Okey Doke from Muskogeedoke

For this we climbed 15,000 feet?

While it's Donald Trump's blunt candor which has been generating news stories throughout this election season, Barack Obama jumped back into the erudition spotlight recently with a devastatingly brutal condemnation of current political rhetoric. Specifically, the World's Most Eloquent President told a crowd in Elkhart, Indiana: "Don't fall for the okey-doke."

The halls of History already ring with many a lesser phrase. "Four score and seven years ago," "Give me liberty or give me death," "Ask not what your country can do for you," "I have been to the mountaintop," and "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" all fall by the wayside when compared to Mr. Obama's brilliantly galvanizing insight.

Can any of us, in our heart of hearts, truly deny that our current woes - personal, professional, or political - were caused by falling for the okey-doke? Of course not. We are all only human, and it is widely known that the devil mixes his okey-doke with truth to confuse us. And sometimes he or she mixes the okey-doke with promises of subsidies and entitlements, especially during election years.

While it may be debatable which of the remaining presidential candidates is throwing around the most okey-doke, there's no question that the total quantity is rising a lot faster than ocean levels and is a significantly greater danger to our world and way of life.

For this reason, after nearly 8 years, Hope n' Change is finally taking the unprecedented step of actually agreeing with something Barack Obama has said: "Don't fall for the okey-doke." Not now, not ever again.

Wait - what's that you say? You don't actually know what okey-doke means...?

Well, truthfully, we're not sure either. But we suspect it might be Kenyan for "bullshit."

Can't Get Over The Hump Day

We're pretty much taking the day off today at Hope n' Change.  Oh, we tried to find something worth talking about but we just weren't feeling it (as Paula Jones once shouted before fleeing a weenie-waggling Bill Clinton).

Truthfully, we just can't quite make the shift from the seriousness of Memorial Day to the utter lack of seriousness in what passes for news and governance these days. But the odds are good that we'll be throwing snark around again by Friday.

The comments section is open for business as usual (in case anyone doesn't know where to find the comments, just click on the title of each day's cartoon). Consider this "Open Line Wednesday!"

UPDATE: Well, as long as you've taken the trouble to visit today, here's a cartoon that will probably offend a lot of people (grin).

Memorial Day 2016

Be it Memorial Day or any other day, let us never forget the sacrifices of those who served our nation and sometimes paid the ultimate price. Hope n' Change humbly thanks these men and women and their families.

Let today be a day of awareness, gratitude, and a reminder that each of us carries a debt to be worthy of what others have given us.

REGARDING HIROSHIMA

We're breaking policy by discussing politics on Memorial Day, but we feel compelled to comment on Barack Obama's reprehensible actions in Hiroshima over Memorial Day Weekend. 

We can forgive him for laying a wreath for Hiroshima's dead, but can not forgive his characterization of America's use of the atomic bomb as immoral. Specifically, he said he desires: "a future in which Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known not as the dawn of atomic warfare but as the start of our own moral awakening."

The start, Barry? Really? We weren't behaving morally before you came along to lecture us?

People are debating whether or not the president's words constituted an "apology," but they're missing the more significant point of Obama's anti-nuclear speech. He called out our nation as having been in the wrong morally, but did not - could not - apologize because he would have to identify himself as representing the United States to do so. And in this case, as in so many others, he was presenting himself as an outsider - a citizen of the world - speaking disdainfully to our country rather than for our country. 

The bombing of Hiroshima was a terrible necessity and most experts agree that in the end it saved countless lives - including Japanese lives.

For Barack Hussein Obama to label our nation and our warriors immoral on this weekend of somber remembrance is beyond the pale. He can't possibly leave office soon enough.

For the benefit of Homeland Security, we'll point out that Mr. Trump is the entirely metaphorical bomb in this cartoon.