Tuesday Cartoons: Twilight Zone
Posted: November 4, 2025 Filed under: just because 5 Comments
Hey, I’m sure you all know that when The Twilight Zone first aired it was on CBS…
Put that into perspective, yesterday Dak wrote a personal post about 60 Minutes…and just how awful CBS News has become, now that it has essentially gone completely TrumpTV.
So in a twisted sense, CBS is now living out its own Twilight Zone fantasy.
Now…imagine if you will, a country being run by a raping, stealing, racist, pedophile …who continues to break the law, without repercussions! Millionaires become richer by the hour while disease is rampant and children are starving in the streets. You have just found yourself in the twilight zone.
See what I mean!!!!
Now for a few things of note:
Rest in peace Diane Ladd, she was always one of my favorites:
Cartoons via Cagle:
Some mad childhood books:
Please be safe out there, this is an open thread.
peej
Carissa
ecocatwoman
mablue2
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
well, Boston Boomer sent me a text saying Dick Chaney is dead… so there is that.
Well, I have no doubt when he exited the earthly door where he was headed … Karma has a big plan for him with all the deaths he caused.
https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/costs/human
Costs of War research examines the human toll of U.S. military operations and spending, for U.S. service members, veterans, military contractors, and allies; and for civilians killed and displaced.
An estimated over 940,000 people were killed by direct post-9/11 war violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan between 2001-2023. Of these, more than 432,000 were civilians. The number of people wounded or ill as a result of the conflicts is far higher, as is the number of civilians who died “indirectly,” as a result of wars’ destruction of economies, healthcare systems, infrastructure and the environment. An estimated 3.6-3.8 million people died indirectly in post-9/11 war zones, bringing the total death toll to at least 4.5-4.7 million and counting.
From my old FDL friend DDay!
Trump Lost the Politics of the Shutdown
But he may win the policy anyway, as a gang of Democrats prepares to squander their leverage based on a vague assurance.
Donald Trump wants the government shutdown, which today ties the record for the longest in American history, to end. You might say he’s desperate for it to end, because he’s gone back to the well of demanding the elimination of the Senate filibuster, so Republicans can pass government funding themselves. Killing the filibuster would be a great thing for the country and the world, but it also appears to be the one area where Republicans routinely defy their president, so I’m not holding my breath.
But the context of Trump seeking an escape hatch is worth exploring. If the president were confident that his strategy to make the shutdown painful for Democrats and force them into submission was working for him, his attitude would be far different. Yet his tactics have backfired. Washington’s paralysis is hurting Trump politically, raising the salience of the issues that reveal him as indifferent to public suffering and even cruel. Today’s elections will be one indicator of this, but the legacy of the shutdown miscalculation is likely to linger and define Trump as an unpopular lame duck. His authoritarianism can intimidate elites who seek accommodations with power, but it can’t fool ordinary people who aren’t bought off.
Trump’s first instinct with the shutdown, as with all things, was to punish his opponents. He tried mass layoffs and spending cuts in blue states. The layoffs were put on hold by the courts and the spending cuts were mostly to long-term projects, so the immediate effect was muted. And Trump has been laying people off and cutting spending to blue states all year; nobody bought that it would end if Democrats caved.
I questioned the Democrats’ primary focus on health care as a policy strategy, but there can be little doubt that as a political strategy it’s been a major success, driving attention to the looming spikes in health insurance premiums that everyone seeking Affordable Care Act exchange coverage can now see during open enrollment. Trump briefly floated coming up with a new health care solution, the latest in a failed ten-year search by Republicans for any health care policy alternative that fits their ideological worldview. This has led to Republicans making ham-fisted arguments about how Americans don’t deserve health care and have been getting a good deal for too long. The Republican House literally not showing up for work for weeks has made this indifference and appearance of being out of touch look far worse.
It would be nice to have a real conversation about why health costs keep marching up endlessly (middlemen, complexity, and corporate control are major factors). But the sticker shock on ACA exchanges happens to fit with the biggest fear the public has right now: the rising cost of living. Republicans have consistently been blamed more for the shutdown than Democrats, but the discontent is bleeding into other issues. Democrats are suddenly trusted more on the economy, with rising insurance rates a symbol of Trump’s neglect of Americans’ well-being. Two-thirds of voters say Trump hasn’t delivered on cost of living and the economy, according to a recent NBC News poll. And with that being the primary policy topic in the country, Trump is extremely unpopular and Democrats have a big generic ballot lead for next year’s midterms.
Still my SHERO!