An Argument Against the 17th Amendment
08 Sunday Sep 2019
Posted in Legal/Political Columns
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08 Sunday Sep 2019
Posted in Legal/Political Columns
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24 Friday May 2019
Posted in Other Columns
≈ Comments Off on Pearls’s Blissful Ignorance
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Pig makes a decent argument for staying uninformed. (And acknowledging the, uh, downgrade in DC).
Patis
05 Sunday May 2019
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17 Thursday May 2018
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PC “Right think” is a low-quality cover for no think. Joe Bob Briggs writes, today, for Taki’s Mag (a “wrong think,” thus, not politically correct, thus, actually correct publication) on the failure to grasp humor by the outraged, unintellectual masses.
He takes offense with the offended youth of today:
Satire is a machine gun on a swivel. You aim at a target, fire, move one foot to the right, fire, move again, aim and fire—you hit all the targets, without exception, and about one in ten targets will scream. When that happens, you hit that target twenty more times.
That’s how you identify the sacred cow, then exterminate the sacred cow.
The difference, in 2018, is that it’s not one in ten targets, it’s one in two. Everybody screams, like, all the time. Nobody ever says, “Oh, wow, you caught me, yeah, that’s pretty stupid.” And everybody assumes you have some kind of second agenda, usually political.
…
I stopped reading the Comments sections entirely, not because I couldn’t take the heat but because I often couldn’t even understand the context of the argument.
Unreasoned assumptions are bad enough; making an “ass out of u and me.” It’s much, much worse in an era and an area of rapidly declining intelligence. For instance, assuming (wow) that most could even read the above-selected Briggs’s quote, some might assume (again) that he’s promoting gun violence and nothing else.
He’s not communicating at the highest level but at one a good deal higher than the passing average. By strange coincidence, today’s Pearls Before Swine strip tackles the same subject from a slightly different, easier to comprehend angle:
Stephan Pastis, Pearls, 5/17/18.
Again, even here, a basic literacy is required, else the viewer merely sees three generic people and a rat holding a beer. But Pastis is saying the same thing as Briggs: mind your own business, brighten up, and lighten up!
The other day we lost the mighty Tom Wolfe. He made a mark offending the pretension, as Monica Showalter observes.
What a treasure he was. He wrote about the world as it is, telling our American story because he loved our American story. How sad that we don’t have him to write about the ongoing story of America. He wrote about the world as an outsider, and he examined the establishment as it needed to be examined, and naturally, that added up to making the left look stupid. There was no other way for a writer this honest, and we are the richer for it.
It’s true that I would love to step into Wolfe’s role, merely lacking the talent and those white suits…
I do hope all this offended someone.
16 Friday Mar 2018
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I think this kind actually works.
THIS is why you must read Pearls Before Swine.

Pastis, PBS, 3/16/2018.
Oh, boy. TGIF.
07 Thursday Dec 2017
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So this morning, as usual, I read today’s Pearls Before Swine panel. It was unusual but unusually good. See it HERE.

Pearls, Dec. 7, 2017. Pastis/Go Comics.
Based on Pastis’s and Pig’s soul-searching I did a Google search and settled for his (Pastis’s) page at Wikipedia (Infogalactic it’s not, but they try). I found something very interesting.
A while back I noted my Big Four daily comics: Garfield, Pearls, Get Fuzzy, and Dilbert.
It turns out that three of the four have more in common than just my liking them. There’s a Peanuts connections too. Charles Schulz was Pastis’s mentor going into the field. A little later Pastis received public praise from Scott Adams (Dilbert) which launched his career. Pastis later collaborated with and learned from Darby Conley (Get Fuzzy).
I looked around for a connection to Jim Davis and Garfield but couldn’t find one. So I made one. Via this article (and a few in the past) the two titans are hereby linked.
Carry on.
17 Tuesday Oct 2017
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See: today’s Pearls Before Swine.

Pastis, 10/17/17.
Actually, see it everyday.
Anyone read romance??
27 Sunday Nov 2016
Posted in News and Notes
As Rat says, they really can’t make this stuff up. Today’s Pearls Before Swine cartoon accurately and easily sums up your relationship with the criminal banking industry.

Pastis, 11/27/16.
There’s a reason I read Pearls everyday. Aside from Pastis, Scott Adams, and maybe the weather, I cannot think of any reason to consult any “news” paper these days.
16 Sunday Oct 2016
Posted in Legal/Political Columns
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Stephan Pastis has his Rat character running for President. Though a cartoon rodent, Rat is the most brutally honest player on the political field this season. Today’s Pearls Before Swine perfectly captures the true nature of American politics:

Pearls Before Swine
Pastis, Oct. 16, 2016.
“If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.”
– H.L. Mencken
Farmers give lots of free stuff to hogs and chickens held for slaughter. Agriculture mimics politics or visa versa.
16 Friday Sep 2016
Posted in News and Notes
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Stephan Pastis on politics:
Pastis, Pearls, Sept. 16, 2016.
Amazing. In four short cartoon panels Pastis accurately sums up all of American politics. Unlike a politician, a couch is good for something.
**Totally unrelated note: I have a new, firmer mattress that has eased my back pain away and lessened my need for sleep. I usually get up early. Today! Today, I was wide awake at … 2 AM… I scanned the news of the world for the very best for you. The very best is a cartoon. Life imitates mattresses.
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