CSotD: On The Eve
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Good advice from one traditional figure of the new year to another. Some years, the editorial cartoons look forward to progress and improvements, but this isn’t one of those years and nobody has any grand expectations for 2026.
It’s also traditional for killjoys like myself to point out that, while a few new laws have January 1 start dates, tomorrow is mostly just another day.
There will be a surge in health insurance premiums, but we already knew that. Maybe there will be some uproar, this being a country in which people who voted for the Leopards Eating Faces Party are repeatedly shocked to realize that the leopards are eating their faces.
I suspect a lot of people will drop their coverage and hope. And most of them will be okay, just as most drunk drivers will get home safely tonight.
I wouldn’t play either of those odds, but I’m a cancer survivor. YMMV.
I have no idea what this cartoon means. The midterms will have a profound effect, and seem likely to produce a blue wave but they could also turn into a monkey-wrenching operation with attempts to subvert the process.
Maybe her point is that the approaching elections will make it seem longer, but I suspect a lot of people will wake up November 4 wishing they’d had a little more time to campaign.
Pett offers what is for progressives an optimistic view of things, and the numbers support his gag. Politics is full of unexpected reversals, however, and pollsters promised us President Hillary Clinton when the election polls delivered President Donald Trump.
Riddell expects the new year to continue the existing policy of distracting people from the cover-up of the Epstein files, but it’s wearing thin with all but the hardcore faithful.
Not only is the cover-up self-serving and dishonest, but the distractions are as disturbing as those hidden files.
Brodner puts Trump in the position of Harold Lloyd’s classic film, dangling over disaster, which at first glance seems to echo Pett’s commentary on fading approval ratings. But a second look shows that he’s attempting to hold back the hands of the Doomsday Clock, which is more about his foreign adventurism than his domestic popularity.
That seems more problematic, as we continue to test the degree to which the Trump administration obeys the dictates of the courts. Abrego Garcia keeps winning court cases — he’s on the verge of another victory — but he’s still on the hot seat as the government struggles to charge him with something or other to justify those other attempts.
But while it was possible to pull him back from CECOT after the courts insisted, it’s impossible to un-bomb a shipping port regardless of how anybody rules on it, and that’s more relevant to Brodner’s depiction.
Dear Leader still promotes himself as the Peace President and claims to have ended wars, some of which didn’t end, some of which never took place, and upon few of which he had any effect at all. Whether he is deliberately lying to us or is also lying to himself becomes moot once blood starts flowing.
BTW, we’ve just learned that when you drop explosives on fentanyl and cocaine, they turn into weed. Who knew?
Bramhall notes that we’ve been watching for this particular ball to drop for a long time and it seems to be stuck or possibly to be rising rather than falling.
In three weeks, it will have been a full year since Dear Leader stepped up to solve everything, and there must be some statute of limitations about how long he can blame lack of results on his predecessor.
And yet Trump has once more attacked Fed Chairman Jerome Powell as a Biden holdover, and, that Guardian article reports:
“I mean, Biden reappointed him. It’s too bad. You would have thought he wouldn’t have done that,” Trump said, without any acknowledgment that he had first appointed Powell himself, in 2018.
Meanwhile, his SBA chief told Fox “I don’t think small business owners have ever been so excited to pay their taxes thanks to President Trump!”
Yeah, and they’re especially thrilled to be paying tariffs.
Commentators regularly cite the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes, but when the small boy points out that His Majesty is naked, he’s dismissed along with other whistleblowers as radical left scum, and the issue — aside from Wexler’s point about our tone of debate — is how many people still insist that those new clothes are splendid?
Dear Leader is certainly not throwing a wide net; his latest fundraising email is clearly intended for the MAGA faithful. He acknowledges trouble, but takes no blame, claiming rather that the Commies are doing it, and that “Dems” are going to give illegal aliens the $2,000 checks that Trump is most certainly probably maybe going to send workers.
Here’s a copy of the letter in its original format. Note that the checks, which don’t exist, will be given to “illegals” if you don’t respond in the next hour. He should have said that, if you respond in the next hour, we’ll send you this adowable bwanket.
The issue of fraud in Minnesota seems to have legs among the hardliners, though Kelley might have shown the year 2022 making the warning, since that was when the state began cracking down on the problem.
This could be an excellent topic for some whatabouts. You could keep a running total of money stolen in Minnesota next to the totals of stolen money unrepaid by people Trump has pardoned.
But the real whatabout is whatabout we deal with the complexity of the actual problem.
If you want a simple problem, answer me this: Can Dear Leader count on support from the brown people who see Latino citizens beaten in the streets and people sent to gulags for the equivalent of traffic tickets?
And how do Black voters feel about having Black holidays dropped and recognition of Black soldiers deleted?
Is this any way to pander for votes?
Molina offers what may be the most practical vision of the year to come, but I already used “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss” as my musical selection two days ago.
Anyway, the suggestion to take off the topper and put on a helmet seems wise.
At least now y’all are old enough to vote.
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