Almost Immoral

Obama and Boehner hold secret White House meetings on the debt ceiling.

Boehner and Obama incognito

I have to run up to Wilmington today for business so I’m keeping this short, but the train trip to Delaware reminds me of SENATOR Joe Biden’s commute back and forth to his home and home state before he became Vice President. Joe was holding meetings with Eric Cantor and John Boehner on the debt ceiling–you know, the ones that Cantor walked out of–and of course, the two evil twins insisted on paying for more tax cuts for the rich by dumping so-called entitlements for the not very rich. You know, Grandma. To quote the AP article: “To ask senior citizens receiving Medicare to pay more in taxes when people earning more than $1 million a year receive a substantial tax cut ‘borders on immoral,’ the vice president said.”

BORDERS ON IMMORAL? That’s kind of like saying the decision to award the burglar damages because he knocked over the candle you’d negligently left burning right where he could run into in on his way to the family silver and sustained injuries WHEN YOUR HOUSE BURNED DOWN “bordered on unjust.” If that’s what “borders on immoral”, I’d hate to find out what actually qualifies as immoral. Besides Weiner’s Wiener.

Let’s see. How about “starting a war against a virtually defenseless country that has been impoverished by economic sanctions because we said they might be thinking about making nuclear weapons in order to get the oil they’re sitting on.” Immoral? Nope–perfectly moral in the 21 century. How about, “selling the oil to China instead of using it to help American industry.” Perfectly moral! “Protesting the war and accusing its proponents of war crimes?” Now THAT’S immoral–AND unpatriotic!

How about “doping yourself with growth hormones so you can win–oh, say, the Tour de France?” Perfectly moral–especially if you’re a cancer survivor. Unless you’re NOT on our team. Then it’s downright flagrant cheating!

“Frequenting a prostitute while holding office?” Fine–as long as you’re not a Democrat–after all, you EXPECT Republicans to be hypocrites. “Holding secret meetings with the Speaker of the House to achieve a compromise on the debt ceiling?” Well, we’ll see how moral THAT one turns out.

Morality is an awful fluid thing where money, politics and sports are involved. Would that it were so in other matters like sex or abortion. And speaking of sex–congratulations to the gay couples of New York State. Now you can go through messy divorces just like the rest of us!

See you next week!

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‘The Aristocrats’, Take Deux–Oddly apropos after the past week.

A new punchline for The Aristocrats ... the Ryan Plan?

A new punchline for the world's most ummm anticlimactic joke--and I do mean anticlimactic

I prepared this cartoon the other week before Anthony Weiner’s little, errrrrr, big? ummmmm, well, let’s just say his problem was uncovered (ahem), knowing I’d be at AnimeNext in NJ this weekend. And oddly enough, it’s still appropriate. The real thing that people should be worried about which has taken a backseat to a more lurid and titillating story is, of course, the Republican plan to DRIVE AMERICANS TO THE POOR HOUSE to pay for Granny’s health care. Otherwise known as the Ryan Plan. Budget isn’t the biggest problem facing the country. Unemployment is. But the budget is being used as a means to undermine the social safety net in a cynical masquerade called “austerity.” Austerity is what YOU have to do without, not what WE have to do without, after all. And you have to do without social security, medicare and medicaid so we can keep troops in Afghanistan to protect Chinese mineral rights… I mean, make Afghanistan safe for democracy.

But the Koch Brothers-run Tea Party, the Republican party, and the big money-owned media don’t care about rising tides that float all boats. They only care about floating their own boats. But hell, even Europe is under the spell of this “austerity,” which is an attempt to drive out of a skid by yanking the steering wheel 90 degrees away from it to allow the natural braking effect of the trees to stop the car. But thinking about that is too depressing, Weiner’s wiener is much better to think about. Well, not really think about. Oh, god, I need to clorox my eyeballs to get rid of THOSE images!

Anyway, the Ryan plan forms an excellent ending for a certain misleadingly named world’s dirtiest (insert verbiage to separate the words so they don’t come together in search engines) joke. I say “misleadingly named” because it’s not a joke. It’s the SETUP for a joke. Why? Because there is no punchline.

That’s right. Joke analyzers have thought hard (ahem again) about “The Aristocrats” and wondered in what “context” the line, “We’re the Aristocrats,” is actually funny. Well, it’s not funny. What was funny was what went on before the line, and the stupid look on the audience/victim’s face when it goes from laughing like an idiot to “Huh?” What I’m saying is that if “The Aristocrats” ever really WAS a joke instead of an act of sadism on the part of the comedian then, somewhere along the line, the actual ending was dropped for the endingless ending. What is needed for it to be a real joke is a straightline followed by an actual punchline. In other words, “The Aristocrats? Why the Aristocrats?” followed by the badumbum line, “Because only Aristocrats could behave like this and still keep their dayjobs” or something like it (badumbum!). Which isn’t very funny–or probably wasn’t very funny once the immediate context–some particularly juicy bit of aristos acting badly in the news–was lost. But since it was a great excuse for coming up with the dirtiest story ever told, the hell with the punchline, I’ve got to get a look at the guy’s face when I tell it to him.

So I’m supplying a straightline/punchline combo which, once again, will not be very funny at all once the “Budget Crisis” is over. Either we forget the Ryan Plan like it deserves, or it actually becomes the basis for the US Budget. And one thing is clear. Once we screw up Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid for the sake of “tightening YOUR belts”, no one will be laughing. Except the sadists who decided it would be a good idea.

And shoutouts to Alicia/Dokudel and her bf Jean-Luc, Jasmine, Onezumi (whom I missed but whom I will see at Intervention Con which anyone into webcomics, gaming and all that other good stuff should check out September 16-18 2011, at the Hilton Washington DC/Rockville) and all the other people I met this weekend at AnimeNext. And a safe trip back to Japan to Japan’s ambassador of KAWAII Yu Kimura–loved hearing you and meeting you! And check out the rock band UZUHI–they ROCK!

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Weinergate, Schmeinergate, Why Does Anyone Take Andrew Breitbart Seriously? [Updated]

cartoon of Anthony's Wiener stand. The 50th time I was asked today.

The Weiner-Wiener jokes go on longer and longer and never seem to come to a climax.

UPDATE: Well well well, looks like Andy BB actually got one right. One out of four is a good record–for HIM. A shame about Weiner’s taste in underwear, though. Should he resign? I don’t know, last time I looked, stupidity wasn’t illegal, and we just finished 8 years of a stupid President to prove it. Immoral? That’s between him and his wife–and the voters of his district. Anyone remember the old saw about being a liberal or a conservative? If a liberal makes a mistake and does something bad, everyone says, “See, the hero has feet of clay.” But if a conservative makes a mistake and does something GOOD, everyone says, “Hey, he wasn’t such a bastard after all!”

I STILL say it’s meant to distract us from the DEATH VOUCHERS, though.

ORIGINAL POST:
You all know what happened. For the benefit of search engines, Andrew Breitbart got a tip about a photo some college girl received ostensibly from a tweet by Anthony Weiner, congressman from New York. Actually, I’m not sure WHAT happened–the story, which I tried to get straight before writing this–has gone through several convolutions, none of which really make any sense. I mean, if he mailed it to the girl, why was the Twitter feed so important? I mean, did he tweet that picture? Or did someone tweet it to him? If he tweeted it, why did only one person of his 180 some followers get the picture? Did he Twitpic the pic? or was it a link to a pic already on the web? If it was already on the web, was it really Weiner’s wiener to begin with? And why doesn’t Anthony Weiner know if that’s his underwear? Is his taste in underwear THAT GQ?

I guess it makes sense to someone. Andrew Breitbart. You know, the guy who uploaded the severely edited video of Shirley Sherrod that made her sound like an anti-white bigot, when she was telling a story about how some farmer’s case PREVENTED her from being an anti-white bigot. The same Andrew Breitbart that web-published James O’Keefe’s creatively edited video of his interviews in ACORN offices, where he inserted clips of himself and Hannah Giles dressed as pimp and prostitute (or is that prostitute and prostitute?) supposedly getting help from ACORN hiding their income from the IRS and their activities from other agencies. You know, the James O’Keefe who was busted trying to surreptitiously sneak a microphone into Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu’s office?

Why does anyone take Breitbart seriously? Everyone already knows that he won’t question a source as long as it makes Democrats or liberals look bad. See? I didn’t call him a sneaking liar! I wouldn’t say that about him because the news media has guaranteed that he doesn’t and will not ever sneak. Stinking maybe, but not sneaking! It must be the silly season already–anything to keep our minds off the DEATH VOUCHERS that Paul Ryan is trying to replace Medicare with. That’s right Democrats, be creative for a change! The Republicans renamed your end-of-life counseling sessions to DEATH PANELS. Call this “modification” to Medicare DEATH VOUCHERS. OK, maybe someone will say, copycat, copycat, but at least they’ll be focused on it.

Anyway, I no longer want to hear about Weiner’s weiner. Let this come to a climax already. I know it’s a slow season for news and reporters are hard up for copy. But Anthony Weiner has always been a standup guy. I mean, it’s not like the story’s going to come to a head and explode in anyone’s face. Nobody was playing hide the salami.

Although the salami does look kind of hidden. (Ahem!) 😀

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