The Left-Cheek Ass Clown for May, 2021

In the vast, swirling cesspool that is the universe of potential Ass Clown Awardees, there's an occasional chunk that comes to the surface faster and bobs for attention more energetically than most. And so it is today, as we present the award for

The Left-Cheek Ass Clown for May, 2021

to

Representative Andrew Clyde (R, GA-9)

What is it with Georgia and the people it elects to Congress? The state already has the questionable distinction of having sent Marjorie Taylor Greene (the Left-Cheek Ass Clown for January of this year) to Washington for some reason, but another Georgia representative, Andrew Clyde, has reached a level of stupidity and denial of reality at least equal to Ms Greene.

During a May 12th House Oversight Committee hearing on the January 6th Capitol riot, Rep.  Clyde said the House floor was not breached during the riot. Unfortunately, there is photographic evidence of him (second from the left) trying to hold the door to the House chamber against the rioters ...

He went on to say that,

"Watching the TV footage of those who entered the Capitol, and walk through Statuary Hall showed people in an orderly fashion staying between the stanchions and ropes taking videos and pictures, you know ... If you didn't know that TV footage was a video from January the sixth, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.” 

Let's look at a few images from January 6th of people on "a normal tourist visit" behaving "in an orderly fashion" ...

The level of gaslighting and blatant denial of reality of Republicans* in general, and of Rep Clyde in particular, is stunning. It's little wonder that many people are recalling this famous quote from George Orwell's prescient novel 1984:

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

The nation cannot afford to allow cynical liars like Andrew Clyde, Ted Cruz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Louie Gohmert, Ron Johnson, and others to obscure or bury the truth of what happened on January 6th, 2021. It was a huge and violent riot in which six people died, more than a hundred were injured, and massive damage was done to the Capitol Building and to the honor and international standing of the United States. It was the result of a disgraceful, sustained effort to undermine the results of a free, fair, legal, and proper election in the interest of a defeated party and a depraved individual unwilling to accept the legitimacy of the American people's choice for President.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Readers, the choice is clear: the Left-Cheek Ass Clown for May, 2021, is Georgia Representative Andrew Clyde. Like his fellow representative and Ass Clown Awardee Marjorie Taylor Greene, he deserves the opprobrium and disgust of every American who values truth, honor, democracy, and the primacy of the Constitution.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow, on Cartoon Saturday. See you then.

Bilbo

* The GOP was, of course, the Right-Cheek Ass Clown awardee for May, 2021.

Musical Sunday

This week, we honor that most macha of GOP House members. Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is one tough legislator, fearlessly berating her fellow members of Congress, as well as courageously taking on teenaged gun control advocates. Don't cross this lady ...

It makes you wonder what sort of people are being elected to Congress ... and what sort of people are voting for them, doesn't it?

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

Bilbo

Cartoon Saturday

It just gets weirder and weirder ...

The remains of a 20-ton Chinese rocket fell from space on Sunday, landing harmlessly (thank goodness) in the Indian Ocean; deadly violence continued in the Middle East with at least 130 people killed as Hamas militants continued to launch barrages of rockets into Israel, which responded with massive artillery fire and air strikes; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced on Thursday that persons who have successfully received full immunization for Covid-19 can stop wearing masks in most areas; Congresswoman Liz Cheney called out Fox News - on a Fox News program - for the network's culpability in spreading the myth of the stolen 2020 election; and in South Carolina, a woman was seriously burned after her car, loaded with multiple cans of hoarded gasoline, exploded as she tried to elude police, who had noted that the license plates on her car had been reported stolen.

This week, in honor of the difficulty of President Biden accomplishing anything worthwhile for real people in the face of admitted 100% Republican opposition, I thought a collection of cartoons riffing on the myth of Sisyphus would be timely ...

Few people know about Sisyphus's little brother ...  

What could make it worse? ...

Myth mashup ...

He should have thought of that sooner ...

Delay of game ...

Too many steps to count without it ...

It's an appropriate hobby ...

Who's more frustrated? ...

Helping out temporarily ...

Yep, that was probably how things started ...

That's it for today - hope the trials of Sisyphus have helped you laugh at your own trials in today's weird US of A.

Have a good day and a great weekend. More tuneful thoughts tomorrow, when Musical Sunday returns.

Bilbo

Great Moments in Editing and Signage

And away we go ...

I usually take care of this myself, but why pass up a good deal? ...

A side of mansplaining with your lunch, ladies? ...

Um ...

I hope the animal rights people don't get wind of this ...

Republican economic math ...

Thanks, but I'll go with the broccoli and cheese ...

That's one tough arbitrator ...

Well, duh ...

This was in a newspaper in Tyler, Texas back in January ... you know ... Texas, the Looney Star State ...

Is this an odd way to describe gerrymandering, or just an inept ad? ...

That's it for this week - hope you enjoyed it.

Have a good day, and come back tomorrow for Cartoon Saturday. More thoughts then. 

Bilbo

Mothers Day, 2021

If you were looking for the Poetry Sunday post you expected, don't despair. Because today is Mothers' Day, Poetry Sunday will not appear this week so that I can present the fourteenth iteration of my traditional Mothers' Day post, slightly revised and updated. It may be recycled and tweaked, but it comes no less from the heart. If you've read it before, just know that everything still applies ... read it again if you like, or come back another day for my thoughts on other things ...

Today is Mothers' Day, the one day each year we set aside to honor the lady we undervalue the other 364 (365 in leap years). It's the day we remember the person who made our hurts better, explained our homework, cooked our meals, washed our clothes, drove us where we needed to go, warned us about our less-savory acquaintances, embarrassed us in front of our friends, and did her best to point us down the straight line of a moral and upright life.

Mothers are the wonderful and woefully underappreciated people from whom the Army and the Navy stole their one-time recruiting slogans - the Army's "We do more before 9 AM than most people do all day," and the Navy's "It's not just a job, it's an adventure." They'll never match the skill and daring of a mother who, over the past year of Covid-inspired insanity, managed a household, coped with the loss of a job (or jobs), helped home-school her children and keep them occupied all day long, and worried that every sniffle or sneeze was a sign of impending death.

Somewhere in my web surfing I found this riff on how we look at our Mothers at different ages:

Age 4: Mommy can do anything!
Age 8: Mom knows a lot!
Age 12: Mother doesn't know everything.
Age 14: Mother doesn't know anything.
Age 16: Mother is so old-fashioned.
Age 18: Her? She's out of it.
Age 25: Mom might know something about that.
Age 35: Before we decide, let's ask Mom.
Age 45: What would Mom have thought about that?
Age 65: I wish I could talk that over with Mom.

It's true.

My mother passed away twenty years ago at the far-too-young age of 74. She spent a long and honorable life raising four children who, I like to think, made her proud ... most of the time, anyway. And in her twilight years, her once-formidable mind ravaged by Alzheimer's Disease, she missed much of the result of her love and care and sacrifice - a son who's now retired and gray, a small army of grandchildren, and six beautiful great-grandchildren who will never know her love and wisdom and the off-the-wall sense of humor* that brightened the lives of everyone who knew her.

Now the next generation of mothers is moving the family forward. Between them, my beloved daughters Yasmin and Tabitha** are raising the world's six greatest grandchildren (Marcy, Joe, Noah, Leya, Elise, and Ava). And someday those wonderful grandchildren will sit down on Mothers' Day and reflect - just as their opa does today - on the lady who gave up so much of her own life and dreams to make them who they are.

And so again this year, I wish my own Agnes, Yasmin and Tabitha, my sister Lisa and sisters-in-law Laura and Brenda, fellow bloggers Amanda and Fiona, my dear friends Kathy, Gail, and Lioudmila, and all the other mothers and grandmothers out there doing the world's toughest job, a very happy Mothers' Day and many more to come. We couldn't be what we are, or do what we do, without you.

And lest you think I'm getting too maudlin about the whole thing, here's a picture from long ago of my Dad with four then and future moms: my daughter Yasmin, my sister Lisa, Agnes, and my mother ...

We're an odd family, but somehow we've turned out all right, more-or-less. Good parents will do that to you.

Have a good day, and take the time to give your Mother a hug and a kiss. Someday, you'll wish you had.

Bilbo

* Every time you groan at one of my puns, you should be grateful that you never had to go down in flames in a pun war with Mom.

** I don’t think of Tabitha as an “in-law.”

Cartoon Saturday

And what a week it's been ...

A federal grand jury has indicted the four former Minneapolis police officers involved in the arrest and death of George Floyd, charging them with violating Mr Floyd’s constitutional rights; in an event allowed to be covered only by GOP-friendly Fox News, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis on Thursday signed a bill tightening voting rules in Florida, a pivotal presidential swing state - the latest in a series of Republican-endorsed voter suppression measures aimed at ensuring the 2024 election is won by the GOP, regardless of the outcome of the vote; near San Antonio, Texas, more than two dozen people were freed from a semi-trailer that was stopped on suspicion of human smuggling; in India, pressure is growing to impose a strict nationwide lockdown in spite of the economic impact, as the death rate has skyrocketed and crematoriums and burial grounds are swamped; and the Republican governors of South Carolina and Montana are ending federal pandemic unemployment benefits for their states' residents because, they say, enhanced jobless programs are creating labor shortages by making it more lucrative to stay unemployed, it being easier to blame federal unemployment assistance than a lack of jobs which pay a decent wage.

This week, a collection of cartoons about politics and politicians, because why not ...

The weekly meeting of the House and Senate Republican Caucuses opens ...

I don't know how the Oscars missed this one ...

He needs to stay far away, then ...

That will do it ...

The new definition of "Compromise" is "what the GOP demands Democrats do in order to gain a potential promise of eventual support that will never materialize, anyhow" ...

True ...

Also true ...

GOP skepticism ...

We need to replace volume control with performance enhancement ...

The GOP approach to solving the nation's ills ...

Have a good day and a great weekend. Think carefully about what your politicians say and do ... and think especially carefully about what partisan opinion analysts (particularly those of the far right) interpret what your politicians say and do. They do not necessarily have your best interests at heart.

More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

The Right-Cheek Ass Clown for May, 2021

As we pass the first hundred days of the Biden Administration, we see once again what a functioning government is capable of doing. We also see what a political party interested only in maintaining power is capable of doing. While President Biden chugs calmly along, working to beat the pandemic, restore the economy, and run a federal government that actually cares about ordinary Americans, the Republican Party, still fearful of Der Furor and his rabid followers, falls back on hatred, lies, voter suppression, and obstructionism in a desperate attempt to return the nation to an imagined Golden Age ruled by white men and devoted to the worship of guns, lower taxes, and the interests of big business and the wealthy.

For the first time in a long time, the choice of an Ass Clown awardee is a complete slam dunk, without the least question or hesitation in my mind. Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Right-Cheek Ass Clown for May, 2021

is presented to

The Republican Party

The GOP has received this award - either as a sole awardee or part of a joint presentation - ten times* before today, and has reached a level of stupendous ass clownery that would appall the Founders whom they so piously invoke when it suits them. The party has wiped its collective backside with the Constitution and abandoned all pretense of honor, decency, and democracy in the service of a disgraced former president unfit to hold any office of responsibility. 

As I write this, the Republican Party continues to refuse to accept the results of the 2020 election, insisting - without the least shred of evidence - that the election was fraudulent. Although virtually every lawsuit filed by GOP drones contesting election results has been withdrawn or dismissed by the courts for lack of evidence, the party continues to insist that it could only have lost the election because of vast cheating on the part of the Democrats. The former president went so far as to incite a deadly riot at the US Capitol that cost five lives and huge damage to the physical Capitol and the reputation of the United States as a nation governed by the rule of law ... and his party refuses to acknowledge or support any inquiry to assess responsibility for that horrendous, tragic, and thoroughly un-American event.

More than half a million Americans are dead and the economy was in ruins because the Republican Party, following the lead of its disgraceful head, refused to take the Covid-19 pandemic seriously. Now that a competent administration is in charge, the GOP continues its refusal to acknowledge the loss of the election, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell openly declaring that "One hundred percent of my focus is on stopping this new administration" ... an administration that is actually trying to do good things for the American people.

Across the country in states where it has the power, the Republican Party enacts restrictive voting laws - ostensibly in the name of "election integrity," but clearly designed to discourage voting by those Americans likely to vote for Democrats. 

Today's Republican Party stands for nothing other than gaining and maintaining power in an authoritarian, undemocratic government it will rule without possibility of challenge - not because of the popularity of its programs and actions, but by writing election laws and defining electoral districts in its favor. It did not even bother to publish a platform - a declaration of its goals and principles - for the 2020 election, simply saying that its platform was whatever Der Furor wanted.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Readers, without the least doubt or question, the Right Cheek Ass Clown Award for May, 2021, is presented to the Republican Party ... and to those Americans who have drunk enough self-destructive Kool-Aid to follow it.

Have a good day, and seriously ask yourself which party actually has your best interests at heart. The answer should be obvious.

More thoughts tomorrow, when Cartoon Saturday returns.

Bilbo

* I keep track of the awards I've presented, and whether they are individual or shared. Since I began presenting Ass Clown Awards in 2011, they have been presented to the Republican Party/GOP as an organization 10 times (two of which were shared with the Democratic Party); they have been presented to individual Republican or conservative political or media figures 128 times. By contrast, I have presented the award to the Democratic Party as an organization twice (both times shared with the GOP), and to individual Democratic or liberal political for media figures eight times. From these figures, you might infer that I am harder on Republicans/conservatives than on Democrats/liberals ... this is probably true, but mostly because I am at heart a moderate (well, okay, slightly center-left) fellow, and I expect more from people who claim to espouse fundamental conservative principles rather than present-day Republican sewage.

Musical Sunday

There are necessary evils in our sad world; too bad more of them aren't just musical ...

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

Bilbo

Cartoon Saturday

New month, new challenges ...

President Biden gave his first address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, while Republican Senator Tim Scott gave the GOP response; at least 44 people were killed and dozens more injured in a stampede at a crowded religious festival in Israel; in separate incidents, a cow and an alligator caused traffic delays on Wednesday in Houston, Texas; an Indonesian submarine lost at sea last week may have been hit by a powerful underwater wave; and here in the good old US of A, people are being bribed with free beer, donuts, and even savings bonds in order to convince them to get themselves vaccinated against Covid-19*.

Following on yesterday's focus on great moments in police blotters, this week's cartoons feature the men and women in blue we hope will protect and serve, rather than shoot first and ask questions later ...

Now, Mr Lecter, may we see your license? ...  

Plenty of witnesses, nowadays ...

I'm sure there's some other law he could cite ...

Why the cops always interrogate criminals separately ...

That narrows it down ...

How the police can make up for budget cuts ...

Forsooth! ...

Yep ...

Hmmm ...

Extra duty ...

You have the right to remain silly. Voting for people like Jim Jordan, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Josh Hawley will help.

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

Bilbo

* Apparently, "not dying alone in a hospital with a ventilator tube stuck down your throat" isn't a good enough reason for some people. In America, you have the right to remain stupid.