CSotD: Blamecasting

I’ll confess (A) I didn’t stay up for the RNC, it being hard enough to get up at 4 AM to get this blog together and (B) I certainly saw more than enough clips this morning of Don Jr’s girlfriend screaming.

And I saw that Herschel Walker endorsed the fellow who, lest we forget, should also add those brilliant moves at the USFL to his list of bankruptcies.

But (C) I love Ann Telnaes‘ established cast of characters and it’s a delight to see them all assembled, even before I’ve dug in and caught up.

To which I will stipulate that I may have curated my friends list such that it’s not unexpected that the responses to the DNC were mostly “How inspiring!” while the responses to last night were “WTF?” though I think it’s reasonable to question Don Jr’s Main Squeeze declaring herself a first-generation American because her parents were from Puerto Rico.

Honey, that’s not “first generation.” We call that “passing.”

 

Then again, Tom Stiglich is hardly a raving libtard, and even he seems to have picked up on the whiplash of someone running for re-election and basing his appeal on the hell-hole we’re living in.

Dear Leader did, let us recall, promise back in 2016 that, if elected, he’d fix everything.

Then again, he also promised that he’d be working so hard he wouldn’t have time for golf.

 

While, as another conservative cartoonist, Scott Stantis puts it, sometimes nothing is a cool hand.

Let’s be honest here: We’d all like to see a positive campaign celebrating the best of our country.

But that’s a lot like saying that you go to stock car races to watch the masterful driving of well-tuned machines rather than in hopes of a spectacular wreck.

And that you’d rather watch a replay of Jerry Falwell Jr’s inspiring speech from the 2016 RNC than the video of him lurking in the corner while his wife cavorts with the pool boy.

Ah, well, that’s nothing new.

After college, I had a brief career selling the Great Books of the Western World — I repented and testified against them in front of the Federal Trade Commission — and the people contemplating purchasing bad translations of overpriced books they’d never read invariably told me they didn’t watch much TV.

Meanwhile, their cat would be luxuriating on top of the warm set they’d turned off when I knocked on the door.

 

And speaking of keeping warm, they’ll all agree with Phil Hands about that desire for a civilized campaign, then grab their Hershey bars, marshmallows and graham crackers to go make somemores over a crackling Dumpster fire.

Which brings us to this

Juxtaposition of the Day

(Kal Kallaugher)

 

(Mike Luckovich)

The leftwing progressives are all pissed that Biden is keeping to that center track, while the rightwing, which is all that remains of the GOP, is delighted that Trump is going off the tracks entirely.

I suppose it’s worth pointing out once more that we learned in high school that the noble Athenians, who wrote wonderful plays and invented democracy, had a war with those vulgar, violent Spartans.

It wasn’t until college that we learned who won, because it didn’t fit the uplifting historical narrative.

Speaking of college, let’s have another

Juxtaposition of the Day

(Jeff Danziger)

 

(Rebecca Hendin)

 

(Bill Bramhall)

Unlike Dear Leader, I make no bones about my academic record. I learned a lot in the classroom, but barely graduated at all and did most of my learning in conversations and interactions elsewhere.

I dated, I was in a play, I performed at campus coffeehouses, I ran for student government, I went to both political rallies and football games and I did a lot of reading that wasn’t in the curriculum.

Which makes me extremely dubious about the cost/benefit ratio of spending $40,000 or more to attend the University of Zoom.

The admissions scandal Danziger references did appall me, but I have also long-questioned spending money on SAT prep classes, because the goal should be not find the hardest school you can squeak into but the one that actually fits your needs and interests.

But leaving that aside, I’m with the Mom wondering what they really think they’re offering if all they’re offering is an interactive form of Sunrise Semester.

Hendin notes that the UK government is shutting down pubs and parties while insisting kids can be in classrooms quite safely, which mirrors Trump’s accusation that Covid is spread by people (nearly always in masks) in the streets but won’t be spread by kids (often without masks) in classrooms.

And Bramhall offers a happy ending, provided there is some kind of refund for early closure.

I don’t know how that works, though some auto insurance companies have lowered rates, knowing people are driving less and hoping they’ll become grateful customers when normalcy is restored.

Meanwhile, the kids, faculties and administrators at both Dartmouth and Notre Dame seem to be quarreling over the notion of safety versus soldiering on.

Gotta admit, it’s a whole lot less theoretical than it was when we argued over closing campuses for the Cambodian Invasion: Daddy can’t pay a doctor to write you a letter excusing you from the coronavirus.

 

While out in the real world, I like Steve Sack‘s commentary, though I’ve been impressed with the apparent resiliency of businesses in our area.

We’ve lost a few local businesses, but, then again, we’ve lost some chain stores that were marginal enough to begin with in our small, semi-rural state.

I’m also not sure that we were as strongly impacted as the cities by the most-favored-client power-grabs that directed a lot of stimulus funds away from local businesses and into the hands of giants.

It could be, too, that you need the intimacy of a small town to allow local diners to distinguish themselves from the fast food franchises, though I’ve been to Chicago and I’ve been to Pittsburgh and I’ve been a lot of major cities where a good hole-in-the-wall restaurant can make its mark.

Mostly, I don’t think we’ll get to really inspect the damage until the storms have passed.

Pandemic and political.