CSotD: Easy Lies and Hard Truths
Skip to comments
Boris gets it right, but I’m already seeing the next Big Myth: Other cartoonists, and plenty of social media commentators, are declaring that Congress has approved $1 billion to build the ballroom. Not true.
The billion of taxpayer funds is mostly for the bunker under the ballroom, and specifies that none of it can be spent on Trump’s Folly. Okay, it doesn’t use the term “folly,” but it’s clear that it can’t be used for any of his frivolities.
As Boris states, it’s for security, and it’s extra, and, as his artwork suggests, it seems mighty excessive.
There was a parody going around Back in The Day that went “There’s a cavern in the ground, and there our leaders safe and sound …” but I’ve never been able to find the lyrics. Point of the song was that, in the event of nuclear war, we’d all be blown to smithereens but the perpetrators would be just fine.
And we’re willing to spend a billion to make it come true.
It seems, however, destined to join the list of lies and myths in which we believe.
For example, Al Gore never claimed to have invented the Internet, John Kerry earned his medals and Trump wasn’t holding that Bible upside down.
I’m still not sure whether the Chicago police are there to create disorder or to preserve disorder. I’ve seen them do both.
Meanwhile, Molina draws an unreasonable likeness of two major donors to Trump’s Folly as they show up at the IRS office to not pay their fair share of taxes, and the song that goes with this one is Fortunate Son, where, when the tax man comes to the door, the house looks like a rummage sale.
And, speaking of lies, Obama added to the IRS budget to fund additional personnel and resources to track down tax cheats, but it was spun by the opposition to be a myth about armed, jack-booted thugs coming after innocent bluecollar victims. And so it was canceled and the grift goes on.
This is a somewhat fanciful scene, because nominated judges are questioned one by one, not en banque, but his point is clear, and we’ve seen it not only among judges but among prospective cabinet members as well.
Senator Warren became incensed recently when Fed nominee Kevin Warsh declined to state whether the 2020 Presidential Election was on the level, but you’d have to be extraordinarily naive to think his lack of candor was going to have a negative effect on his chances of confirmation.
Warren called him Trump’s sock puppet, but we reward loyalty these days, not honesty.
We’ve come a long way from 1993, when two of Bill Clinton’s nominees for attorney general failed because they hadn’t paid FICA taxes on their family’s nannies (unless that was about the party doing the nominating, rather than the character of the nominees themselves).
Sorensen examines John Roberts’ claim that we don’t have to worry about racial discrimination anymore. Or any less, apparently.
Roberts made a speech the other day in which he explained that the public doesn’t understand Supreme Court justices:
I think they view us as truly political actors, which I don’t think is an accurate understanding of what we do. I would say that’s the main difficulty.
And he’s right. People misunderstand Justice Alito flying an upside down flag at his home during the “Stop the Steal” uproar and an “Appeal to Heaven” flag of the Christian Nationalist movement.
They somehow think Justice Thomas should recuse himself from Jan 6 cases, since his wife was active in that movement, and they also believe he has political leanings just because he said progressive politics were responsible for the rise of Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini and Mao.
I mean, it’s not like they’re newspaper reporters who are ethically prohibited from having political yard signs.
The latest wrinkle in DOJ’s phony-baloney case against the SPLC is that they are “clarifying” and “walking back” their claims that the group didn’t provide them with insider information from its infiltration of hate groups.
Or, to put it another way, admitting that they lied.
The SPLC is seeking the grand jury transcripts to see what else DOJ lied about in order to obtain the indictment.
Oh, and Kash Patel is taking a break from handing out bourbon with his name on the bottle so he can order his agents to investigate the reporter who wrote that he likes booze.
Same Atlantic reporter on both stories. That ought to save the FBI some taxpayer funds!
Bennett offers a funny idea, but it wouldn’t work, because while various states have different distances in their laws, you are required to remove all campaign materials from the immediate vicinity of a polling place, and price tags on groceries would, as he says, surely qualify.
Another benefit is that, unless Trump votes by mail, which he opposes but does, it would be his first chance to ever set foot inside a grocery store.
He’s seen groceries. They laid out a display for him when, as a candidate in August, 2024, he made his promise to lower food prices, one of several such pledges.
As he said in Wilkes-Barre that month
Energy is going to bring us back. That means we’re going down and getting gasoline below $2 a gallon, bring down the price of everything from electricity rates to groceries, airfares, and housing costs.
Gas prices really were high back then. When he made that speech, the national average was $3.44 a gallon. Since then, he’s got it down to only $4.60 here. And I’ll bet he’s never pumped a gallon at either price.
As for groceries, they’re just as much a mystery to him, but one that apparently intrigues him.
It’s such an old-fashioned term but a beautiful term: groceries. It sort of says a bag with different things in it.
It does sort of say that, doesn’t it?
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen voter registration drives at card tables outside the grocery store, much less heard of college students registering voters on their spring break.
Those, my friends, are old-fashioned but beautiful things.
They make me feel like Freedom.
Comments 15