CSotD: Write offs
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The Syria air strike cartoons are coming in, but I'm not seeing a lot of consensus, either in cartoons or in social media.
Joe Heller is one of the few who salutes an actual, as he says, change of heart, which, by the way, I would note might also be indicated by the demotion (and rumored impending firing) of Steve Bannon.
It's hard to tell what's happening in the White House, but it seems possible that someone has finally — inshallah — grabbed hold of the tiller.
If so, the air strikes may have been suggested by one of the few grown-ups in the administration, and maybe we'll see a few other signs of change.
Meanwhile, Steve Sack indicates a foiling of Assad's chemical warfare, but without stating exactly how he feels about it, though his art makes it clear that he disapproves of genocide, while the bright red,white and blue of the missile suggests that he approves of the intervention.
And Pat Bagley seems to see it less as a "change of heart" than as one more example of Trump's lack of vision, and a move that will lead to further war.
He doesn't directly contrast the strike with Obama's more cautious "red line" approach, but others have, and, while Bagley may consider it impulsive, they don't.
There are also some new cartoons noting that, if we're so concerned about Syrian genocide, we might let more refugees escape it, most of which I think were drawn earlier and are only appearing now.
As noted yesterday, it's hard to be timely when the system hangs your work up for a few days regardless of current events.
Which I hope is also the reason the Don Rickles Pearly Gates cartoons are beginning to show up, because I really think dead civilians and lethal air strikes are a little more pressing.
On the other hand, the Syrian kids and the old comedian died pretty much at the same time, so maybe I'm misunderestimating other people's sense of perspective.
Keep watching …
… and write when you learn how
Part of appreciating Alex is recognizing that Britain has strict compliance laws for businesses that don't seem to exist in the United States.
We do have rules and a look at them explains why we also have TurboTax. It's not that they're impenetrable but they are complicated enough that to hell with it, let the computer sort it out.
Not that I have to figure out how to apportion the expenses of renting a skybox at the Super Bowl in order to entertain clients while simultaneously thrilling my family.
But I hope the IRS doesn't mind if I put airport fast food on a single credit card and don't otherwise document each burger.
I'm filing my taxes today and I have zero expectation of being audited, partially because I'm small fry and partially because we've completely gutted the IRS, cutting staff to a level where you can pretty much write off anything you want without anyone seeing any red flags, however blatant.
This is apparently not the situation in Britain.
However, issues of privacy are front and center in this country, particularly with the recent decision to cancel a regulation that hadn't yet gone into force which, had it been permitted to take effect, would have prevented ISPs from selling your data like on-line sites do.
Forcing us all to use DuckDuckGo as our home page.
Even Glenn McCoy – a dependable fan of free markets – drew a cartoon decrying this loss of (potential) privacy.
But I like the approach of Alex's client to foil electronic monitors by going analog.
I'm sticking by my belief — shared, by the by, with Edward Snowden — that collecting everything is pretty much the same as collecting nothing, and that the only sensible way to monitor data is to identify narrower targets.
And the other half of sensible monitoring is to avoid having nitwits evaluate the data that you pick out.
I still have to laugh over the Senator who, in grilling Hillary Clinton, was appalled that she had not been aware of a private email exchange between two mid-level State Department employees, because, of course, one of the duties of the Secretary of State is to read each and every piece of email in the entire 68,000-employee department.
But Alex is right in that written communications can be much more private, which suggests a crackpot tin foil theory that I'd like to see "Fox and Friends" pick up on.
Something else that has been rattling around social media lately is that kids (allegedly) can no longer write or read cursive, despite some states which have passed laws requiring cursive be taught.
Which might prompt some to say that we don't need more laws telling teachers what to teach and that maybe, if there weren't so many other things that little tiny kids are legally required to do in first grade, cursive would still be on their list of subjects, along with coloring and reading "Dick and Jane" and basically learning how to be in school.
But here's my theory: The reason we no longer teach kids cursive is because we can't monitor people's thoughts if they put them on paper.
Getting rid of cursive is a gummint black helicopter trilateral plot to force the next generation to do everything electronically so Big Brother can track them.
Now, if we can convince "Fox and Friends," and maybe a few talkshow hosts, of the validity of this theory, that would get it right to the top and we'd start pulling federal funding from any states that don't teach cursive.
I think it was Tennyson or maybe Edna St. Vincent Millay who wrote:
Write on, baby, write on, baby
Write on, baby, write on, baby
I could pick your face out in an FBI file
You may look pretty but I can't say the same for your mind
Same poet, anyway, who wrote "Have you seen Big Brother, baby, standing in the shadows?"
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