Tom Toles for May 14, 2020

This is a repeat of what I said about Signe Wilkinson’s ’toon.

He’s not just the least useful president I’ve ever read about. He’s not just the dumbest president I’m aware of. He’s not just about tearing down anything Obama touched, or anything else good that we’ve ever accomplished. On top of all that he’s venal, incapable of empathy and sucks up to the enemies of the nation.

Of course he’s doing the wrong thing here, now. It’s what he’s good at.

Can’t have those poor people not feeling threatened over their lives.

Just who is the ☠resident serving?

https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/coronavirus/trump-house-democrats-stimulus-plan-is-doa

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/americas-racial-contract-showing/611389/

What recovered the US from the Great Depression was a willingness to accept enormous debt so as to produce materials for war and to employ people to make them.

The regressives want to pay the rich and ignore everyone else. We are already a welfare state – for the rich!

Where is the money that was going to improve infrastructure? The f*king regressives have done zip. You want people to be able to pay rent? Give them jobs, jobs that will help rebuild this country so that we can go forward as a society. And pay living wages for that.

It’s not like it has not been done before. WPA anyone? Has your restaurant failed? We need to be able to feed workers and the unemployed. Your experience running a business providing food could get you employment. Or even continue your business, subsidized by the government if you feed those on WPA. And because of the social distancing that will continue to be needed for some time, you’ll have to adapt to lower customer density in space and time. That means adjusting your business’s intake of food for the business to a smaller base. Government subsidy can help with that.

When you can again stand on your own, and have fulfilled all obligations, you can try to return to a pre-pandemic kind of business (but that may take a while).

The fact is, it is going to require massive programs that employ people to rebuild the country and not just highways, but pretty much everything. Most people have not been considering that increasing automation will rmean most jobs held by humans will be done by machines.

Now is the time to build the future, not try to rebuild a past that will die anyway. Now is the time to spend on a future for all, not just a few.

Stop that. There’s no money for bridge repairs until after I’m re-elected.

The super rich and corp CEO’s have their own private jets…. they don’t need no stinking bridges…..

Let Trump Have a Crack – {limerick}

HEY!! It’s TRUMP who’s to mend

the economy’s nose-diving trend.

You DEMs should stand back

and let Trump have a crack

at bringing this mess to an end.

[[ … Note: {4 beats/line}

Here I’m rhyming with tongue in cheek; -

- he’d row even farther, ’way up the creek. ]]

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The bridge is probably in a blue State anyhow…

I’m loving it, to see the GOP, connive, cheat, lie, and squirm about The election. The cowards are digging up FAKE anything To smear BIDEN and etc! Their playbook is a pathetic given! They got NOTHING!

And then a certain orange so-and-so, along with his GOP cronies, will claim to have built the bigliest, bestest bridge, ever. But when it collapses it will be the Dems fault.

“The Play’s the Sting”

A bridge not far enough, the end-point unconnected;

A blueprint with dimensions wrong, remaining uncorrected;

A building with undone lower floors, but penthouse luxurious

Would seem so badly designed as to all at least be curious.

.

If a path’s paved to walk upon and then o’er a cliff it leads;

If an operation’s deemed success, but to death the patient bleeds;

If a baby’s born, baptized, and then is left to die,

One should stop to realize that things have gone awry.

.

The fault is in the script written by incompetents in power —

When scenes go wrong, the plot denouements sour,

The stars in charge denounce the critics, and redirect outrage

To other issues, other faults of those next to take the stage.

.

When at last the drama’s done, to falling curtain under,

When it’s clear that those in charge did blunder after blunder,

Deflecting blame no longer works, that bogus mirror is cracked,

Banished from the playhouse the bad actors are then sacked.

.

The stage is left in chaos and the script is torn in tatters,

The theater must be repaired — but all that really matters

To the former players who did not succeed, beyond avoiding jail,

Is making sure those coming next are well set up to fail.

It is very strange when the Republicans start whining when the Democrats propose multi-trillion dollar aid packages, while the previous five multi-trillion dollar packages (recall the tax cut package?) were all proposed by the Republicans and hailed as a total Republican success!

{Off-topic:}

Aprés Ze Donald – {limerick}

The pollsters make us suspect

that our nation might not re-elect

the Trump-blemished bunch. -

- We have a hunch

that America might resurrect …

… Coda {4 beats/line}

… when no longer by Trump we’re misdirected,

so our course can be checked and wisely corrected.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I get the main point of the cartoon, but the dangerous sub-point is that Phase 5 is gonna finish the job. Realistically, this particular stone should be maybe a quarter of the way across the chasm. I know that hope springs eternal, but hope is not a strategy! We need to be prepared for a much longer haul than just the few months we’ve lived thru so far.

The only reason he’s a millionaire today is because he was a lousy billionaire.

trumps a wall man.. never did bridges and is too old (read stupid) to learn

Moscow Mitch will guarantee this won’t happen. His big donors are in desperate need of another tax cut instead. It’s been a couple of years since the last one. It’s really getting tuff out there for them.

Republicans don’t like to build bridges – they only like to build walls.

Wow, it’s Infrastructure Week again – or should that be Infrastructure WEAK?

If Republicans can’t steal it, they will destroy it.

Trump, not known for his ability to spell (or reason), mistook “phase” for the Star Trek “phaser”, and therefore has no problem waiting centuries for the next “phaser.” Of course, Moscow Mitch feels there is no “urgency”, because the Russian oligarchs he takes bribes from have assured him that there is NOT………

It’s not the money that is so troublesome, although the Dem’s attempts to double and triple each phase is definately going to haunt us n the years to come.

No, it is the insidious attempts to cram in permanent Progressive agenda items, most of which have absolutely nothingto do with Covid or its immediate impact.