CSotD: Hawks and Owls and Crabs, oh my
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It’s no particular secret to Constant Readers that I’m a fan of Ann Telnaes, but when, quite some time ago, she began to simply add stacks to her “Nothingburger” cartoon base, I felt she was overplaying the concept.
However, I may have missed the value of patience and of a sort of quiet relentlessness. This piece has been growing, growing, growing and let’s hope she doesn’t need to build it much higher, now that Robert Mueller has begun revealing his Somethingburger.
And, since I’m planning to send people off to read other things today, I’ll start with a Nigerian folktale on the topic of patience and justice, which I retold a few years ago (with the help of Marina “Rinacat” Tay).
Poor Trump didn’t think the owls would also be protective of the chickens.
But David Rowe says that Dear Leader’s trip to Argentina may not be a terribly relaxing vacation after all. (The suggested animation of Trump’s head is a nice touch, BTW)
And much has been made of the jolly handshake between fellow journalist-murderers Vladimir Putin and MBS at the gathering.
ICYMI, I posted an “extra” last evening with some cartoons about their mutual interest in press freedom, but I had not yet seen Jim Morin‘s plain resetting of the photo.
I can almost hear Putin speaking to Trump:
You never think to protect yourself with real friends. You think it’s enough to be an American. All right, Mitch McConnell protects you, you have friends on the Supreme Court , so you don’t need a friend like me. But now you come to me and say “Vladimir, you must give me justice.” And you don’t ask in respect or friendship. And you don’t think to call me Godfather.
Right up to “This I cannot do,” and that’s what you hear when you try to make friends and guardians out of oligarchs, tyrants and mobsters.
Meanwhile, David Horsey suggests a holiday reformation of character that I wouldn’t hold my breath for, and promises of pardons which likewise.
The issue of pardons is pretty complex, by the way, and if any of these jamokes think a presidential pardon is going to end his cares, he’s getting some very bad legal advice somewhere.
John Cole depicts a couple of other people who may not get out of jail free, even with a presidential pardon, and the impact of their exposure could provide the measure of Dear Leader’s narcissism.
Cole is highlighting the profiteering aspect of their criminal conspiracy, which reminded me of the post-election dog-and-pony show in which Trump gathered everyone together to gaze with devotion upon six stacks of folders that proved, proved absolutely, that he was not going to profit from the presidency.
Only his children would profit. But only at arm’s length and not in any way that was not explained in those six stacks of folders.
Which were full, no doubt, of 8 x 10 colored glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explainin’ what each one was.
Though the press never got to see inside them.
Juxtaposition of Stuff You Should Read
Which brings us to those places to which I said I was going to send you. Clay Jones lays things out as well as I could, and provides a good “where we’re at” summary, while Toles — as his illustration suggests — expounds sensibly about where it leaves us.
To which I can only add that, while I’m hearing people say that, compared to Trump, Nixon wasn’t so bad, I’m more depressed by the notion that Pence might not be either.
Meanwhile, over on Twitter, Wiley Miller points out that, if both Trump and Pence were brought down, it would, by the law of the land, bring about President Pelosi.
A lovely thought, but one which left me wondering how such a creatively grouchy old curmudgeon could have neglected to factor in Mitch McConnell and his dastardly crew of unindicted co-conspirators, including Mike Lee (R-Ut) who, as Pat Bagley notes, cast the only vote needed to keep the Mueller Protection Bill from coming to the floor.
Any comparisons of Nixon and Trump themselves pale next to comparisons of Nixon’s Senate and Trump’s.
Nixon certainly had his share of blind, dogged loyalists, but only his share and no more: The bulk of Republicans back then were Americans first and partisans second.
Perhaps you had to be there.
But speaking of Nancy Pelosi, here she is, wading ashore to commence the reconquest, as depicted by RJ Matson.
And besides the gavel/corncob pipe, she ought to be carrying a bucket, because there are still some crabs in it who would rather quarrel amongst themselves than advance any reforms beyond their own.
I gather, from listening to the mewling and puking from inside the bucket, that Pelosi’s major flaws are that she is 78 years old and that she has (gasp!) accepted campaign donations of more than $30.
I honestly, sincerely, genuinely want to see the new crop in Congress rise to leadership, but they at least need to first find out where the bathrooms are (and who insisted that women get some of those).
Meanwhile, what some call “old age,” others call “experience,” and it all reminds me of Lincoln’s terse defense of Grant: “I like him. He fights.”
McClellan designed a good saddle and Burnside inspired a facial hairstyle but Grant, for all his faults, kicked rebel ass, and, while Grant wasn’t much of a president, he was one hell of a general.
Pelosi not only has a track record of getting things done, but the added advantage of probably not wanting to be president.
She can endure the shitstorm any Democratic leader will have to over the next two years and then some spic-and-span young JFK type can step up and reach for the brass ring in 2020.
But let’s remember that charismatic JFK had former Senate Majority Leader, expert armtwister and all-around-son-of-a-bitch LBJ at his back.
You may not have liked him, but he fought.
Now here’s your moment of zen:
Hi.
I love you.(sound up) pic.twitter.com/4RXlIpLIec
— ????K (@chunkled) November 29, 2018
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