Sunday Funnies 120125

The Sunday Funnies phrase of the week is hair of the dog:

hair of the dog - informal an alcoholic drink taken to cure a hangover. [ORIGIN: from hair of the dog that bit you, formerly recommended as an efficacious remedy for the bite of a mad dog.]

Based on the comics that showed up last Sunday morning, it looked to be a dog of a week with no unifying themes or words - not much red meat, if you will. So, I decided to sink my canines into, gnaw at the bones, and share whatever showed up the rest of the week leashed to man's best friend. 

What follows are the top-10 items in that category (there were only ten). The selections appear in no particular order. Rank them as you see fit and choose the one you think is #1.

1. Animal Magnetism

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2. Fame, Fortune, and Food

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3. Why Humans Strive To Keep Fit - A Detailed Account

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4. Odor In The Court

If you think it's stupid to create a story line in which a dog is nominated to become a member of the Supreme Court, I suggest you examine the decisions made and opinions expressed by the ultra-conservative members currently sitting on that august body.

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5. Let Talking Dogs Lie

Once again I am compelled to correct the grammar of a cartoonist. Lay is a transitive verb, It must be followed by a direct object (a noun, a pronoun, or a suitably constructed clause or phrase). Around is an adverb; so, it cannot correctly serve that purpose. Grammatically, Fang can "lie around," bur he cannot "lay around." To that end I offer a correction for his ungrammatical sentence. "You need to go to work while I lay a round turd Watching TV and taking naps all day." Now, isn't that better?

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6. Liquidity?

Hey, I didn't say they were good comics or cartoons, just that they were leashed to man's best friend.

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7. Religious Litter-alism?

For those who have not been following the Francis comic strip, Dogma is the name of Francis's pet canine. She recently had a litter of twelve puppies.

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8. That's Relatively Arful!

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9. A Dickens of a Choice

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everythin gbefore us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaveh, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. – A Tale of Two Cities by Charled Dickens

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10. No Taste For Vengeance

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Definitely Not Hair Of The Dog

I couldn't resist including this one in today's post. Despite its being off topic, I think it adds some needed warmth and fuzziness to the collection. Don't you agree?

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Bilingual BS and Bigotry

Everyone knows that politicians bend, fold, staple, and mutilate the truth in order to convince voters with widely differing opinions on a subject to believe that they are on their side. Members of today's GOP, however, have brought the art of obfuscation and duplicity to an entirely new level.

They don't even attempt to hide the fact that they're lying. They tell a bald-faced lies and then claim that they never said the words despite the fact tha anyone with access to the internet can see and hear them saying on Youtube. For its part, a gullible electorate seems to be unaware that it is being duped and would rather hear what it wants to hear than to spend any time thinking about where they're being led by these lies.

Tuesday night, newly elected Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) was tabbed to deliver the official GOP response to President Obama's State of the Union Address, and Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.) was to translate the identical speech into Spanish. But that's not what happened.

Sen. Ernst opposes immigration reform. Rep. Curbelo holds a different opinion on the subject. As a result, those who watched Sen. Ernst's speech heard no mention of immigration reform while those who listened to the supposedly identical Spanish "translation" heard Rep. Curbelo talk about ways to get immigration reform done by working with President Obama.

But the BS didn't stop there. Competing GOP responses to the President's speech were all the rage. There was a bungled, heavily-choreographed, prebuttal by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), and not one, but two, Tea Party responses, one by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and another by Rep. Curt Clawson (R-FL).

It's clear that the GOP will go to any lengths to thwart the efforts of President Obama.

Why such lock-step animosity?

Watch the video clip to understand exactly what it is that they don't like about him.

In this bit of fiction Mel Brooks exposed an uncomfortable fact, one that many Americans claim does not exist, but which is clearly alive and well in the rhetoric and lack of respect Republican "leaders" have shown toward our President from the day he was sworn in.

Sunday Funnies 150118

The Sunday Funnies phrase of the week is communication gap:

What we've got here is a failure to communicate. (line from the movie Cool Hand Luke)

The communication gap exists in many forms, thus there were way too many good items to limit this week's Sunday Funnies to the customary baker's dozen.

Enjoy!

1. Techie vs. Luddite Gap

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2. Generation Gap

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3. Terminology Gap - Say what?

Maybe it means 20¢.

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4. Sartorial Excellence Gap - Clothes Make The Man (a qualitative paradigm shift)

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5. Newspeak News Speak Veracity Gap

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6. Embracing the Gap

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7. Celebrating the Gap

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8. Exploiting the Gap for Gun and Prophet

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9. Listener Gap - Grammar Lesson For The 1%

I'm rooting for the verb.

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10. Honesty Gap - A FOX "News" True Believer Meets Reality

This is precisely why such people will continue to watch FOX and deny science.

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11. Patriotic Propaganda Gap - A Middle-Class American Meets Reality

It's wise to check our who's peddling a product before you empty your bank account.

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12. Comprehension Gap - Can you hear me now? ... No!

Mitt Romney, Miracle Cure for No Known Disease

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13. Integrity Gap

Appearing nightly on your favorite, corporate-owned, cable "news" channel...

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14. A candidate and a cartoonist walk into a communication gap...

While I appreciate Mike Lukovich's effort and agree with his characterization of Romney as an effete dilettante, I am compelled to point out that despite his knowledge of haberdashery, he is out of his depth when it comes to geometry. A chapeau is undoubtedly a hat, but a ring is in no wise equivalent to a sphere.

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15. Biblical Literalism Gap

But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth. (Matt 6:3) 

This quote is from the Sermon on the Mount and deals with proper behavior when giving to charity. For the GOP, of course, everything is part of the Sermon on the Amount with the tacit understanding that charity begins not at home, but in one's wallet.

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16. Gap Between The Ears

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17 Timing Gap

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18. Missed Opportunity Gap

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19. All Hat, No Cattle Gap

Those who place a greater value on the titles others bear than on the behavior of those who bear them effectively surrender their right to think for themselves. 

Those who use their titles to accumulate power and wealth deserve no title but that of charlatan.

Notes:

1. The "Max Height 12 Feet" clearly indicates that this is America, not Italy.
2. Pope Francis has shown that he places greater value on behavior than titles, and it's driving the entitled hierarchy crazy.

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20. Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction Gap? ... What gap? It's not even close.

In today's America truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Fake news programs like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report from The Comedy Channel are infinitely more credible than anything one sees on America's No. 1 cable "News"  network. Oh...and Benghazi!

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Barack Franklin? Benjamin Obama?

Say what?

This post is the result of the confluence of two stories, one about President Obama, the other about Benjamin Franklin. Go with the flow of my stream of consciousness, dear reader, and listen as the currents of the two tales intermingle and babble over the sandy shoals of what passes for knowledge of the character of these two Americans.

Earlier today I came across Johnathan Chait's article in the January 12, 2014 issue of New York Magazine entitled History Will Be Very Kind To Obama (And if it's not, it will be for a highly ironic reason.) It's worth reading.

Coincidentally, I'm almost finished with A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America by Staci Schiff.

It is a long book, which is unlikely to be read by those whose total knowledge of American history consists of what they remember of the simplistic, patriotism-instilling myths they heard as children.

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere...

(Never mind that Revere was captured and failed to finish his ride. Revere's fellow rider, Billy Dawes, on the other hand, did finish, but his name does not lend itself as easily to patriotic poesy.)

But I digress. (Meander might be a better term, given the aquatic metaphor with which I began.)

In Schiff's book I found a great deal of similarity between how Benjamin Franklin was viewed both at home and abroad as he sought help from France during the Revolutionary War and how President Obama is judged on those same fronts for his efforts to serve simultaneously as the first Black American President and the leader of the free world.

For both men the various factions within the home crowd succumb to personal and tribal prejudices. They fail to recognize the value of a gifted politician with the extraordinary and singular ability to set aside his own prejudices and desires in order to do the job his country asked him to do.

For both, citizens of foreign lands are enamored not with the man's acumen but with his celebrity, uniqueness, and affability. They heap praise upon him, which his detractors and enemies use to undermine his efforts at home, claiming he seeks the limelight at the expense of his country.

One passage from the Chait article on Obama parallels much of what Schiff says about Franklin.

The president’s infuriating serenity, his inclination to play Spock even when the country wants a Captain Kirk, makes him an unusual kind of leader. But it is obvious why Obama behaves this way: He is very confident in his idea of how history works and how, once the dust settles, he will be judged. For Obama, the long run has been a source of comfort from the outset. He has quoted King’s dictum about the arc of the moral universe eventually bending toward justice, and he has said that “at the end of the day, we’re part of a long-running story. We just try to get our paragraph right.” To his critics, Obama is unable to attend to the theatrical duties of his office because he lacks a bedrock emotional connection with America. It seems more likely that he is simply unwilling to: that he is conducting his presidency on the assumption that his place in historical memory will be defined by a tabulation of his successes minus his failures. And that tomorrow’s historians will be more rational and forgiving than today’s political commentators.

Schiff says this about Franklin in her introduction. It's tenor could quite easily apply to Obama.

Always a generous soul, Franklin left his best years to his biographers. The outline for his unfinished Autobiography ends: "To France. Treaty, etc." This is the story of those four words, with emphasis on the last. Although its subject shied from doing so, Franklin's revolutionary odyssey has been examined before. In the simplified version, his is a kind of messianic entry into Paris that will precipitate a violent exit, thirteen years later, stage left, with noble French heads o pikes. In John Adams's worst nightmare, the story of the American Revolution assumed a different formulation: "The essence of the whole will be that Dr. Franklin's electrical rod smote the earth and out sprung General Washington. That Franklin electrified him with his rod–and thence forward these two conducted all the policy, negotiations, legislatures, and war." In the romantic version, the French mission is reduced to a tale of baroque international melodrama, boasting a cast of aristocratic lovelies who transform Franklin into a debauched European. From there it is a short distance to the hostile misconceptions, in which Franklin is "the first to lay his head in the lap of French harlotry."

I encourage you to read both and see if I am not justified in asking Barack Franklin? Benjamin Obama?

Sunday Funnies 150111

The Sunday Funnies words of the week are moral, ethical, honorable, virtuous, righteous, self-righteous, sanctimonious, and clueless:

THE RIGHT WORD

You can be an ethical person without necessarily being a moral one, since ethical implies conformity with a code of fair and honest behavior, particularly in business or in a profession (: an ethical legislator who didn't believe in cutting deals), while moral refers to generally accepted standards of goodness and rightness in character and conduct—especially sexual conduct (: the moral values she'd learned from her mother).

In the same way, you can be honorable without necessarily being virtuous, since honorable suggests dealing with others in a decent and ethical manner, while virtuous implies the possession of moral excellence in character (: many honorable businesspeople fail to live a virtuous private life).

Righteous is similar in meaning to virtuous but also implies freedom from guilt or blame (: righteous anger); when the righteous person is also somewhat intolerant and narrow-minded, self-righteous might be a better adjective.

Someone who makes a hypocritical show of being righteous is often described as sanctimonious —in other words, acting like a saint without having a saintly character.

* * *

This week it's your turn to do the work by taking a little quiz.

Which of the words of the week (above) best describes...

1. the behavior of Neighbor Bob, Pig, Goat, Rat, and Stephan?

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2. What about Calvin? and Hobbes?

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3. The larcenists and legislators who perpetuate America's loop of largesse?

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4. The mechanic with a clear view of how Congress works?

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5. The employer? The intern?

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6. The dilemma in each choice?

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7. The dilemma the cartoonist faces?

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8. The NSA?

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9. America's political parties?

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10. Bob, the lawyer?

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11. The psychic? The King of Id? Sir Rodney?

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12. The father? His son? The average American?

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How did you do?

Religion and Politics Don't Mix? Guess again.

Jesus and Mo is a wickedly satiric comic strip, which regularly mocks the absurdity of claims to moral superiority fundamentalist religious leaders rely on to keep their followers...um...er...following.

The strip below carries an additional revelatory payload - religious and political leaders are cut from the same cloth.

By showing that both groups employ the same modus operandi, the strip explodes the oft-stated claim that religion and politics don't mix. That position denotes a failure to recognize a simple reality. Conflict is to be expected whenever two different tribes of politicians fight over the same turf - that is, the hearts, minds, and most importantly, the bank accounts of the general public.

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Sunday Funnies 150104

The Sunday Funnies word of the week is communing:

com-mune ² |kəˈmyoōn|

verb [ intrans. ]

1 ( commune with) share one's intimate thoughts or feelings with (someone or something), esp. when the exchange is on a spiritual level : the purpose of praying is to commune with God.

• feel in close spiritual contact with : he spent an hour communing with nature on the bank of a stream.

2 Christian Church receive Holy Communion.

ORIGIN Middle English : from Old French comuner ‘to share,’ from comun (see common ).

1. Communing With Nature - The Wonders Of Winter

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2. Miscommuning With Nature

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3. Mother Nature Talks Back

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4. Sign Language

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5. Choice Words

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6. Small Talk

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7. Sagan Says: Billions and Billions of Stars Have Nothing To Say To Us

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8. A Shining Specimen of Sagan's Sagacity

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9. Bearly Amusing Communing

This comic strip calls for a poem - one of my eighth grade teachers told the class. Yes, it's THAT old. 

Algie saw the bear;
The bear saw Algie.
The bear was bulgy.
The bulge was Algie.

(Thank you, Mr. Tamburo.)

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10. A Direct Line To A Higher Authority

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11. Communing with Men Of The Cloth - GOP Style

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12. Masscommunication Miscommunicated

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13. A Resolution That's All Geek To Me

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14. Nonverbal Communication - Enjoy!

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