the Wells family attorney that Wells decided to return home with his friends, presumably the same ones he arrived with, rather than stay longer on the island with her.

I smell pork, and it’s burning something fierce.

This cartoon comes about as close to expressing, either in a cartoon or in writing, what I believe to be true about the United States, its current state and its history. As it turns out, this morning I heard a brief news segment on NPR about how (mostly white) politicos have been feverishly attempting to rewrite our nation’s history, facts and evidence be damned. I’m looking at you Governor Gumboots down in Florida, Mango Mussolini, Christopher Rufo, et. al. I also include all the handwringing, pearl clutching white liberals who moaned at the first mention that they, “the do-gooders,” might also behave in racist ways that describing even the mere possibility that this might be true makes them, “feel uncomfortable.”

Really? Seriously? Facts, mere words, make you feel uncomfortable? Why don’t you try wearing manacles and shackles for a 3-month journey over the Atlantic while chained to 300-400 total strangers? How about toiling a lifetime in a brutal concentration camp where he had zero rights or protection? Or what about living in racial ethno-nationalist state whose laws were so severe that even the Nazis, researching Jim Crow as a basis for their own social engineering, felt compelled to say, “Whoa…now that is going overboard.”

Good grief. Get a god blessed grip, Karen.

I don’t have much good to say about my member of Congress, or any member for that matter, but I did appreciate hearing Rep. Kweisi Mfume make it plain at a recent hearing called by the GOP majority about the Smithsonian Museum of American History “being invaded by a woke ideology.” Here’s what he said in response to a suggestion that the Smithsonian Museum National Museum of African American and Culture might be next for such scrutiny:

"We will not let you destroy that museum. No matter how long it takes, how many battles are required, how much effort is needed, we will not allow that to happen unless you find a way to kill all of us and walk over our bodies to change history.”

Well said, Congressman.

And while I doubt any of my followers will accuse me of being anti-American, unpatriotic, etc. - who am I kidding? Social media is mostly people with more or less the same views reaffirming each other’s views - I would only point out that the three labeled blocks at the base are none other than Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “evil triplets.” Hardly the stuff of a Marxist dialectical critique, although…oh, never mind, enough ranting and raving for one afternoon. Enjoy the toon.

Food insecure - that’s the wonky antiseptic way of saying that you don’t have enough food to feed yourself or the rest of your household on a daily basis. What it “means” in the big picture is that the wealthiest goddamn country in history the world, possessing all the means and resources at its disposal to solve this problem for good, has decided that it’s okay not to do so and instead just let these folks suffer and starve.

Well, of course we are okay with it. N.B. This is where I give my boilerplate rant about American exceptionalism, so for any who aren’t up for my nostra culpa, nostra maxima culpa, please skip down to the toon so that you can keep your white (I’m guessing) privilege in tact.

American exceptionalism, white entitlement gone global. This is what allows us, often unconsciously, to turn a blind eye to all of the death, destruction and suffering we have caused over the last four centuries and change. It is not an accident, nor is it some slapdash P.R. attempt to paper over our crimes against humanity. It was and is an whole-of-government effort in partnership with major institutions to trumpet our aspirational virtues as loudly as possible while shaming anyone who dares to hold a mirror to our history and actual sordid state.

Many institutions have had a hand in this effort at one time or another - education, mass media, advertising, music and arts, etc., etc. - all willing collaborators in this systemic gaslighting campaign. The result is we were all socialized at an early age to buy into the myth that as Americans, we are at heart a good people and we are all earnestly committed to continuing on the path of becoming better people, both individually and collectively as a nation.

Except that this myth, like most myths, is mostly bunk, but it does serve a purpose. The purpose is to protect the status quo and prevent even the whisper of meaningful social change that might allow us to become what we’ve claimed to be for 250 years - a democratic republic.

Because in what kind of society is it somehow “okay” to allow tens of millions of our fellow citizens to go without healthy food along with clean air and water, quality healthcare, education and other public goods and services? What nation finds it acceptable, even “patriotic” to instead allow a minute fraction of its citizens to hoard vast wealth and power while exploiting the rest of us and trashing the planet to the point where we’re perilously close to climate catastrophe will soon reach point of no return? And what people allows its leaders to divide them again and again again, like Lucy pulling the football away as Charlie Brown swoops in to kick it, over the very things that should unite us?

I’m not trying to be pessimistic, cynical, or contrarian or whatever label might be easiest to throw on some very uncomfortable vile truths. Instead, I’m holding a mirror up to us, all of us, and not just the bloated mouth breathing, diaper filling, crotch grabbing, whiney little Sonuva <Bleep> King. But since I couldn’t fit all of us in the cartoon, you’ll have to settle for another one with just him in it.