Political Memes, Comics, and other Shenanigans, Part 47

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"Biden Negotiations"

Quote

President Joe Biden vowed he wouldn’t negotiate with Republicans on raising the debt ceiling, demanding a clean bill without cuts to spending. He said the time to negotiate budgets was when it’s time to pass budgets, not when it’s time to pay the government’s bills.

Kevin McCarthy and House Republicans have been demanding spending cuts before they agree to pay the nation’s bills, mostly to programs they don’t like. One of their largest demands is to cut funding for the IRS that was passed last year to add personnel to go after billionaire tax cheats.

The Republicans have been holding the nation hostage over their demands. They never did this during the past four Republican presidencies. They only make these demands when a Democrat holds the White House.

Right after he finally won the House speakership on the 15th vote, McCarthy tweeted, “House Republicans are on a mission to end wasteful Washington spending.” Fun fact: Roughly 25 percent of our total national debt incurred over the last 230 years actually occurred during the four years of the Trump administration (sic).

That fact was brought to light by former Republican House member David Jolly. And, it’s true. Do you know who was in Congress all four years of the Trump administration (sic)? Kevin McCarthy. The debt ceiling needed to be raised three times during those four years. Did Kevin McCarthy make any demands for spending cuts to accompany raising the debt ceiling? Did he refuse to vote to raise it? Nope. Kevin voted to raise it three times without condition. It’s like he didn’t realize there was a national debt until Joe Biden became president.

This is not a bold prediction, but if Trump or DeSantis takes the White House in 2024, spending will go unabated. Republicans will not present any conditions for raising the debt ceiling.

Donald Trump has actually been talking to McCarthy during these negotiations. After playing a tee shot on his golf course outside Washington, Mr. Trump approached a reporter for The New York Times, iPhone in hand, and showed a call with McCarthy, and he said, “They’ve spent three years wasting money on nonsense. Republicans don’t want to see that, so I understand where they’re at.”

The guy who is responsible for 25 percent of federal debt incurred over the past 230 years said, “They spent three years wasting money on nonsense.” But the good news is Tiffany won’t have to pay an estate tax.

Now, it appears Biden and McCarthy have a deal to raise the debt ceiling. The deal would raise the debt limit for two years while imposing strict caps on discretionary spending not related to the military or veterans for the same period. This will allow Republican fuckwads to say, “Yo-ho! We cut spending” while the debt continues to increase, and Democrats can claim they saved most domestic programs from large cuts.

What you need to know is that this deal will cut $10 billion from the $80 billion of new funding for the IRS, because Republicans want to make it easier for Billionaires and corporations to be tax cheats. They are also still haggling over work requirements for social safety net programs and a permitting overhaul for domestic energy and gas projects.

As it turns out, President Joe Biden will negotiate with terrorists.

 

[47of74]

Why is he in town for a campaign event? 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Space Man Meets Florida Man"

Spoiler

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis finally announced his candidacy for the White House yesterday, after his state legislature removed the legal burden preventing current governors of that state from running. And DeSantis’ announcement was a total and complete disaster. The “failure to launch” is only part of it.

Every presidential candidate makes their announcement from a safe environment. Most announcements, whether the candidate is a Democrat or a Republican, are at rallies full of supporters. Hell, Donald Trump held his first one in the lobby of Trump Tower (where he paid people to pretend to support him) and his second in the ballroom of his Mara-a-Lago (which Fox News stopped airing live out of boredom, but told us to take Sean Hannity’s word for how awesome it was). I didn’t think it could get much friendlier than that until DeSantis did what he did yesterday.

DeSantis didn’t hold a rally or even make the announcement on a talk show (like Arnold Schwarzenneger did when he announced his campaign for governor of California). DeSantis held it on Twitter Spaces, which is a new platform for audio conversations. DeSantis was trying to get around traditional media as he hates most news outlets, although he did run to Fox News right after his Twitter Spaces event.

And, it was hosted by Twitter owner Elon Music and moderated by David Sacks, who most people don’t know. And, it took 20 minutes for the event to get rolling because the platform kept crashing. Elon claimed it was because of the amount of users logging on to witness the audio-only event, but the real blame falls on Elon for running a shitshow, and on DeSantis for not thinking this one through. How great of a campaign can DeSantis run if his first move was to follow Elon?

DeSantis was avoiding crowds because he has zero charm, charisma, and personality. he’s not good with humans which explains why he hung out with Elon. And he was avoiding real news outlets because he’s a coward. He fielded softball questions from goons like Republican congressman Thomas Massie, Chris Rufo, Dana Loesch, and Iowa radio host Steve Deace. It was a real slobberfest as DeSantis promised to bring his brand of Florida fascism to the rest of the nation.

Elon called the event “historic,” though it was really just a radio broadcast which has been done. Elon is going to claim he invented radio after this. And it was a platform, “Twitter Spaces,” that most people have never heard of before. They may as well have made the announcement on MySpace.

Elon is working to turn Twitter into a right-wing paradise. Many of my readers have told me that my posts no longer show up in their feeds, and my news feed is made up mostly of right-wing goons I don’t follow.

This was a stupid move for DeSantis because most Americans are NOT on Twitter. Only 42 percent of Americans aged 12-34 are on Twitter. And that’s Twitter, not Twitter Spaces. DeSantis isn’t going to win by only appealing to 12-34-year-olds. If DeSantis had made his announcement at a rally, or even just by zooming it from his broom closet, every news outlet would have run it live, at least for the first few minutes before viewers got bored.

This fiasco of a campaign announcement isn’t just great news for Donald Trump and other Republicans but for the entire nation. It’s an indication of just how bad of a campaign DeSantis is building. Sure, Bootsie has a lot of cash on hand but he doesn’t know how to spend it. Puddin’ Fingers might be able to build a statewide coalition, but it’s after he steps outside of Florida that everyone sees his pudding is vanilla and boring.

We probably don’t have to fear a Ron DeSantis presidency but we still have to fear Republican fascism. We still have to fear a Florida Man.

Creative note: The cartoonist I compete against the most is myself. When I do these types of cartoons, I try not to repeat Easter eggs from previous cartoons…but a few are still repeated. C’mon, if I did a cartoon like this without Pizza Rat, an angry mob would show up at my door with torches and pitchforks.

 

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