Cagle World

Raging Moderate by Will Durst

The State of the Union address, about to be presented by President Donald Trump, is a week late, due to the government being closed for five. In the shutdown showdown, the 45th POTUS blinked. He got stared down by Nancy Pelosi, which has to tick him off not less than somewhat, especially since she didn’t have the decency to gloat.

Of course, if there’s one thing we’ve gotten used to after living under the wild emotional swings and unprovoked rants of our plump swaggering Oval Office ego sausage, it’s that everything is all about him. Always. That’s the way it is, has been and forever shall be.

So the State of the Union will actually be the State of The Donald. Not the authentic condition but the extravagant hyperbole he uses as brand. Which means we can expect to hear that the State of the Union is not orange, overweight and bedraggled but rather “tremendous. Fantastic. The best it’s ever been. In the history of ever.”

Here’s a leaked excerpt:

Since we have been blessed with Captain ‘get things done’ at the helm, our Ship of State is headed in the right direction. Finally. After you know who, the guy with the phony birth certificate, tried to steer us into the rocks. He was a disgrace. Seriously, folks, a disgrace. I’m much better. I got all the good words and I know how to use them.

And this is just the start. Major projects are in the works that will neutralize the lying mainstream media, which cannot go a day without picking on me like no other president has ever been picked on. Ever. That’s a fact. You can look it up.

Then we’ll lock up Crooked Hillary and her criminal cronies in Congress and those activist judges who do nothing but obstruct our plans to Make America Great Again. We’re not going to divulge those plans until we’re ready. Don’t want to give them advance warning. But you’ll see. And you will be amazed. Seriously, folks, huge plans. Really good ones.

The wall will be built. Make no mistake about that. We will have a great big beautiful wall protecting our country from crime and disease and earthquakes and hurricanes and the measles. And there will be no skirting of that wall. We’re going to make ladders and shovels illegal in border- states. Canadian borders too. Puerto Rico.

And we’ll have cheaper, better health care for everybody. The best health care. It’s easy. You know it and I know it. The only reason we haven’t done it before is I’m forced to work with idiots. People who won’t do what I tell them to do. Trust me. I know more than anybody else. A lot more. These so-called experts are passive and naive. That’s the truth. Everybody knows it.

It won’t be long before the yellow lines down the middle of our highways are outlined by real gold and double quarter-pounders with cheese pop right out of your phone and the chickens lay nothing but soft boiled eggs and people won’t need to go on holidays, because everywhere in this great nation will be a vacation spot. Just wait and see, it’s going to be amazing.

Thank you and God Bless the Soviet Union, I mean America.

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Copyright 2019, Will Durst, distributed by the Cagle Cartoons Inc. syndicate.

Will Durst is an award-winning, nationally acclaimed columnist, comic and former sod farmer in New Berlin, Wisconsin. For a calendar of personal appearances, including his new one-man show, “Durst Case Scenario,” please visit willdurst.com.

Raging Moderate

It’s way past time to congratulate the baby Jesus on the anniversary of his birth. While all those annoying unending ads for the Christmas sales have blessedly come to an end, they’ve been replaced by all those annoying unending ads for the after-Christmas sales. The only major difference is there are much fewer jingle bells on the soundtracks.

It’s also a relief to have the traditional holiday music stuffed back into the poisonous mistletoe vault, meaning we’ll have to wait nine whole months to hear the same thirty songs sung by the same thirty dead white men. And Nat King Cole.

As we throw the last shovel full of dirt on the most festive of seasons and kick the dried-out fir tree to the gutter, it is our self-imposed, public-service task here at Durstco to right the many wrongs perpetrated by the corpulent bearded cisgender male in the scarlet suit on his global flight.

Apparently Santa had some holes in his bag and a few folks didn’t receive the gifts they so richly deserved. A little mistake we would like to rectify here with WILL DUR$T’$ AFTER XMA$ GIFT WI$H LI$T.

At least the after-Christmas sales will make the purchasing of said items more bargainy. And by delaying another week or so, we could dovetail into President’s Day sales. What with the government shutdown, every penny saved is a penny earned. Earning a couple hundred or so could buy us a cup of coffee. Not a latte, but still.

For Kellyanne Conway: A red, white and blue muzzle.

For General James Mattis: An all-expenses paid vacation to the relative calm of Damascus, Syria.

For Melania Trump: Not a designer coat, but a new coat designer.

For Nancy Pelosi: A whip, a gun and a chair.

For Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III: A cold dish of revenge.

For Sarah Huckabee Sanders: A round-trip ticket on the clue train.

For Michael Cohen: A poster to hang in his cell that reads “What Happens in Jersey Stays in Jersey.”

For Mitt Romney: A cape and pair of tights to help him single- handedly save the Republican Party.

For Kamala Harris: Some of Hillary Clinton’s excess testosterone.

For Donald Trump and Roseanne Barr: Two pairs of those Chinese finger traps for their thumbs.

For Ivanka Trump: A fully furnished pied-a-terre in the Seychelles.

For Jared Kushner: The same kind of family reverence his father showed his uncle.

For Kanye West: A new hat.

For Brett Kavanaugh: Clarence Thomas’ primer on how to question Supreme Court litigants.

For Mike Pence: A strobe light, so at press conferences, he can at least give the appearance of movement.

For Elon Musk: A years’ supply of whatever medicine they give kids with Attention Deficit Disorder.

For Bernie Sanders: A series of bushes to lurk behind for the next two years.

For Rudy Giuliani: A case of mint-flavored shoelaces for the multiple occasions he puts his foot in his mouth.

For Joe Biden: A 55-gallon drum of patience.

For Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador: A wall to control our immigration.

For Rachel Maddow: A nice blue sweater.

For Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Two six-foot spools of industrial strength bubble wrap.

And finally for the American People: Total gridlock of the 116th Congress. No harm, no foul.

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Copyright 2019, Will Durst, distributed by the Cagle Cartoons Inc. syndicate.

Will Durst is an award-winning, nationally acclaimed columnist, comic and former sod farmer in New Berlin, Wisconsin. For a calendar of personal appearances, including his new one-man show, “Durst Case Scenario,” please visit willdurst.com.

Raging Moderate

Donald Trump and global warming. Not what you would call your match made in heaven. Rather, the pairing harkens closer to the other location. That hotter destination often described as being in a more Southernly direction. The one with the pitchfork racks on the scorched walls of the foyer.

Not only does the president not believe in global warming, he thinks the exact opposite is going on. Whatever that is. He’s not really sure. But it’s definitely neither warming nor global. Could be localized. Could be cooling. Still snows in New Hampshire in the winter, don’t it?

His series of climate change denials have included calling it a hoax, blaming the Chinese and saying it could turn back on its own. He even said it was a spurious plot dreamed up by Crooked Hillary to make him look bad, and claimed he would have won the popular vote if millions of illegals hadn’t flooded the polls.

He pulled out of the Paris Climate Accords, even though hundreds of U.S. corporations lobbied to stay in. Because apparently they have access to research that seems to indicate that the extinction of the human species might adversely affect quarterly dividends. Especially in the retail sector.

In their most recent report, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change announced an updated strategy: learn to live with it. Remember when they said that if something wasn’t done within ten years, all hell was going to break loose? Well, that was 16 years ago. So what they’re saying now is, the basement is already full of gas, we should concentrate on lighting the fewest matches.

Then Trump’s own administration was forced to issue the 1,600 page national climate assessment, which they attempted to bury by releasing it the day after Thanksgiving. You know, that blackest of Fridays, when most Americans are recovering from ingesting enough calories to stuff a wooly mammoth. Speaking of extinct species.

That report suggests that unless something is done by 2100, 10 percent of our GNP could disappear due to environmental deterioration. There you go. See, that’s how you reach the guy. Focus on ramifications he can understand. And losing money would certainly be one of them.

So here are some other possible items of note to help convince Mr. Trump that climate change might not be the best thing since sliced bread.

– Rising ocean levels washing through Mar-A-Lago would necessitate the refurbishment of a large amount of rooms.

– Increased humidity guaranteed to make his daily hair scaffolding ritual more complicated.

– Might prove to be a major inconvenience for Sean Hannity.

– Rudy Giuliani would dissolve into an oil slick that would dissipate and befoul beaches up and down the entire east coast.

– Would definitely affect Melania’s complexion. And not necessarily in a good way.

– Can almost guarantee it would interfere with the intricate electronics that allow Mike Pence to appear so lifelike.

– Might prove to be a major inconvenience for Vladimir Putin.

– Kellyanne Conway can’t float.

– Scientists predict wars breaking out over dwindling food and water supplies and we all know how much he enjoys his snacks.

– Having the carts burning up on his golf courses might negatively affect resort revenues. Because as everyone knows, a dead member is not a dues paying member.

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Copyright 2018, Will Durst, distributed by the Cagle Cartoons Inc. syndicate.

Will Durst is an award-winning, nationally acclaimed columnist, comic and former sod farmer in New Berlin, Wisconsin. For a calendar of personal appearances, including his new one-man show, “Durst Case Scenario,” please visit willdurst.com.

Raging Moderate

Sit the kids down. Let the dogs out. Prop the grandparents up. The nation’s patience has been richly rewarded, because the eagerly awaited list of the Top Ten Comedic News Stories of 2018 has been officially released. This truly is the most wonderful time of the year.

But first a caution: please do not confuse this list with the top ten legitimate news stories of 2018. No. No. No. They are as different as charcoal sketches of historic steam engines and a bucket of compost. Like golden-stitched, sequined blue jean jackets are to chocolate brownies. Bow ties and dirt bikes.

There are no wildfires or hurricanes or kids kept in cages or bone saws or cave dwelling Thai soccer teams, nor mention of the movie “The Happytime Murders” in this report. No casualties from the #MeToo or TimesUp movements. These are the stories that most lent themselves to (s)mocking and scoffing and taunting. So here they are, the Top Ten Comedic News Stories of 2018.

10. PROPOSAL TO GIVE TEACHERS GUNS. Brilliant idea. And the cure for concussions is hammers. It admittedly would add an interesting element to the faculty lounge. Might help parent teacher conferences resolve a little earlier. Of course then all the school employees would want them. And the librarians would demand silencers on theirs.

9. KIM KARDASHIAN MEETS WITH TRUMP. In May, the two broke the old record for largest assemblage of White House ass, set in 1978 when Jimmy Carter welcomed the Upper Michigan Donkey Basketball Champions. Five months later her husband Kanye West set the bar even higher. Or lower.

8. KIM JONG UN & THE SINGAPORE SUMMIT. A win-win. Trump got a great photo op and Kim Jong Un got to leave North Korea and eat real food.

7. BOOKS ON TRUMP. Four major publications and every one calls him nuttier than the hospitality suite at a squirrel convention. Stormy Daniels said his male member looks like a mushroom prompting a protest from the American Mushroom Institute. Apparently, every twenty years America needs to know the shape of the leader of the leader of the free world.

6. VLADIMIR PUTIN & THE HELSINKI SUMMIT. The president made Neville Chamberlain look like a mixed martial arts champ. He sucked up so hard he probably left hickeys.

5. UN LAUGHS AT TRUMP. After he claimed to be the best president EVER, they laughed. And because of translation delays, it was a slow ripple of laughter punctuated by the occasional guffaw.

4. WHITE HOUSE CORRUPTION. His malfeasance is so large it can be seen from space. Rick Gates testified under oath he stole money from Paul Manafort who stole money from Donald Trump who stole money from everybody. These guys are the Russian nesting dolls of crime.

3. THE KAVANAUGH HEARINGS. Women outraged for being disenfranchised and white men outraged for… having their entitlements challenged.

2. THE BLUE WAVE. Against all odds, the Democrats actually exhibited a pulse. The midterms were less of an election and more of an intervention.

1. DONALD JOHN TRUMP. Refuses to release his DNA to prove he’s a carbon-based life-form. The president calls his administration a finely tuned machine, which certainly sounds better than out-of-control dumpster fire but might be a little less apt.

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Copyright 2018, Will Durst, distributed by the Cagle Cartoons Inc. syndicate.

Will Durst is an award-winning, nationally acclaimed columnist, comic and former sod farmer in New Berlin, Wisconsin. For a calendar of personal appearances, including his new one-man show, “Durst Case Scenario,” please visit willdurst.com.

Raging Moderate

Money. Moolah. Cash. Dough. Scratch. Dinero. Benjamins. Greenbacks. Cabbage. Lettuce. Gravy. Whatever you call it, nobody ever has enough of it – you, me, poor people, rich people and even, apparently, America.

Republican Senator Mitch McConnell says the country needs to slash entitlements because of our huge deficit. What he fails to mention is he’s mostly responsible for that deficit because of the $1.5 trillion corporate tax cut pushed through earlier this year. Kind of like the kid who murders his parents then begs the court for mercy owing to him being an orphan.

Of course, now, with a change in the House of Representatives, you got a better chance of a wounded gazelle taking down a pride of lions than getting the Democrats to sign off on cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Unless, of course, it would increase their reelection prospects.

Fortunately we have a president who’s good at monetizing things. After all, he ran a string of casinos and hotels and golf courses and beauty pageants and football teams and airlines and universities and made plenty of money, right? With only a couple of bankruptcies. Okay, six. And a gazillion lawsuits, but still.

This nation needs someone who knows how to sell the presidency and the current occupant seems the perfect match. He’s already presented a Medal of Honor to the wife of his largest donor. If the rich are willing to drop big bucks for hunks of metal dangling from ribbons, we should do everything in our power to accommodate them.

There’s plenty more ways this Administration can raise money by offering items of interest for which the general public might be willing to cough up hard currency and here are just a few of the more marketable with fancy titles.

FIRST LADY MAKE OVER. An intensive one-hour beauty consultancy with the lovely Melania Knauss Trump.

RUMBLE IN THE TRUMPLE. Presidential son Eric will let you beat him at tic-tac-toe in the lobby of Trump Tower.

IMPEACHMENT POOL. A national lottery on what day the House will vote to impeach. Submissions closest to exact vote earn bonuses.

BEST FRIENDS FOREVER. High quality limited edition autographed photos of Vladimir Putin riding a horse shirtless. Not very limited.

WHY THIS NIGHT IS REALLY DIFFERENT PACKAGE. Ivanka Trump Kushner will attend your Seder and bring home-made matzo.

VICE PRESIDENTIAL SPA. A soothing back rub from VP Mike Pence. Note: cannot be performed in the presence of a woman.

ALTERNATIVE FACTS CAN BE FUN. Kellyanne Conway and Sarah Huckabee Sanders conduct a how-to webinar where they teach students how to dispute commonly held beliefs like gravity and nighttime. Self-delusion a pre-requirement.

PARS, PUTTS & PITCHES WITH THE POTUS. Round of golf with the Leader of the Free World. Mulligans not included.

MUNCHING WITH THE MUNCHKIN. Don Jr. will provide lunch at same restaurant table he ate with Natalia Veselnitskaya.

GRISLY IS AS GRISLY DOES. Private audio session with Mohammed bin Salman describing the action during Jamal Kashoggi’s “interrogation.”

REPRESENTATIVE YOU. Your very own US Congressional seat. (limited to residents of red states)

BOSS TWEETER. The president of the United States will mention you in a tweet.

BOSS SWEETER. The president of the United States will mention you in a tweet, favorably. Costs just a wee bit more.

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Copyright 2018, Will Durst, distributed by the Cagle Cartoons Inc. syndicate.

Will Durst is an award-winning, nationally acclaimed columnist, comic and former sod farmer in New Berlin, Wisconsin. For a calendar of personal appearances, including his new one-man show, “Durst Case Scenario,” please visit willdurst.com.

Raging Moderate

One thing we should all be grateful for this year is that Thanksgiving is making its annual appearance at the earliest possible point on the 22nd. And it could not come at a better time, conveniently laying down a soft muffling blanket of brightly colored leaves over the scorched ruts of one of the most contentious elections in our nation’s history. Thanksgiving this year comes 712 days before the next most contentious election in our nation’s history, one that officially kicked off on Wednesday, November 7.

The fourth thursday of November is the best of American holidays, a non-denominational feast of friends, family, food and football featuring six-story helium balloons on rope tethers jousting with lampposts. Where’s the bad? The first sanctioned appearance of Santa, for crum’s sakes.

And we do have much to be thankful for. 712 days until the next election for one thing. Also, we can’t forget to mention all the everyday ordinary objects, people and events that fill our lives and normally slide by unnoticed as we go about the important business of earning a living and carving out a future. Like the store-bought pumpkin pie topped by canned whipped cream that is undoubtedly the real culprit for the hour nap striking down the entire family after dinner.

So, unless you’re a large fowl that has recently been force-fed a glut of high protein grain then crowded down a path towards a big metal machine making scary swooshing noises, there is much to be thankful.

We, the Board of Directors at Durstco Industries, are thankful:

– For the fact that the Pilgrims chose to celebrate on a Thursday providing their descendants with a unique 4 day weekend to kick off the Christmas shopping season

– For spoonfuls of peanut butter right out of the jar.

– For the State of Florida. Can’t drive. Can’t count. All right Florida, we’ve had it. Time to circumcise America. Just cut it off at the Georgia border and kick it into the Caribbean. 49 states. Works even better on the flag. Seven rows of seven stars.

– For Donald Trump’s unceasing efforts to provide daily comedic fodder on an hourly basis. Minutely.

– For being alive during the Platinum Age of television.

– For Turner Classic Movies’ obsession with early Barbara Stanwyck movies.

– For a wife who understands that any decision made before the consumption of a third cup of coffee is not binding by custom or law.

– For perfectly turned, 6-4-3 double plays on bright summer afternoons with a Sheboygan brat in one hand and a cold Anchor Steam in the other.

– For Thomas Jefferson who presciently predicted that America gets the leaders it deserves.

– For Shake Shack now having 194 locations.

– For Robert Mueller’s patience, perseverance, persistence and perspicacity.

– For Jim Acosta, because you need a blunt instrument to counter other blunt instruments.

– For Aunt Lee’s lime Jell-O with carrot shreds and Aunt Hoogolah’s Dupamouche.

– For Chris Christie. Love him or hate him, he’s not going away and is too big to fail.

– And finally, for the Newly Elected 116th Congress. Now that Democrats control the House, it’ll be interesting to see who they have bigger fights with: the GOP or themselves.

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Copyright 2018, Will Durst, distributed by the Cagle Cartoons Inc. syndicate.

Will Durst is an award-winning, nationally acclaimed columnist, comic and former sod farmer in New Berlin, Wisconsin. For a calendar of personal appearances, including his new one-man show, “Durst Case Scenario,” please visit willdurst.com.

Raging Moderate

Be careful out there folks, because we’re in the middle of that scary time of year when spooky, hollow-eyed, costumed creatures come begging for treats and if refused, threaten dastardly tricks. Meaning one of two things; either its Halloween or the following Tuesday is Election Day.

This year, both diabolically sinister events occur within a week of each other. It’s an extraordinary conjunction of the fiendish, spine-chilling and horrifying. Two separate days when ghouls rule, eerie echoing noises are rampant and the whole nation flinches at the slightest change in barometric pressure. Scary. Scary.

The press, with its love of visuals, highlights the battle between the orange and black & red, white and blue as being exceptionally fierce. Right now we’re experiencing that rare rainbow of fright. With soothing autumnal shades blessedly awaiting us on November 7.

Color-coding the events may be the best way to keep from getting confused and dropping absentee ballots in plastic pumpkins or toilet-papering polling places. It also keeps us from getting robo-calls that encourage buying bigger Butterfingers, and Costco isn’t offering endorsements with every purchase in the extra-large, county-picnic, economy size. Although, we do seem to be stumbling near the latter. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

The weird thing is there are so many similarities between the late October/ early November activities. The two have much more in common than simply sharing the same linear space of a calendar page. You always hear people describe their experiences in politics and Halloween as being “scary but fun.” The smell of desperation and giddy excitement of pre- pubescent kids as the day approaches are a couple more. And Mitch McConnell is an honorary mascot to both festivities.

In order to insure your physical security and mental safety over the next week or so, we here at Durstco, purely a public service, have compiled a list of other reasons why Halloween is so monstrously like Election Day.

– People really enjoy going around pretending to be somebody or something they aren’t. Even those who aren’t aware they’re wearing costumes.

– Greed is not only encouraged, but richly rewarded.

– Ronald Reagan and Mickey Mouse are perennial favorites.

– Zombies and vampires and miscellaneous blood-suckers wandering the streets everywhere you look.

– Many people will stay in their homes with the lights off to avoid the whole thing.

– Based on the results of the evening, both children and adults will be highly susceptible to future nightmares.

– Shocking surprises lurk around every corner.

– The really hard work goes on in the darkest regions where secrecy reigns.

– The more malevolent, wicked, diabolical and villainish, the better.

– There’s always one weird house that no body wants to go near.

– You run the risk of overdosing on candy or regret.

– The scariest faces are often found under the masks.

– Warnings not to get involved by mental health authorities are continually made, yet go unheeded.

– Boos and booze are regular attendants.

– MSNBC, FOX News and Turner Classic Movies all delight in running horror marathons.

– The shared goal is obtaining the mostest, bestest goodies, not caring a whit what happens to your fellow night crawlers.

– And the No. 1 reason why Election Day is like Halloween: this year, a major focus of both events will be a plump vegetable with orange skin.

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Copyright 2018, Will Durst, distributed by the Cagle Cartoons Inc. syndicate.

Will Durst is an award-winning, nationally acclaimed columnist, comic and former sod farmer in New Berlin, Wisconsin. For a calendar of personal appearances, including his new one-man show, “Durst Case Scenario,” please visit willdurst.com.

Raging Moderate

For some unfathomable reason, Donald Trump has worked himself into one heavy-duty lather over dictators. Strongmen. Warlords. Kingpins. His love of tyrants is tremendous. It is amazing. It is huge. The man relishes hugging despots. Vladimir Putin. Rodrigo Duterte. Kim Jon Un. Kanye West.

The president backed up his good buddy Mohammed bin Salman, who assured him that Saudi Arabia had nothing to do with Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance from their Istanbul embassy. Not only did the Crown Prince deny any involvement, “it was a forceful denial,” which means it has to be true. How could anybody lie when delivering a forceful denial?

Trump trusted his pal so much he summoned all his public relations skills to offer up the opinion that the columnist might have been slain by “rogue killers.” Yeah. Sure. That’s it. Or maybe he was consumed by spontaneous combustion. Or struck by an asteroid. No, it was the one-armed man. He got stuck in a cave like that Thai soccer team. Flesh eating bacteria? Could have been another 400-pound fat guy on a couch.

We waited breathlessly for the president to rationalize that when it comes to investigative journalists and rogue killers, “you can find good people on both sides.” Surprisingly, he neither tried that or blaming Hillary Clinton.

Turkish officials claim to possess evidence that an autopsy specialist transporting a bone saw was among the 15-member Saudi hit team that dismembered and beheaded Khashoggi during an interrogation. Which you might think would hinder the man’s ability to provide answers to specific queries.

Over a two week period, the Saudis furnished enough explanations to fill the trunk of a limo with room left over for the dismembered parts of many bodies. “We have no idea what happened.” “He left through the rear entrance.” “He’s fine, just sleepy.” “Fell down during an interrogation and couldn’t get up.” “Accidentally died during a fist fight.”

And if that last bit were true, it’s obviously his own damn fault. Only a journalist would get into a fist-fight with 15 guys armed with a bone saw. The man deserved everything he got.

Nobody knows how the Turks are aware of this. They too have spun enough tales to bore Scheherazade. First they floated the story that Khashoggi’s own Apple Watch recorded the deadly rumpus, which confused everyone including Apple CEO Tim Cook. The general impression is that there are more bugs in the Saudi Embassy than in the basement of the Smithsonian’s National History Museum.

The Saudis promised a thorough and transparent investigation, which is like letting Jeffrey Dahmer find out how that head got in his refrigerator. Finally they said the Washington Post columnist was dead but they didn’t mean to kill him. Some rogue killers got into their embassy and were torturing him when something went awry. Not their fault. Just an attempted rendition that screwed the pooch. Could have happened to any murderous regime.

Trump refuses to even consider slapping sanctions on the Saudis because “people are innocent until proven guilty.” This guy sees only what he wants to see, and mostly now he sees hundreds of billions in arm sales. He’s not just myopic, he’s a myopic ostrich, burying his head in the sand. In this case, extremely oil-rich Saudi sand.

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Copyright 2018, Will Durst, distributed by the Cagle Cartoons Inc. syndicate.

Will Durst is an award-winning, nationally acclaimed columnist, comic and former sod farmer in New Berlin, Wisconsin. For a calendar of personal appearances, including his new one-man show, “Durst Case Scenario,” please visit willdurst.com.

Raging Moderate

It’s such a hoary old chestnut, the phrase should be roasting on an open fire right about now. “This will be the most important election of our lifetime.” We hear it every even-numbered November from every politician in every competitive race. But this time, they may be right. This isn’t just an election. It’s an intervention.

If indicators hold true and the midterm elections are fair, Democrats should retake the House. The Senate is bit of a stretch, although marginally attainable. Victory in either chamber would allow opposition committee chairs to initiate investigations and rein in our current president’s more extreme impulses. Tamp down the chaos to a dull roar. Then again, if the election isn’t fair, many applications on the Canadian immigration website, currently bookmarked on computers, will be filled out.

The first Tuesday of this November is a straight up referendum on the current occupant of the Oval Office. Black and white masquerades as blue and red. And both angry hues are doing whatever they can to get out the vote by energizing the base in their own inimitable ways. Democrats are accusing Republicans of deliberately ignoring the intricacies of the health care debate while Republicans charge that Democratic mobs want to punch pregnant women in the belly.

The only thing everyone agrees with is the midterms can change everything and we need to focus on November 6. Eat and breathe and live and die for November 6. Hope and pray and steal and cheat for November 6. This isn’t brain surgery. It’s much more important than that.

So go out and vote for the person most like you. Vote for the person most unlike you. Vote for the person most unlike HIM. Vote for the candidate with the biggest plans. Vote for the candidate who couldn’t organize a take-out order from Sonic. Vote for the candidate you dislike the least. Don’t think of it as the lesser of two evils, but the greater of two lessers.

Just get out and vote. Vote like you’ve never voted before. Vote like it’s going out of style. Vote as if the lives of your children are at stake. Because they are. Vote like they’re going to take it away from you. Because they want to. Vote as if the whole world were watching. Because it is.

Don’t just talk about voting. Read about voting. Write about voting. Shout and flail your arms about voting. Encourage other people to read and write and shout and flail their arms about voting. Grab random strangers on the street by their lapels and shake them until they start spitting blood about voting.

Pay no attention to the billionaire PACs or the hacking Russians or our own Justice Department or the National Enquirer’s Pecker. We have to show up in such numbers that anyone even thinking of tampering with the election will be intimidated like a poodle in a rhinoceros paddock.

Democracy is a participatory sport, people. It’s not meant to be viewed from the bleachers. We have to exercise our electoral muscle before it atrophies. Use it or lose it. Get pumped up. If you don’t vote, you can’t bitch, and we do plenty of that, don’t we? Vote early. Vote often. Adopt a dead voter. Where? In Chicago. Vote hard.

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Copyright 2018, Will Durst, distributed by the Cagle Cartoons Inc. syndicate.

Will Durst is an award-winning, nationally acclaimed columnist, comic and former sod farmer in New Berlin, Wisconsin. For a calendar of personal appearances, including his new one-man show, “Durst Case Scenario,” please visit willdurst.com.

Raging Moderate

Brett Kavanaugh’s pathway to the Supreme Court has been more circuitous than a drunken snake’s slide down a bobsled run. No matter whether you were in favor of the confirmation of the conservative justice or dead set against it, you have to admit the man overcame more obstacles than an Olympic hurdler training on a bombed-out alley in downtown Aleppo.

His journey featured enough lowlights to scorch the balls of the feet of a thousand centipedes, but the high point of the lowlights may have been the contentious hearing where the nominee ranted and raved and cried and sneered and loudly proclaimed he liked beer!

Deviating from previous self-portrayals as a sober non-partial umpire, Kavanaugh exhibited the temperament of a spoiled 5th grader who got caught in a lie, then tried overwrought indignation to bluff his way through. Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

In an effort to delay, deflect and defray, Arizona Republican Jeff Flake struck a deal with the rest of his Senate Judiciary Committee for an abbreviated FBI investigation into the sexual assault allegations before the full Senate voted. With an emphasis on the “abbreviated.”

More thorough investigations are required for dishwashing positions at suburban Applebee’s. The announced week-long investigation barely lasted four days, which is Senate-speak for many months’ worth of arduous toil.

The White House purportedly limited the scope of the investigation, prompting Democrats to call the inquiry a travesty of a mockery of a sham. And for Republicans to call Democrats-predictable.

The FBI declined to talk to Kavanaugh or his accuser, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, which is like not speaking to either the driver or the victim of a hit and run. Obviously, the administration preferred the FBI interview more trustworthy witnesses like Lindsay Graham, Mitch McConnell, Alex Jones and Kanye West.

After the report was submitted, to say the committee made it hard to read is like hinting that active lava makes a substandard base for a nice Hawaiian punch. This arrangement made “cursory” seem planted in concrete, threaded with steel webbing and encased in polyurethane.

All 100 senators, in one-hour increments were forced to share a single physical copy; probably a 3rd generation Xerox of a smudged mimeograph which could only be read in a darkened room. With the drapes closed. In 8-point type. Translated into Farsi. Printed in yellow.

In the wake of the Senate voting 50-48 to hand Kavanaugh a lifetime position on the highest court of the land, Donald Trump bragged “a lot of women are extremely happy.” Don’t know which women he’s talking about, but would hazard to guess more than a few of them share his father’s last name.

Explaining his use of a female human shield interrogator, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Republican Chuck Grassley, claimed the reason more women aren’t members is because the job is a lot of work. Putting him in contention for this year’s “Clueless Male Who Breathes Misogyny In and Out Like Oxygen” Award. But, alas, he hasn’t even cracked the top ten.

Democrats pray these proceedings will produce a midterm wave of outraged females voicing frustration at being further dismissed and disenfranchised, while Republicans expect these proceedings to produce a midterm wave of outraged males who resent their entitlement being threatened.

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Copyright 2018, Will Durst, distributed by the Cagle Cartoons Inc. syndicate.

Will Durst is an award-winning, nationally acclaimed columnist, comic and former sod farmer in New Berlin, Wisconsin. For a calendar of personal appearances, including his new one-man show, “Durst Case Scenario,” please visit willdurst.com.