Rick McKee provides a context for the quote, “Where ignorance is bliss, ‘Tis folly to be wise,” by Thomas Gray, who wrote a few better poems but not many better quotes. It’s gobsmacking for one portion of the population to hear the utter nonsense, toxic lies and frightening promises of the past week, and then […]
Walt Handelsman sums it up: The demolition crew is here to begin taking apart America. It may be metaphorical, but it’s not theoretical: Trump has already begun spinning and, to use an old phrase from Jonathan Swift’s era, “to say the thing that is not.” To accuse him of lying requires reading his mind. But […]
This is one of those “Where do we begin?” moments. The torrent of horrifying, dishonest, ridiculous nonsense that has poured out over the past 48 hours or so seems overwhelming, and I ended up with so many links to so much argumentation that I had to sort through them to come up with a reasonable […]
Jimmy Margulies (KFS) isn’t the only commentator who appears trapped in a mutual admiration society, but his donkey’s remark makes a perfect starting point, because I would dispute it. While the Chattering Classes echo outrage over the pardon, if you look at the comments, on stories, on columns, and on cartoons where comments are permitted, […]
Rabbits Against Magic addresses a current Sophomore-Dorm-At-2-AM plan with the only way this silly idea might be worthwhile. There seem to be a lot of SD@2 plans floating around on social media, and as much as I appreciate idealistic concepts, and as much as I favored lowering the voting age to 18, there are times […]
Dana Summers (Tribune) shows what happens when you only watch Fox News but not, for instance, when they carry the debate between Trump and Harris, in which she explained her position on Ukraine, as she has several other times. To which I would add that, if she has repeated her stump speech often enough that […]
There have been times when emigrating to Australia seemed like a good idea, but it doesn’t take a lot of reflection to recognize the futility. After all, Nevil Shute wrote On the Beach in 1957 and Stanley Kramer turned it into a movie in 1959 in which Australians waited for death to arrive in a […]
Ted Rall was hardly the only person who, in 1995, pointed out that Bob Dole was old. And, compared to his opponent in the 1996 election, he was, given that Clinton was 50. Clinton was also the incumbent, but I felt at the time, and still believe today, that Johnny Carson’s flood of “Old Bob […]
The observation in this Jeff Stahler cartoon would be obvious any other time, but it’s important at the moment. Evaluating it depends on whether you consider everyone having a voice an example of equality or one of leveling, because when the greatest wisdom is placed next to the greatest folly, it puts quite a burden […]
Peter Schrank notes the almost-too-late move by the Americans to resupply Ukraine, and it’s good to get an outside view, because our internal reasons for the delay don’t much matter to people facing conquest. That more pragmatic point of view makes “Better late than never” a dubious expression, which Schrank emphasizes by showing Ukraine on […]
I like cartoons that make demands on their audience, and Andertoons did a lovely job here of requiring readers to recognize a very unusual name and a key indicator of her voice. If you don’t get it, it’s completely explained in the comments, with a few people taking umbrage at not having been spoonfed but […]
A happy ending for this Stephen Collins cartoon: Liz Truss did indeed come up with a title, and, though her book hasn’t been published yet, she did get to speak to a half-empty room at CPAC, which seems like an unnecessary effort, since she could have stayed home in Britain and spoken before a group […]
We’ll lead off with a strange choice of little current relevance, just to kind of ease into the grimmer ones. It wasn’t far into the Vintage Ben Bolt (KFS) story arc that I began to fear that he’d end up adopting this plucky little guttersnipe, but I hoped it wouldn’t happen. Big Ben Bolt launched […]
Robert Ariail depicts the Republican elephant whistling past the graveyard, and it certainly seems the GOP is coming apart at the seams and could, indeed, cease to exist. The Whigs, however, may not be the best example of that, though they did go from being able to put candidates in the White House — not […]
I’m going to assume — given lead time for comic strips — that this Taylor Swift reference in Brewster Rockit (Tribune) is coincidental, but it fits well with the sudden explosion of geezers discovering the existence of someone who has been a major phenomenon for a decade and a half. And it fits particularly well […]