CSotD: Scams, shortcomings & other funny stuff

I worked at a paper where this Pardon My Planet (KFS) pretty much described the company health plan.

There were fewer than a dozen of us and so the cost of insurance was not only massive to begin with but vulnerable to individual claims: If one person had gotten seriously ill, the entire system would have collapsed.

This is how we structure health care for small businesses in America. In fact, I was watching President Biden addressing the Canadian Parliament the other day, and he was getting plenty of laughs. I half expected him to tell the old John Wing joke that Canadians are just unarmed Americans with health coverage.

Which is a lot funnier if you’re Canadian.

I was about 55 and my mother reminded me that it was time for me to get a colonoscopy. My doctor agreed with me that I wasn’t showing any specific need, but he also agreed with her that a guy my age should probably have one, so he ordered it.

When I showed up to get my prep materials, the receptionist asked if I were aware that my insurance wouldn’t cover it, and that it would cost me something in the mid-four figures.

I could have gotten scoped and then changed my name and moved with no forwarding address. But I just walked out.

It’s a lot funnier if you’re Canadian.

Also a lot funnier if you don’t get cancer until later, when you’re on Medicare and living near an advanced cancer center. So I got the last laugh.

On accounta it’s a lot funnier if you’re not dead.

The Republicans keep saying they don’t intend to cut Medicare and then saying that they actually do, and I’m glad they didn’t get their hands on it back when I needed it.

At the moment, they’re in the odd position of complaining about Biden’s defense budget, as Michael Ramirez (Creators) does, while promising to balance the budget within 10 years, which is more about unicorns than dragons.

Biden’s defense budget shows an increase over the past, despite the fact that we’re no longer at war in Afghanistan, we’ve seriously drawn down our presence in Iraq and we only strike back in Syria when people there try to kill us. But, even with those Republican-led adventures in the rearview mirror, we’ve still got to maintain some defensive posture and that still costs money.

However, the Republican counter-proposal costs less because it doesn’t exist.

Their promise to balance the budget in a decade sorta kinda exists, except that the Congressional Budget Office explains that the plan pretty much depends on not spending anything on anything.

Though one way to cut the defense budget is to cuddle up to Putin and stop resisting his urge to expand across Europe, which isn’t funnier in Canada because the last time we sat back and played “America First,” they had to carry on the battle without us for two years.

Peace in our time! Or, at least, in Charles Lindbergh’s time.

Note, by the way, that the Republican Party isn’t the only thing Vladimir Putin has tucked in his pocket, as Patrick Blower points out.

He’s also got Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in there. He announced that Russia plans to place tactical nuclear arms in Belarus, because, while he could reach Ukraine with nukes from Russia, he thinks Belarus would look better turned into a sheet of glowing glass.

This is the nuclear equivalent of “Let’s you and him fight” but, of course, there won’t be a war at all if the pro-Russians in Washington can take the Senate and White House.

We’ll see!

Juxtaposition of the Day

Following the Grand Wonderful World Summit of Xi and Putin, his embrace of Lukashenko is reminiscent of the kid who wanted a pony but whose parents, instead, bought him a goldfish.

Both Blower and Kamensky have some fun with the bathos of the summit, but the bottom line is that Xi is no fool and has enough to deal with on his own without adding Putin’s adventurism to his tab.

Not that there isn’t loyalty in this world, as Paolo Calleri (Cartoon Movement) points out.

Juxtaposition of the Day #2

Aside from the mystery of why the GOP continues to back Trump, who hasn’t won a campaign in ever-so-long, there is also this mystery: Nobody has said he was on the verge of being indicted and arrested except for Donald J. Trump hisownself.

Nobody else has even confirmed it, much less announced it.

It’s another of his fundraising scams, like when he raised a quarter of a billion dollars to challenge the results of the 2020 elections and then forgot to spend it on that.

This isn’t even original. It’s the old scam where someone calls you and says a relative has been arrested and needs bail money right away. This time, the relative is actually making the phone call, but it’s still a scam.

And, why not? It’s been working for years. The guy is raking in cash from the same pigeons, over and over and over again.

If they ain’t broke (yet), don’t fix it!

Speaking of Scams

There was some hope, however faint, that Ron De Santis would mount a credible challenge to Trump, and, for a time, it appeared some leading Republicans were prepared to abandon the Orange God King in favor of the new, improved version.

But this David explosion is like a test of that old theory that, if someone had snuck up behind Hitler during one of his early speeches and yanked his pants down, he would have never come to power.

Barry Blitt pushes it to the limit, combining the absurd commie takeover of Disney World with the even more absurd firing of a principal for revealing to sixth graders that boys, and even men, have penises.

De Santis might as well just pull on his white boots and stick three fingers in the pudding. He can’t possibly look any more ridiculous than he does now.

Although I’m sure he’ll try. Hiring a neonazi white supremacist speechwriter was a good effort.

Though, as Liam Simonelli warns us, it is unwise to underestimate the electorate’s appetite for stupidity.

A lot of these kids will show up on analyst’s couches in 20 years, but the rest will be out in the streets smashing statues and bullying minorities.

Thinking it far better than to play a Ron De Sanctimonious part, with a pirate head and a pirate heart!