CSotD: City/Country, Young/Old

I didn’t understand GrubHub before the lockdown, since so many pizzerias and Chinese places deliver anyway and because I couldn’t see the advantage of paying some gig worker to do what it would take you so little effort to do yourself, which is get off your lazy ass and go get the food.

It didn’t help that Dominos is careful to tell you that, while there is an extra charge for delivery, none of it goes to the driver, so you should add a tip, which ratchets the price of a less-than-mediocre pizza up to the cost of a much better meal.

However, Joy of Tech is much more young, hip and urban-oriented than I am, and, besides, I’m more tolerant now, given that people in cities are genuinely locked down, while out here in the sticks, we just avoid unnecessary contact.

 

In fact, New Hampshire is opening up to outdoor seating for restaurants, and the distancing regulations are such that the city is blocking off part of a street as well as a parking lot so that two restaurants on the pedestrian mall can spread out, which I think is pretty cool.

It’s not the only way we work together: Our (Republican) governor holds regular news conferences in which he answers questions politely and thoroughly and introduces specialists to pick up on the science he knows is beyond him.

In case you’d forgotten that was possible.

I suppose if I were paying $2,700 a month for an apartment in Manhattan, I wouldn’t begrudge tipping $20 for a $14 pizza, but, more than that, if I lived in Manhattan, I wouldn’t be ordering pizza from Dominos.

Here’s a related …

Juxtaposition of the Day

(Alex)

(Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)

I should probably be a lot more tolerant, as well, of parents who are locked up in apartments with their children while out here we can take the little ones to the woods to run around.

And we’ve only got little Anne’s memories of what it was like in the Secret Annex, while I’m guessing her folks and the Van Pels could have expanded on the inner tensions, but, still, they lasted a good deal longer than all the people today who are bitching and moaning about their children.

I’m trying to be sympathetic, in part because, as said, we’re not nearly so locked down as they are in major cities, and also because, when my kids were little, I was home with them except for brief post-maternity months when their mother was.

Not every career choice offers the option of simultaneously playing with your kids and working.

But I also come from a time when falling in love and having kids wasn’t so goddam intentional as it seems in these two cartoons.

Part of it is the economy, certainly: We could afford to have one person home, while daycare costs would have gobbled up any advantage of both of us working. (Which they still often do.)

But there’s also the issue of being vulnerable and allowing yourself to, literally, fall in love rather than negotiate your way in.

Well, whatever. Maybe I’m being too harsh and judgmental, but here’s a judgment I won’t back off from: Bitching about your children is tres uncool.

We’ve heard a lot of talk and seen a lot of cartoons about how the lockdown will bring about domestic violence, but I kind of wonder how Joan Crawford and the kids would be doing about now.

If you’re really having trouble coping, get help.

If you’re not, don’t disgrace yourself by publicly trashing your children.

Little pitchers have big ears and decent people aren’t impressed.

 

And while I’m up here in the pulpit

As noted before, there is “spin” and there are “goddam lies,” and Mike Luckovich puts his spin on Moscow Mitch’s goddam lie that Obama didn’t leave advice about dealing with pandemics.

By the way, Antonin Scalia died on February 13, 2016, seven months before the elections that year, which means that, if anything happens to RBG, McConnell will block the president from appointing a new justice until after the elections six months from now.

Just kidding.

He’s not even pretending to be honest anymore, and it would be amusing if there were not an army of Deplorables out there eating up every word as if it were Holy Writ.

And, in case you thought Trump’s mishandling of the coronavirus or McConnell’s blatant lack of respect for the Constitution were changing anything, the GOP just won two Congressional seats in special elections.

 

It’s all in how you look at it

(Lisa Benson)

(Tom Toles)

I was going to run some of the cartoons from before the pandemic, the ones in which fiscal conservatives attacked Trump’s massive tax cuts and his huge additions to the national debt, but I seem to have misplaced them.

I gather that, theoretically, massive tax cuts are good for business while putting spending money directly in the hands of individuals is bad.

Although, in practice, the only thing trickling down on the middle class is plutocratic urine.

But, since Deplorables insist on thinking of national budgets like family budgets, it’s worth observing once again that when you can’t afford to feed your children or take them to the doctor, you get a second job, i.e., increase your revenues.

You don’t just stop feeding your kids or deprive them of medical treatment.

The America that was once so “great” had substantial taxes on the wealthy and much less distance between the earnings of the workers and the accumulations of the oligarchs.

That’s not socialism. It’s history.

 

Plus this

(Gary Varvel)

 

(Bill Bramhall)

Okay, the Obama era may not have quite been as celestial as Bramhall puts it, but that’s spin.

Promoting “Obamagate,” however, without explaining what it is supposed to be, simply backing up Dear Leader’s “Oh, you know what it is!” blank insistence, or his nonsensical, counterfactual accusations, with no explanations or examples, is not simply “spin.”

And if you make your living by commentary, you have a moral obligation to be able to tell the one thing from the other.

 

5 thoughts on “CSotD: City/Country, Young/Old

  1. I found the perfect encapsulation of the modern mask-denying poodle-trim-at-all-costs patriots in a 1947 Li’l Abner strip. Rather than find out that trying to embed it here is a breach of protocol and might not even work, here’s a link:

    https://flic.kr/p/2j23a8i

    I suspect that if this group had been prevalent in the 1940s, they’d be tired of saving vital war materials and other sacrifices by February of 1942, and by 1943, we’d be studying German so we could understand what our new government was saying, and maybe digging the thrilling jazz stylings of Charlie and his Orchestra.

  2. I live in Ohio, so yes, I know that sensible, courteous Republican governors are possible.

    The Lil Abner is good, but Pogo said it best : “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

  3. This one was worth it for Obamagate alone. Also, I love me some SMBC as weird as it sometimes is.

    There are certainly Republicans more sane than the president (five years ago, I would have guessed most of them were but I would have had to eat my shoe). There are also clearly democrats who are more crazy (anti-vax, the people scared of millimeter waves but somehow not freaking out about sunshine, people who sell crystals for uses other than purely aesthetic…).

    None the less, most scientists lean liberal, and I think that is a little telling as to who has more check marks in the “fairly reasonable” catagory. It also is striking how often the Republican leadership pushes something and then, a week later, blames Pelosi or the democratic party more generally for it, as if 1) democrats were the one sneaking in pork for big business while Republicans bemoaned the fate of the poor Everyman. My dudes, that’s not even your official platform, and also if a republican President and Senate majority can’t stop something, then you get the blame anyway. It’s not weird that politicians lie, but it’s getting awfully weird how willing we are to accept BS without thinking twice.

  4. Yeah, gotta love conservatives who have five dogs, three pickup trucks, and a wall full of guns, and complain that they struggle to feed their families. Just an observation. I grew up during that time of “American Greatness.” It wasn’t great for everybody, but it was better for most. Yes, high taxes and Union wages were a part of that prosperity.

    As far as debt and deficits go, the only Presidents in my lifetime who practiced fiscal discipline were Democrats. I read once where JFK wanted to lower taxes, and it was the Republicans who objected, in fear of creating deficits which would raise the debt. The top tax rate was 92% at the time. Where have those Republicans gone?

  5. So sad to hear how mother’s actually have to waste their precious time with their own children ?, instead of strangers instilling their values principal’s, so sad to think parents have to
    be at home the place of safety and security, and not
    spread the plague (one guy in 5hr. Verified to infect 80 people at nightclub,fact)and kill family and friends
    ,damn Democrat hoax invented to make the boastful little horn(Trumpy) and Mr.666 5th avenue (The Kushner) look bad! Isreal might have to take Trump’s likeness off the 1.5 sheckle Temple coin! But don’t worry folks the microchip will save us all from this hoax, as it will hold all precious vital health , wealth, and location information to keep us safe and snuggled , no need to ever worry , about cash, keys, being robbed where kids are who they are in proximity,ECT,ECT,, or any crime because everything everybody must comply , it’s a matter of national security.
    alerting us of instantly to protect us and others ! It’s standing at the door knocking, the infrastructure for the 1st time in history is launching the new 5g is powerful enough , A.I. is here to save the day. make it happen! Wow what a mouth full but…truth be told there is so much more. What a quawinkadink, almost sounds apocalyptic to think there just might be …guided , I’m a math,science ,history buff, these odds all coming to a pinnicle simultaneously calculate 1in a 1,000,000,000 or better.
    #Trump plague! Guess now we are #1 it’s time to own it .

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