Cartoon Saturday

There are five Saturdays in the month of January. That's a lot of cartoons, and God knows we need them ...

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia died this past week at age 90, to be succeeded by his younger (?) brother, Crown Prince Salman (age 79); a large asteroid is scheduled to fly by the earth on Monday, but will miss our planet by approximately 745,000 miles*; the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has moved the hands on its Doomsday Clock up two minutes, so that it now reads three minutes to midnight, the "latest" it's been since 1984; two former athletes are suing the University of North Carolina and the NCAA, claiming they represent hundreds of thousands of college athletes who were promised an education but don't get one because they were enrolled in “paper classes.”**; and the US Air Force has declassified nearly 130,000 pages of files on UFO investigations and sightings, which are now available for viewing online.

In honor of the heroic efforts by the GOP to get rid of Obamacare without having a plan to replace it or help Real People deal with high medical care costs, this week's collection of theme cartoons deals with doctors and medical care ...

The walletectomy is one of the most commonly performed surgeries in America ...

Some things never change ...

And here I always thought a chiropractor was a doctor who practiced in Egypt ...

The cure for a common 21st Century malady ...

Details of the GOP replacement for Obamacare are starting to emerge ...

Looks as if Crown Prince Salman got in just in time ...

Now, here's a guy with an image problem worse than mine ...

That's one way to cut corners ...

When you have cheap medical insurance, this can be the result* ...

And finally, a question I've often asked myself ...

So here we are: four Saturdays down and one to go as we struggle valiantly toward the end of January. Here in NoVa, it's going to be a very hectic weekend ... this afternoon, Agnes leaves for another two weeks in Germany to take care of her ailing father, and we are expecting yet another winter storm to roll through the area by tomorrow evening.

When it rains, it pours, as the old Morton Salt advertisement used to say.

Have a good day and a great weekend. Stay warm, and come back tomorrow for Poetry Sunday. More thoughts then.

Bilbo

P.S. - because of a personal situation, my posts may be a bit erratic (in terms of time posted ... they're always erratic in terms of content) over the next week or so. Keep coming back ... it'll get back to normal soon.

B.

* This reminds me of an interesting semantic question: why, when we want someone to do us a favor, do we say "Can you do me a solid?" Why don't we say, "Can you do me a liquid?" Of course, I can think of lots of reasons why we wouldn't ask someone if they can "do me a gas," but the question is nevertheless valid.