Cartoon Saturday

New month, new cartoons ... some of them, sadly, in positions of responsibility ...

Attorney General William Barr testified before the Republican-led Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, clearly demonstrating that he is less the US Attorney General and more the lead lawyer for the Trump Organization; speaking of Barr, having been savaged by Senate Democrats during his testimony, refused to testify before the Democrat-led House Judiciary Committee on Thursday; actor Peter Mayhew, who played the beloved character of Chewbacca the Wookie in the Star Wars films, died at the age of 74; melting glaciers on the slopes of Mount Everest in Nepal have revealed tons of garbage and dozens of human bodies; Japan's new emperor, Naruhito, formally ascended to the Chrysanthemum Throne on Wednesday, replacing his father, Akihito, who abdicated the previous day; and Donald Trump enjoyed a lengthy telephone conversation with his role model Vladimir Putin in which he derided the "Russian hoax" but failed to warn his friend against future election meddling.

Since the Russians are back in the news again, whether continuing to interfere in our elections or fielding spy whales, I thought it might be nice to have a Russian theme again for Cartoon Saturday ...
and what could be more Russian than the famous nesting dolls?

They grow up so fast ...

Cats can be a problem ...

Downsizing is easier when your employees are multiple ...

Yes, this can be an issue ...

That is serious ...

More potential cat trouble ...

It's not easy being a parent sometimes ...

Whose, indeed? ...

Mass murder should never be this easy ...

There you are ...

And there you have it - the first Cartoon Saturday of May, 2019. At least you have something Russia-related that you can laugh at.

Have a good day and a great weekend. More thoughts coming tomorrow, when Musical Sunday visits with Rita Coolidge. See you then.

Bilbo

Great Moments in Editing and Signage

First collection for the new month ...

What do you get the children after the Easter Bunny has left the building? ...

Well, yes, I guess that was a good move ...

I think I'd be looking for a new marketing advisor ...

Right time, wrong place? ...

How would you know it leaks if it doesn't rain? ...

In this weird new world of gene manipulation, who knows what else the father could have been? ...

Um ... no, thanks ...

Very trying, I'd say ...

Reasons to feel weird ...

Why am I not surprised? ...

And there you have it ... we're off and running into a new month filled with editorial and signage amazement to distract you from the last three episodes of Game of Thrones. Hang in there.

Have a good day. See you back here tomorrow for Cartoon Saturday - more thoughts then.

Bilbo

Poetry Sunday

I didn't realize it until my friend and fellow blogger Kathleen pointed it out to me, but April is National Poetry Month. It's a shame that there's just this one last Poetry Sunday left in the month, but it's appropriate nevertheless to mark it with a poem suggested by Kathleen that's also one of my favorites ...

The Road Not Taken 

by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

As J.R.R. Tolkien put it, "It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to." Take the other road ... it may make all the difference.

Have a good day and enjoy the rest of your weekend. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

Cartoon Saturday

Oh, please ... just make it stop ...

North Korean strongman Kim Jong-Un was caught cheating on Donald Trump when he traveled to Russia for a date with Vladimir Putin; North Korea billed the United States $2 million in 2017 for hospital care for American student Otto Warmbier, and insisted that an American official sign a pledge to pay it before allowing Warmbier to return to the United States in a comatose state to die ... the pledge was signed by diplomat Joseph Yun on orders of Donald Trump, but it's not clear if the bill was ever paid; acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan has been cleared by the Department of Defense Inspector General of allegations that he showed favoritism in system acquisition towards Boeing, his former employer; Donald Trump has been invited to make his long-desired and pageantry-filled state visit to the United Kingdom in June of this year; and former Vice President Joe Biden has joined the herd of Democratic hopefuls competing for the party's 2020 presidential nomination.

This week, in honor of the looming horror of the 2020 presidential campaign season, a few cartoons about politicians and their campaigns seem appropriate ...

Everybody's gotta start someplace ...

Something about watching sausage being made ...

The Donald Trump presidential library won't need a whole lot of space to include his major writings, all of which are either 140 or 280 characters long ...

Good question ...

Ah, euphemisms ...

Never trust a politician by the size of the flag he waves ... or hugs ...

I think that office is much too large ...

How the 1% views the two-party system ...

As fantasies go, it's not a bad one ...

 It's one of the fastest ways to lose out in DC ...

And that's it for this edition of Cartoon Saturday ... I hope you enjoyed the cartoons about politicians, because it's easier to laugh than cry. And lately, I've been crying a lot.

Have a good day and a great weekend. More thoughts tomorrow, when Poetry Sunday returns. See you then.

Bilbo

The Left-Cheek Ass Clown for April, 2019

We've come down to the last days of April, and on this final Friday of the month it's time once again to find another Ass Clown worthy (and I use the term loosely) of recognition - however passing - above all others. The choice is always difficult, given the enormous number of candidates and the fact that I've already excluded Donald Trump (a lifetime award winner) from further consideration, but sometimes it's easier than others. So it is today.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Readers, I give you

The Left-Cheek Ass Clown for April, 2019

and the award goes - for the fifth time - to

White House Press Secretary

Sarah Huckabee Sanders

As the public face of the an administration, the Press Secretary fulfills a vital function, presenting information to the public and answering questions about administration policies. This can be a difficult and thankless job even in a relatively popular administration, but it's an especially tough one when the administration is headed by an egotistical, prevaricating blowhard like Donald Trump. Nevertheless, Sarah Huckabee Sanders has risen (or sunk) to new levels of mendacity in her full-throated defense of the indefensible and her tendency, like that of her boss, to double down on falsehood even when confronted with overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Consider this excerpt from the Mueller Report:

"Sanders told this Office that her reference to hearing from 'countless members of the FBI' was a 'slip of the tongue.' She also recalled that her statement in a separate press interview that rank-and-file FBI agents had lost confidence in Comey was a comment she made 'in the heat of the moment' that was not founded on anything."

It's important to note that, when testifying under oath, Ms Sanders grudgingly admitted lying to the press and the American people. But once the report was published and she was no longer under oath, Ms Sanders reverted to type, shifting the blame for her performance to someone else, as is the style of the Trump Administration:

“Those were Mueller’s words that they weren’t founded on anything. What I said was that it was in the heat of the moment . . . meaning, it wasn’t a scripted thing, it was something that I said, which is why that one word has become a big deal. But the big takeaway here is that the sentiment is 100 percent accurate. The FBI is a better place without James Comey. He disgraced himself and he undermined the agency that he was supposed to be in charge of.”

I see no reason to take anything Sarah Sanders says at face value, and neither should you. And if she's not going to do a daily. Or weekly. Or even monthly press conference, why should we be paying her?

Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Readers, Sarah Huckabee Sanders is named as the Left-Cheek Ass Clown for April, 2019 - her fifth award, and well earned.

Have a good day, and be sure to come back tomorrow for more thoughts on Cartoon Saturday. You know you need it, the way things are nowadays.

Bilbo

The Importance of Taking Notes

Many years ago, when I was serving on the Air Staff in the Pentagon, I worked for then-Major General Ken Minihan, who at the time was the Air Force's Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence. General Minihan was a great boss and a gifted leader, and we all enjoyed serving under him. But like all of us, he had his faults ... one of which was a very soft voice and a tendency to mumble, which sometimes made it difficult for us to follow what he was saying in meetings. This was coupled with a tendency to host lengthy brainstorming sessions with his staff to hash out difficult problems. He'd begin most meetings by telling us "now, don't write this down" as he went on to think through the issue of the moment out loud.

Naturally, because we were good staff officers, we did write everything down, and we used our notes later to reconstruct the discussions and document the results. This allowed us to create the staff packages that the General could use to make good decisions and implement sound policies. Taking good notes was a critical part of our jobs.

I've told you that story because I think that one of the most interesting things to come out of the Mueller Report on Russian interference in the 2016 elections and on the potential obstruction of justice by Donald Trump and his enablers is this: Trump doesn't like people who work for him to take notes.

General Minihan didn't want us to take notes because he didn't want us to waste our time writing when we could have been thinking and contributing to the discussion. Donald Trump doesn't want his staff to take notes because he hates leaving a paper trail that might come back to haunt him.

Donald Trump doesn't write much, unless you consider thousands of spiteful, insulting, and juvenile tweets to be presidential writing. Past presidents and their staffs left hundreds of thousands of pages of diaries, contemporaneous notes, and commentaries, and presidential libraries are treasure troves of information for historians. New discoveries and insights continue to be uncovered in the papers of George Washington, FDR, and other great presidents. One wonders what sort of presidential library will document the Trump administration. I suspect it will be very small, have few records larger than a tweet, and will not give future generations much insight into the workings of one of the most divisive and poorly-performing presidential administrations in our history.

Documenting what you do, particularly at the highest levels of government, is essential. Many presidential actions have results that will not become apparent for many years ... if nothing else, good documentation lets future administrations understand how and why decisions were made, and how plans and policies evolved in response to changing conditions. The presidential paper trail tells future administrations as much what wasn't done as what was.

It will take the United States decades to overcome the damage done by Donald Trump and his secretive, authoritarian ways. A hundred years or more from now, historians will look back and try to figure out why the nation elected such a man, why he did the things he did, and why so many members of his party ignored his blatant unsuitability for office and blindly supported him. It'll be tougher without the type of written record left by every previous administration.

Have a good day. Write more ... it may be the only way you'll be remembered*.

More thoughts tomorrow, when we name the Left-Cheek Ass Clown for the month. See you then.

Bilbo

* For my earlier rumination on how we'll be remembered, you can look at this post from November of 2009.

Musical Sunday

With the release of the Mueller Report, this seems like the appropriate song for this week ...

Send lawyers, guns, and money ... the s**t has hit the fan!

Have a good day and enjoy the rest of your weekend. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

Cartoon Saturday

It's been quite a week ...

The beloved cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris was severely damaged in a huge fire that apparently began when renovation workers sparked the blaze; an Alabama man who accidentally shot himself and his infant daughter with a gun carried in her diaper bag has died of his injuries; Special Counsel Robert Mueller's redacted report was released by Attorney General William Barr, revealing exactly what whoever reads it wanted to hear; the tabloid National Enquirer was sold to a magazine distributor for a reported $100 million; and the New York Yankees have dropped singer Kate Smith's rendition of "God Bless America" from their recorded music list because Smith evidently also sang some songs with racist lyrics.

This week, in honor of the release of the Mueller Report and its contribution to the full-employment program for lawyers, we feature cartoons about ... lawyers. Note: some of these have appeared on Cartoon Saturday before, but they're just too appropriate to the present situation to not use. Let's get to it ...

It's said to be in a tie for the title "The Oldest Profession" ...

If you read the written testimony provided to the Mueller investigation by the White House, you may recognize this one ...

Behind the scenes at the White House ...

Good point ...

I have this feeling every time I watch some high-priced lawyer bloviate on television ...

I'm sure Mr Trump gets a quantity discount ...

The nerve! ...

Yes, that's the Trump enabler version ...

Ain't that the truth? ...

The bottom line of the Mueller Report ...

And there you have it: another Cartoon Saturday dedicated to one of the world's oldest professions. Did I mention that I have tremendous scorn for the legal "profession?" Deal with it.

Have a good day and a great weekend. More thoughts tomorrow, on Musical Sunday. See you then.

Bilbo

Great Moments in Editing and Signage

Here we go again ...

He can probably serve in Congress or most Cabinet positions in the current administration ...

Well, that would certainly point to a potential suspect ...

I think they should have bought a better model ...

Nothing like a job with really good benefits ...

Police work is getting more specialized all the time ...

I wonder how he got out of the bowl ...

It's an understandable mistake, although I'd have thought he'd be a better fit at the Interior Department ...

Must be a very specialized font ...

They even have procedures for it? This is worse than I thought ...

Sounds like my house ...

Is there an editor in the house? I thought not.

Have a good day. See you back here tomorrow for Cartoon Saturday - the non-redacted edition. More thoughts then.

Bilbo