CSotD: Long time coming and a long time gone

There is a wealth of political cartoon commentary at the moment, and I could do a roundup of everything said on any one of several topics, but I’m going to do more of a roundup of everything, starting with Matt Wuerker‘s summary of the departure of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, that “slightly chunky soccer mom” who managed to outlie Trump, because, while his torrent of untruth seems compulsive, her lies appear to have been deliberate.

I use that descriptor because, when David Horsey used it, it became the lever by which Trumpanzees ended his career at the cowardly LA Times, and I use that descriptor because a newspaper with courage and a spine would have withstood the outpouring of ginned up trollery and focused on what Horsey had actually been pointing out, which was that Trump prefers to surround himself with spokesmodels, but, in this case, had hired someone for her ability rather than her looks.

And I agree with what he said: “(E)ven if Trump privately wishes he had a supermodel for a press secretary, he is lucky to have Sanders.”

Which you can read about here, in a blog posting I wrote after the trolls had begun their work but before the lily-livered, gutless Times had bowed down to them.

I note, by the way, that Trump’s actual bonafide “supermodel”, Hope Hicks, has recently agreed to testify before Congress. 

And for the 97% who haven’t read it, this:

Hicks, BTW,  had previously testified before Mueller’s probe, but she’s not one of the sources footnoted here.

Still, Mueller’s report solidifies a point I made in that earlier posting:

Ron Ziegler, who was Nixon’s press secretary, sparred with the press and came up with some memorable workarounds for avoiding obvious truths, but as willing as Ziegler was to stand before the press issuing “non-denial denials,” there was a certain acknowledgment that he was playing a role and playing a game. 

Sanders gives off no such sense of “hey, it’s my job.” She’s a true believer.

 

Other cartoonists draw references to bullshit, but bullshitting is just politics. JP Trostle cuts to the core: She was paid to lie, and she lied.

Of course, the notion of her being reduced to panhandling is simply a joke. She’ll surely join the heavenly choir at Fox, I’m quite sure.

The wages of sin come in six figures.

 

And speaking of lies

The drumbeat is ramping up and Matt Davies shows us the drums.

I always like to be caught in the car when All Things Considers does its Friday afternoon commentary session, and Matt Yglesias subbed in for EJ Dionne yesterday, delivering this analytical gem:

 I’ve seen this video they put out. It doesn’t mean a lot to me. I remember at the very beginning of the Trump administration, when they were claiming that Trump’s inaugural crowds were in fact larger than Barack Obama’s.

And one thing a lot of people said right then is, you know, you don’t want to just lie about obvious things because the time comes when there’s national security and you really need to ask the American people to trust you – right? – to take on faith that your government, your intelligence knows something about what’s going on.

And I don’t think the Trump administration has ever behaved with information in the kind of way that would build confidence. 

Bingo.

And I say that as someone old enough to remember the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and to have been shamed when Colin Powell — a man I respected — put on his damnable puppet show to lure us into the Second Gulf War.

In the former case, we had two out of 90 who were not blind and refused to be mute, but you could attach these speeches to Iraq and it won’t be long before they’ll fit an Iranian resolution and my guess is that they’ll be just as tragically ineffective.

Morse was right that our constitutional rights are only as good as our efforts to uphold them.

I wish he had been right in predicting that we would all look back with dismay at how easily we swallowed the lies and danced to the beat of the drums.

Fool us once, shame on you. Beyond that, we own the results of our own gullibility.

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

 

Plus this

Kevin Siers needs no exaggeration for this State of the Union cartoon.

Part of the trick to being a conman is not to stick around long enough for your lies to begin to contradict each other.

Part of being a compulsive liar is not to be conscious enough to recognize that your statements are clearly inconsistent, not simply with the truth but with each other.

 

And if you add a dollop of paranoia, as RJ Matson points out, you can turn your back on the very people who might be able to help you.

 

Though Tom Toles is right: Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not listening to the things you say and watching the things you do.

Accusing them of “spying on you” is paranoid.

Acting as if you can’t be seen or heard is a bit more psychotic.

 

Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell has, in recent days, blocked separate pieces of legislation that would have helped protect our elections against hacking and required candidates to report foreign offers of opposition research.

I do not believe McConnell is insane. I believe he knows what he’s doing and has reasons to continue. And I believe that Jim Morin has encapsulated the result of his efforts.

 

And here’s the thing: It’s not a self-contained disaster.

Ingram Pinn lays out the situation in Hong Kong, and it’s hard to imagine such a bold step if China did not believe that they had the Cops of the World in their back pocket.

 

I agree with Dana Summers: If I were Taiwan, I’d be very, very nervous right now.

Sigh. It seems like a long, long time, Lily Wong.