I’ve entered a sponsored political cartoon contest (that means there’s money in it for the winner!), in which the judges can be influenced by voting. Search for Erin Ptah on the voting page to find my entry — you’ll recognize Sparrow in it — and cast a vote! Better yet, do so every day, for the rest of the week ^_^
Bennett (thinking): . . . I think I handled that pretty well.
Walker (memory): Pleasure talking with you, Congressman! I’ll be sure to tell my friends what a good ally you are to business!
Bennett (thinking): Now all I have to do is propose the amendment, then find a way to weasel out of it. Say . . . cut a deal allowing the Democrats to vote it down, on condition that I don’t have to change anything else.
. . . if I can convince the public that its loss would be a huge sacrifice.
When Cohen visits, maybe I can talk him into “accidentally” letting Cybele go free? . . . What am I thinking? He’ll be right there beside Walker, bidding for the right to hang on to her.
Imaginary Cybele: Don’t lose hope, sir! You can figure something out!
Bennett (thinking): And what if I can’t, Imaginary Cybele? What then?
Imaginary Cybele: I dunno! That’s up to you!
Bennett (thinking): Even in my subconscious, she’s completely unhelpful!
Stupid brat . . . Why did she have to go and get kidnapped? Why couldn’t she have escaped to come home and be unhelpful in person? Now I’m going to have to spend this whole committee meeting worrying about her, and it’s all her fault . . .
Aww… he cares. In a somewhat jerky, selfish way, he cares.
Y’know, the solution I think I much easier than he realizes – Congress is notorious for getting absolutely nothing done. Convince enough of his fellow elected officials that passing the thing would not make them look good/get reelected and it’ll sink.
Good cartoon. Standardized tests are next to useless at actually measuring performance, but the easiest thing to collect and analyze, which is why every politician loves them. And meanwhile those of us who teach are left to facepalm at the stupidity of how government bureaucrats/administrators get to tell us how to do a job they don’t understand in the slightest. Ugh.
Trying to understand Bennett’s plan. Not sure I understand what kind of deal he’s going for here.
I think he means that he gets to look good for his constituents by following through and submitting the bill, looking like he is addressing the being problem. The democrats get to look good for their constituents and for the party by stopping the enemy party’s bill, and nobody tries to actually solve the problem beyond doing that.
Basically both sides agree to waste some time.
He’ll make his bill extreme enough to lose and they in exchange won’t “try to work with him” by pressuring him to resubmit a modified democrat friendly version with something to appease their interests or move some money around tacked on as a compromise that may have a chance of passing with the risk of the bit that would put Cybell in danger being left intact.
Wait no, On second read through he is saying
painted himself into a corner. Has to submit that addition to his proposed bill allowing experimentation on beings and endangering Cybele or get caught trying to explain why not
but he’ll cut a deal to get the democrats to do his dirty work for him and cut out the part he doesn’t actually want. Giving them a political win there.
In exchange they won’t continue to attack and dismantle the rest of his bill. he’ll throw the fight for the experimentation clause and they won’t go after anything more on that bill and he can pass the version he intended to.
They’ll see it as strategy. Surrender what you do not need to get what you do. Putting up a target for them to hit, like a lightning rod protecting a house. or ablative fireproofing.
Adorable tsundere.
…I find Walker and the tiger holding hands cute somehow.
Huh, surprised you didn’t take on Voter ID laws, but that’s a good point too.
Hmmmmmm.
Let’s presume this does go through as Bennett wrote it; who enforces this? DoD? They’d go for weaponization from the get-go, and as much as I love our military, that is worrying. DoJ maybe? Or would a being be a possible natural resource under Interior?
Meh, making fun of the standardized tests make sense. The SATs are bs, I remember my school used to actually stop classes for a week+ to basically teach us the answerkey instead of lessons.
basically one isn’t as inherently harmfully pointless because its government doing something it actually knows about(pointless government and forms) vs interfering in random people’s ability do do a job so they can appease a form with shiny meaningless numbers.
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government doing government stuff to make themselves look like they’re doing something(i said above how it won’t actually have any effect on anything)
largely pointless but harmless
government wasting class time not learning reduces time spent learning
eh? this is out of context lol
They’re especially relevant right now because they’re a point of contention in the Chicago teachers’ strikes. Teachers are being evaluated on how well students improve – which is being measured by standardized testing – which are crap. They’re asking that student improvement measured quantitatively be removed from teacher evaluations.
Something I’ve been meaning to ask; what are the limits of their mystical abilities outside that garden battle zone? We’ve seen them shapeshift (which given the whole cast and injuries in different forms has a stored body vibe to it) and heal but not much else. Basically can they do any other magic? Or even use their energy attacks outside the battlezone?
It’s complicated because Beings don’t think of those as mystical “abilities.” If anything, they’re limits — humans are the impressive ones, able to stay in one consistent body all their lives! The energy attacks are specifically designed for each other, and can’t be used on just anything.
Also something relevent to today’s comic: It seems his conciouse is eating at him. I get the impression this little bugger is something he’s not use to getting under his skin. Interesting moral dilemma.
Okay am I missing something? These people in this comment section keep bringing up SATs for some reason. I keep looking but I am not seeing anything about that in the comic strip or could relate to it…so what is going on here?
It’s to do with the Political Cartoon Erin linked in the news section of today’s post.
ah, I somehow missed it was a link there.
What am I missing from the strip that criticises standardised testing? ><