CSotD: Post-Games Wrapup

The Paris Olympics end tonight, which means cartoonists won’t be able to crank out “Daily Things As If They Were Olympic Events” cartoons for another four years. I’m not sure whether that counts as c’est dommage or tant pis, but ca y est.

Frank Mariani depicts the medal race between the US and China. I’m old enough to remember when China wasn’t invited and we competed with the Soviet Union, which included a lot of subject nations that now compete on their own.

I’m not, however, old enough to remember the 1924 Paris Olympics, though I did see Chariots of Fire when it came out. It’s about what an antisemite Avery Brundage was, not to be confused with movies about Brundage’s attitude towards Jesse Owens.

I mostly remember a brief period where the Olympics had amateurs competing without regard to race or creed, but then someone realized the Games weren’t commercial enough.

I am also old enough to have lived in Colorado when people there rose up and rejected the 1976 Winter Games, and to have had a bumper-sticker that said “Don’t Californicate Colorado.”

So they moved those games to Innsbruck. They’ve since californicated Colorado, but they still didn’t want the 2030 Winter Games there, so they’ll be held in Vancouver, where Canadians go to live if they don’t like snow.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch …

Juxtaposition of the Day

Patrick Chappatte

Dave Brown

The whole world is watching, or, as was said in Deteriorata, “whether you hear it or not, the Universe is laughing behind your back.”

Here are two humorous approaches to the sudden reversal of Trump’s fortunes, with Chappatte taking something of a light touch and Brown going for the pathetic with an homage to Everett Shinn. Either way, they mark and seemingly celebrate Harris’s success in overtaking Trump in what had looked like a runaway victory.

Chappatte shows her ever-present smile, but though Brown only depicts her shadow, it is clearly a happy, energized shadow, contrasted with that woebegone clown.

Lee Judge (KFS) is considerably more direct in laying out the difference in their campaigns, and harsh as his judgment may seem, it’s readily justifiable by the approach each is taking. The statement about Harris is simply a matter of arithmetic, but it’s not hard to document the accusation in his assessment of the GOP’s track record thus far.

Drew Sheneman puts Trump’s obsessions in the mouth of a generic Republican elephant, but the intense loyalty to MAGA principles makes it hard to deny that the party seems determined to follow his lead wherever it goes.

Those who dissent — including his former vice-president and half his cabinet — keep their objections quiet, and those like Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney who wouldn’t keep quiet have been banished.

Clay Bennett (CTFP) depicts the difference between Tim Walz’s politics of joy and JD Vance’s spreading of dread and division.

I was in a conversation the other day over whether Harris is more like Obama or JFK, the premise being that, while both were inspiring, Obama was a chess player while JFK floated on charisma.

But the contrast between VPs is more telling. Both JFK and Obama backed themselves up with congressional veterans who could shake hands and twist arms. Vance is too fresh to Congress to have that kind of standing, while Walz has shown an ability both in Congress and as governor to get things done.

Nobody ever accused LBJ of being charismatic, Biden somewhat was, Walz decidedly is.

Vance, on the other hand, seems to have been chosen for his celebration of blue collar roots, and Trump already had that vote in hand, while the more Vance talks, the more people he alienates.

In a wide-ranging column, Jennifer Rubin describes not only the difference between the politics of joy and the politics of division, but the ability of the Harris/Walz ticket to dispel the assumption of conservative solidarity that Trump/Vance count on.

Steve Kelley (Creators) demonstrates an element of the GOP’s attempt to attack Harris, which is that while Trump held a press conference, she hasn’t done so.

It’s become a GOP talking point that ignores the ridicule Trump has received for the way he piled lie upon lie at that gathering, and that the press received for tossing him puffball questions, a major topic in Lawrence O’Donnell’s rant.

Moreover, when Harris did step over to the press at a gathering and invite them to ask her anything, their questions were about when they would get to ask her questions. What about right now?

One question the media ought to be asking, Dave Whamond suggests, is about the Washington Post’s uncovering of a $10 million contribution to Trump’s 2016 campaign.

According to reports, the Department of Justice and FBI were looking into it, since foreign governments are not legally allowed to make political contributions, but Attorney General Bill Barr shut down their investigations.

Garth German adds up Dear Leader’s various disproven claims, adding one of the more disturbing bits of speculation, which is whether he can make it to the finish line, much less serve four years if elected.

Matt Wuerker (Politico) meanwhile shows how Trump and Vance hope to push back against the Harris/Walz ticket by resuscitating the dishonest swiftboat approach that worked against an unprepared John Kerry.

First of all, the Democrats have seen this act before and are not unprepared.

Second, while W may have pulled strings to get a safe National Guard berth, he did serve. It’s harder for a draft dodger to cast aspersions on a 24-year military career.

And veterans like Jesse Ventura — hardly a left-winger — and Stonekettle are rising up against those who question a fellow vet’s service.

How desperate are these new swiftboaters? They’re even accusing Biden of draft-dodging because he was classified I-Y for asthma, which would matter a whole lot more if (A) his landlord daddy got one of his tenants to write the letter and (B) Joe Biden were running for office.

And, by the way, having had a II-S student deferment in college, I never ever heard it broken down as four separate deferments until people too young to have been there began yapping about it. It was one deferment, renewed each fall.

But I’ll let Lt. Col. Adam Kinzinger (ANG-Ret) carry the ball: