Adam Zyglis explains the ongoing outrage factor, in which the Republicans work to rile up the public over dubious threats while quietly enacting real ones.
Coming up with phony reasons to restrict voting rights is a core goal, but hardly the only one: It’s also reported that, while GOP legislators are fuming over the prospect of having to pay for the spending of the past, a major factor in Trump’s additions to the deficit is his generous tax cuts for the plutocrats, which his party hopes to recoup by limiting Social Security and Medicare.
As Pat Byrnes suggests, there is no issue so obvious in its origins that the aggrieved rabble can’t turn it into yet another example of libtard oppression.
It’s fair to point out that a couple of those items on the Wheel of Outrage are genuine. Vermont has outlawed one-use plastic grocery bags, which means that, if I shop on that side of the river, I either need to remember to bring my own — at last, a use for all those PBS tote bags! — or accept a bag made of renewable, compostable, recyclable paper.
If I shop on the New Hampshire side of the river, I get a flimsy bag that I can pretend I think will be recycled.
I’m so old I can remember when plastic jugs and bottles replaced returnable, recyclable glass for milk and other liquids. We were outraged, but, well, they came for the glass bottles and I did nothing.
Still, we managed to survive the horrors when they took the lead out of gasoline and we even somehow have gotten past the demise of the incandescent light bulb. Tobacco is killing us, but that’s a third rail nobody is willing to touch, so we’ve simply made it incredibly expensive in hopes it can help pay for its own damage.
Which brings us to this
Juxtaposition of the Day
Sorensen and First Dog are right to mock the hysteria around reports of the genuine harm caused by natural gas, particularly in stoves where it cannot be effectively vented outside.
I was for decades a fan of gas burners, primarily for their speed in heating up and cooling down, which makes them far better to cook on than electric coils. But for the past few years, I’ve had an induction cooktop and it performs the same: Quick to heat, quick to stop.
And the difference between gas and electric ovens is all but indistinguishable, much like the difference between lead pipes and brass or PVC pipes: The main difference is that one is harming you and the other isn’t.
Unfortunately — assuming truth has a place in these things — this is something of a self-inflicted wound, because while the general proposal is a phase-out, someone who probably wasn’t authorized to open his big fat yap did, indeed, bring up the possibility of not selling new stoves.
Which isn’t the same as confiscating your existing stove, but, then, try to buy a new car that requires leaded gasoline, to replumb your house with lovely, traditional lead or to buy a bottle of heroin for your croupy baby.
Or a roll of DDT wallpaper with Disney pictures, to protect the little tyke from infection-bearing insects.
Those jackbooted storm troopers are everywhere these days!
Though it could be worse, as Graeme MacKay points out: People in Canada have just been advised that they shouldn’t have more than two alcoholic beverages a week.
Just a recommendation, not a mandate, but it does come from The Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction, which makes it semi-almost-official.
As well as utterly futile and a bit pathetic:
Real beer — as opposed to that pathetic yellow stuff — is more than 5% however you measure it, while nobody ever poured five ounces of wine except as a sample, and 80 proof whiskey is a few points shy of anything worthwhile, the conclusion being that taking advice about drinking from the CCSUA is like taking advice about sex from your parish priest.
Meanwhile, in Britain, “one of Britain’s leading experts on diet and health” has declared a fatwa on people bringing cake to the office, comparing it to passive smoking as a risk to health, because, just as you can’t help breathing in other people’s cigarette smoke, you can’t help but scarf down other people’s cake.
I suppose we all have our acceptable risk levels, and The Other Coast (Creators) surprised me with this, because the strip often mirrors my attitude and experience, but dogs in the front seat is an absolute no-no in my book.
A large dog makes it hard to see your right-side mirror or out that window at all, but a greater hazard is that there will be something fascinating on your side of the car which the dog decides requires a closer look. Or something on the floor that might be food, right there under the pedals.
Worse are the nitwits who let their small dog ride on their lap while they drive, and I’ve been known to advise them to wear red shirts, so that, if the air bag goes off, they won’t ruin their clothes.
Again, it’s an issue of weighing risk. To be perfectly safe, the dog not only belongs in the back but should be wearing a restraint, and, yes, I know someone who lost a dog in a rollover accident.
But, then, I know a lot more people whose dogs eat cookies and live in houses with gas stoves, and I once saw a basset hound sidle up to the coffee table and have a few slurps of a Manhattan.
We all compromise. My dog rides beltlessly in the back and eats cookies but is a teetotaler, mostly because I don’t put my drinks where she can reach them.
Now to conclude this diatribe on risk-avoidance and nannyism, let us return to 1964, and an article from the Indianapolis Star which mirrored a nationwide radio movement to protect our children.
I have commented so many times on The Other Coast’s GoComics page on the fact that dogs are so often shown without leashes and, in this case, riding harnessless and in the front seat. Either a restraint or, even better, a crate. My hubby had both Airedales crated in the back of his van when he was t-boned years ago. IF the dogs hadn’t been crated, 1) they’d have run off; or 2) they’d have tried to prevent EMTs from entering the vand; or 3) they’d have flown into him and/or the windshield, like an 80- and a 50-pound sack of flour. The wire crate side was BENT, so you can imagine how much damage they could have done if they hadn’t been secured.
However, no matter how many times I (and others) comment, the artist never 1) responds; or 2) changes.
Not only have the jackbooted storm troopers come for DDT in wallpaper, you can’t get wallpaper paste with arsenic, illuminating gas (mostly carbon monoxide), or thallium to remove unwanted hair. And if you do choose to consume beverage alcohol, it doesn’t have methanol these days. Bunch of snowflakes!
Your reference to Beans in my Ears prompted me to look once again for a song I dimly remember from the 1960s that had the lyric “why did the kids put beans in their ears” (I remember it as “boys,” but this may be the gender-neutral update), as well as “why did the kids pour jam on the cat.” This time I found it: Never Say No, by the Fantasticks. (Lyrics: https://www.allmusicals.com/lyrics/fantasticksthe/neversayno.htm, song (probable copyright infringement, Mike, feel free to remove if it violates your policies) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5ATQsqjrLQ.)
Two verses probably constitute fair use:
Why did the kids pour jam on the cat?
Raspberry jam all over the cat?
Why should the kids do something like that,
When all that we said was no?
Why did the kids put beans in their ears?
No one can hear with beans in their ears.
After a while the reason appears.
They did it cause we said no.
And no, I’ve never been tempted to put jam on a cat or beans in my ears, despite the brainwashing by the Liberal Media.
THAT’S the one I remember!
According to family lore, one of my mother’s cousins died (aged 1-2) from an infection after she stuck a bean up her nose.
Here in South Africa we have so many power cuts, I’m grateful I bought a house with a gas hob. At least I can cook in the dark. I have battery LEDs and a small generator, so I try to keep my carbon footprint low.