CSotD: Catching Up

After nearly a week of odd isolation — five days with no company beyond some of the most brilliant editorial cartoonists in the country — Ann Telnaes and Mo come home to find something strange rolling down the street.

I don’t know about the other attendees, but I had enough of a superficial view of the news to suggest that Dear Leader was falling apart but not enough time to dig into the details.

Nor was it because of hilarity and hangovers: There were a couple of “receptions” in the evenings — a couple of drinks and some fancy things on tiny toast — but nothing I’d call a “party” and the days were slammed with panels and business meetings.

So, f’rinstance, the day after winning the Ink Bottle Award for contributions to the group and to the art form generally, Ann Telnaes put in enough hours Sunday at the AAEC booth selling books that she didn’t get to settle in to work on Mo until about six o’clock, with a midnight deadline.

Which is an indication of both what kind of weekend it was and of what kind of nose-to-the-grindstone attitude it takes to not just be filling in the space with two-week-old gags about vaping. The best were back in the saddle quickly.

Meanwhile, I was able to absorb enough from Google News over breakfast each morning to appreciate this trio of

Juxtapositions of the Day

(Lisa Benson)

(Walt Handelsman)

(Kirk Walters)

The charges of conflict-of-interest and so forth against Joe Biden have been disproven, but what the hell difference does that make?

So were the charges that Hilary Clinton, as Secretary of State, had needlessly let our people in Benghazi die, that Obama was born in Kenya and that we faked the Moon landing on a sound stage in the desert.

Voters do not have to be tested on current events or for gullibility, and, while Trump was apparently told several times that the rumors were garbage, here we are, and whether it was a cunning plan or an insane delusion makes no real difference.

Biden didn’t fall into a trap. He was simply the leading candidate when the president attempted to extort election help from another nation.

And while Trump often rages and strikes out when he feels threatened, I’m also going to disagree with Handelsman’s take in part, because Trump initiated the Biden controversy in that phone call, not after the call was discovered and he found himself under pressure.

However, Handelsman is right that, while Trump claims Biden is the one in trouble, it’s really him.

Though only to the extent that thinking voters will recognize Trump’s guilt and the enormity of his betrayal of office, while also realizing that the charges against Biden are nonsense.

It’s the other 75% of voters I worry about, which brings us to Kirk Walters and the likelihood that this ridiculous kerfuffle will, in fact, do to Biden what the Canuck Letter did to Ed Muskie.

The result of which, O Best Beloved, was the nomination of George McGovern, who not only adopted the positive, forward-thinking views many Democrats wanted to hear but was completely untainted with the despised flaw of “electibility.”

As he proceeded to demonstrate.

And while abandoning Muskie truly was the result of a clever trap, Biden may find himself to be collateral damage, given that, whether the Democrats went forward or not, Trump would still be promoting his false conspiracy theory to his gullible followers.

 

Mike Lester advances the administration’s “witch hunt” defense, though his take requires not only ignoring how many times wiretaps have been used to prove crimes but ignoring the fact that extortion and soliciting foreign assistance in a political campaign — both illegal — can be done by phone as readily as in person.

That is, you can use a phone call in court as evidence of a crime if someone says, “I am glad you imported 20 kilos of cocaine upon my direct orders,” but, in this case, the phone call itself was the crime.

Meanwhile, we all love the Monty Python reference, but the slap at Adam Schiff falls a little short, for no fault of Lester’s.

It’s just that …

THAT is a Newt:

Yes, he’s baaaack, not only claiming that the Clinton impeachment probe was serious but offering the misleading information that Ken Starr said Clinton “was guilty on count (a)fter count,” which is true — Starr kept saying that — but the only thing they ever proved was that a married man lied under oath about his sex life.

If there were ever a witch hunt, it was the well-financed fishing expedition that began with the alleged murder of Vince Foster, then inspired Gingrich and his rightwing GOP cohorts to start the four-year Independent Counsel circus, which ended up with taxpayers paying $80 million for a blue dress.

The Democrats could put President Trump under oath and ask him about paying off an extra-marital sex partner (or two) as part of his presidential campaign.

The last time he was asked to testify under oath, he declined, his advisers calling it a “perjury trap.” Sound thinking on their part.

Still, given Biden’s Ukraine issues, Benghazi, Obama’s birth certificate and the faked Moon landing, it’s hard to imagine enough Republicans going along with facty-facts to get a conviction on perjury.

 

Besides, what with Biden the target of conspiracy theories and polls beginning to shift, the GOP is going to have to alter their focus, as Steve Breen suggests.

 

Meanwhile, over in the funny pages

Yesterday and today’s entries in two arcs you may want to follow:

Not sure where Staton and Curtis are going with this, but, having made that same error, I promise you that you cannot ignore it. Something is seriously amiss with this woman in the current Dick Tracy story.

 

And for crimefighting on a whole other level, join young Sedgewick over at Monty for an exciting foray into derring do, or, more likely, derring don’t. Sedgewick arcs are my favorite part of this strip.