CSotD: Priorities
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This week, Non Sequitur has had an "alternative facts" story arc going in which Danae tweeted that there would be a snow day despite no evidence to support the idea.
It was amusing, but alternative fact gags are a dime-a-dozen and I wasn't paying all that much attention.
Until today's wrap-up cracked the whip. Well played, Wiley.
Not only is it a surprising contrast to the usual Saturday story arc wrap, generally a bland piece that hits the reset button so Monday can start anew, but it's a perceptive summation of the real harm in "alternative facts," which is that policy can be formed around nonsensical, self-serving fakery.
Which is nothing new. We've simply come to the point where we don't bother with the fig leaf anymore.
As readers here are well aware, some cartoonists, like David Horsey and Clay Jones, now feature blogs to go along with their cartoons. Tom Toles does something of the opposite, with a blog that is separate from his graphic commentary and often only illustrated with variations on a logo.
Today he comments on the evergreen top priority of the Republicans and how their allegiance to tax cuts for the wealthy thereby ties them into Trump's less reality-anchored policies and pronouncements.
I wouldn't normally feature a column that wasn't matched by a contemporary cartoon, but this one sharply pinged memories of an old — not sure how old and can't read the date on it — Horsey cartoon from the W years that fits perfectly.
Note that this isn't to suggest that Horsey was ahead of Toles, simply that the Party of Rich Folks has been remarkably consistent over the years, and, as Toles points out, however they dress it up, they're still serving the SOS.
Meanwhile, back in the present day, Toles' colleague at Washpo, Ann Telnaes, tweeted a link to a chilling-but-revealing Politico article about how the White House staff pampers Dear Leader to keep him away from his unsecured phone and unhinged Twitter account.
Then she followed it up with a cartoon that proves that a picture can, indeed, be worth 1,000 words, or, in this case, 902.
In the last months of Woodrow Wilson's presidency, his incapacity from a stroke led to his wife and aides having to take over parts of his duties, and it seems that both FDR and Reagan were not quite up to the task as their time in office wound down.
But we've never before elected a president who needed tending from the get-go.
Perils of the Profession
Ted Rall gets tripped up by a new factor in editorial cartooning: It's hard to come up with anything as absurd and insane as what's actually going on.
Trump's immigrant actions, we have been assured, are not racist and are certainly not specifically aimed at Muslims.
Just at people from Mexico or places where people look and talk like Mexicans, and it's not racist to suggest that those are the same thing, as well as people from the dangerous terrorist nations of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Libya …
It's not that you can't make this stuff up.
But you've got to get your fantasies out fast, before Dear Leader turns them real.
Meanwhile …
(Retail)
Driving down the road and seeing the forest of "help wanted" signs in front of stores and restaurants makes me wonder if the current policy of paying peanuts and getting monkeys is working at all?
Margulies makes a well-known point that the jobs taken by immigrants and illegals are hardly on a par with the jobs being shut down here.
Moreover, something some of us out in the countryside know is that hiring legal foreign farmworkers requires that you first advertise for and give preference to American workers. The ads are simply an additional cost of doing business, however, because very few people respond to them and very few of those who do are willing to stick through the season.
Seasonal work is hard for permanent residents in the first place, and tough, demanding temporary jobs that don't pay well are not what most people are looking for anyway.
Factory jobs, such as they are, at least don't require you to constantly relocate, but I think people are aware that the more skilled manufacturing jobs are disappearing not because they are being exported but because of robots, and the jobs we're actually sending to overseas sweatshops are pretty low-skill, low-pay gigs anyway.
But Retail has been following an arc this week about a low-level storeroom worker who, though he likes his job, can't get more hours and so has been forced to take a second gig simply to make ends meet.
You would think that all these employers who are raising "help wanted" signs on road sides, and meanwhile bitching and moaning about the quality of the workers they get, would make some effort to retain the ones like Donnie who are dependable and willing to work.
However, they obviously don't make that effort.
Norm Feuti doesn't just spin Retail out of dreams and rumors, but spent years working in the business, and I have also been in a middle-management position where I was told to get more out of my employees but for god's sake don't let them take overtime.
One of the problems with losing small, locally-owned businesses is that the people making the decisions don't ever see the people who are doing the work.
The button-down buffoons at Corporate have often never worked in the business at hand but, instead, are simply expert about interchangeable spreadsheets.
It's easy to make decisions about how things should be done when you don't have to confront the reality of how things are.
Especially when you have a government that's willing to share the burden, weeping over welfare spending while subsidizing the robber barons rather than mandating appropriate pay levels and working conditions.
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