Comic Strip of the Day Editorial cartooning

CSotD: A Royal Flush and ‘Royalty’ Unflushed

I don’t live in New York City, or even close enough to feel its presence, and so, no, I’m not scared about who they’re going to elect as mayor tomorrow. I do find it interesting, however, because Mamdani is making a lot of promises, some of which I’m pretty sure he can pull off, some others that seem more challenging, so I guess it may provide some test-cases for the rest of us.

But I’m not scared of socialism because I’ve lived next door to Bernie for nearly 40 years and he seems like a decent guy who cares about people, which makes him stand out more than it ought to.

If you want to worry about “socialism” why not focus on the communists in the White House? Not only has the Central Government begun helping itself to shares of what had been private industries, or, as one might say, owning the means of production, but now the commissars are setting prices and policies for grocery stores.

In this case, they’re ordering grocers not to offer lower prices to the poor, apparently because it interferes with their plan to use food as a weapon and starve people into submission. (BTW, if they cut off the funding, those folks aren’t “SNAP-EBT customers” anymore, are they?)

It reminds me of a story I’ve told before, of sitting with a group of Soviet timber executives in a lecture on supply and demand, after which one of them said, “But you have not told us the role of the central government in setting production quotas.”

That’s communism, folks. Before you run around complaining about socialism and communism, how’s about you find out what those terms mean?

I’m also reminded of an assembly I went to in the third grade where a couple from the John Birch Society warned us that, if we didn’t fight the Russians, we’d end up in a country where police would stop you on the street and demand to see your papers.

Well, we didn’t fight them and here we are. I wish tariffs were only the issue upon which Dear Leader has departed from Reagan’s policies, which seemed so extreme at the time.

At least we haven’t started throwing our opponents out of windows. Yet.

Of course, Wexler is kidding. Dear Leader doesn’t torture people and put them in dungeons. He ships them off to other countries who torture them and put them in dungeons.

But Mamdani wants to have the city run non-profit grocery stores and provide free public transportation and childcare. No wonder Andy Ogles (R-TN) wants to revoke his citizenship and send him to one of those foreign dungeons.

To be clear, Andy’s office in Columbia, Tennessee is only 925 miles from New York City, which explains why he’s worried about whether they elect a socialist mayor.

If it were 1,000 miles distant, it would be none of his business.

Meanwhile, over in England, a young woman’s story of sexual assault and pederasty has toppled The Prince Formerly Known As The Prince from his pedestal.

When the facts first began to emerge, Buckingham Palace announced that Andrew would be stepping back from his royal duties, whatever the hell they were, but once the details came out in Giuffre’s autobiography, he was stripped of his title and cast out of his royal mansion.

This was significant, given the general reverence in which the Royal Family is held, despite a recent rash of scandals, broken marriages and general misbehavior.

They managed to shuffle off a Nazi-loving king with some romantic codswallop about giving up his throne to marry the woman he loved — Hello, Camilla! — but there’s no way to cover up Andrew’s appalling criminal behavior and it seems, as Morland suggests, that there’s little urge on anyone’s part to do so.

That could never happen here. For one thing, we don’t have royalty.

For another, we’ve got Mike Johnson keeping an elected Congressional Representative from taking office so she can’t become the deciding vote to release the Epstein files.

Telnaes suggested that Johnson go as a wienie for Halloween because he’s a wienie all year long and works hard to make a mockery of the concept of checks-and-balances upon which our government is based.

Though in all fairness, whether Andrew remained a prince or became a commoner was at the discretion of the king, so that learning of his behavior through Giuffre was sufficient to allow his removal without a formal trial.

It would be harder to remove a president from office and the January 6 committee provided ample evidence of how even having ample evidence won’t do the trick.

As Katauskas notes, the whole world is watching. Mostly with a growing sense of disdain, horror and disbelief.

It’s hard to understand how those in power can forgive attempting to violently overthrow the government but are terrified of having drag queens read stories to children.

The British were able to uncrown a royal based on reports of what he had done, but the fact remains that, in this country, we don’t believe in punishing people without giving them a fair trial with evidence and attorneys and so forth.

Unless we want to.

Which brings up this question: Am I the only one who wonders why the Coast Guard apparently doesn’t even sweep up the wreckage?

Back when I was working in a newsroom just south of the Canadian border, the customs guys were eager to show us what they’d come up with. They’d spread it out on a table and then call all the TV and radio stations and newspapers and have a press conference to tell everybody how it all went down and to show off what they’d found.

They were proud of what they’d done.

I suppose that’s probably the difference.

It should be hard to explain why you’ve arrested or blown up somebody without any proof of a discernible reason. But as Pett points out, sometimes there’s just something about a person that Dear Leader doesn’t like. If only we could find a pattern of some sort!

Anyway, here’s something Dear Leader would really hate, so crank it up.

And keep the faith, baby.

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Comments 26

  1. Off topic to this: Has the comic strip Daddy’s Home ended or about to end for good? I notice for the 3rd. week in a row the daily Daddy’s Home strip it has been in 2022 rerun mode as of day on November 3, 2025. Could somebody contact Creators.com and/or the creators of the Daddy’s Home comic strip for proof about this. The most recent Sunday Daddy’s Home strips have been new 2025 strips.

      1. For the record, the creators of Daddy’s Home are Tony Rubino and Gary M. – The last/recent week of first run 2025 dailies was on the October 13-18, 2025 week.

    1. I color DADDY’S HOME dailies, and I see new strips on deck for weeks 11/17 and 11/24. I’ll retract this if I see a change, though.

      1. I guess the creators are taking a few weeks or a month off of Daddy’s Home strips.

      2. Gary had to take some time to help his mother with some health issues. They’ll be back soon.

  2. Andy Ogles is a nitwit of the highest caliber, an embarrassment to Tennessee (and we have lots to choose from)

  3. In the country of the insane, the half-crazed man is king.

  4. What the f*** is wrong with Ramirez?

    1. So many things seem to frighten the man.

      1. And I don’t get why that is? And he’s not alone—him and Steve Kelly and I think all of the known conservative tooners seem to have done a Mamdani cartoon that’s some combination of “swarthy foreigner bad!” and “socialism bad!” without trying to convey anything beyond that.

        I’m not even offended, I’m just flabbergasted by how utterly dumb it is. I mean, okay if you have a problem with the guy (why it matters to anyone outside NYC is beyond me, but whatever)—maybe try making a high-school level argument to make your case? Presumably Ramirez et al are smart enough to do that.

      2. Full agreement.

        Seems like most MAGA supporters run on a 7th grade perspective of the world.

        including you-know-who.

      3. Well, since a lot of MAGA types like to accuse Dems of making “ORANGE MAN BAD!” arguments, it’s no surprise that they think “BROWN MAN BAD!” is a good enough reason to oppose Mamdani.

      4. Conservatives and then Republicans have been continuously messaging that ‘Socialism’ is evil and scary stuff since the early 1900s. They have been so relentless in this messaging that just saying ‘Socialism’ results in a Pavlovian response. Just look at Ramirez or Kelley or Bok or Benson …. all spooked and/or trying to spook everyone.

      5. @SC—-

        Right, and it’s been that way for as long as I can remember, too.

        I’ve been listening to a podcast about McCarthyism lately (Rachel Maddow’s “Ultra”, season 2—highly recommend) and it got me thinking about how socialism really only found a foothold in the 30’s because capitalism had failed so badly. And we’re kind of in a similar moment now—capitalism is failing more people all the time, so of course socialism is looking good in comparison.

        Given that, just “socialism bad!” Isn’t much of an argument, is it? I think if I were a right wing pundit (or cartoonist) and I was really gung-ho for capitalism, I’d be spending more energy on trying to sell people on capitalism than I would making the other side into this fake-looking boogeyman. Like, tell me why you love capitalism so much!

        The fact that I’ve yet to see any prominent voice on the right actually do this just convinces me that the socialists are probably on to something.

  5. Because I am picky, a command economy (here’s your production quota) is not communism. However, the “communists” in China and the Soviet Union always claim they are working towards communism (ownership of the means of production by the workers, which works quite well in coops such as Mondragon).

  6. I guess Monty Python had it right, with a small change…”Who made you Prince?” I can’t think of many things less important than what happens to “the royals”. Well, that’s not true…but in percentage of news coverage to their importance, anyways.

    1. “Well, I didn’t vote for him.@

    2. you can’t expect this wheel supreme power just because some watery tart through a sword at you!

  7. It’s honestly kind of jarring whenever other countries actually hold their leaders accountable for the things they’ve done.

    This is America, we just don’t do that sort of thing here.

  8. I’m sorry that Ann Telnaes didn’t have Mike Johnson dressed as something that can be considered similar to a weenie but much more cruder, because that is what he truly is.

  9. in this country, we don’t believe in punishing people without giving them a fair trial with evidence and attorneys and so forth…

    Hard to tell if you are being sarcastic here.

    In case you are not, the out for all Trumpers is that they don’t consider Those People to be Americans. Or, in most cases real humans. Once you convince yourself of that, the Constitution can be dispensed with.

    1. Is Patel worse than J. Edgar Hoover?

      1. Define ‘worse’.
        Patel is definitely more incompetent than Hoover.
        But on the racist, authoritarian, evil scales… I can’t tell.

  10. Republicans fear Mamdani because they are worried he will succeed, then people in other cities and states will want the same. My city already has free buses and it works out great. It is paid for by local businesses and donations from the general public. Some of them are now electric, too. My city also has mental health professionals that work with the police force as Mamdani has proposed and that works out well, too. Many states have state owned/run liquor stores and that is ok, but a city owned grocery store is not? While his proposals may be new for NYC, they are not new and we already know they work.

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