CSotD: Ethical Rulings Remain Up In The Air
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I couldn’t decide whether to comment on politics today or pick out some funny stuff from the comics page, so I’ll compromise and discuss the ridiculous flying emolument, which Anderson accurately depicts as a clear example of corruption and self-dealing.
Clarence Thomas must certainly be gnashing his teeth over having sold out for so little, though Clarence has the advantage of not having to pretend he’s donating his motor home to his library in three years.
This fabulous beast is 250 feet long, with a 195 foot wingspan and stands 63 feet off the ground, which makes you wonder how big the rest of the presidential library is going to have to be, given that you could probably fit all of Trump’s books in the back of the pouch of the seat in front of you.
Trump now promises that he won’t fly around on the plane once he’s out of office and we know he’s always been a man of his word.
So he has bought Melania a respectable Republican cloth coat. And you know, Don Jr. and Eric and Ivanka, like all kids, love the plane, and regardless of what they say about it, he’s gonna keep it.
Ohman suggests that the plane needs to be big in order to carry all of Trump’s baggage, which is considerable.
By the way, it takes two hours to fly from Washington to Palm Beach, but it also requires flying down the bullet-proof limo and other motorcade vehicles in a second plane. Given that each weekend trip costs about $13.4 million, maybe we should just keep a second motorcade parked down there, since he goes nearly every weekend.
Wuerker suggests that, in addition to being a bribe, the thing is a major security risk, and it’s already been pointed out that, besides the need to retrofit it with communication devices, it will have to be taken nearly completely apart to remove any little tiny communication devices that may have already been implanted in it.
Not that our friends in Qatar would do that sort of thing, mind you. It wouldn’t be sporting, old chap.
It’s all conjecture at this point. Now the Qataris are saying they weren’t actually going to give him the plane. They were just going to let him borrow it.
And before he took off, they’d walk around the plane and make note of any nicks or scratches, and he was going to have to return it with a full tank.
Oh well, it could be worse: After all, Jimmy Carter’s brother put his name on a brand of beer. Now there was a scandalous conflict of interest!
So what else is on the docket today?
Glez addresses the Trump administration’s admission of Afrikaners with a cartoon that says “Test your own chance of obtaining refugee status” with color swatches of “Welcome,” “Don’t insist” and “Try again later.”
This is a more nuanced test than the old “paper bag test” known in the African American community, in which the color of a grocery bag was the divider between light- and dark-skinned black people for discrimination within the community.
However, it seems our immigration policy is binary and either you are acceptable or you are from what our president terms “shit hole countries,” though now we’re making an exception for white people from those shit hole countries where their fellow countrymen can’t pass even the grocery bag test.
Accordingly, a white person who might have to take compensation for giving up land to redress a century of unfair practices is a good prospect, while, elsewhere, a brown person being threatened by gangs or starving to death is a bad prospect and, as Glez suggests, a black person should not even ask.
But of course that’s not the way the decision is made. US Deputy Secretary of State Christoper Landau explained that “we underscored the importance of assimilation into the United States, which is one of the very important factors that we look to in refugee admissions.”
In other words, we prefer people who look like we do, and it is the policy of the administration that “we” are white and that people who fall elsewhere on Glez’s color wheel are “them.”
Juxtaposition of the Day
I’m ignoring cartoons about Leo XIV being a White Sox fan or refusing to put ketchup on hot dogs, and even the mildly sacrilegious jokes about deep-dish communion hosts. While I don’t think they’re insightful or funny, I’m not particularly offended.
And if they make him seem human and approachable, that’s not a bad thing.
But he spent a couple of decades in Peru and became a citizen of that country, so whether or not it is offensive to deck him out in American Jingo vestments, it is inaccurate. I would assume he will serve as a citizen of the world, which is a good thing, whether or not there is a next world.
Juxtaposition of the Day #2
Two views of the sudden shift in the US/China trade war, and if you have followed this story at all, you are likely to agree with Granlund’s take, which is that Trump backed down.
As was clear from the start, Xi Jinping had no interest in bargaining and was content to take a hit on American business while he used the contretemps to cement China’s standing in other markets. He gave up very, very little as Trump dropped his tariff from 145% to 30%, which will still increase costs for American importers.
So if Granlund had also chosen a scene from the Holy Grail to illustrate the situation, it might have been the part where King Arthur shouts “Run Away!” and the knights scatter..
Certainly not the Black Knight scene, unless he had positioned Xi as Arthur and Trump as the threatening knight who, though bereft of both arms and legs, insists that he won the battle and that his opponent is a coward for walking away.
Which would be silly.
He’d have been much more likely to have chosen the part with the Knights Who Say Xi, or, as he somewhat hinted, the Tale of Sir Robin Heelspurs.
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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