Comic Strip of the Day.com

Humor appropriate to the day

One must acknowledge the day, or the night, and Monty rose above the many "trick or treating as Trump" cartoons to put little Montague in a Milton Friedman costume, which is much more frightening because so many in Congress snicker at the one but truly believe -- against all experience and logic -- in the other.

 

Meanwhile, over at Brevity, Dan Thompson indulges his insatiable appetite for puns. He was not only able to drop two R's to create a double-pun within a standard phrase, but, as a single panel, he doesn't need to show a response: The somewhat confounded homeowner is neutral enough to let the joke rise or fall on its own.

Probably personal -- and it probably helps that I have a very weak brain-to-mouth filtering system -- but I hate when someone apologizes for a pun.

If you can't stand by it, don't say it.

And, specific to cartooning, you can't use the excuse that it just tumbled out: There's time to think it over in the writing, penciling, inking, submitting process, and besides, if you stick an apology in the last panel, you obviously felt it was beneath you all along.

You'll commit enough unintentional stupidity. Don't apologize for stupid things you do on purpose.

 

Which, shifting from silly to serious, brings us to Jen Sorensen's latest reflection on intentional or unintentional sexual stupidity, and at least one answer to the question in the second panel.

I subscribe to the theory that you learn more in the campus coffee shop than you do in the classroom, which, in this case, could suggest that students who spend too much time grinding in the academic sense don't spend enough time grinding in the other sense, and emerge at the top of the class with excellent grades, wonderfully employable and socially unformed.

Which is a particularly attractive theory, given that I graduated in the top 85% of my class, but I'll admit I knew poor students who weren't very adept at learning outside the classroom, either.

Still, there are a lot of guys in nice suits who are utterly clueless when it comes to sex and sexual relations and women and relations with women, and, if you combine that with the kind of got-to-score ego drive that propels them to the top of the heap in the first place, you might do better to date a guy who cleans swimming pools.

It's entirely possible that he writes poetry and plays guitar in his off-hours. Or at least that he did a lot of apologizing as a young man and thereby learned how to behave around women.

And, in your non-spare time, when you're working among guys you wouldn't date, say something to whoever insults your dignity.

If that doesn't work, say something higher up the chain.

If this #MeToo business simply encourages women to speak up, that will be one hell of an improvement.

Not Funny Story: I had a male assistant whom I cautioned against hanging around in the customer service section of circulation, where, when things were slow, the jokes began to fly and most of them were tasteless, despite the 80/20 ratio of women to men. 

I warned him that all it would take would be for a new hire to be offended and all hell would break loose.

He didn't listen, but he did quit working for me and took a job over in the newsroom.

Where the women apparently had stiffer spines, because, within a few weeks, we all had to troop into the conference room and watch PowerPoint presentations, which taught most of us nothing new and apparently didn't teach him a damn thing because, a few weeks after that, he repeated his folly and was handed the cardboard box and given five minutes to GTFO.

"Please don't do that" might work, and is worth trying, because some guys can learn.

But, if it doesn't work, you've got to drop the hammer, if not for yourself, for someone less strong.

 

Speaking of powerful, clueless men

Over at the New Yorker, Brendan Loper harks back to the OJ Simpson slow-motion chase, substituting a golf cart for the white Bronco.

The look back over the shoulder sells the gag, and the fact that a golf cart couldn't outrun much of anything seals it. This is wonderful stuff and could have been a cover.

 

Tom Toles comments on the defense against that gathering storm.

I said yesterday, in reference to a L'il Donnie strip, that the "But ... Hillary" defense would be trotted out by cartoonists who support Trump and they'd already begun but they're continuing now.

People keep citing "1984," but this is straight out of "Animal Farm," in which, having driven Snowball from the grounds, the reigning pigs continue to blame him for anything that goes wrong, notably the collapse of their windmill project.

And the sheep believe it, and believe that the slogan has always been "Four Legs Good; Two Legs Better."

Let's not forget the outcome of that slow-motion chase: Despite overwhelming evidence, OJ walked free.

As for any hope that we'll have a public discussion of the issues on Facebook, Joy of Tech puts that in perspective. Between Russian trolls and delusional nitwits, Facebook has become, as they suggest, a pit of idiotic delusions.

 

And here's a Shannon Wheeler comic which would be a little bit funny if we weren't putting our Buffs back on ready-alert for the first time in over 25 years, which of course we aren't.

We're just doing some routine maintenance.

Just in case. But not.

Y'know. We're not.

And here's a Civil Defense poster from back then. Perhaps not exactly an official one, but, then, today's Moment of Zen wasn't exactly official in 1952, either.

 

 

Forgetting How To Bow

 Timing, Part One

L'il Donnie cracks me up on a regular basis, and, as an editorial cartoonist, Mike Norton has the advantage of reacting with speed. 

I'm hoping, in the course of this week's Association of American Editorial Cartoonists' convention, to get a firmer grasp on deadlines and other timing issues editorial cartoonist face.

However, the announcement Friday that Mueller has obtained his first indictment made it damn hard for anyone to get something out before today's expected revelation of who's indicted and for what.

Print was surely too late: Sunday editorial sections were likely already being pre-printed as the news broke.

And there was only that sliver of a hint of news, so what could you say?

Still, if you wait to pull the trigger, too often you end up with pablum. Good for L'il Donnie, and I hope a lot of readers get to see it as I did, before the actual announcement is made.

And, while nobody expects L'il Donnie himself to be named, the strip doesn't quite suggest that ... more a sense of things tightening.

Meanwhile, conservative editorial pages have a wide choice of "But ... Hillary!" cartoons, and that final fit of deflection will, I am quite sure, remain relevant regardless of what the Big Reveal turns out to be.

 

Timing, Part Two

Meanwhile, over at Tank McNamara, Bill Hinds surely didn't do today's strip anticipating that the owner of his hometown team would touch off a controversy that boiled over this weekend.

For those who missed it, there was a meeting of NFL owners and players on the 17th, trying to come up with a solution to the ongoing protests during the anthem, which consist of players taking a knee to demand improvements in how minority people are treated by police and the courts.

Some owners want the protests to simply stop, but there's a large contingent, including the commissioner, that would like to accomplish that by creating some kind of major outreach on the part of the league and players to bring police and minority communities together.

In the course of the negotiations, Houston Texans owner Bob McNair said, "We can't have the inmates running the prison," a phrase often used to mean that employees at some point have to follow management's rules but which, given the topic, turned into its own crisis.

McNair quickly apologized and met with his team, but the Texans still staged a large kneel-down during the anthem yesterday to answer the gaffe.

Where things go for the Texans is something that will have to play out, but the fact is, as Hinds suggests in his cartoon, nobody is listening anyway.

The players, and most of the owners, know what is happening.

The rightwing, including Dear Leader, are casting it as a rejection of the anthem and the flag, and their outcry deliberately ignores the original issue.

Which, by the way, happens to have significant history not just in Houston but within the Houston Texans lockerroom, as I noted even before this blog ever began. (Go read that)

Nobody is listening, including the people who are reporting on it. For instance, this NBC Sports coverage includes how players protested after Trump called them sons-of-bitches and recommended they be fired, but fails to note that the owners joined them in standing up to Trump's insults and threats.

Perhaps that can be dismissed as incompetence, but it sure sounds like supporting the wardens and dissing the prisoners.

And it's not just the football protests.

Today's Pardon My Planet coincides, though the reference is hardly direct, with a ghastly example of intentional fake-news malpractice: A church in Virginia has decided to move two plaques, one saluting Robert E Lee, the other saluting Washington out of the altar area. 

It was headlined here as removing Washington, only later mentioning Lee, and ignoring both the balance the parish sought by moving both plaques, and the fact that they were only being moved, not removed.

Then the story is illustrated, not with the plaques, but with a statue of Washington that is some 450 miles away in Boston.

As the fellow at the bar says, "Neither side is listening. They're just playing a game of PC oneupmanship."

Putin's troll factory could hardly do a better job.

 

(They really have been given numbers!)

 

Everything old is still old, dammit

Baby Blues sets off several rants. I'll try to contain myself.

This is actually a reverse of the "Clueless Cellphone Buffoon" issue, because Kirkman and Scott are inexplicably suggesting that a man could actually go to the grocery store without screwing it up if his wife would not turn it into a manipulation game.

I hope they are not expelled from the National Cartoonists Society for this heretical gag.

But the Clueless Cellphone Buffoon, an embarrassment to our gender, is a real thing: The guy who spends the entire shopping trip with his cellphone plastered to his ear, checking back with Mission Control.

"Honey? The diced tomatoes? Are they in cans with pictures of tomatoes on them? Do you want the diced tomatoes that say 'Diced' or 'Whole' or 'Crushed' on the label?"

It's evidence that the old whine "I went from being somebody's daughter to being somebody's wife, and I never learned how to be myself" can be applied to men as well.

Everybody -- male or female -- should have to spend three years on their own in a town without takeout. ("Town Without Takeout" sounds like a horror movie title, doesn't it?)

I would give the buffoon on the cellphone this much: He may be playing that game where, if you prove to be incompetent enough at a task, you won't be asked to do it again.

It used to be easier, for instance, to get out of ever having to do laundry again, before they started using colorfast dyes on everything. Something red in the white load would generally do it.

These days, you have to throw her favorite wool sweater in the dryer.

Now that I'm empty-nested, I don't shop anymore; I market, Euro-style. That is, instead of making one trip to round up a week's menus, I go nearly every day and grab whatever looks good to me.

When I was an at-home parent, however, I shopped during the week, avoiding the days when coupons came out or when the senior center bus brought people in. And never at noon, or after school was out.

Those of us who took the job seriously were like lap swimmers -- the pool belonged to us during those certain hours.

In those pre-cell-phone days, the ones who made me embarrassed to be a guy came in on weekends with a list from Mommy, and then defied the male stereotype of logical efficiency by going down the list instead of down the aisles.

And, since they didn't know what aisle anything was in, they'd find an item, then begin wandering around looking for the next item.

Nor did they have the sense to scan the list ahead of time. If they had, when they found the Shredded Wheat, they'd realize it would probably be a good time to pick up the Captain Crunch, too.

But no: Swing around and go wandering off in search of whatever is next.

Weekends at the grocery store were like a Demolition Derby played with carts.

And then there's The Family That Shops Together, and I'd rather encounter the Clueless Cellphone Buffoon puzzling over the tomatoes on the phone than run into Mom, Dad, Bud and Sis spread out across the aisle trying to reach consensus on the subject.

These are not the rantings of an irascible old geezer. These are things that drove me crazy in my 20s and 30s.

As an old single guy, I just zip in and out of the store, sometimes with a basket but almost never with a cart, and so I can chuckle at the things that once drove me mad.

 

Speaking of Mad ...

Here's a little reward for your having waded through that whole rant. Let the masters -- Harvey Kurtzman and Jack Davis -- demonstrate proper kvetching on the topic.

 

And to pick up the bitching-and-complaining part of that rant, here's Sean Martin on the topic of people constantly telling you you're doing things wrong, though he's doing so over at Medium instead of at his usual hangout.

I am sick of being told I'm doing everything wrong, and y'all haven't invented a damn thing, either: What smug Internet jackasses call "life hacks" were, before your mother was born, called "handy household hints," and, specifically, Hints from Heloise, who was almost militantly unhip.

Well, the original Heloise was.

When her daughter took over the gig in the late 70s, word on the street was that she was pretty hip indeed but smart enough to keep it on the down-low. If nothing else, she was hip enough to rock that premature gray well before anyone else.

In any case, neither of them would announce in snotty tones that you were doing something wrong. They'd simply suggest a new way you might want to try.

Most of the "life hacks" I've seen on line are useless: Either they're something I figured out long ago or they're not as efficient as something else I figured out long ago.

But, perhaps ironically, the two I actually have adopted are re-heating pizza in a frying pan and ... wait for it ... peeling bananas from the bud rather than the stem.

 

Today's Edison Lee made me laugh, but then the final panel got another laff because, yeah, not worth it for a Tootsie Roll.

I greatly suspect that's something else they've ruined.

Tootsie Rolls were Old School even when I was a kid. They were first made in 1896, and I suspect did not taste like rubber candles back then or they wouldn't still be around 121 years later. They were still pretty good in the '50s.

It's nice to get hold of some throwback versions of Mountain Dew or Coke and discover that you're not imagining it: They once tasted much better. And so I wish Hostess would make throwback cupcakes and that Tootsie Rolls would also come out in vintage versions.

Though they're probably wise not to.

I'm not sure why the soft drink makers think it's a good idea to remind us of what their products were like before they turned into crap.

 

Here's your moment of zen, Tootsie:

 

Everlasting Twinkies and the Evil of Research

 

Clay Jones saves me from having to either run a blank panel or violate the Prime Directive and run cartoons only to mock them.

Yes, we talked about this two days ago. But it's growing.

Folks, there is nothing illegal or even particularly sleazy about opposition research. This is one of those situations where "They all do it" isn't excusing anything. It's simply a statement of fact.

When it came out that research which resulted in the Steele dossier was paid for by the Clinton campaign, I expected Trump Loyalists to explode with accusations.

Sure enough, the fact that the original sponsor of the research was a Republican is ignored, the fact that opposition research is legal is ignored and they're apparently confusing the fact that you're not allowed to have foreign governments assist your campaign with their own odd notion that you're not allowed to research anything that happens overseas.

I expect spin and bullshit, but I don't like it, and I'm fair in that: I also dislike left-wing cartoonists who reflexively attack business practices or political stances that are perfectly normal and expected.

Maybe reading history makes you cynical: I used to tell students that, while William Marcy Tweed was a very bad, corrupt man, Thomas Nast would probably not have gone after him with such relish were it not for the fact that Tweed was a Democrat and Harper's Weekly was a Republican journal.

When I first started doing that in the early 90s, I had to explain the "partisan press." By the turn of the century, I just had to say, "like Fox and MSNBC."

Maybe that made me cynical.

But fine: Hillary was colluding with the Russians by investigating Trump's collusion with the Russians. It's a plot between Putin and Clinton to make Dear Leader look bad. 

Don't laugh. That's all over Facebook, likely started in the troll farms and spread by the true believers.

Meanwhile, however, I'm seeing something even more depressing: Centrist cartoonists taking the position that having conducted opposition research is coming back to damage the Democrats.

Nobody explains why or how.

I have often said that I am more willing to forgive a partisan hack than a cartoonist who is just plain lazy. 

It takes about 10 minutes on Google News to discover that there's no Russian connection to the DNC funding, and it takes maybe an eighth grade civics class to know that opposition research is as old as democracy itself.

And it is incompetent and unprofessional to promote ideas you have not examined, but, rather, are based on what Charles Mackay long ago dubbed "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds."

Most foolish-but-popular beliefs are harmless enough:

The Cleaver family was not sheltered in a perfect suburbia. The show frequently tackled tough social problems.

Jack Swigert did not say "Houston, we have a problem" but rather "Houston, we've had a problem." Test pilots report. They don't whine.

And Twinkies indeed will spoil in a relatively short time.

Other popular delusions are more toxic, like the idea that Barack Obama is a Muslim, which, of course, has to be allied with Islamophobia to be a bad thing, but certainly has been.

And that Hillary Clinton is an inherently evil person.

Hillary Clinton has been a convenient rightwing punching bag from the moment she declined to bake cookies, which is a very large reason a lot of progressives were not happy to see her as the Democratic nominee in 2016: Not because of who she was, but because of who "everybody" was pre-programmed to think she was.

So here we are, with lazy cartoonists picking up on the easy, familiar pre-fab target.

Dammit, people, there's nothing illegal or unethical about opposition research.

And it only comes back to hurt the Democrats if the public is repeatedly told that it did.

My first traffic ticket came many years ago, at a pair of very close intersections where I saw that the first one had a green light and failed to notice that the second had a red light.

Which I told the judge.

He responded that he'd rather hear that I had simply decided to run the red light than that I was so inattentive that I hadn't even noticed it.

I was pretty young, but I was old enough to grasp his point.

And even to adopt it myself.

I would rather see an inaccurate, deceptive cartoon drawn from deliberate malice than one that simply reflects inattention and a lack of caring.

 

Now here's one about the current FLOTUS

Ed Hall isn't the only person to comment on the seeming incongruity of Donald Trump's wife taking on bullying as her social cause.

Nor, reading the comments, am I the only person who apparently likes this cartoon for reasons other than Ed's.

I get a lot of vibe about an informal Melania fan club that isn't based on liking her so much as feeling almost protectively compassionate about her.

It's not so much that she doesn't seem to be embracing her role as First Lady. It's more that she doesn't seem to be embracing her husband.

For all the bitching about the cost of security when she stayed in New York, I've heard cheers for her refusing to jerk little Barron out of school early just because Daddy got a new job.

I've also heard people who say they can't wait until Barron is grown and she walks out and writes a tell-all, but I suspect they haven't considered what sort of pre-nup you sign when you marry a guy whose employees are all required to sign non-disclosure agreements.

Well, I don't need to hear the details.

But here's my speculation on the whole anti-bullying campaign:

When Nancy Reagan came out against drugs, it rang hollow, and "Just Say No" was more of a punchline than a viable slogan.

But when Betty Ford talked about drugs, we listened.

Maybe someday there will be a Melania Trump Center for the victims of bullies.

Meanwhile, I'm cutting her some slack.

 

 

Greed, lust and whathaveyou

This Ann Telnaes panel coincides with a fascinating report last night on "All Things Considered" that made me really miss the business beat.

Ann is correct that the Trump Family Industries are benefiting from Papa Schtrumpf being in the White House, not surprising since he ran for office to swell his personal prestige, rather than out of some urge to serve the nation, except in the Twilight Zone interpretation of the phrase.

As she suggests, it's all tricks and damn few treats for us.

But leasing the White House is not an across the board advantage, particularly in the real-estate development business, a pretty big chunk of both Trump and Kushner holdings.

The report on NPR was about a Kushner attempt to profit from an aptly-numbered building on Fifth Avenue, and as the tale unwound, my Spidey senses began to tingle.

Then came the great HA-HA! when they told how a major Chinese company backed off a nine-figure investment in the project because, even with Jared Kushner technically divested, anything his family does attracts reporters.

As host Kelly McEvers summed it up, "In other words, when you're in the White House, your business is going to get a lot more scrutiny, which can scare away investors and customers."

The whole report is worth your time because commercial real estate development is incredibly secretive and we don't get to peek under the covers very often. 

Example: A company I covered was planning to build a mall with a Costco store as its anchor. At the same time, a rival company was slightly ahead on plans to build a strip mall.

The Costco guy flies up, steps off the plane and greets the developer with "Is it true that XYZ company is bringing in a Sam's Club?" 

"Yes."

Costco guy spins on his heels and gets back on the plane. He'd apparently bought a round-trip ticket and was only planning to stay if the answer had been favorable. 

Business development information is so delicate that a mall manager lost his job when I asked him about a set of blueprints I'd ... found ... and he said it was too early to comment. That was too much information.

Reporting Hint: I used to attend Chamber functions, but most of what you got there was spin and bullshit. The real tips came at the Home Builders Association meetings, because the contractors knew who was blowing hot air and who was actually about to stick some shovels in the soil.

They also had funnier stories, like the evening a bunch of them began swapping tales about a prominent "wealth management" adviser who was building a new office and had named her boyfriend general contractor.

He didn't know, for instance, that there were left-opening and right-opening doors. He thought you just flipped them upside down to get the desired effect.

I miss those days. 

 

But if Ann Telnaes got me jumping like a retired fire-horse hearing the bells, this Steve Breen cartoon sure brings me back to earth. 

I think I'm more depressed by these revelations than all the stories of out-and-out predatory bastards. It's not simply that "I thought he was one of the good guys," but his wife's genial acceptance brings back my utter bewilderment about couples who would go to Las Vegas and attend the topless show girl extravaganzas together.

I never understood how a wife could sit next to her husband at one of those things, and I find the airy "boys will be boys" dismissal of crude behavior baffling.

I'm not sure where to draw the line -- maybe it's okay to tolerate a Playboy subscription, but, jumping jesus on a pogo stick, you don't have to sit down and read it with him, nor do you have to go to girlie shows with him.

Nor do you have to stand by while he's goosing young girls and making dirty jokes to them, rolling your eyes and treating it as if it were cute or inevitable.

I'm not simply blaming the wives. I'm genuinely baffled by the whole relationship.

And it's not like it's just the old folks: If women no longer smile, roll their eyes and dismiss it, it's still a source of humor, and note who comes off as the bitch in this popular meme. 

As for GHWB, maybe the #MeToo thing is working, and maybe, alongside the genuinely criminal cases, we'll see more of these disappointing revelations, as well as thoughtful responses and maybe some genuine dialogue in place of weary acceptance or pointless hostility.

Promise: I won't ask why anyone wears low-cut dresses if you don't demand to know why guys look down them.

But we all know that there are rules, dammit:

Even a clueless, gormless schlub like George Costanza, who can't help but stare, would know that you're not supposed to comment and you're certainly not allowed to touch.

WTF is wrong with guys like GHWB?

That's a genuine question. Even guys in my generation, who grew up with the Playboy Philosophy that, whatever else it promoted, emphasized being cool, remained totally uncool.

It didn't help that James Bond, the epitome of cool, was uncool when it came to keeping his hands to himself and obtaining consent and suchlike.

Too bad that secret slide-out drawer in the briefcase Q gave him, instead of containing a row of gold doubloons or whatever the hell they were, had held a row of condoms.

Trust me, James, if you'd had the decency to ask, you'd have still gotten to use them.

 

Speaking of gormless ...

Harry Bliss brings to mind a poem on this topic that I wrote in eighth grade. We'd been studying Richard Lovelace in English class, and I'd been reading John Lennon and Jack Douglas on my own.

A heady combination.

There were three or four verses, redolent with bathos, but I can only remember the first:

O Maiden Fair, t'were cruelly done
To bid me wait whilst off thou run,
Pledging return -- O wicked lie!
Why wouldst fair maid
So hurt a guy?

 

O Tempore! O Mores! O Boy!

I didn't want to be political today. And I wouldn't have had to, if everyone had obeyed the original directive and done a "Fats Domino at the Pearly Gates" cartoon like they were supposed to.

But then -- as Nick Anderson so well illustrates -- news surfaced that the Democrats had paid someone to do research on their opponent in the 2016 elections, whereupon all the conservative cartoonists got a second directive cancelling the Fats Domino tributes.

So let us all take a moment to be horrified that, for the first time in American politics, a campaign has paid someone to do a little research -- perhaps even dig up some dirt -- on their opponent.

We might even cite that over-used quote in "Casablanca" in which the police captain, under orders from the Nazis ... no, never mind.

We'll just link to this article summing up the whole sordid scandal. And perhaps we'll add this pull quote, so that the bloodhounds will know where to start sniffing.

Or, rather, where to stop. Because, hell, there's no news in that.

Democratic, not Republican, funding is the point.

 

Plus this

And as long as we're covering current events, I'm okay with cartoonists commenting on Amazon's open invitation for communities to solicit their secondary headquarters, as long as they're not shocked, shocked. (Dammit, I wasn't going to go for the cheesy reference).

I like Rob Rogers' take because, first of all, it's a clever tie-in of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, which none of us know about because the liberal mainstream media refuses to cover it. (At least, that's what it apparently said in another lockstep directive to conservative cartoonists.)

I also like Rogers' take because Pittsburgh has a good case for landing the HQ: It's a very pleasant city with a vibrant local culture, good educational institutions, plenty of tech, and its infrastructure has been largely rebuilt since the steel days, which puts it above a lot of other Rust Belt locations. 

But what I really like is that, while Rogers cites the competitive zeal (there were 238 cities making bids), he only expresses disdain, not shock, at the idea that someone promising 50,000 jobs would expect tax breaks and similar incentives.

Which doesn't surprise me, because I've met Rob and he's not eight years old. I really don't understand commentators who react as if they were.

Back when I was turning 40, I participated in a program by the local chamber that walked 40-and-under sorts of young professionals through an extended series of day-long presentations on government and industry, providing an inside view of how these things actually work. 

I know many chambers still offer those programs and I think anyone commenting on politics or business ought to take one. You can't make intelligent comments on things you don't understand.

And, by the way, Pittsburgh would also be a hip, symbolic choice. The city became the center of the steel industry in olden times because it was where the Allegheny and the Monongahela formed the Ohio, so it was already where tons of products flowed from the Northeast down the Mississippi, and, consequently, it was also a railhead and crossroads for industries further upstream.

Its choice would be a salute to history, and a testimony to the new reality, where decisions need not be so based on geography that it diminishes other considerations.

 

Speaking of new realities ...

Today's Alex celebrates, or possibly bemoans, the speed of change.

I finally broke down and traded in my flip phone for one that can do all sorts of things I don't need to have done, but I still pay for things with debit cards and I'm not sure how many stores out here in the hinterlands are re-tooled for phone payments anyway.

We do have chip-readers now, though the way they're configured, it takes three or four times longer to pay for anything than it did when we just swiped our card and entered a PIN.

And we still have to enter a PIN. But it's better because it's new.

I'm still a pretty hep cat, and I bought a new carbon-fiber wallet when my organic, artisanal wallet wore out. It's slim and hip and doesn't press on my sciatic nerve.

It also doesn't have a place for cash or for a store of business cards, because nobody uses cash and I guess nobody hands out business cards, either.

I do feel guilty using a debit card when I'm just grabbing a loaf of bread, because I hate the idea that the store has to pay a percentage to Mastercard on such a minor purchase, but, then again, the people who own the store have probably figured our cashless society into the price of the bread to begin with.

On accounta they're hip, too. We're all so hip that being hip isn't hip anymore.

 

Bonus Earworm!

 

Meanwhile, back at the Bat Cave

As Carpe Diem notes, we old folks do occasionally have trouble adjusting to these new technologies.

Though my best stories on the topic come from about a quarter-century ago, when we weren't old enough for that to be the excuse, but the newness of the technology was.

Except that the newness of it all should have made us that much more vigilant.

Whatever the reason for our blunders, there weren't many excuses.

Filthy jokes sent on "Reply All" to a corporate email list -- twice! -- by upstanding professional women, or a VP who sent some preachy drivel to a corporate list instead of to his Preachy Religious Drivel list.

Best of all came when a fiery feminist attorney posted something to a family law discussion list and the abusive fathers' rights trolls went ballistic because it showed the address of a different list member, proving that they were sockpuppets and frauds.

Turned out that, while we knew they were in cahoots, we didn't know that they were also in bed. He'd neglected to log out, she assumed she was still on her own account. Hilarity ensued.

O tempore! O mores! O boy!

 

State of the Disunion

Mike Marland on a local story that about put me off the road yesterday.

Yep, according to NHPR and a few other places, Steve Bannon is coming to the Granite State to raise money for a right-wing group, with the proceeds to "support training and support for local Republican candidates in 2018."

Presumably the ones they manage to get on the ballot.

Which is not hard, given that New Hampshire has the most state legislators per capita in the country, which means if you've got 20 friends, you can get elected at least to the House if not the Senate. As a result of this, you'll often see national stories about looney proposals in our legislature, most of which don't make it out of committee.

Well, with the help of the 603 Alliance, now they might, and the question then will be whether our regular, mainstream GOP governor will be bullied into signing whatever the Very Silly Party puts on his desk.

Which would be a local story except that I also heard somewhere -- possibly the 202, and, yes, we all go by area codes -- that, if there were to be a bruising primary between Arizona Senator Jeff Flake and whatever tinfoil loon the GOP fringe-dwellers put against him, he could end up taking stances that reasonable people in the state would not accept in the general election.

Thus opening the door to a Democratic Senator.

Now Flake has flaked out, and the GOP hardliners may get to nominate one of their own. We'll see if whoever they pick is horrifying enough to slide that prospective Dem into office.

 

Though, of course, the True Left will never accept victory without a fight, the latest evidence of which being the Ideologically Righteous Revolutionary Guard's response to W's criticism of Trump.

You might expect it to be accepted -- as Flake's has been, as Corker's has been, as even McCain's has been -- with celebration.

Instead, as Ted Rall says, the cool kids are rejecting it, since celebrating W's speaking up is thereby embracing everything he did as president.

I still contend that "Bernie Bros" were a Russian troll factory invention, but those trolls aren't stupid and they know where to plant their seeds.

The ability of the Left to turn upon itself is one of the Right's major advantages, and the aforementioned 202 is already suggesting that progressives in Arizona are likely to push back against the Democratic Party leadership's plan to find a mainstream candidate who might actually win election.

I am not a member of any organized political party.
I am a Democrat.
-- Will Rogers

 

More of a Progression than a Juxtaposition

Kevin Siers points out that an "empty barrel" is sometimes better than a full one, depending on the content.

Facebook is too ephemeral for me to try to search for the source (Update: Oh, wait, it was in the comments right here! Sorry, Hank!), but someone noted that John Kelly claimed to have been at the speech in which Rep. Wilson took credit for funding that building.

Which subsequently released tape of the speech shows she didn't.

So either Kelly lied about having been there, or at least he lied about remembering what she said and parroted the lies he was told.

Or he just lied.

And the fact that The Nation's Most Annoying Honor Student says there's nothing to apologize for is ample proof that we are in an area where insults are permitted and "alternative facts" are nothing to be ashamed of.

 

And David Fitzsimmons pulls no punches in suggesting that "Garbage In, Garbage Out" is no longer just about programming computers, but about electing presidents.

His caption says it all.

How could anyone in a position of authority act like this? 

How could anyone who acts like this be in a position of authority?

And what does this spoiled prep-school brat know about military service, or sacrifice of any type?

Now, I'm sick of people who know nothing about the era claiming that taking a II-S deferment was "draft dodging."

That's not just historical nonsense but a grave insult to college graduates who subsequently enlisted and died in Vietnam.

But John McCain is right that bluecollar kids got drafted and rich kids got letters from their family doctors.

I took my II-S, and, at 18, planned to serve if called, but, as I learned more about the war, I hardened my intentions not to.

However, I have no idea what I'd have actually done if the lottery hadn't saved me from testing those intentions.

Which is the most anyone can say who never got that letter telling them to report, including those who weren't born yet.

Still, rich kids with letters from their family doctors -- even if they had credible medical issues -- were taking advantage of medical oversight a less wealthy kid might not have. That's dodging.

Oh, and, BTW, in those days of backalleys and coat hangers, their sisters were getting "D&Cs" from the same cooperative don't-ask-don't-tell family friends.

There are many harsh realities which rich kids were (and still are) able to dodge.

 

I question the third in this progression, in which Adam Zyglis assumes that people who revere our troops are having some kind of buyer's remorse.

I don't think so, except for those who assumed he wouldn't win and only voted for Trump to send a message.

The people who intentionally elected him already knew about his heel spurs and already knew what he had said about the Khan family.

And I believe he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose their support.

Even if he shot a baby in a stroller point-blank, they'd spin it to declare him a hero and say that, if more people packed heat, crime rates would plummet.

We shall always have such deplorables among us, but ...

Robert Ariail concludes this progression by using the now-familiar quote to ask if we really should have an entire party acting as if they can't distinguish truth from lies, or honor from perfidy.

Exploitation

Steve Sack steps above the partisan divide that has, almost inexplicably, enveloped the Harvey Weinstein et al controversy to put before us what ought to be a priority, but may be becoming simply a momentary distraction.

It's the et al, which he captures on the page of that newspaper, that should pierce through everything else, because the strength of that flood of #MeToo postings was the recognition that it wasn't just Harvey Weinstein, and it wasn't just Hollywood, and it wasn't just the famous women who came forward.

Nor is this anything new, and, in fact, I said so quite specifically back in January, 1990, in a long Sunday business cover on the topic.

And I cite the date not so much to establish my bona fides on the topic, but because the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill confrontation did not happen until a year and a half later.

It has always stuck in my craw that the article, of which I was quite proud, earned not so much as an honorable mention in the 1990 awards, when it would have been top of the charts had it been written after Hill's emergence.

Hence my frequent snarl that "Plaques are for Haques," because awards nearly always go to hot-topic coverage, while lesser-known issues stay submerged.

I've thrown out all my old plaques anyway, and I certainly wasn't the only person writing on the topic back then.

Never mind that. This is what matters:

What if the Thomas hearings had sparked an honest and ongoing reappraisal of the topic?

What if they hadn't simply been the skyrocket of the moment, exploding colorfully against the sky, then fading out against the darkness as the show ended and the circus moved on?

Hill was interviewed on CNN recently, and said this about the incongruity of Weinstein and Ailes being fired for their abuses, while Trump and Thomas were able to deny everything and go on untouched:

How far have we come to equality? How close are we if, in fact, women are having to endure this kind of behavior in their day-to-day lives, in the workplace and on the street?  And if we ask ourselves that question, we need to also ask, today, for our leadership, whether it's in the public or private sector, to step up and tell us what they're going to do to stop the problem.

The quick, cynical answer is "Not much."

Clarence Thomas employed the OJ defense before OJ invented it: Simply deny the obvious evidence.

His honorable response might have been, "I was going through a divorce at the time and didn't realize how badly I was behaving. I deeply regret the things I did during that painful portion of my life."

I'd have bought that. I was divorced, too.

But having powerful Senators and a conservative media conspiracy to buttress your denial also works. 

So those accusations sank into distant history and the Access Hollywood tapes didn't matter, and conservatives have now decided, as Clay Jones notes, that Weinstein is a villain but that Roger Ailes and Bill O'Reilly are not.

As he notes in the column that goes with his cartoon:

I’ve seen about two dozen cartoons on Weinstein from people who never touched the stories on conservatives, while liberal cartoonists haven’t held back on Weinstein. Donald Trump Jr. tweeted about Weinstein, momentarily forgetting he’s the son of a man who brags about assaulting women, barging in on teenage girls while they’re undressing, and openly cheated on Jr’s mother. 

So now what? Should we all just dress our daughters and granddaughters in niqabs and hide them away in purda, or should we just accept that one day they'll join in the chorus of #MeToo?

Or might we hope something will change?

I see in this morning's news that women have come forward about another Hollywood mogul, and this guy hasn't got half the power of Harvey Weinstein, which suggests that, while it won't make as much of a splash, he won't come out any cleaner.

With luck, the two of them will only be the beginning of a trend.

But let's not get overconfident.

Reilly has now embraced the OJ defense: He didn't do it, it never happened, they're all liars.

And, as the old accusations against him resurface, Trump has gone the same direction.

Will anyone believe these bald-faced denials of credible testimony?

Short answer: Yes.

The longer answer: Yes, but how many?

It's plain that simply laying out credible testimony will not be sufficient, which brings up the depressing possibility that, if denial continues to be effective, if injustice remains the default, and if Weinstein remains the exception, we'll just sink back into silence.

 

So let's have Kirk Anderson completely depress us with this interesting neuroscientific takedown on the biological differences between the Deplorables and the Liberals. This is only one panel; read the whole thing here.

I'm hoping the research he cites turns out to be like that right brain/left brain thing, which was eventually revealed to be piffle, though that one, despite being discredited by anyone who knows anything about the brain, is still very much around.

 

The theory at least offers an explanation of why, as Pat Bagley notes, some people, confronted with obvious, indisputable facts, simply reject them.

The moral response remains: We owe our children a better world.

Our daughters, and our granddaughters, and our manchildren, too, deserve happier lives, and happier songs, than this:

Where is hope while you're wondering what went wrong?
Why give me light and then this dark without a dawn?
(Evil is sweet in your mouth
Hiding under your tongue)
Show your face!
(What a long fall from grace)
Help me understand!
What is the reason for your heavy hand?
(You're stumbling in shadows
You have no name now)
Was it the sins of my youth?
What have I done to you?
That you make everything I dread and everything I fear come true?

Healthy attitudes

It's entirely possible that Dave Blazek was inspired by the same thing that made me laugh at today's Loose Parts: Those sanitary wipes at the grocery store, which keep you from getting bubonic plague from touching a shopping cart.

My solution is that, when the cart wranglers get a train of carts together, they should shove them through an autoclave that would be like a carwash, except that it would heat the carts up to kill all the germs and bugs.

The problem being that you'd lose work time because employees would have to put "sanitized for your protection" slips across each one. Which may be why motels no longer put those slips on toilet seats: They decided catering to the paranoid was pointlessly expensive.

Besides, given that the original Typhoid Mary was a cook, it has occurred to me to wonder, wouldn't it be ironic if she'd been the motel maid who put the "sanitized for your protection" bands on toilet seats?

Anyway, it's my considered opinion that people who are afraid of grocery cart contamination should wear gloves, which would also protect them against all the disease lurking on the packages and cans in the store.

Plus, if someone would start posting "Wear gloves or die of infection" warnings on Facebook, we could get a better sense of who falls for that sort of thing just by looking around. 

Safety first, people.

 

Fay's mom would be first in line to buy gloves not only for herself but for her poor daughter, as seen in today's Luann.

Presumably, Luann will now do a little more to help liberate Fay from the helicopter.

Camp Lord O' the Flies used to get kids with all sorts of parentally-diagnosed issues, but the fact that it was an eight-week overnight experience provided enough time to overcome most of these phantom disabilities.

As misguided and unattainable as was the director's dream of teaching kids to box so they could go home and beat up the school bully, there was a part of the mission that worked: Simply teaching them that they were not as fragile as their mothers thought they were helped them overcome a different, more pernicious style of bullying.

We had one kid who earnestly explained that his mother said he was allergic to carbohydrates.

It's entirely possible that his mother had him on some forerunner of the Atkins Diet, but, in any case, the counselors told him that he couldn't possibly be allergic to all carbohydrates or he'd have been long since dead of starvation.

He also earnestly explained one day in track that he had "French eyes," which the counselor told him was about weeping at sad movies and not about crying because you had been ordered to attempt the high jump.

The good thing was that, while he underwent a little mockery for all his sensitivities, he wasn't particularly bullied over them. His self-proclaimed foibles were mostly just ignored and by the end of the summer, he was acting like a regular kid. 

This is not to underplay genuine health issues like peanut allergies or diabetes, by the way. But you don't get any of those things from touching shopping carts, nor is every case of diarrhea a case of food poisoning or allergies or intolerances.

Sometimes it's just a case of the runs.

 

Meanwhile, among the grownups

Ann Telnaes on the White House flunkeys.

I have to feel a little for General Kelly, who was apparently fed some unresearched bullshit about Rep. Frederica Wilson and thus induced to make himself look like a liar in front of the cameras. 

Then again, nobody forced him to condemn her for listening in on a private conversation and then say he knew what was said because he was listening in. 

Note that Colin Powell was also fed some bullshit, in his case about weapons of mass destruction which didn't exist.

First, maybe these guys should do a little fact-checking before getting in front of the microphones.

And, second, it's a damn good reason why, despite what we are told by The Nation's Most Annoying Honor Student, we should indeed question and debate decorated four-star generals.

Especially ones who got those decorations in wars we wouldn't have been sucked into in the first place, if somebody had questioned and debated some other four-star White House flunkeys.

And, by the way, Arkansas was, indeed, part of the cattle industry in the Good Old Days, so an Arkansas native might well borrow that Texas expression about "all hat and no cattle."

But don't tell us that's what y'all say "down South." 

It's what they say "out West," in the part of Arkansas that butts up against Texas.

TNMAHS needs a regular compass as well as a moral one.

 

Juxtaposition of the Day

(Tom Toles)

(John Cole)

Well, well, well, look who's bellying up to the bar and scarfing down the free lunch?

As we say down South or maybe in the Midwest or possibly up here in the Northeast or in outer space or some damn place, "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch."

And, as both Toles and Cole point out, we used to say that at budget hearings, until the Republicans took charge, and, if that gives you what we in France call "deja vu," I submit this David Horsey cartoon from 2001.

You remember 2001 -- That was when Bill Clinton, a dusty ol' cowpuncher from the same town as TNMAHS, had just left office with what down South we call "a budget surplus."

Not to worry, however.

This new, improved GOP budget may have a $1.5 trillion deficit, but it would be far worse if they hadn't been responsible legislators and cut a trillion from Medicare and a half-trillion from Medicaid.

As Wiley Miller notes, it's not like Healthcare won't exist anymore.

It just means that, as we say down South, you can't get there from here.

Patriotic Americans wouldn't want to.

 

Sunday Short Takes

You have to be up on Quebec politics to get this Gary Clement cartoon: Quebec has passed a law forbidding people to have their faces covered while receiving public services, which includes things like riding a bus or checking out a library book.

The law, its sponsors insist, is not aimed at Muslim women who wear the niqab or burka but could also include masked protesters which is why it is named "Bill n°62 : An Act to foster adherence to State religious neutrality and, in particular, to provide a framework for requests for accommodations on religious grounds in certain bodies."

Because masked protesting is a religious act.

Prime Minister Trudeau the Younger says that it's not the government's business, while others have, like Clement, noted that sunglasses and scarves would be a violation of the ban.

To which the supporters of the law scoff, saying that, of course, they wouldn't apply the law to that sort of face covering. Which shows that, however they feel about revealing faces, they're very much in favor of revealing motivations.

I am curious about conservative Muslim dress, not just parsing through the various types, but parsing through, on the one hand, the people who insist it is repressing women and, on the other, people who say it is a way to preserve modesty.

I was passing through an airport a few months ago when I encountered a group of women in what I think were probably al-amir hijabs, such that their faces were exposed but their hair and bodies were obscured, kind of like old-school nuns but without the starched white frames.

They were laughing and talking and I thought how attractive they looked and then realized that this kind of went against the idea that covering up would keep strange men from ogling you.

But at least I was only seeing their dark eyes and laughing mouths and focusing on how much fun they were having and thinking it would be nice to know them, which is not the same as staring down the front of someone's dress or contemplating her ass.

I'm not sure if that's an argument in favor of the niqab or one in favor of accepting that men will look at women.

Yes, even on public transit or when they are checking out library books.

I'm also not sure what is covered by an asshat, but I suppose the people who passed this law ride in limos and not on buses.

 

Juxtaposition of the Day

(Edison Lee)

(Reality Check)

I've just switched from a somewhat aging desktop to a new laptop, which means that I have had to go back and re-learn all my passwords.

And, yes, I know you're not supposed to let your browser remember them.

Also you're not supposed to write them down.

Also you're not supposed to use Q-Tips to clean your ears.

And I should have a Mac, which I don't think has anything to do with this, but anytime you talk about an annoyance with a computer, someone will inevitably explain that you should have bought a Mac.

Anyway, I went to a site which I need for work and couldn't remember the password, so went back to my desktop, brought it up and requested a re-set, at which point it instructed me that my password needed to be at least 12 characters long.

The one I was thinking of was 16 characters, but if I took the "go" off the front and changed "yourselves" to "yourself" at the end, it came out precisely to 12, or 13 if I add an "!" which is a special character.

SYSADMINs love special characters.

But it doesn't matter, because we're all switching to face recognition and fingerprint recognition and retinal recognition and since computers never ever screw up, that's gonna solve all our password issues.

As seen in Reality Check.

Guy should have bought a Mac parachute.

 

God Am I Old

Today's Tank McNamara shows an old guy harking back to his childhood and his transistor radio.

I knew Bill Hinds was younger than I am, but I didn't realize his father is, too. 

We didn't have transistor radios until I was a teenager. I had ... oh, jeez, I don't have to describe it because here it is!

It's older than I am, but that's how it eventually ended up in my room. Yes, we had hand-me-down electronics then.

There was some problem with grounding because I had to keep a finger on it or it would squawk with static, but it pulled in stations pretty well. 

Those little radios the size of a pack of cigarettes were useless, by the way, unless you lived next door to the transmitter. When I finally did get a transistor radio, it was one of those mini-briefcase ones where you could add a wire and fling it out your bedroom window and up on your roof to act as an antenna.

Dagnab it.

 

Cartoons With A Cause

The original art for today's Non Sequitur is up for auction through Elayne Boosler's Tails of Joy organization, where you can find a little explanation plus an interview with Wiley Miller.

Wiley writes:

There will be joint effort with her and the syndicate in promoting it on social media in an effort to raise as much as we can. The minimum bid will be $500, which is what I charge for an original Sunday edition. 100% of all funds donated to Tails of Joy go to animal rescue. 

And if you prefer to support hurricane and fire relief, or if you'd like to support both efforts, the National Cartoonists Society is currently asking cartoonists -- not just their members but all cartoonists -- to join in a fundraiser that will also auction off original art, this being the work from November 23. 

I'll post again when that one's ready to start.

Meanwhile, my dog's best friend is a greyhound rescue who runs his legs off just for the fun of bringing him down a peg, so here's a moment of zen for her: