From DC to DC, Swamp Thing makes a special guest appearance on Paul Krugman’s Substack, nudging me ever closer to becoming a paid subscriber.
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/wake-up-and-smell-the-corruption
Drain the Swamp Thing
Anybody Surprised?
The inevitable breakup is here. The only surprise is it came after Elon had already split from the scene. I guess his gold key to the White House wash room won’t be working after all.
“The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Funny “Money”
I continue to sit on the fence about upgrading to a paid subscription for Paul Krugman’s presence on Substack. His recent essay on the undeniable risks of indulging crypto inclines me more on the side of sending $7/month to the Nobel Prize winning economist.
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/digital-corruption-takes-over-dc
Stepping in Man Cave Guano
Let’s keep up with Colbert, as he expounds on the dinged male egos of American men today.
Thirty-five years ago, discussion of the “masculine identity crisis” for the “post-sensitive male” resided within the NPR/New Yorker set, as popularized by Robert Bly’s Iron John. I read the book and thought it was interesting, but not particularly compelling. By that point in my life, I considered myself relatively immune to such influences, after all of the “personal searching” I’d done during my college years. Which is the proper time for such musings, after all. Speaking of the various schools of thought I exposed myself to while a student, I highly recommend the HBO Max documentary, Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief.
The buzz around Iron John inspired me to start working on this cartoon, with the intention of submitting it to The Comics Buyer’s Guide. I abandoned it after losing the inspiration due to interruptions for business travel.
Gold for Green
I’ve been an American Express “member” for over 40 years. At some point, I upgraded from a green Amex card to a gold card. Trump is offering his gold card as a way to get a green card.
“$5 million to these people is jet fuel cost. It means nothing to them,” says Matthew Kolken, an immigration lawyer from Buffalo, NY, who has Canadian clients asking about the Gold Card.
I’m supposed to be impressed? I’m appalled. Trump has made it clear that he considers all poor immigrants to be violent criminals. Now he is implying that all rich immigrants are good and worthy of American residency.
Of course, it may not become a reality, given Trump’s track record of failed ideas. When will Alcatraz reopen as a prison? I’m thinking likely never.
This One Goes to Eleven
So off Elon goes, leaving Washington with a black eye, both figuratively and literally. He has, what, eleven offspring? Maybe he got the idea from listening to this Zeppelin track while stoned.
Rather than taking a hatchet to government agencies and staff in an attempt at reducing government fraud and waste, wouldn’t this “radical left idea” from AOC have served the purpose better?