Fresh Earwigs

One of the primary differences between Hope n' Change Cartoons and Stilton's Place is that we no longer feel compelled to visit the subject of politics with every post - in part because we're not feeling the day to day assault from the Obama administration anymore, and not really looking to go out of our way to find fresh sources of stress.

Which is why you're getting a nice, fresh Earwigs cartoon today  - which hopefully gives you a fun start to your Monday, while freeing up our time to work on purging our home of superfluous bric-a-brac before starting some pretty major renovations soon. Not that we'll be doing the work, mind you. We'll just be signing the checks and weeping the bitter salt tears.

Part of the purge is finally converting about a cubic yard of old VHS videotapes to digital format. For those of us having sensitive dispositions, it can be a very emotional experience to see some of those decades-old images again. In part because they frequently leave me wondering "why the heck did I think I would want to ever see this again in my doddering old age?!"

But then something many years old will pop up, putting a smile on my face and making the whole process worthwhile.

I'm referring, of course, to a shot of scotch.

Pre-existing Political Conditions

So, why are there two cartoons today instead of just one? Because we're sick (not in the demented sense, which is sort of our day-to-day normal, but in the coughing, hacking, and spraying phlegm sense) and we honestly don't know if either cartoon will connect, so we thought we'd throw them both out there and hope for the best.

Personally, we have a fondness for the ducks (who haven't appeared here since 2013) and the solidly constructed comedic phrase "Aunt Edna's schnozz." But then again, we've coughed ourselves into a concussion and may be judgement impaired.

We don't have a lot to say about the passage of the GOP Health Insurance bill just yet, although we think that the DrudgeReport got waaaaaaaaaay ahead of themselves by declaring that this means Obamacare has been repealed. Not hardly, folks.

Moreover, we don't really have a firm grasp of what's contained in the House bill, and how much it might change in the Senate. We do know that the bill throws roughly $138 billion into helping make sure that people with pre-existing conditions can get insurance as the market "stabilizes."

Although to our ears, that simply sounds like propping up the system with taxpayer cash (unavoidable after Obamacare) until a future date - at which point people who have deliberately not insured themselves will finally and inevitably suffer the dire consequences of their poor decision making skills. Only we all know that will never happen.

In the classic sense, real "insurance" can't co-exist with a mandate to accept people with pre-existing conditions without charging them higher rates...at least, not in the long run. The GOP bill attempts to remedy this by re-establishing high risk pools which taxpayers will help fund - but in the end, the health insurance system will have to be either market driven or government driven, not both. We're hoping that yesterday's vote will be a step in the right direction.

And we'd say more, only now we're coughing flecks of lung tissue on our computer screen and having no real success wiping them off with the tiny (but numerous) wax paper wrappers from our extra-menthol cough drops.

Cough drops we damn well paid for ourselves.

No, the irony isn't lost on us.

UPDATE: PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS

Hilariously, the Left is going insane on social media claiming that the new healthcare bill strikes down coverage of any pre-existing conditions (which it doesn't) and also defines "pre-existing conditions" to include things like rape, domestic violence, c-sections and more. Cher is even bitching that she won't be able to get her asthma medication anymore.

It's all lies, of course, and easy enough to check - although that's not as much fun as spewing outrage and virtue signaling on Twitter and Facebook. A friend who is an actual, certified expert in health insurance matters (you've likely seen him on TV) lays out these simple truths about the new plan:

Those who keep consistent coverage in place without any lapse in coverage will be able to move freely from one policy to the next and cannot be charged anymore for a preexisting condition. Those who REFUSE to keep consistent coverage in place and who as such attempt to 'game the system' by WAITING until they are SICK to buy health insurance (which drives up the costs for everyone else) will be penalized up to 30% more for health insurance. Those who are so sick that they are uninsurable (which is about 5% of the 23 million who buy individual health insurance) will be able to buy affordable health insurance coverage through state high risk health insurance pools. $128 billion was allocated to ensure that those people have affordable coverage when they buy health insurance in the state run high risk health insurance pools. This is the way it was done for 20 years before Obamacare as dictated in 1996 HIPAA law. The problem was there were about 5 states that did not follow that federal HIPPA law and did not have a functional high risk pool in their state. This law mandates that they not only have one but that it is well funded.

Stick It In Your (Good) Ear

Yes, that's an actual quote from Colbert.

We'd like to feign outrage at Stephen Colbert for his extended, gutter-language attack on President Trump on the CBS "Late Show," but frankly we've come to expect this bottom-scraping level of discourse from the Left.

More than anything else, this incident has given us a moment of nostalgia for the days when obscenity wasn't considered family entertainment. Specifically, we're remembering when Jack Paar, the wildly popular host of "The Tonight Show" at the time, actually lost his job after he dared to utter the words "water closet" (a gentle euphemism for "bathroom," as if one were needed) on his late night broadcast. How times have changed - and not for the better.

Mind you, when it comes to being garbage-mouthed, we can personally put Tourette's patients to shame. But we're not on a national stage, talking about the President of the United States. And in eight years of attacking Barack Obama, with cause, we never went quite as far as Colbert did. Except maybe that one Valentine's Day when we mentioned that Barry and his "body man," Reggie Love, could use Preperation-H to make their relationship even tighter.

Perhaps Colbert's screed can be attributed to the well-documented ratings war between himself and his late night rival Jimmy Fallon. The race for first place is thought to boil down to (and "I kid you not," as Paar used to say) which host can be the most vicious in his attacks on Trump. Or maybe the genuinely witty (but wildly liberal) Colbert has simply lost his mind after enduring 100 days of a President trying to make America great again.

We aren't going to boycott Colbert, because we already don't watch his show. But we hope he cleans up his act, and restricts his scatological outbursts to a more appropriate time and place.

We're thinking the water closet.

We have no idea, however, if he also has asymmetrical nuts.

BONUS: AND SPEAKING OF WATER CLOSETS...

In keeping with our reflection on the once-genteel nature of popular entertainment, we thought it would be fun to share a bit of movie trivia we recently discovered.

Back in 1960, Alfred Hitchcock's classic film"Psycho" was the first American movie (let alone TV show) to show a toilet being flushed. Audiences were shocked and horrified, even though the commode (oops, there goes our late night TV career) was only being used to dispose of torn scraps of paper.

Not even toilet paper. And definitely not used toilet paper. Which could probably get its own late night show these days.

The film that changed the whirl of motion pictures!