Ann Telnaes resigned as editorial cartoonist for The Washington Post after her editor spiked a cartoon she had drawn that showed surrounded by fawning billionaires offering him wads of cash. One of them was Jeff Bezos, owner of The Washington Post. Her cartoon appeared on her Substack blog, Open Windows.
While Trump continues his revenge tour, Musk thinks he’s in charge
John Manley was a deputy prime minister and minister of finance in Jean Chrétien’s government in Canada.
He loves Trump’s idea of uniting Canada and the United States. Democrats should love it too. Republicans would never again win the presidency!
“I am so excited about this, Mr. Trump – I can already see the 60 little maple leaves on the flag with 13 stripes!”
His article appeared in The Globe & Mail, a major newspaper in Canada.
Dear Donald Trump,
My mentor and former boss, prime minister Jean Chrétien, has dismissed your suggestion that Canada and the U.S. merge.
Don’t despair. My point of view differs somewhat from his (sorry, Boss). I think we may be able to make this work if Canadians fully understand your proposal.
Imagine what the “United States of Canada” could be. We would marry American ingenuity and entrepreneurship to Canada’s natural resources, underdog toughness and culture of self-effacing politeness to create a powerful, world-dominating country.
We would be the largest land mass in the world. We would be self-reliant in every respect (food, energy, minerals, water). We would attract the world’s most talented people. We would truly be “the best country in the world,” to use Mr. Chrétien’s words, and would dominate international hockey competitions. Your idea is truly brilliant.
As you know from your corporate experience, for any successful merger, the devil is in the details, but I have some suggestions.
First, Canada could never simply be the 51st state. Canada consists of 10 states (we call them “provinces”) and three territories. Each of our provinces exists for historical reasons and citizens feel a deep loyalty to their province.
So we would need to be the 51st to 60th states. With two senators for each state, of course. Our 20 senators will no doubt bring fresh ideas to the institution that will help make the United States of Canada truly great!
Some issues that cause division and frustration in your country are considered settled by political parties of all stripes in Canada, so I suggest adopting Canadian consensus in the interest of making this deal work.
For example, there is no argument in Canada over women’s reproductive rights. There! That hot-button issue is resolved for you! (You can thank me later.)
All Canadian politicians support our single-payer health care system because no one is refused treatment for their inability to pay and no one goes broke because they suffer a catastrophic illness. In effect, all of our citizens have lifetime critical illness insurance provided by the government. And while it’s expensive, our system costs considerably less than yours, with 100 per cent of the population covered! Your citizens will love it, I promise.
I would also observe that Canadians have long preferred to live with many fewer firearms than are tolerated in the United States. The result is a drastically lower rate of deaths and injuries caused by gun violence in Canada. Our gun laws would make the country safer than it is, and safer is definitely greater!
We have some other innovations that you may wish to consider. Our Canada Pension Plan, equivalent to your Social Security, is fully funded and actuarially sound. This requires higher contributions, but it pays off with solvency. I believe your Social Security runs out of money in the near future. (That’s not great, is it?)
Lower personal income taxes paid in the U.S. are a great attraction. But our programs to support both seniors and young families to reduce the worst cases of poverty among them help make society more cohesive and fair. That’s one of the reasons our taxes have been higher.
Oh, and we must consider how we fund government expenses. We’re struggling to bring our deficit back down, but it wasn’t that long ago (2015) that our budget was effectively balanced. In fact, for more than a decade prior to the global financial crisis, Canada ran surplus budgets. In addition to spending discipline, our national value-added tax, the GST, was key. You definitely want to adopt that! In fact, you will love it! (Canadians don’t love it, but their governments do. And it beats borrowing money from the Chinese.)
There are many smaller details that I am sure we can work out. You will enjoy the simplicity of the metric system for weights and measures, for example. Oh, but we’re not crazy, you can keep yards for football! And you will love that sport even more when you play it on a bigger field with only three downs.
I am so excited about this, Mr. Trump. You are truly a visionary leader to have come up with this idea. I can already see the 60 little maple leaves on the flag with 13 stripes! I am ready to throw myself into this great project of making the United States of Canada great again! (Oh, that’s too long. Let’s just call our new country “Canada.”)
Respectfully, as I dislodge my tongue from my cheek,
John Manley
Andy Borowitz is one of our very best political humorists.
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—District of Columbia officials confirmed on Tuesday that they are constructing a fence around a federal government building to keep a sexual predator 500 feet away from the public.
With a Monday deadline for completion of the barrier fast approaching, the calls to “build the wall” have only grown louder.
“Once we got official word last week that the felon in question would not be going to prison, we immediately got to work on the fence,” D.C. spokesman Harland Dorrinson said. “We’re doing everything we can to keep people safe.”
D.C. residents praised the decision to build the fence, but warned that one is still needed around the Supreme Court.
Andy Borowitz is a humorist of the highest order. He used to write for The New Yorker, now he has a blog at Substack.
Here is his list of what to watch tomorrow instead of the inauguration of you-know-who.
He invites you to submit your ideas.
I suggest not only films, but activities.
Take a long walk unless you are in a state hit by the Arctic freeze.
Read a good book. Fahrenheit 451? 1984? Brave New World? The Handmaid’s Tale?
Listen to music that soothes your soul.
Go to the zoo.
Do something kind for others because kindness will be in short supply for the next four years..
What else?
I’m posting this latest missive from Jeff Tiedrich because it made me laugh out loud. I once again apologize for his generous use of words I don’t allow on this site. But he uses the F word to make you laugh and to emphasize his point. The next four years will give him plenty to work with. I subscribe to his blog. You should consider doing so.
He writes:
as another stupid week comes to a close here in America, let’s look back at some of the highlights.
it’s been a hot minute, so let’s check in on America’s new christofascist overlords. here’s newly-elected Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita.
“with your help, together, we will make Indiana a truly free state … where we can raise our children as God intended, without interference by woke schools, doctors or courts … where we are no longer vaxxed or masked.”
sure, absolutely. it’s a well-known fact that Jesus was all about spreading preventable diseases. it’s right there in the Sermon on the Mount: blessed are the science-deniers, for they will choke to death on their own infectious mucus.
I’m no scholar, but I’m pretty sure that there’s nothing in the Bible about vaccinations — but as long as we’re going to adhere to “God’s intentions,” here’s one he’s pretty specific about.
if you wear linen and wool at the same time, you should be fucking slaughtered.
Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed: neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee.
that’s good old Leviticus 19:19. now here’s Leviticus 19:27.
Ye shall not round off the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.
what do you have to say for yourself, Todd, you infidel? because it looks to me like you’re definitely marring the corners of thy beard.
that’s what I love about these cristofascist hypocrites. they cherry-pick the Bible to prove whatever oppressive notion they want to inflict on the rest of us — but when it comes to actually adhering to the laws that are right there in the Bible, it’s fucking crickets.
Tuesday was Pete Hegseth’s confirmation hearing, and Senate Republicans brought all the props out in support of his candidacy — because nothing says I’m a serious legislator whose issues should be taken seriously more thanmisspelling the word military.
in their own defense, Senate Republicans had been out all night getting hammered with Piss-Drunk Pete, and were too hung over the next morning to notice.
during oral arguments regarding a Texas law requiring age verification in order to access porn sites, Fishin’ Trip Sammy Alito raised a cogent question.
“Justice Alito is asking if websites like Pornhub have ‘essays, modern day Gore Vidal, stuff like that’ like the old Playboy.”
um, who wants to tell him?
I suppose on the one hand, it’s admirable that Steal Stoppin’ Sammy should be so ignorant of the online porn experience that he’d ask such a ludicrous question — but on the other hand: why the fuck are ancient white men allowed to rule on technologies they’re too out-of-touch to understand?
remember the old “the internet is a series of tubes” meme? here’s where it came from: an old white man who had no clue what he was gibbering about.
back in 2006, Alaska Senator Ted Stevens was railing against streaming services. he wanted to shut them down. he was convinced they were going to break the internet — because, as he explained it, the internet is “a series of tubes.” here is exactly what Senator Stevens said.
“And again, the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes. And if you don’t understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it’s going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.”
these people should not be setting policy affecting millions of Americans. they should be enjoying a nice, hot cup of shut the fuck up in a managed care facility.
oh, and for the record, “I download porn for the articles” is a joke I made twelve years ago.
you’re welcome.
oh frabjous day, the toxic incels are at it again.
pro tip: posting shit like this is proof you’ve failed as a human being.
also, can you fucking idiots get your stories straight?
just two weeks ago, the Space Nazi was extolling the virtues of c-sections — promising that if women would opt out of giving birth the old-fashioned way, all of us could have brains as big as his.
“There are certainly other factors at play, but heavy use of c-sections allows for a larger brain, as brain size has historically been limited by birth canal diameter.”
so which is it, incels?
while writing these daily posts, there’s a line find myself I using over and over: “it’s so easy to solve all the world’s problems when you have no fucking clue what you’re talking about.” the reason I keep repeating it, is because Republicans keep proving it’s true.
here’s failed wig model Rand Paul, explaining how he knows more about water management than all the water managers.
“I see these homes burning and I’m like wow, if they just had a generator and a hose, you start sucking the water out of the The Pacific Ocean. but you can do more than that. you can pump it and put it in cisterns up in the hills a mile or two in. why don’t they take the ocean water and put it in cisterns have a bunch of water ready when a wildfire shows up? once again, bad local government.”
hey everybody, Rand Paul just invented reservoirs. that’s some Nobel Prizewinning stuff right there.
this fucking arrogant asshole, lecturing Los Angeles on why don’t you just have reservoirs?
you nincompoop, Los Angeles has reservoirs. plenty of them. and they were all full when the fires started. that’s not the issue. Rand Paul is conveniently forgetting about the part where LA was dealing with literal hurricanes made out of fire that were too massive and fast-moving to control or contain — by any fire department, anywhere.
talking out of your ass from the floor of the Senate is easy. actually dealing with problems is hard — and Republicans are proving it every day.
hey, it’s still morning as I sit here writing this. but give it time, I guarantee you that some dipshit wingnut is going to do something stupid before the day is over. you can set your watch to it.
everyone is entitled to my own opinion is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
do you have a nomination for This Week in Stupid? email me at jefftiedrich@gmail.com. thanks!
Alexandra Petri is the resident humorist at The Washington Post. She has the knack of taking wacky ideas in the world of politics and exposing them as bizarre. In this post, she shows the absurdity of sanewashing extremism in the guise of finding a “middle ground” with crackpot ideas. The “middle ground,” she cautions, may actually mean “giving ground” to very bad and deadly ideas. Sometimes there is no middle ground between a good idea and a dangerous idea.
She writes:
“As a Democratic member of Congress, I know my party will be tempted to hold fast against Mr. Trump at every turn: uniting against his bills, blocking his nominees and grinding the machinery of the House and the Senate to a halt. That would be a mistake. Only by working together to find compromise on parts of the president-elect’s agenda can we make progress for Americans who are clearly demanding change in the economy, immigration, crime and other top issues.”
— “Let’s Try Something Different in How We Deal With Trump,” Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-New York), in a New York Times op-ed
Look, some people are still naive enough to believe that polio is, for lack of a better word, “bad.” And recent signs haven’t been encouraging! It seems like the disease wants to do exactly what it did last time: cripple children and put them in iron lungs. But what if instead of fighting it, we … didn’t?
When I look at how people voted this election, I am forced to conclude: Some of you want polio. Who am I to stand against that desire? Someone with values?
Do I think polio is good? No! Of course not. But some people do, and I just think it would be a mistake not to give them the opportunity to set the course of vaccine policy for the next four years. Which, again, isn’t what I want. But compromise is important. That was why people voted for me, someone who said he didn’t like polio, so that I could surprise them by wanting to hear polio out. That’s just good politics.
It’s not only polio. Everywhere you look, there are battles that once felt existentially important in which you can just surrender, as I’m sure Donald Trump is eager to tell Ukraine. And I am ready to start doing that work — first on polio, then on everything else.
Listen, I’m not naive. I know that every indication so far has been that only one side is willing to compromise on anything. That gives us bargaining power! Or is it the other side that gets the bargaining power … ? Hang on, let me go look this up. This feels important to get right! Well, let me keep going with my argument, but I will come back and look this up. Don’t let me forget!
Where was I? Right: Having core values means that sometimes you have to stand up for them, even when it feels like an uphill battle. For instance, the belief that trans people deserve protection from those who would legislate them out of public spaces and eliminate their right to medical self-determination — a bottom line that I would never budge on, except to completely throw away that principle if I ever decide it’s politically expedient. Which I think I might just have done! Whoops!
But, hey, that’s what principles are: inconvenient. Except for my bedrock principle: that those who want the opposite of what I stand for and who refuse to work with me on any issue probably know something that I don’t, and I should listen to them. That I will never abandon.
When I see someone who wants to put polio back on the map, I just see one more opportunity for compromise. Why, if enough of us say, “You know what, in all that ranting about fluoride, I heard one word that made a kind of sense! Say more! I bet we can find common ground!” maybe the other side will stop believing what they believe and change their entire worldview! Isn’t that what happened to Scrooge? It’s not? Well, never mind.
If I just listen hard enough and agree to find common ground, I am certain the other party will be the one to change. That’s usually what makes people change: when you give up defending your position completely! Then they budge. I hope! That’s certainly what I’m counting on for the next four-plus years!
When I read the sentence “Unless enough people find the spine to oppose his appointment, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will soon be in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services,” what I see is not a call to find some spine (impossible) and remind others of the stakes of not doing so. When has anyone found a congressional spine, except RFK Jr. while out on one of his weekly Hikes in Search of Surprising Things to Put Into His Freezer?
No, what that sentence means is: We need to start thinking of ways to compromise now! Compromise public health, compromise public safety, compromise all of our principles! Because that’s what the country needs: more things to be compromised.
And I, for one, am excited.
Andy Borowitz, who sees the humor in almost everything, spies another likely Trump appointment: Druglord El Chapo as our next Ambassador to Mexico.
PALM BEACH (The Borowitz Report)—Donald J. Trump raised eyebrows in diplomatic circles on Saturday by naming the former drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman U.S. ambassador to Mexico.
Trump told reporters that the appointment of El Chapo was consistent with his policy of surrounding himself with “only the best people.”
When asked about El Chapo’s ten felony convictions, Trump said, “I wish he had more, but I still think he’s qualified.”
Please open to read the last laugh!
Guess who’s serving? is it JD in drag?
Alexei Navalny stood up to Putin. He did so with humor and joy. His documentary about Putin’s wealth and lavish lifestyle infuriated the dictator. After having been poisoned by Putin’s secret police, he was air-lifted to Germany, where doctors saved his life. He could have stayed in the West, but he insisted on returning to Russia, where he knew he would be arrested as soon as he exited his flight. He never lost his equanimity or his sense of humor. He refused to be depressed or show anger. His writings from prison were just published in a book titled Patriot. The New Yorker printed excerpts from the book. They are powerful.
n August 20, 2020, during a flight from the Siberian city of Tomsk to Moscow, the Russian opposition leader and anticorruption campaigner Alexei Navalny thought he was dying––he was disoriented, and felt his body shutting down. The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, and Navalny was hospitalized. Two days later, thanks to the persistence of his wife, Yulia Navalnaya, and international pressure, the Russian authorities allowed a German plane to take him to Berlin for treatment.
Navalny emerged from a coma on September 7th. A week later, he announced his intention to return soon to Russia, despite the obvious danger. Doctors concluded that Navalny had been poisoned with a deadly nerve agent called Novichok. While recovering in the German countryside, he began writing his memoir, “Patriot,” and investigating the attempt on his life. He had no doubt that it had been the decision of Vladimir Putin and the work of the F.S.B., the Russian security services, but he was determined to uncover the details. During an unforgettable telephone call, which was filmed for a documentary about his life, Navalny duped an F.S.B. agent into describing how agents had broken into his hotel room in Tomsk and dosed his clothing with the poison.
On January 17, 2021, Alexei and Yulia flew back to Moscow. Navalny was arrested at the airport. Despite international protests on his behalf, Navalny immediately entered a netherworld of trumped-up criminal charges (embezzlement, fraud, “extremism,” etc.), prison cells, and solitary confinement. By the end of 2023, he landed in the “special regime” colony known as Polar Wolf, north of the Arctic Circle. In captivity, he managed to keep a diary and even had his team post some entries on social media. In one Facebook post, he explained why he refused to live out his life in the safety of exile: “I have my country and my convictions. I don’t want to give up my country or betray it. If your convictions mean something, you must be prepared to stand up for them and make sacrifices if necessary.”
January 17th
Exactly one year ago today I came home, to Russia.
I didn’t manage to take a single step on the soil of my country as a free man: I was arrested even before border control.
The hero of one of my favorite books, “Resurrection,” by Leo Tolstoy, says, “Yes, the only suitable place for an honest man in Russia at the present time is prison.”
It sounds fine, but it was wrong then, and it’s even more wrong now.
There are a lot of honest people in Russia—tens of millions. There are far more than is commonly believed.
The authorities, however, who were repugnant then and are even more so now, are afraid not of honest people but of those who are not afraid of them. Or let me be more precise: those who may be afraid but overcome their fear….
Having spent my first year in prison, I want to tell everyone exactly the same thing I shouted to those who gathered outside the court when the guards were taking me off to the police truck: Don’t be afraid of anything. This is our country and it’s the only one we have.
The only thing we should fear is that we will surrender our homeland to be plundered by a gang of liars, thieves, and hypocrites. That we will surrender without a fight, voluntarily, our own future and the future of our children….
I knew from the outset that I would be imprisoned for life—either for the rest of my life or until the end of the life of this regime…
I’m forty-five. I have a family and children. I’ve had a life to live, worked on some interesting things, done some things that were useful. But there’s a war on right now. Suppose a nineteen-year-old is riding in an armored vehicle, he gets a piece of shrapnel in his head, and that’s it. He has had no family, no children, no life. Right now, dead civilians are lying in the streets in Mariupol, their bodies gnawed at by dogs, and many of them will be lucky if they end up in even a mass grave—through no fault of their own. I made my choices, but these people were just living their lives. They had jobs. They were family breadwinners. Then, one fine evening, a vengeful runt on television, the President of a neighboring country, announces that you are all “Nazis” and have to die because Ukraine was invented by Lenin. The next day, a shell comes flying in your window and you no longer have a wife, a husband, or children—and maybe you yourself are also no longer alive….
I said it two years ago, and I will say it again: Russia is my country. I was born and raised here, my parents are here, and I made a family here; I found someone I loved and had kids with her. I am a full-fledged citizen, and I have the right to unite with like-minded people and be politically active. There are plenty of us, certainly more than corrupt judges, lying propagandists, and Kremlin crooks.
I’m not going to surrender my country to them, and I believe that the darkness will eventually yield. But as long as it persists I will do all I can, try to do what is right, and urge everyone not to abandon hope.
Russia will be happy!…
And now they’re trying me in a closed trial in a maximum-security penal colony.
In a sense, this is the new sincerity. They now say openly, We are afraid of you. We are afraid of what you will say. We are afraid of the truth.
This is an important confession. And it makes practical sense for all of us. We must do what they fear—tell the truth, spread the truth. This is the most powerful weapon against this regime of liars, thieves, and hypocrites. Everyone has this weapon. So make use of it….
I have my country and my convictions. I don’t want to give up my country or betray it. If your convictions mean something, you must be prepared to stand up for them and make sacrifices if necessary.
And, if you’re not prepared to do that, you have no convictions. You just think you do. But those are not convictions and principles; they’re only thoughts in your head.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that everyone who’s not currently in prison lacks convictions. Everyone pays their price. For many people, the price is high even without being imprisoned.
I took part in elections and vied for leadership positions. The call for me is different. I travelled the length and breadth of the country, declaring everywhere from the stage, “I promise that I won’t let you down, I won’t deceive you, and I won’t abandon you.” By coming back to Russia, I fulfilled my promise to the voters. There need to be some people in Russia who don’t lie to them.
It turned out that, in Russia, to defend the right to have and not to hide your beliefs, you have to pay by sitting in a solitary cell. Of course, I don’t like being there. But I will not give up either my ideas or my homeland.
My convictions are not exotic, sectarian, or radical. On the contrary, everything I believe in is based on science and historical experience.
Those in power should change. The best way to elect leaders is through honest and free elections. Everyone needs a fair legal system. Corruption destroys the state. There should be no censorship.
The future lies in these principles.
But, for the present, sectarians and marginals are in power. They have absolutely no ideas. Their only goal is to cling to power. Total hypocrisy allows them to wrap themselves in any cover. So polygamists have become conservatives. Members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union have become Orthodox. Owners of “golden passports” and offshore accounts are aggressive patriots.
Lies, and nothing but lies.
It will crumble and collapse. The Putinist state is not sustainable.
One day, we will look at it, and it won’t be there. Victory is inevitable.
But for now, we must not give up, and we must stand by our beliefs.
I ordered the book. I can’t believe that I lived on the earth at the same time as a man like Navalny. Putin is a sadistic criminal
Rex Huppke writes for USA Today.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on a minute. President-elect Donald Trump has started appointing screwballs for important government positions, making plans for immigrant detention camps and leaning, authoritarian-style, on Republicans in Congress to obliterate check and balances?
Are you telling me the man who said he was going to do all these crazy things is actually going to do all these crazy things? What the heck?
I was told by many Trump supporters that he’s a showman who talks tough, but when he gets into office again he’ll govern like a sensible conservative, just like he didn’t do the first time around.
I am shocked to see Trump do exactly what he told people he’d do
And now I find the next president is, in fact, going to let a certifiable nutball like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “go wild” on American health and medicine? I mean, when Trump said he was going to let Kennedy “go wild” on American health and medicine, I assumed he was kidding around. And besides, I was mad that eggs are expensive.
But now it looks like vaccines are going to become optional and Americans will be told the best way to protect against infectious diseases is to put a clove of garlic in your ear and avoid processed foods.
I am shocked – shocked, I tell you! – that a presidential candidate who spoke in run-on sentences that sounded like they were written by a dumb version of Jack Kerouac on a Benzedrine bender might have actually been telling the truth about his intentions.
Trump has appointed unelected billionaire weirdo Elon Musk to a fake department he claims will slash-and-burn the federal government in the name of imagined efficiency. And since nobody on Trump’s transition team apparently knows what “efficiency” means, Musk can’t do it alone, so Trump paired him with another wealthy weirdo, Vivek Ramaswamy, who talks like he should be selling Veg-O-Matics on late-night TV infomercials.
I mean, just because Trump has spoken highly of Ramaswamy and had Musk more-or-less by his side since before the election, saying he would put Musk in charge of government efficiency, I never expected that…ohhhh, OK, this is starting to make sense now.
Apparently Trump DID mean all the noodle-brained things he said over and over and over again during the campaign. Things that included being a dictator, but just for the first day of his administration. And rounding up millions upon millions of immigrants and stashing them in detention camps. And punishing his political enemies, and giving police officers greater immunity protection, and implementing massive tariffs and pardoning the convicted Jan. 6 attackers.
I guess I just thought him saying those things, and the media reporting on those things, and pundits warning that Trump will definitely do the things he keeps saying he’s going to do…well, like I said, eggs were expensive, and I figured, “Nah, he’s not gonna do all that.”
Boy do I have expensive eggs on my face.
This guy’s gonna do all that and a whole lot more.
But don’t worry, I won’t complain about it now. The last thing I need is Attorney General Matt Gaetz coming after me.
And besides, I’ve got to stock up on garlic cloves to keep my family safe from infectious diseases before Trump’s tariffs make garlic unaffordable. Of course that might not matter once Musk and Ramaswamy do away with the Department of the Treasury and force all of us to use cryptocurrency and go broke.
It’s strange how all the things we were explicitly told would happen are now going to happen. It really makes you think.
Or at least wish you had done so sooner.
Diane Ravitch's blog 