CSotD: Maybe it’s me
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Maybe I’m just in a bad mood or maybe events are making any other mood difficult, but I’m going to start by breaking a rule and using yesterday’s Candorville instead of the current one.
I thought it was pretty cool that this particular strip dropped on the day Harris announced her candidacy.
And I found myself taking both roles: Like Clyde, I’m ready for a little toughness. But I join Lemont in wanting to hear about policies and ideas, and that’s where my cynicism and lousy mood started to kick in.
I’d expect quick pushback from the Trump side, but the pushback, rather, came from progressives: Harris was a tough prosecutor and AG and so they are against her.
And Kirsten Gillibrand, another presidential hopeful, said in a MLK Day speech that her faith has guided her search for social justice, which drew immediate fire because we don’t want someone basing their policies on religion.
Which means we wouldn’t want Barack Obama or Jimmy Carter or, certainly, Martin Luther King, Jr. as president, either, because they were all openly guided by their faith.
And Elizabeth Warren should never have taken Trump’s dare and proved her family stories of native blood, though we admire how AOC stands up to bullies.
While Tulsi Gabbard can’t be president because some years ago she made anti-LGBTQ statements which she has since recanted.
Thus the crabs pull each other down instinctively, rather than letting elimination take place through position papers or head-to-head debates.
Meanwhile, media pundits say we need to fix the system to get away from “horse race’ coverage and, instead, discuss what the candidates actually stand for.
And then one of these respected commentators posts a link to this site, where they offer betting odds on who’s going to win the horse race.
And if you read the comments there, you’ll get a good sense of the intelligent conversation we’re in for.
Which reminds me of 1968 and this post-convention Herblock panel, but that was an odd year when the incumbent declined to run, a top contender was murdered and the last man standing seemed like the personification of why LBJ hadn’t stepped up.
It was a bizarre, atypical situation.
Then, four years later, there was a good field to challenge Nixon, until his plumbers and rat f*ckers took out the top contenders and drove the nomination towards the idealistic, unelectable George McGovern.
Today, however, progressives have learned to eliminate contenders without GOP assistance.
Someone commented yesterday that it was just like 2016 when everyone began attacking Clinton, but it’s just the opposite: Martin O’Malley was her sole major opponent, with Sanders entering only when it became clear that DNC leadership had tucked horses’ heads under the sheets of prospective Democratic candidates.
This time around, we’ve got a growing field of nominees and I’m hoping to see them present some compelling issues and debate some critical points, and, yes, challenge each other’s weaknesses.
I’m also hoping the two feet of snow and sub-zero temps we got this weekend are the last of winter weather.
With equal expectations.
Juxtaposition of the Day
I’m assuming Bliss is another example of synchronicity rather than a direct comment on the Lincoln Memorial dust-up, but Marland matches my take on the burst of rightwing justifications and explanations.
As far as the public shaming goes, it’s frightening that we’ve come to a point where people are issuing death threats to the kid himself, and those who made his name public should be held responsible for leading the lynch mob.
But I have no problem with the school being shamed, both for lack of immediate supervision on the trip itself, and, as noted yesterday, for not preparing the kids to be intelligent, effective representatives of the pro-life movement.
And this backgrounder: During our brief encounter with parochial schools, my son was forbidden by the school to wear the T-shirt that he’d earned in two days of volunteering with the Pikes Peak Marathon because it included a beer logo.
But the kids at Covington are permitted to represent their school while wearing hats that support branding Latinos as rapists and drug dealers, and Haiti as a shit-hole country and pussy-grabbing as harmless fun.
Rudy, Rudy, Rudy, Do You Love Me?
Adam Zyglis isn’t the only cartoonist to turn Rudy Guiliani’s tongue into the equivalent of Dear Leader’s tie, but he was first out of the gate in the current round of WTFisms, so we’ll let him represent.
As someone who lived in NY State a few decades ago, I continue to be mystified by Giuliani, not simply for a “fall from grace,” but for a degradation into a place where you wonder if he’s had some sort of stroke or other event that genuinely hindered his thinking.
I was more than 300 miles from Gotham during his mayoralty, but word did get to us up the Northway and, when he challenged a carpetbagger for a Senate seat in 2000, he seemed a viable candidate in what was likely to be an interesting, hard-fought campaign.
And then the wheels came off in spectacular form: He had a diagnosis of prostate cancer, but also had a diagnosis of dumping his wife for his mistress and her finding out by watching his press conference and then he withdrew from the Senate race and I don’t want to be unkind, but the boy just ain’t been right since.
Whatever may have misfired didn’t land him in a quiet Catskill retreat; he’s still right out here where, unbalanced or not, you have to pay the piper when you call the tune.
Which can include Jon Rosenburg simply illustrating one of your unhinged appearances on television, of which this is only a single panel.
And only a single example, because there is also this jaw-dropping interview in the New Yorker.
Though if you kind of squint and tilt your head a little, you can sort of kind of believe that there is maybe method in his madness:
Best explanation since the invention of epicycles.
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