CSotD: Three Mystifying Mysteries
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Today is the Big Day — the start of three Big Days — if you think the Bezos/Sanchez wedding is the event of the season.
For my part, I’m mystified by the whole thing, though, unlike Le Lievre, I wouldn’t imply that the entire $50 million should have been spent on the homeless instead.
I’d put it in the category of “besides.” It would be nice to have an equal amount earmarked for the less fortunate although I suppose that would come across as condescending. There’s really no way to make a three-day wedding any less grotesque.
It’s possible to be fabulously rich without being fabulously vainglorious. Plenty of wealthy people have had small tasteful weddings, to which I would add that, if you have 250 friends, you don’t really have any.
First Dog, as he so often does, speaks for me, though he doesn’t often do so in Italian. I have little to add except that, given how much the world’s richest Jeff is already spending, perhaps he could buy his bride a shirt, since her photos suggest perhaps she doesn’t own one.
Jennings appears to think that the compulsively acquisitive have few limits to their need to possess everything and I particularly like the wedding presents in the background because you might think he’d at least get some of the money spent on the shindig back in the form of presents, but where else would his friends shop, if they truly love him?
Katauskas admits she didn’t put Jeff and Lauren in this cartoon, but that it was inspired by their wretched excess, and I think she’s closer to the mark than Le Lievre because it’s not so much the contrast between the wedding and the poverty as it is the long-term relationship between tax shelters and the unsheltered.
And then there’s this, the response to Zoran Mamdani’s victory in the NYC Democratic Mayoral Primary, which has given the collywobbles to the folks who can’t quite define “socialism” or “communism” but have used Bernie Sanders for years to frighten their children into eating their vegetables.
I’ve lived within a stone’s throw of Burlington since Bernie was mayor there and followed his career ever since. Burlington is still around and mostly intact.
What’s more, the small city I live in now has free buses and yet I doubt there are a dozen people here who know the words to the Internationale, or even the tune.
On the other hand, we turned out a few thousand people to protest the Man Who Would Be King and who thinks the federal government should be able to control private businesses, which I learned in junior high is the textbook definition of a communist.
Juxtaposition of the Day
MacLeod’s cartoon reminds me of a long-ago time when I was selling vacuum cleaners, and one of the guys broke the whole room up reporting that a customer told him, “I’ve bought three of those Singers, and not one of them was worth a damn!”
As the Good Book sayeth, “As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly” and the Democrats returneth to Andrew Cuomo.
In this case, it’s not that I don’t understand the appeal of Mamdani, because despite Gotham’s confidence that the universe revolves around it, I hadn’t been paying any attention to their mayoral race.
What I don’t understand is getting the party brass behind someone who was forced out of office for moral turpitude. I loved his old man, too, but Mario’s been dead for ten years and the Democratic Party seems determined to join him.
And then there’s the issue of NATO, which has drawn a number of negative cartoons from overseas, many suggesting that Trump was insulting and dismissive of the alliance.
That’s not the impression I got from news coverage, which even reported that he’d had a change of heart.
Now, Trump changes his opinions more often than he changes his socks, but there are certain central pillars that he clings to even in the face of strong contrary evidence, and he’s been railing against NATO for as long as he’s been playing politics.
He gave quite the opposite impression following the meetings. “I left there saying that these people really love their countries. It’s not a ripoff. And we’re here to help them protect their country.”
Royaards depicts one member crossing off the social benefits they’ll have to give up to make that 5% commitment to national defense, but I’d like to see the spreadsheet, because they’re already spending an average of 2.6% of their Gross Domestic Product on defense, and it’s hard to believe another 2.4% would break the bank, though the US only spends 3.2% of its GDP on defense.
It’s also hard to believe they’ll all leap to meet that goal. They pledged to spend 2% on defense back in 2014 and nine of the 32 members haven’t gotten to that level yet.
On the other hand, it beats the hell out of Wimpy’s suggestion.
And despite Koterba’s take, it doesn’t seem that Trump left Zelenskyy high-and-dry, either. Ukraine’s potential membership, which was raised at the last NATO meeting, didn’t come up this time, but, on the other hand, several nations have pledged to provide weapons and resources to Kyiv.
In addition, Trump and Zelenskyy met privately during the summit and reported a friendly exchange, with Trump saying the US would be likely to provide Ukraine with Patriot missiles.
And despite Turner’s suggestion, it appears the bloom is off Trump’s infatuation with Putin, at least vis-a-vis the Ukraine invasion. Describing Putin as “difficult,” Trump told the press “Look. Vladimir Putin really has to end that war.”
As noted, Trump is hardly a model of consistency, and the list of reasons to dislike him is far greater than he could erase in one trip to the Netherlands, but it has been 80 years since Western Europe stood in ruins while the USSR gobbled up vassal states.
Maybe having an undependable jackanapes at their back is like kicking the crutches from under a former invalid who is perfectly capable of walking unaided.
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