“shit, put her in charge NOW, can’t possibly be any worse than the REAL LIFE fictional character we got rn”
As i’ve said in a previously, a hippo with diarrhea would be better than what we got now. It wouldn’t suggest you inject Lysol, for example. The REAL question is whether his base will reject him. Perhaps Willis has some insight into that since he comes from them? (Joyce is essentially autobiographical)
You know how you hear about the occasional town that elects a dog as mayor? I think that could work! Popular with voters, won’t tell people Lysol injections would work, foreign relations would probably improve . . .
Main issue is the age requirement, unless they count it in dog years. Maybe a tortoise?
Have you seen his base? They’ve intertwined their identities with supporting him, to the point that not supporting him is inconceivable. The coalition backing him successfully applied the religious fundamentalism playbook; they built a loyal a cult of personality around him by tapping into emotional appeal. Get people angry and resentful of your opposition, and you cement a mindset in them that will back you and hold up to any logic or argument your opposition can throw at it. Their heels are dug in, and there will be no convincing them to change their minds with logic.
The real question should be, have they alienated enough swing voters and RINOs? Are enough of them beyond their breaking point, where they’ll vote for anyone else if they’re not completely disenfranchised? Why do you think they’re trying to sow discord in their opposition, and make voting as difficult as possible? They know the base alone isn’t enough, and they’ve overcooked their positions past their swing voters’ taste, so they’re trying to suppress opposition votes.
Dorothy is proving to have some **great** leadership props here. Even if she is a bit cocky.
That said . . .would Ross/Toedad be the equivalent of her Secret Service here?
Also on that note. . .oh dear. That shot to the head might be slowing down Toedad more then I thought if Blaine has him on his back on the floor even in his beaten up condition.
We’re seeing them looking down from above and I believe that Ross is still standing in spite of being beaten on the head twice now with a bloody hammer. Which is kind of impressive.
Oh it really is. That is some IMPRESSIVE endurance and pain tolerance, or just sheer determination, to be able to get up and fight after getting stuck in the temple like that.
Honestly not even that unrealistic either . . just really really impressive on Toedad’s part.
More like having a thick skull.
Someone before has noticed while he’s about as tall as a 15 year old girl, Ross is built like someone who should be a LOT physically stronger than what we’ve seen. (I think he may have a rigid muscle condition much like myself. Do his muscles suddenly spasm in a vibrating way for no reason, somethings?)
Ross was also called out on what kind of person he’s amounted to by someone he chose to believe was sent as a sign of God’s favor (and thus ignored all the red flags he was confronted with), right before said person struck him on the head with intent to kill.
Blaine’s badly injured, and is only making himself easier to take in a fight by continuing to play ‘wrath man.’ Ross is short. Not little, just short, with a very large skull (broad build, too) and has nearly been violently killed recently.
In superhero stories, you often can spot the Villain by finding the character who is opposite to the Hero’s defining traits. Amber is more than aware of how Amazi-Girl is more like Two-Face than Batman. At the same time, this is a sign of possessing Batman’s self-scrutiny, on top of being driven to become stronger; better than she was before.
Beavis and Butthead here, are purely motivated by a need to protect their gratifying and untrue self-images from Reality…
The US sometimes has a court-case instead of an election even when there aren’t unusual difficulties in conducting the vote and hostile forces trying to discredit the results.
trump has been very clear that he would label any election he loses as “fake”.
He will not go willingly, and there are many people with guns who will take to the streets if he tells them to. The anti-lockdown protests are practice runs for this.
Again, it’s bad but it’s not that bad. Yes, Trump has supporters who are currently protesting against the lockdown with guns. It won’t matter – if Donald Trump loses the election on 3 November 2020, then on 20 January 2021 he will legally no longer be POTUS no matter how much he shouts otherwise on Twitter. The Constitution may be vague in some areas, but it is absolutely clear on this point.
There’s little love between Trump and the military, and in such a situation Trump would have no legal authority to command them, no longer being the Commander-in-Chief. We are not looking at a civil war situation, at least this election cycle. Riots? Maybe. Civil war? No.
At the risk of being labeled something or another, if they can’t get along with the rules of this country, maybe losing them wouldn’t be all that bad. As Thomas Jefferson wrote way back in 1787, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” (emphasis mine)
Riots, perhaps. More likely terrorist style killings – we’ve already seen plenty of right wing domestic terror.
Not civil war. There are extremists out there looking for it, but like the lockdown protests, it’s a tiny minority of people. The media coverage of these has been all out of proportion to their actual size.
I’d also expect court challenges after the fact and a ton of attempts to cheat and suppress the vote.
I’m leery of what this administration will do in its lame duck term, and especially of what the red hat cult of personality will do during and after. They’re more likely to double down than accept reality.
What the Trump administration will do during its lame-duck session (whether that comes in 2024-25 or, hopefully, ’20-21) is a perfectly valid concern to have – it’s one I’ll admit to, myself. What I consider doomsaying are preemptive declarations that we’re on the brink of a civil war where Trump has somehow persuaded the military (which, by and large, does not like him) to be on his side, or that Trump will somehow manage to illegally stay in office once his term is expired.
Like, the situation is certainly bad but it’s not yet that bad.
Yeah, I expect the types who protested the COVID lockdowns to pick up their Bass Pro Shops rifles and dress up in their Amazon tacticool gear again, to protest the “deep state” “orchestrating a coup” with somehow appointing Hillary Clinton as a dictator-for life as the “end game”. They’ll continue to consider Trump the “real winner” and “true President”, while the irony that they’re living out the tall tales they’ve woven about the “deep state” these last four years flies a mile over their heads.
Meanwhile, back in reality, we’ll be dealing with Tea Party 2.0 (now with double the bald-faced hypocrisy of the next leading brand) screaming about how all the problems the last administration left behind are somehow all the new administration’s fault, and that they’re not fixing them fast enough. For the most part, though, life will go on.
Except that a lot of his drones will absolutely attempt armed rebellion if he claims that he was “cheated” (translation: his terrible behavior and lack of leadership catch up with him), and a depressing number of them are law enforcement/military. It’s pretty terrifying to think about.
If they do (and I think that’s a big if — dressing up all tacticool and going to Walmart with your AR-15 is a lot different than actual combat) I fully expect them to lose and lose badly. The 2nd Amendment does not provide training in small unit tactics or strategy along with the right to bear arms, nor does it provide you the right to all the weapons. Provided the military isn’t on Trump’s side — and let’s be honest, it’s not — I don’t think we have to worry.
That’s a good point about the 2nd amendment. Keep in mind that it was intended to make sure the states could at least have a chance at taking on the federal government forces in an armed conflict. But that was when ‘arms’ meant ‘bolt action rifles’ as the bulk of your firepower. By restricting it to things like that, the courts have effectively neutered the 2nd amendment’s intent. So it’s kinda moot now and serves only to keep gunsturbators happy. No one thinks they’d be anything but a minor impediment to an enemy in an armed conflict. No one but them, that is. And Sarah has previously expressed her opinion of them in this very story arc.
Actually, it was written when “the right to bear arms” meant carrying a flint-lock, muzzle-loading musket or, if you were really rich, having a smoothbore cannon standing in your shed. Neither of those weapons would have much killing power in the hands of a single person. The 2nd amendment inseparably connects the right to bear arms to taking part in the ‘well-regulated militia’ that later evolved into the National Guard. Naturally, most 2nd amendment enthousiasts happily ignore that half of the text, because they’re not really interested in the constitution – they just want to have guns.
Actually, the purpose of the 2nd Amendment was to protect the slave states’ slave patrols. All white men were required to serve on these for several years starting at age 21 or so – they patrolled to check passes for any slaves caught off their plantations, run down and round up runaways, and to put down rebellions. It says right there in the 2nd Amendment: “A well regulated Militia”. These slave patrols functioned as local militias, and the wording puts this at the *state* level because the slave states didn’t want the federal government conscripting their slave militias to fight in wars against foreign enemies – they needed them there at home! See this article at the Daily Beast for more: “How Slave Owners Dictated the Language of the 2nd Amendment”
It wasn’t intended for anything like that at all. Back then the states had their own militias and those were the main source of troops for any serious conflict. They didn’t want the country to have a standing army at all, but it soon became clear that wasn’t practical.
Mostly though, it’s only a tiny fraction of even Trump’s base that would even try to take up arms – most of them already connected to various militia and hate groups. There will very likely be violence. They will very likely try to kill people and start their boogaloo, but they don’t have the numbers or the support to be anything more than murderers.
Correction — are WANNA-BE law enforcement and (maybe) ex-military. And if push comes down to actual shove, my money will be on the REAL military — the guys who have all the neat toys like REAL armored vehicles, REAL body armor, and REAL weapons that will do far more damage than a guy with an AR-15 look-alike with a couple of extended magazines taped together. Oh, and have been trained constantly on how to use them to their best advantage.
In historical examples it has often been a problem that people can’t agree on what happened. The Constitution may be clear, but the facts are often not. It may very well be the case in November that Faux News will report a set of events that would, if they were true, make Trump the constitutional president. If a lot of senators, governors, judges, attorneys-general, Army officers and National Guard members continue in their habit of believing Faux News, then a lot of important institutions can be paralysed during a crisis.
Yes, of course it is. But the constitution and the legal system it enables are not magical cosmic forces. They only work because people do them. Yes, if he loses the election he’s no longer president. But if he stays in office, and congress and the courts don’t do anything about it? If the secret service doesn’t allow him to be hauled off by the FBI? Then what? There’s no recourse without a congress that has shown time and time again it doesn’t give two shits what laws he breaks.
The 20th Amendment says the President and Vice President’s terms end at noon on January 20th the year after an election year. This can only change by ratifying a new Amendment, which will never happen with a divided Congress. I doubt the system would let him unilaterally ignore or nullify this, because it would set a precedent for any Administration to unilaterally ignore or nullify any Amendment, including the 2nd.
He also can’t suspend or cancel the election, because that’s not the Executive branch’s purview. It would take an act of Congress to move election day from “the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November”, which I think sets the whole process in motion, and that’s highly unlikely given the blue House.
Basically I think the only thing stopping the current Administration and Senate from going full Emperor Palpatine on us is the looming threat that it can come back to bite them in the ass if their opposition comes to power, and they can’t 100% prevent that from happening yet.
Yes, in a way you’re right. If the entire apparatus of government stands behind him, despite the law, despite the newly elected President and Congresscritters, then he’ll continue to hold power.
If the secret service and the Department of Justice and the military all stand behind him, then it’s an open coup. And remember it’s not just the top people – his appointed cronies, but the actual low level people doing their jobs, who will, come January 20th have to choose between breaking their oaths and following their old bosses and following the law and their newly elected and appointed superiors.
I don’t see it happening. I don’t think he’s hollowed out the lower ranks of government that much. I certainly don’t think the military’s behind in that fashion – especially not after his administrations handling of Covid-19 outbreaks on naval vessels (and elsewhere in the military).
In the US, we’ve long believed we have the rule of law. But the last few years have shown us, repeatedly, that what we really had was a rule of norms.
The current US president just ignores those norms, which wouldn’t be that much of a crisis were it not for the fact that his Attorney General also ignores those norms, and pretty much every political appointee in the executive branch also ignores those norms, and oh guess what? the judicial branch has been filled with people who also ignore those norms, confirmed in their positions by one of the legislative branches that is controlled by people who ignore those norms.
I think it’s a pretty safe bet that we’ll have an election in November, though probably not a free and fair one. But if the results don’t come out the way the president wants, and he refuses to accept them, and continues to act as though he were re-elected — who’s going to remove him? Not the Justice Department, that’s for sure.
The president-elect will need to take armed services personnel to arrest him. trump’s Secret Service detail will permit this, provided no-one threatens his life.
At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work. I do not share King Daniel’s optimism, but I do hope sanity prevails. For once.
If he loses the election, his term ends on January 20th whether a successor is sworn in or not. Period. If at that point there is no definitive successor selected, Congress picks a new President and VP from the top three individuals who got the most Electoral College votes; the House picks the POTUS and the Senate picks a VP. I think this is extremely unlikely because we only have two parties big enough to muster a majority of EC votes.
The real worry in my opinion is his sycophantic fan club rejecting the results as some kind of “deep state shadow government” “taking away control” from the “real government”, ironically listening to a one-man ‘shadow government’ themselves.
No election means either Pelosi or Patrick Leahy becomes president when Trump’s term expires on January 20th. There are quite a few worrying scenarios out there, but cancelled elections isn’t really one of them.
Enough have to do that to get 45* past 270. He needs a majority, not a plurality. And while TX and Ohio would probably be reliable, can he count on, say, Florida to give him electors without an election and not end up with a bunch of pissed-off Puerto Ricans rioting?
He only needs 270 votes in the elector college if all 538 electoral votes are cast. If some states end up unable to conduct an election and lack any alternative method for appointing electors, of if any states’ elections end up so screwed up that the Supreme Court gets to rule that the states’ electors were not validly appointed, then only a smaller number of votes are needed to made up the majority.
The US electoral system is a rickety old Rube Goldberg contraption, and parts of it only works because, when, and if they are carried out by people of goodwill who are committed to democratic values.
Democratic controlled states will have elections normally though, and they control the majority of the electors. What Republican states choose to do or not to do with their elections will at best keep Trump’s loss from being a landslide.
Maybe they will. They’ll certainly try. But I’m really afraid, actually terrified, that there will be things going on by then that make if very difficult to conduct an election that is fair and transparent and in which all citizens have an equal opportunity to cast their votes and have them counted. The conduct of elections in the USA is a schmozzle at the best of times; with Trump and the Russians and the die-hards of the Confederacy and conspiracy nutters and random shooters all trying to screw things up there is a strong chance of widespread irregularities. Irregularities will end up in front of the federal courts. And an awful lot of federal judges were appointed since January 2017 by Trump on the advice of the Federalist Society and confirmed by a McConnell’s senate. It can easily all end up in confusion with no agreed-upon result. As it did in 1876, for example.
Judicial appointments have been one of the few bright spots of the Trump administration. I’ll just mention that some of Trump’s more egregious acts of overreach were swatted down by judges that he appointed.
I think those electors are supposed to be counted on Election Day, so any states that don’t count their votes and assign electors by then run the risk of effectively “sitting out” the election. That’s probably to incentivize getting the process done and over with, but you know they’ll try any chicanery they can weasel up to get counted anyway.
One problem is that states aren’t actually required to assign electors through a popular vote process. They can simple appoint electors as they please.
They are however required to elect House Representatives by voting. So if they skip elections, they don’t get Representation. (Or something. It’s not entirely clear to me what would happen in the long run in that case.)
I am being obscure intentionally, to avoid trouble, but there is a certain type of person where the whole world becomes familiar with their middle name. Like “Harvey” or “Wilkes.”
“I heard on the internet that butter knives are part of the liberal agenda.
Quickly, break into all the homes and seize the butter knives.”
-Trump to Armed Forces, August 2023
I’ve long lost grasp on which of these kinds of hypothetical situations about Trump would actually be farcical, so your guess is as good as mine whether I intended that seriously or not. :/
You’re talking like rule of law still applies. What if Trump just keeps acting like he’s still in office, who’s going to remove him? Not the Attorney General, that’s for sure.
The Attorney-General is nominated by the POTUS and approved by the Senate. If there are no elections on 3 November 2020, the majority of the senators leaving office will be Republicans, swinging the Senate over to a Democratic majority. Nancy Pelosi (D) is the Speaker of the House of Representatives, so she’s third in the line of succession after Pence and Trump – both of whom would lose their office on 20 January 2021 if Trump is voted out.
That leaves us with a Democratic President, presiding over a Democratic Senate. Nothing would stop them from then rubber-stamping a Democratic Attorney-General to immediately replace Barr.
What if — and just hear me out — what if the Republican senators keep acting as though they were still in office? What if the president keeps acting as though he were still in office? Who is going to enforce the law, when all the people in charge of enforcing the law are not interested in enforcing the law?
If someone who is constitutionally not in office (and the Constitution is quite explicit on this front, unlike some other vague areas) claims to be in office anyway, they’ll have about as much legal authority as “Emperor Norton I of the United States” did – they can make as many proclamations as they like, but they’ll be ignored as possessing no legal bearing. They will no longer have access to their offices in the Capitol Building, or their rooms in the White House, or in any other governmental building. In the event that Trump loses office, he will no longer be POTUS or Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces, and will no longer be able to enforce his vision – nor will Pence as Vice President, nor Barr as Attorney-General. It’s the damage they can still do while they yet remain in office (hopefully, for just nine more months) that warrants concern.
You seem to be missing the point being made. *Who* would be ignoring him? The other lawmakers who also might refuse to leave? *Who* would be locking them out of their offices? The military? Which is an inherently authoritarian system that has a lot of Evangelicals and white supremacists? Would they, the secret service, the police, have the will to go against the flow when it’s the harder action to take? Legal authority, or lack of, means nothing if everyone with power just decides to ignore it, like they have been up until now.
The part that changes is that legal authority. To take the extreme example of the military – right now to act to remove Trump would be a military coup, illegal and unprecedented in the country. On January 21, they would be acting on the orders of the actual President, if so asked. And while the military may be authoritarian, they’re not that fond of Trump, especially after some of the recent failures (Capt. Brett Crozier?)
There are a lot of people in government who are not “ignoring it”, but simply do not have any legal options for removing him. That changes if he stays in office without being elected.
Technically though, if there were no elections this fall, there would be no House, since all of its member’s terms would have expired. That likely means no Speaker.
However, in that case the next in line would be the President Pro Tem of the Senate, who would be chosen by the new Democratic Senate majority.
Congressional elections are state level, and outside the Electoral College system. Even if the Electoral College is tied up in red tape, we’ll still have a new session of Congress sworn in on January 3rd.
It would take an act of Congress to move Election Day. That’s not happening with a split Congress in today’s political climate.
State governors generally have the power to appoint people to vacant seats in Congress, for the remainder of the term or until a special election is held (depending on circumstance and state law). This has happened many times before when a Congressperson dies while in office (like Ted Kennedy or John McCain) or resigns (Tina Smith replacing Al Franken). If Election Day somehow gets cancelled, we’d see many emergency appointments.
No election means no Congress critters in the house. So Pelosi is out.
It also means no Senate elections either. Since more Republican senators are up for reelection this year than democrats, it is likely the Senate control would revert to the democrats. So the next in line would be the pro tiem (likely the longest serving Democrat senator).
Likely not the longest serving Democratic Senator, in that case. That’s the normal tradition, but if they knew whoever it was would become the President, I suspect there’d be a bit more competition for the normally ceremonial position.
Pelosi’s term would expire at the same moment Trump’s does. Even if she’s re-elected, the House would still need to vote for her as House Majority Leader again. The first person in the succession list whose position does not expire would be Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who would become Acting President (because only the Vice President actually becomes President).
I don’t really think there’s not going to be an election next November.
But for people who live in swing states, voter suppression will be unrelenting, and the disinformation campaign will make everything we’ve see so far look like a game of pattycake.
And if, in spite of that, the election doesn’t go the president’s way, he’s already demonstrated repeatedly that he believes himself entitled to act as he sees fit, pieces of paper be damned. If he proclaims himself legitimately elected, and his Justice Department backs him up — what then?
Keys are in the mailbox, dinner’s waiting in the oven, there’s a pie in the microwave, and the washer and dryer are empty if you need to do some laundry.
Hurray!
So let’s see, north of the country goes to Canada, Texas and New Mexico obviously go to Mexico* for the lulz, everyone else is left to their own devices for a while, although electoral system is reformed to avoid that two-party freak show you’ve got going, and you’re getting on the metric system. Mwahahaha METRIC SYSTEM!
*Will they then decide to pay for a wall after all? Will it be built by Lone Star NRA members? Tune in next week to find out!
I’m confident there will be elections. But I think it is a near-certainty that the will be unusual difficulties in conducting them. I’m pretty sure that those difficulties will lead to some significant irregularities. I expect that irregularities in several states will end up before the courts. I fear that the resulting court decisions will not all be universally accepted.
Having a republican partisan supply the voting machines (and not allowing outside scrutiny of their software because it’s proprietary) basically guarantees it, IMO.
If the democrats do gain office then one thing they’ll need to fix is the redistricting the republicans instituted while in power. Those bizzare electoral maps they generated are about as against the democratic spirit as you can imagine.
I suspect that the real danger is not that there will be no elections, but that there will so many irregularities and disputes about what happened that people will disagree about who won them.
You’re right, we’re all completely hopeless and there’s nothing anyone can do to improve the situation. It’s all bad, forever, and nothing can ever change that immutable fact, no matter what.
It’s so cute, you talking like there’s going to be a U.S. in November.
I’m not saying we’ll definitely break up by then. But I think that either the Republican machine falls apart in the next few months, or the US falls apart – maybe not formally and fully yet, but past the point of no return.
That will play merry hell with the sliding timeline of this comic. Will any of its situations or concerns be plausible in the Untied States of America?
Know what else exists? A POTUS stupid enough to recommend that people inject bleach to kill coronavirus, vicious enough to lock kids in cages where healthy people lose 30 pounds in two weeks (and speak well of neo-Nazis), and greedy enough to steal supplies from hospitals to resell.
Not to mention a Senate majority leader and a bunch of toadies who are depraved enough to keep him in power even now. And a political party and base that actually want him in power.
Know what doesn’t exist?
– Enough testing to re-open the country.
– Leaders with enough spine to take away Trump’s power (electoral college, impeachment trial, Article 25 – all failed at their stated function).
– 50,000 American lives (and counting) that could have been saved.
– Any leader who can heal the damage and political division in the US that is getting worse by the week.
Also, there exists a news network that will solemnly report as facts whatever fictions serve that stupid and depraved administration. And a large faction in the electorate that believes them.
I blame the abolition of the Fairness Doctrine under Reagan for that. Editorial content masquerading as factual news reporting is one of the worst things to happen to journalism.
You know, he didn’t actually recommend injecting bleach or Lysol or anything of the sort . He’s said enough stupid things that I can see why that would sound plausible. What he did do was was during a national briefing ask his experts if that kind of approach was feasible. Which is still kind of appalling, but not on the level of what people are saying he said.
It’s not just his stupidity in asking that question, or even him doing it in public. It’s that he and his current crop of cronies are now trying to A) play it off as a joke made to mock a reporter despite copious video evidence otherwise, and 2) blame news media for his latest bout of verbal diarrhea. Same goddamn thing, every time, and we’re all just tired of it.
That’s fair. Still seems like once you’re done hiding it, it’d be fast to free your legs and run than to hop, but I’m going to stop thinking about this now before I convince myself to try it out as an experiment.
FastER to free your legs and run than to hop, is what I meant. Same goal of getting out of sight from the threat, just different opinions on how efficient hopping is. Though in this comic, it seems to work well enough.
Wouldn’t have had to chew it. Just find the end and hold it in your teeth while the person trying to get free moves their hands until there is enough to grab. And once one person has hands free, it gets much easier from there.
I don’t care how much this comic tries to push it I’m nevr believing Blaine had assassins or whatever ready to kkll Mike! I just don’t buy it! And I’m willing to believe Baine never recognized his own daughter was Amazi-girl after encountering her multiple times and she literally told him to his face!
I buy that he’s using someone else’s authority to out people in place to potentially kill Mike that would have landed him in deep trouble when he was found out.
My best guess if I actually believed this is Blaine telling a corrupt cop that Mike knows they are on the take and said corrupt cop just takes his word for it with no proof and is willing to further risk their career by trying to kill an unconscious kid in a crowded hospital during a global pandemic. That sounds really implausible to me.
Yeah, until we get things handled enough it ends up behind the sliding timescale, we just have to ignore the likelihood or lack thereof that we’ll have in-person, on-campus-with-dorms classes this fall. I’m just mentally locking the timeframe in 2019 until we can jump it forward. (Also in fairness, I’m pretty sure this arc was written in February at the absolute latest. I think even earlier like December.)
Speaking of which, two weeks from the point the buffer was at when Willis said, several months back, that the comics he’d just written would be exceptionally worthy of damnation. (I can’t check when I added it to my Google Calendar, but I have an event listed May Third that’s just ‘Dumbing of Age will hurt you’.)
Or maybe they just don’t know about it yet! Y’know like in the real world. I assume Trump is president for them right now so he’s probably underplaying the shit out of it. Of course if the pandemic did ever hit the school would have to close so yeah it probably didn’t happen even if I think that would be a cool shake up for a storyline.
The pandemic hit in March. It’s currently, in comic, October. Next year it’ll be October 2021 and so on. The pandemic would’ve been a thing from months ago, she said hopefully.
I don’t think it’s necessarily a dirty cop who will kill him. I was thinking more like a friend from the mob or another mob contact who worked in the hospital already.
I can maybe believe if a the mob has a nurse or doctor on the take that happens to work at the same hospital Mike went to, even though I think that stretches the believability of Blaine’s influence and the mob’s reach. But if it’s just a guy it’s not as simple as walking into his room and killing him. They’d have to find out the room he’s in at the very least which should raise questions with the staff if you’re not related, plus I do believe at least one of Mike’s parents would be in the room with him. He needed both his phone and wallet to rent one of those scooters so he should’ve been identified very quickly and his parents or emergency contact notified. There’s just a lot of variables I think make it more difficult to believe over Blaine bluffing the threat.
Killing somebody that badly injured and unconscious in the hospital would be relatively easy to get away with, because he can’t defend himself at all and nobody would necessarily think his death was a murder.
To be fair, Blaine is in deep denial about many things, has delusions of grandeur, and is good at lying. He might very well believe that he has someone who can pull Mike’s plug on a moment’s notice. Whether that’s true or not is a different question.
Blaine’s impression of his daughter is basically “weak, anxious mess.” He can’t believe AG is Amber not because he can’t recognize her, but because he can’t *believe* it.
They’re probably still up there, but those goons were never presented as ever being competent so it’s a coin toss. They were only in this to get payback on AG and she’s not even there. If it were me I would’ve checked out after she left unless Blaine dropped some serious cash to stay. Even if they are up there if it’s just the two we’ve seen they are outnumbered.
Neither of those men would accept the idea of a female president. However, that thought is probably not enough to persuade them to put aside their differences.
There are still two mooks somewhere nearby, though.
If either of them had any sense they’d both have bolted immediately when Ross let Amazi-Girl go. Because it must have been clear at that stage that the things were going on a lot more serious and felonious than could possibly be passed off as a student prank.
But if they had any sense they wouldn’t have joined this criminal enterprise in the beginning. If they had any sense they wouldn’t have been trying to intimidate witnesses against Ryan.
I don’t think there is a handrail, at least I can’t see one on the left side of the staircase. I went back through previous strips to check if there was a handrail on the right side, and there is a post at the bottom of the stairs visible here, which I guess could be called a support beam: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-10/03-when-it-crumbles/deepcut/
So Dorothy might be suggesting to grab that post, which would at least be helpful while hopping up the first few steps.
You’ve used that exact phrase – word for word – at least twice previously, that I’m aware of. Possibly it’s a reference I don’t get.
Absent that, clarification is often necessary. Text is notorious for its lack of nuance. Some people use emoticons to compensate. But I’m an old fogey, not comfortable with such new-fangled inventions.
Was waiting for this comment to come by. We sitill have a lot of comics to go. It cannot go this smoothly now and still take that amount of time to unfold. Feces will hit the fan, soon. Probably in about a week.
There is, at minimum, one plan we don’t know about. Possibly two.
Amber/Amazi-Girl isn’t going home to sleep. She’s going home to change and get her phone. That suggests she has further plans, whether or not she gets a chance to enact them.
Becky, Amber, and Amazi-Girl all talked some, enough to hammer out a plan, if they decided to. They might be coordinating, but they also might not: last we saw, they were not cooperating on an action plan.
We know that Becky called ToeDad. We don’t know what she said, or what her actual intentions are. We only know the impression he took from her words.
Was Becky ever headed over there? Does Becky have a plan? Does she have a plan that involves Amber or AG? Does she have a plan that accounts for Dina? There is a game afoot and we know neither the players nor the rules.
Congrats, Dorothy, you just got on the board with ‘I am everything, without you/Later, asshole, I’m fucking your daughter’, ‘I die because I am fucking awesome’ (now and likely forever my Crowning Moment of Leslie Bean, and certainly my Crowning Moment of the Walkyverse rivaled only by ‘you make me not want to run anymore’ and that wedding arc,) ‘I’m gonna be a fuckin’ scientist,’ Carla’s pie-in-the-face/name drone gambit, and basically any given moment of Joyce standing up to her fundie upbringing in Iconic Moments of Pure Willisian Awesome. This is your first real entry here, I think? Well, it’s a solid one. Welcome!
“What are you”???? u fuckin wot m8? Come the Fuck again and pardon me? Wanna take it another, bucko?
Literally can’t comprehend basic fucking competence and rational thought. What a stupid piece of shit. How does he manage to inhale without catastrophic organ failure? Fucking moron. Absolute fucking buffoon. Complete fucking idiot. Dipshit with a side of dumbass. This guy is so fucking braindead, he can’t tell the difference between asphalt and fucking orange juice. Here’s a guy who uses fucking power tools to clean the strawberry jam out of his fucking ears. Just a total fucking brainless from start to finish, the ignorant fucking prolapse.
I have said it before, but it bears repeating: this forum is one of the most civil I am aware of. Commentators here have empathy and compassion. It is a safe space.
Of course, I imagine this takes work by Mr. Willis and his team of moderators, for which I am grateful.
Well, I can’t imagine one person could handle the job. And put out a web comic. Not to mention that most of the comments are posted late at night, which could be unhealthy for one person to try to keep on top of.
So I’m assuming – risky, I know. But it makes sense to me.
There’s just Willis and his unrelenting Hammer of STFU. He also set the system up so commenters have to be approved before their first comment gets posted publicly, which preemptively filters shitheads out (while leaving the opportunity to roast them in screenshots on Twitter).
It works, but to be honest I have no idea how he has the time and energy to do all that and draw the comic and fulfill book orders and help raise twins. The man’s a friggin webcomic machine.
Why does she suppose that he won’t be able to use another one if Joyce swipes his usual one? You know, Ross’s, or one of the bozo brothers’, or the house land-line?
Most people don’t remember phone numbers well and Blaine is a bit too busy fighting right now and also very stupid. Killing Mike isn’t really his first priority here when people are actively escaping and it won’t help him regain control of the situation in the way that trying to run everyone down with a car might. Honestly, I think he will get too caught up in trying to kill them to remember that Mike is alive.
Maybe she’s partway up the stairs by that panel and can kind of see into the kitchen? That seems unlikely though, my guess would be that she saw it when they were being brought downstairs and assumed it’d still be there, which I think is a reasonable assumption because it’s obvious by now that Blaine is terrible at thinking ahead
She may have also overheard him say something, like asking one of the other kidnappers “Where’s te phone charger”.
Its one of these things that never gets mentioned explicitly but there are enough reasons to think it wouldn’t be a problem. (Like knowing how to plant a virus on an alien spaceship.)
Jesus, if your plan requires you to call someone on the phone, maymaybe keep it on you? Or buy a burner and keep it in your pocket? Or… utility belt, I guess?
Out of curiosity: Does US still have landline phones in regular houses? (and don’t people keep the screens of their phones locked – Ross might not give his code willingly)
They’re still very common, especially for older folks who think of their cell as an addition to their landline instead of as a replacement. Even if you don’t have the old analog lune connected to the house anymore, you’d have phone service through your Internet provider and get the lines connected to the modem.
There are some, but not a heckuvalot of them any more. Usually in the homes of the boomer generation who never got into the portable phone/cut-the-cord mentality.
Because I am aware of the limitations of cell phones, I have one as an emergency fall-back.
We keep one in our household for, basically, older relatives who know it out of habit and don’t know our cells.
My mom also insisted on my brother and I having landlines (well, the same phone but by the time he needed it I didn’t) when we were at college and living on-campus, just so there was a backup way for people to reach us in an emergency in case our cellphones weren’t functional. Wasn’t used often but made her feel better to know it existed.
That 90% of the time, she isn’t acknowledged to be in charge. Charisma isn’t on that list. If she’s got no one to lead, then she isn’t a terrible leader – she just isn’t one to begin with.
That’s part of the point the story is hammering home with her – if people don’t Feel you are worth listening to, they rarely will. Even if you are good leadership material, if you can’t inspire people to follow you, you can’t.
You could say that inspiring people to follow is part of being a leader, but honestly a good administrator we all agreed to follow based on that competence is going to be equally good at steering the wheel as the person with the same skill plus charisma.
Competent leadership can create a nation. Competent inspiration by itself only creates a cult.
Part of being a good leader is being able to inspire (not saying its fair just the way it is) through either words or deeds
Think of Churchill, Richie McCaw, Thatcher, Gandhi,Ho Chi Minh, Lincoln, Winfrey, Washington, King Jnr, Castro, Mandela, Queen Elizabeth II, *Insert your choice here*, all good leaders in different fields
If you want to create a nation though you most likely are going to be spilling blood so you better be able to inspire people to give their lives
I did say you could say that. I am aware of all of this.
I’m just taking it in a different direction. We would be better served not framing inspiration as where leadership comes from. It should be a Bonus, or reserved for the head of state whose job arguably involves that as a prerequisite, instead of the head of government(in places where that’s not the same thing. Also, US, take note, it probably shouldn’t be the same thing).
We Used to do it with blood inheritance instead of elections. It’s not like we don’t know different options exist.
As fine as democracy is(definitely in comparison to the past options) turns out it needs to be dry cleaned and by the time we noticed it shrank four sizes in the washing machine. We Could buy a new one, I suppose, but now that we had our test run with it and know where it can fail, maaaybe we don’t stick with it for 3-4 extra centuries and start working on the next one. One where we get uninspiring competent goofballs in charge who keep things running well instead of inspiring ideologues and idiotic demagogues who are good at convincing people to hurt themselves.
Seriously, how many times has Dorothy pulled someone’s ass out of an interpersonal fire? Competence oozes out of her at almost all times, it’s not her fault no one listened to her.
Anybody else curious about what the strips will be like in June and July when the buffer catches up to everything going on right now? At the very least, I bet we get some interesting alt text.
Oh crud……With his inability to see the truth, you don’t think he might mistake Dorothy for Amazigirl. I mean the guy doesn’t want to accept the idea of strong willed women, so his mind might just roll them all up into one person.
okay but what about all of your cell phones and also toedad’s? might not have the numbers blaine needs most but he probably knows at least one number to get the others through
Its possible that some of them never had phones to begin with (like Joyce, some may have left their phones in their rooms when the fire alarm happened.)
But even if Blaine has access to other phones, I think the idea Dorothy has is: Call 911, tell them “We’ve been kidnapped, also the kidnappers mentioned a threat to Mike in hospital”. So even if Blaine called someone, there would likely be some protection for Mike (as well as a big finger pointing against Blaine if something does happen.)
Blaine’s plans are so bad that when they fall apart people get hit by the shrapnel. Dodie will be doing well if she can guide people out of the way of the catastrophic effects of Blaine’s plan blowing up in his face.
Dorothy to self: “OK, this is it. a challenge worthy of your strategic mind. Think, Dorothy. You need to come up with a plan to outsmart not only one but TWO evil dads. This will take your full concentration and brain capacit…”
*listens two Blaine and ToeDad for like 30 seconds.*
Dorothy: “OK, you know what, maybe I don’t have to concentrate all that much to outsmart those two… I can just as well multitask. anyone wants help with their homework? Walky?”
Walky: “HOW COMES NO MATTER HOW STUPID THE SITUATIONS I END UP IN, THEY ALWAYS END WITH ME DOING MATH?!!!”
OK, so Dorothy has the skills, but does she has the willpower to endure the responsibility that comes with commanding-in-chief? Now she’s been elected as AG by Blaine, I hope she will deliver, but I fear she will be brought down by her two known weaknesses: her childish acceptation of super-heroics and her confidence (instilled by her parents) that she can be successful at anything she does.
Dorothy’s course of action is commendable. Its her knowledge of what to do that’s got my attention. How to climb stairs with bound feet under pressure, use of the term “swat” … what kinda kink were she and Danny into before college?
You can’t tell because Willis uses an all-caps font style, but SWAT in this case is an acronym referring to the practice of falsely reporting a situation that demands an armed and hostile response, with the various intentions and consequences of scaring the bejeezus out of the victim or, y’know, murder due to misinterpretation.
It’s bad enough that people who get often targeted also register with their local PD as a high-risk case so that the police know to double-check before responding with force.
Julia Gray and the President finally consummate their 30,000 words of simmering sexual tension after the kidnapping Joyce is about to write about as well, I suspect. (They realize their feelings when Julia’s floored by the President’s quick thinking in a crisis and Julia gets to show off her great right cross.)
Apparently somebody HAS died from stubbing his toe. Somebody famous, even. Jack Daniels. So Becky’s dad might be in trouble after all. Beyond that whole “serious concussion and going back to jail for violating parole” thing.
I once read a doctoral dissertation on the medical history of the county where I live; the first operation here, in the 1870’s I believe, was a farmer removing his gangrenous toe on a stump with a mallet and chisel. Don’t know why I thought of that just now.
There’s bound to be a knife in that kitchen. Joyce returns with a knife in her hand – a moment of uncertainty what she intends to do with it. Then in a swift motion she cuts the tape for each of the remaining hostages…
…Blaine doesn’t even understand that other people can be more competent than he is, does he. I was going to frame it in terms of belief, but that would imply that he could actually imagine the concept and at this point I don’t think it’s ever occurred to him even as a hypothetical.
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shit, put her in charge NOW, can’t possibly be any worse than the REAL LIFE fictional character we got rn
only downside is it takes her literally MONTHS to do like a full day’s work (how’s that different from now lolololol)
Dumbing of Age Book 9: BE READY
Here I was thinking it was DOA Book 9: You Left Us Our Teeth.
Dumbing of Age Book 9: You Left Us Our *Teeth*. Whoops.
I don’t usually do the title proposals, but this one felt right.
Dumbing of Age Book 9: Whoops.
Dumbing of Age Book 9: teeth
That’s damning with faint praise, right there. That’s like saying she’d be at least as good as a brick, which would be quite the step up at present.
“shit, put her in charge NOW, can’t possibly be any worse than the REAL LIFE fictional character we got rn”
As i’ve said in a previously, a hippo with diarrhea would be better than what we got now. It wouldn’t suggest you inject Lysol, for example. The REAL question is whether his base will reject him. Perhaps Willis has some insight into that since he comes from them? (Joyce is essentially autobiographical)
You know how you hear about the occasional town that elects a dog as mayor? I think that could work! Popular with voters, won’t tell people Lysol injections would work, foreign relations would probably improve . . .
Main issue is the age requirement, unless they count it in dog years. Maybe a tortoise?
I don’t think I could vote for a candidate with an anti-cat agenda, though.
“Russia cannot possibly go to war with such adorable animal! Will sign treaty.”
Elect Stubbs the Cat! (or, I guess, since the dead can’t hold office, Denali?)
Have you seen his base? They’ve intertwined their identities with supporting him, to the point that not supporting him is inconceivable. The coalition backing him successfully applied the religious fundamentalism playbook; they built a loyal a cult of personality around him by tapping into emotional appeal. Get people angry and resentful of your opposition, and you cement a mindset in them that will back you and hold up to any logic or argument your opposition can throw at it. Their heels are dug in, and there will be no convincing them to change their minds with logic.
The real question should be, have they alienated enough swing voters and RINOs? Are enough of them beyond their breaking point, where they’ll vote for anyone else if they’re not completely disenfranchised? Why do you think they’re trying to sow discord in their opposition, and make voting as difficult as possible? They know the base alone isn’t enough, and they’ve overcooked their positions past their swing voters’ taste, so they’re trying to suppress opposition votes.
Yeah, i was thinking that too.
“Let them fight.”
https://youtu.be/XKdJ6DnPhzk
yea Dorothy! You are best girl.
Nonsense! Dina is best girl. Just ask Becky.
Just be happy Sarah doesn’t have her bat, Blaine.
Damn Dorothy! I figured she was stalling Ross earlier, but this is even better than I expected.
Dorothy is proving to have some **great** leadership props here. Even if she is a bit cocky.
That said . . .would Ross/Toedad be the equivalent of her Secret Service here?
Also on that note. . .oh dear. That shot to the head might be slowing down Toedad more then I thought if Blaine has him on his back on the floor even in his beaten up condition.
We’re seeing them looking down from above and I believe that Ross is still standing in spite of being beaten on the head twice now with a bloody hammer. Which is kind of impressive.
Oh it really is. That is some IMPRESSIVE endurance and pain tolerance, or just sheer determination, to be able to get up and fight after getting stuck in the temple like that.
Honestly not even that unrealistic either . . just really really impressive on Toedad’s part.
More like having a thick skull.
Someone before has noticed while he’s about as tall as a 15 year old girl, Ross is built like someone who should be a LOT physically stronger than what we’ve seen. (I think he may have a rigid muscle condition much like myself. Do his muscles suddenly spasm in a vibrating way for no reason, somethings?)
Ross was also called out on what kind of person he’s amounted to by someone he chose to believe was sent as a sign of God’s favor (and thus ignored all the red flags he was confronted with), right before said person struck him on the head with intent to kill.
Blaine’s badly injured, and is only making himself easier to take in a fight by continuing to play ‘wrath man.’ Ross is short. Not little, just short, with a very large skull (broad build, too) and has nearly been violently killed recently.
In superhero stories, you often can spot the Villain by finding the character who is opposite to the Hero’s defining traits. Amber is more than aware of how Amazi-Girl is more like Two-Face than Batman. At the same time, this is a sign of possessing Batman’s self-scrutiny, on top of being driven to become stronger; better than she was before.
Beavis and Butthead here, are purely motivated by a need to protect their gratifying and untrue self-images from Reality…
A modicum of cockiness oft translates to charisma.
It’s so cute, all these people talking as though the US is going to have an election in November.
Come on now, the situation’s bad but it’s not that bad.
The US sometimes has a court-case instead of an election even when there aren’t unusual difficulties in conducting the vote and hostile forces trying to discredit the results.
trump has been very clear that he would label any election he loses as “fake”.
He will not go willingly, and there are many people with guns who will take to the streets if he tells them to. The anti-lockdown protests are practice runs for this.
Again, it’s bad but it’s not that bad. Yes, Trump has supporters who are currently protesting against the lockdown with guns. It won’t matter – if Donald Trump loses the election on 3 November 2020, then on 20 January 2021 he will legally no longer be POTUS no matter how much he shouts otherwise on Twitter. The Constitution may be vague in some areas, but it is absolutely clear on this point.
You do realise that trump doesn’t give a flying fig for the constitution?
Given how many people are demonstrably willing to risk their lives when he wants them to, there is a real possibility of civil war.
There’s little love between Trump and the military, and in such a situation Trump would have no legal authority to command them, no longer being the Commander-in-Chief. We are not looking at a civil war situation, at least this election cycle. Riots? Maybe. Civil war? No.
I sincerely hope you are right. But there will be lives lost, even so.
At the risk of being labeled something or another, if they can’t get along with the rules of this country, maybe losing them wouldn’t be all that bad. As Thomas Jefferson wrote way back in 1787, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” (emphasis mine)
Riots, perhaps. More likely terrorist style killings – we’ve already seen plenty of right wing domestic terror.
Not civil war. There are extremists out there looking for it, but like the lockdown protests, it’s a tiny minority of people. The media coverage of these has been all out of proportion to their actual size.
I’d also expect court challenges after the fact and a ton of attempts to cheat and suppress the vote.
I’m leery of what this administration will do in its lame duck term, and especially of what the red hat cult of personality will do during and after. They’re more likely to double down than accept reality.
Yeah, very worried about the lame duck session.
What the Trump administration will do during its lame-duck session (whether that comes in 2024-25 or, hopefully, ’20-21) is a perfectly valid concern to have – it’s one I’ll admit to, myself. What I consider doomsaying are preemptive declarations that we’re on the brink of a civil war where Trump has somehow persuaded the military (which, by and large, does not like him) to be on his side, or that Trump will somehow manage to illegally stay in office once his term is expired.
Like, the situation is certainly bad but it’s not yet that bad.
Yeah, I expect the types who protested the COVID lockdowns to pick up their Bass Pro Shops rifles and dress up in their Amazon tacticool gear again, to protest the “deep state” “orchestrating a coup” with somehow appointing Hillary Clinton as a dictator-for life as the “end game”. They’ll continue to consider Trump the “real winner” and “true President”, while the irony that they’re living out the tall tales they’ve woven about the “deep state” these last four years flies a mile over their heads.
Meanwhile, back in reality, we’ll be dealing with Tea Party 2.0 (now with double the bald-faced hypocrisy of the next leading brand) screaming about how all the problems the last administration left behind are somehow all the new administration’s fault, and that they’re not fixing them fast enough. For the most part, though, life will go on.
Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnny Ray…
I think the concern is more organized riots
Except that a lot of his drones will absolutely attempt armed rebellion if he claims that he was “cheated” (translation: his terrible behavior and lack of leadership catch up with him), and a depressing number of them are law enforcement/military. It’s pretty terrifying to think about.
If they do (and I think that’s a big if — dressing up all tacticool and going to Walmart with your AR-15 is a lot different than actual combat) I fully expect them to lose and lose badly. The 2nd Amendment does not provide training in small unit tactics or strategy along with the right to bear arms, nor does it provide you the right to all the weapons. Provided the military isn’t on Trump’s side — and let’s be honest, it’s not — I don’t think we have to worry.
That’s a good point about the 2nd amendment. Keep in mind that it was intended to make sure the states could at least have a chance at taking on the federal government forces in an armed conflict. But that was when ‘arms’ meant ‘bolt action rifles’ as the bulk of your firepower. By restricting it to things like that, the courts have effectively neutered the 2nd amendment’s intent. So it’s kinda moot now and serves only to keep gunsturbators happy. No one thinks they’d be anything but a minor impediment to an enemy in an armed conflict. No one but them, that is. And Sarah has previously expressed her opinion of them in this very story arc.
Actually, it was written when “the right to bear arms” meant carrying a flint-lock, muzzle-loading musket or, if you were really rich, having a smoothbore cannon standing in your shed. Neither of those weapons would have much killing power in the hands of a single person. The 2nd amendment inseparably connects the right to bear arms to taking part in the ‘well-regulated militia’ that later evolved into the National Guard. Naturally, most 2nd amendment enthousiasts happily ignore that half of the text, because they’re not really interested in the constitution – they just want to have guns.
Actually, the purpose of the 2nd Amendment was to protect the slave states’ slave patrols. All white men were required to serve on these for several years starting at age 21 or so – they patrolled to check passes for any slaves caught off their plantations, run down and round up runaways, and to put down rebellions. It says right there in the 2nd Amendment: “A well regulated Militia”. These slave patrols functioned as local militias, and the wording puts this at the *state* level because the slave states didn’t want the federal government conscripting their slave militias to fight in wars against foreign enemies – they needed them there at home! See this article at the Daily Beast for more: “How Slave Owners Dictated the Language of the 2nd Amendment”
It wasn’t intended for anything like that at all. Back then the states had their own militias and those were the main source of troops for any serious conflict. They didn’t want the country to have a standing army at all, but it soon became clear that wasn’t practical.
Mostly though, it’s only a tiny fraction of even Trump’s base that would even try to take up arms – most of them already connected to various militia and hate groups. There will very likely be violence. They will very likely try to kill people and start their boogaloo, but they don’t have the numbers or the support to be anything more than murderers.
Correction — are WANNA-BE law enforcement and (maybe) ex-military. And if push comes down to actual shove, my money will be on the REAL military — the guys who have all the neat toys like REAL armored vehicles, REAL body armor, and REAL weapons that will do far more damage than a guy with an AR-15 look-alike with a couple of extended magazines taped together. Oh, and have been trained constantly on how to use them to their best advantage.
In historical examples it has often been a problem that people can’t agree on what happened. The Constitution may be clear, but the facts are often not. It may very well be the case in November that Faux News will report a set of events that would, if they were true, make Trump the constitutional president. If a lot of senators, governors, judges, attorneys-general, Army officers and National Guard members continue in their habit of believing Faux News, then a lot of important institutions can be paralysed during a crisis.
Yes, of course it is. But the constitution and the legal system it enables are not magical cosmic forces. They only work because people do them. Yes, if he loses the election he’s no longer president. But if he stays in office, and congress and the courts don’t do anything about it? If the secret service doesn’t allow him to be hauled off by the FBI? Then what? There’s no recourse without a congress that has shown time and time again it doesn’t give two shits what laws he breaks.
The 20th Amendment says the President and Vice President’s terms end at noon on January 20th the year after an election year. This can only change by ratifying a new Amendment, which will never happen with a divided Congress. I doubt the system would let him unilaterally ignore or nullify this, because it would set a precedent for any Administration to unilaterally ignore or nullify any Amendment, including the 2nd.
He also can’t suspend or cancel the election, because that’s not the Executive branch’s purview. It would take an act of Congress to move election day from “the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November”, which I think sets the whole process in motion, and that’s highly unlikely given the blue House.
Basically I think the only thing stopping the current Administration and Senate from going full Emperor Palpatine on us is the looming threat that it can come back to bite them in the ass if their opposition comes to power, and they can’t 100% prevent that from happening yet.
Yes, in a way you’re right. If the entire apparatus of government stands behind him, despite the law, despite the newly elected President and Congresscritters, then he’ll continue to hold power.
If the secret service and the Department of Justice and the military all stand behind him, then it’s an open coup. And remember it’s not just the top people – his appointed cronies, but the actual low level people doing their jobs, who will, come January 20th have to choose between breaking their oaths and following their old bosses and following the law and their newly elected and appointed superiors.
I don’t see it happening. I don’t think he’s hollowed out the lower ranks of government that much. I certainly don’t think the military’s behind in that fashion – especially not after his administrations handling of Covid-19 outbreaks on naval vessels (and elsewhere in the military).
Personally, I think he should be given the Emperor Norton treatment.
(the original from 19th. century San Francisco, not the poster on this forum)
In the US, we’ve long believed we have the rule of law. But the last few years have shown us, repeatedly, that what we really had was a rule of norms.
The current US president just ignores those norms, which wouldn’t be that much of a crisis were it not for the fact that his Attorney General also ignores those norms, and pretty much every political appointee in the executive branch also ignores those norms, and oh guess what? the judicial branch has been filled with people who also ignore those norms, confirmed in their positions by one of the legislative branches that is controlled by people who ignore those norms.
I think it’s a pretty safe bet that we’ll have an election in November, though probably not a free and fair one. But if the results don’t come out the way the president wants, and he refuses to accept them, and continues to act as though he were re-elected — who’s going to remove him? Not the Justice Department, that’s for sure.
The president-elect will need to take armed services personnel to arrest him. trump’s Secret Service detail will permit this, provided no-one threatens his life.
At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work. I do not share King Daniel’s optimism, but I do hope sanity prevails. For once.
If he loses the election, his term ends on January 20th whether a successor is sworn in or not. Period. If at that point there is no definitive successor selected, Congress picks a new President and VP from the top three individuals who got the most Electoral College votes; the House picks the POTUS and the Senate picks a VP. I think this is extremely unlikely because we only have two parties big enough to muster a majority of EC votes.
The real worry in my opinion is his sycophantic fan club rejecting the results as some kind of “deep state shadow government” “taking away control” from the “real government”, ironically listening to a one-man ‘shadow government’ themselves.
The Justice Department will. The political appointees (Barr in particular) are done at that point – the new President will replace them.
And can and will do so even if Trump is still squatting in the White House.
No election means either Pelosi or Patrick Leahy becomes president when Trump’s term expires on January 20th. There are quite a few worrying scenarios out there, but cancelled elections isn’t really one of them.
Not necessarily. State legislatures could adopt some means of selecting electors other than popular election.
Enough have to do that to get 45* past 270. He needs a majority, not a plurality. And while TX and Ohio would probably be reliable, can he count on, say, Florida to give him electors without an election and not end up with a bunch of pissed-off Puerto Ricans rioting?
He only needs 270 votes in the elector college if all 538 electoral votes are cast. If some states end up unable to conduct an election and lack any alternative method for appointing electors, of if any states’ elections end up so screwed up that the Supreme Court gets to rule that the states’ electors were not validly appointed, then only a smaller number of votes are needed to made up the majority.
The US electoral system is a rickety old Rube Goldberg contraption, and parts of it only works because, when, and if they are carried out by people of goodwill who are committed to democratic values.
Democratic controlled states will have elections normally though, and they control the majority of the electors. What Republican states choose to do or not to do with their elections will at best keep Trump’s loss from being a landslide.
Maybe they will. They’ll certainly try. But I’m really afraid, actually terrified, that there will be things going on by then that make if very difficult to conduct an election that is fair and transparent and in which all citizens have an equal opportunity to cast their votes and have them counted. The conduct of elections in the USA is a schmozzle at the best of times; with Trump and the Russians and the die-hards of the Confederacy and conspiracy nutters and random shooters all trying to screw things up there is a strong chance of widespread irregularities. Irregularities will end up in front of the federal courts. And an awful lot of federal judges were appointed since January 2017 by Trump on the advice of the Federalist Society and confirmed by a McConnell’s senate. It can easily all end up in confusion with no agreed-upon result. As it did in 1876, for example.
Judicial appointments have been one of the few bright spots of the Trump administration. I’ll just mention that some of Trump’s more egregious acts of overreach were swatted down by judges that he appointed.
I think those electors are supposed to be counted on Election Day, so any states that don’t count their votes and assign electors by then run the risk of effectively “sitting out” the election. That’s probably to incentivize getting the process done and over with, but you know they’ll try any chicanery they can weasel up to get counted anyway.
One problem is that states aren’t actually required to assign electors through a popular vote process. They can simple appoint electors as they please.
They are however required to elect House Representatives by voting. So if they skip elections, they don’t get Representation. (Or something. It’s not entirely clear to me what would happen in the long run in that case.)
One hopes so. I mean, I don’t need the whole world knowing that my middle name is Allison.
I am confused about this comment.
I am being obscure intentionally, to avoid trouble, but there is a certain type of person where the whole world becomes familiar with their middle name. Like “Harvey” or “Wilkes.”
Doom Alison Shepherd. We knew them when.
I am of course also being facetious. I don’t even possess anything more dangerous than a butter knife. Please stop calling me, Secret Service Man.
You’re saying that like butter knives aren’t dangerous.
“I heard on the internet that butter knives are part of the liberal agenda.
Quickly, break into all the homes and seize the butter knives.”
-Trump to Armed Forces, August 2023
I’ve long lost grasp on which of these kinds of hypothetical situations about Trump would actually be farcical, so your guess is as good as mine whether I intended that seriously or not. :/
Here lies Doom Alison Shepherd. Trouble was their middle name. Also, Alison.
You’re talking like rule of law still applies. What if Trump just keeps acting like he’s still in office, who’s going to remove him? Not the Attorney General, that’s for sure.
The Attorney-General is nominated by the POTUS and approved by the Senate. If there are no elections on 3 November 2020, the majority of the senators leaving office will be Republicans, swinging the Senate over to a Democratic majority. Nancy Pelosi (D) is the Speaker of the House of Representatives, so she’s third in the line of succession after Pence and Trump – both of whom would lose their office on 20 January 2021 if Trump is voted out.
That leaves us with a Democratic President, presiding over a Democratic Senate. Nothing would stop them from then rubber-stamping a Democratic Attorney-General to immediately replace Barr.
What if — and just hear me out — what if the Republican senators keep acting as though they were still in office? What if the president keeps acting as though he were still in office? Who is going to enforce the law, when all the people in charge of enforcing the law are not interested in enforcing the law?
If someone who is constitutionally not in office (and the Constitution is quite explicit on this front, unlike some other vague areas) claims to be in office anyway, they’ll have about as much legal authority as “Emperor Norton I of the United States” did – they can make as many proclamations as they like, but they’ll be ignored as possessing no legal bearing. They will no longer have access to their offices in the Capitol Building, or their rooms in the White House, or in any other governmental building. In the event that Trump loses office, he will no longer be POTUS or Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces, and will no longer be able to enforce his vision – nor will Pence as Vice President, nor Barr as Attorney-General. It’s the damage they can still do while they yet remain in office (hopefully, for just nine more months) that warrants concern.
You seem to be missing the point being made. *Who* would be ignoring him? The other lawmakers who also might refuse to leave? *Who* would be locking them out of their offices? The military? Which is an inherently authoritarian system that has a lot of Evangelicals and white supremacists? Would they, the secret service, the police, have the will to go against the flow when it’s the harder action to take? Legal authority, or lack of, means nothing if everyone with power just decides to ignore it, like they have been up until now.
The part that changes is that legal authority. To take the extreme example of the military – right now to act to remove Trump would be a military coup, illegal and unprecedented in the country. On January 21, they would be acting on the orders of the actual President, if so asked. And while the military may be authoritarian, they’re not that fond of Trump, especially after some of the recent failures (Capt. Brett Crozier?)
There are a lot of people in government who are not “ignoring it”, but simply do not have any legal options for removing him. That changes if he stays in office without being elected.
Technically though, if there were no elections this fall, there would be no House, since all of its member’s terms would have expired. That likely means no Speaker.
However, in that case the next in line would be the President Pro Tem of the Senate, who would be chosen by the new Democratic Senate majority.
Congressional elections are state level, and outside the Electoral College system. Even if the Electoral College is tied up in red tape, we’ll still have a new session of Congress sworn in on January 3rd.
It would take an act of Congress to move Election Day. That’s not happening with a split Congress in today’s political climate.
State governors generally have the power to appoint people to vacant seats in Congress, for the remainder of the term or until a special election is held (depending on circumstance and state law). This has happened many times before when a Congressperson dies while in office (like Ted Kennedy or John McCain) or resigns (Tina Smith replacing Al Franken). If Election Day somehow gets cancelled, we’d see many emergency appointments.
They can appoint Senators, depending on the state laws. Vacant House seats must be filled by election.
Not having an election at all is extremely unlikely. I can’t see any possibility for having a normal election, but skipping the Presidential part.
No election means no Congress critters in the house. So Pelosi is out.
It also means no Senate elections either. Since more Republican senators are up for reelection this year than democrats, it is likely the Senate control would revert to the democrats. So the next in line would be the pro tiem (likely the longest serving Democrat senator).
Likely not the longest serving Democratic Senator, in that case. That’s the normal tradition, but if they knew whoever it was would become the President, I suspect there’d be a bit more competition for the normally ceremonial position.
Pelosi’s term would expire at the same moment Trump’s does. Even if she’s re-elected, the House would still need to vote for her as House Majority Leader again. The first person in the succession list whose position does not expire would be Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who would become Acting President (because only the Vice President actually becomes President).
There damn well better be elections.
There will be. Ignore the doomsaying.
I don’t really think there’s not going to be an election next November.
But for people who live in swing states, voter suppression will be unrelenting, and the disinformation campaign will make everything we’ve see so far look like a game of pattycake.
And if, in spite of that, the election doesn’t go the president’s way, he’s already demonstrated repeatedly that he believes himself entitled to act as he sees fit, pieces of paper be damned. If he proclaims himself legitimately elected, and his Justice Department backs him up — what then?
I’m sorry, ‘murrica, but in that case we’ll have to invade you to topple your dictatorship and take your oil.
Thanks. Anything else we can get you?
Keys are in the mailbox, dinner’s waiting in the oven, there’s a pie in the microwave, and the washer and dryer are empty if you need to do some laundry.
Why would you put a pie in the microwave.
Because the dinner’s in the oven.
Elaborated on BBCC’s remark: You take the pie out of the oven to start dinner, and tuck it in the microwave to keep it from getting too cold.
Do please wipe your feet when you come in, we just shampooed the carpets.
SillyGoose, many of us will welcome you as liberators.
I, for one, would welcome our new status as a province of South Canada.
HM cancels your independence and appoints a slew of lords-lieutenant to reinstate British spelling conventions and driving on the left?
I’ve heard worse suggestions. And I already know the words to “God Save the Queen” (as well as “Oh Canada”, if she decides to parcel us out to them).
Honestly, if New York and New England were to become a Canadian Province, I’d be okay with that.
Hurray!
So let’s see, north of the country goes to Canada, Texas and New Mexico obviously go to Mexico* for the lulz, everyone else is left to their own devices for a while, although electoral system is reformed to avoid that two-party freak show you’ve got going, and you’re getting on the metric system. Mwahahaha METRIC SYSTEM!
*Will they then decide to pay for a wall after all? Will it be built by Lone Star NRA members? Tune in next week to find out!
I’m confident there will be elections. But I think it is a near-certainty that the will be unusual difficulties in conducting them. I’m pretty sure that those difficulties will lead to some significant irregularities. I expect that irregularities in several states will end up before the courts. I fear that the resulting court decisions will not all be universally accepted.
Having a republican partisan supply the voting machines (and not allowing outside scrutiny of their software because it’s proprietary) basically guarantees it, IMO.
If the democrats do gain office then one thing they’ll need to fix is the redistricting the republicans instituted while in power. Those bizzare electoral maps they generated are about as against the democratic spirit as you can imagine.
I suspect that the real danger is not that there will be no elections, but that there will so many irregularities and disputes about what happened that people will disagree about who won them.
You’re right, we’re all completely hopeless and there’s nothing anyone can do to improve the situation. It’s all bad, forever, and nothing can ever change that immutable fact, no matter what.
What’s more, the die was cast with adoption of the Three-Fifth Compromise and the Electoral College, and nothing has improved in any way since 1788.
It’s so cute, you talking like there’s going to be a U.S. in November.
I’m not saying we’ll definitely break up by then. But I think that either the Republican machine falls apart in the next few months, or the US falls apart – maybe not formally and fully yet, but past the point of no return.
That will play merry hell with the sliding timeline of this comic. Will any of its situations or concerns be plausible in the Untied States of America?
ITYM the United Provinces of South Canada.
… wow. This thread is… a thing. That exists.
It is definitely a thing.
Know what else exists? A POTUS stupid enough to recommend that people inject bleach to kill coronavirus, vicious enough to lock kids in cages where healthy people lose 30 pounds in two weeks (and speak well of neo-Nazis), and greedy enough to steal supplies from hospitals to resell.
Not to mention a Senate majority leader and a bunch of toadies who are depraved enough to keep him in power even now. And a political party and base that actually want him in power.
Know what doesn’t exist?
– Enough testing to re-open the country.
– Leaders with enough spine to take away Trump’s power (electoral college, impeachment trial, Article 25 – all failed at their stated function).
– 50,000 American lives (and counting) that could have been saved.
– Any leader who can heal the damage and political division in the US that is getting worse by the week.
Also, there exists a news network that will solemnly report as facts whatever fictions serve that stupid and depraved administration. And a large faction in the electorate that believes them.
I blame the abolition of the Fairness Doctrine under Reagan for that. Editorial content masquerading as factual news reporting is one of the worst things to happen to journalism.
I’ll just say that it’s not really a matter of “spine”, but of the aforementioned depraved enough Senate majority.
You know, he didn’t actually recommend injecting bleach or Lysol or anything of the sort . He’s said enough stupid things that I can see why that would sound plausible. What he did do was was during a national briefing ask his experts if that kind of approach was feasible. Which is still kind of appalling, but not on the level of what people are saying he said.
It’s not just his stupidity in asking that question, or even him doing it in public. It’s that he and his current crop of cronies are now trying to A) play it off as a joke made to mock a reporter despite copious video evidence otherwise, and 2) blame news media for his latest bout of verbal diarrhea. Same goddamn thing, every time, and we’re all just tired of it.
This is where we at, yeah.
I… I think I might be a little gay for Dorothy right now, holy poop!
what Joyce is saying, right now
“That thing I said about adoring you 5% less? I now adore you 55% more, so I’m still a Friend of Dorothy.”
I think Dorothy may have been in Brownies/Girl Guides/something else with a similar “always be prepared” motto: she is organised 😀 <3
She’s absolutely the type.
Dorothy can be overwatch for Amazi-Girl if politics don’t work out.
Dorothy could be the Jack Morrison to Amazi-Girl’s Gabriel Reyes.
And Becky’s Lena Oxton.
I think it’s pretty clear Dina is the teleporter here.
Symmetra’s the teleporter, Tracer just has an adversarial relationship to linear time
Sal would be Ana and help Dorothy hunt down AG after she goes rogue, and Joyce would be kidnapped and forced to become Widowmaker.
*looks in the record collection for proper ballet music*
Outta my way, Bierce.
*plays “At The Hop” on the hacked Muzak*
Original, or Sha-Na-Na live at Woodstock?
We’ll use the live Sha-na-na version, mainly because most people nowadays don’t know/remember that they were at Woodstock.
I can’t help but feel it’d be somewhat more expedient to use your free hands to, y’know, untie your legs, instead of potato-sacking outta there :v
Yeah, if your goal is escape, it seems like that’d even be more pressing than the hands.
It might be easier to hide that you’ve untaped your hands than that you’ve untaped your legs?
That’s fair. Still seems like once you’re done hiding it, it’d be fast to free your legs and run than to hop, but I’m going to stop thinking about this now before I convince myself to try it out as an experiment.
It might also be good to first get out of sight from the threat, make sure they can’t strike at you immediately when you first try to escape.
Bar the cellar door shut, trapping Toedad and the Blaine down there, then free the legs.
The door appears to open away from the stairs, into the room above, so they should be able to effectively block it somehow.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-10/03-when-it-crumbles/smol/
FastER to free your legs and run than to hop, is what I meant. Same goal of getting out of sight from the threat, just different opinions on how efficient hopping is. Though in this comic, it seems to work well enough.
They need something sharp to cut the tape first, wiggling out of it would just slow them down.
They might not have had enough tine to undo both, duct tape isn’t easy to chew through and they couldn’t do it while being watched
Wouldn’t have had to chew it. Just find the end and hold it in your teeth while the person trying to get free moves their hands until there is enough to grab. And once one person has hands free, it gets much easier from there.
Dorothy owns.
I don’t care how much this comic tries to push it I’m nevr believing Blaine had assassins or whatever ready to kkll Mike! I just don’t buy it! And I’m willing to believe Baine never recognized his own daughter was Amazi-girl after encountering her multiple times and she literally told him to his face!
I buy that he’s using someone else’s authority to out people in place to potentially kill Mike that would have landed him in deep trouble when he was found out.
He probably doesn’t, what with the pre-established ‘Blaine’s plan is eight types of garbage.’ Better not to take the chance and gamble wrong.
My best guess if I actually believed this is Blaine telling a corrupt cop that Mike knows they are on the take and said corrupt cop just takes his word for it with no proof and is willing to further risk their career by trying to kill an unconscious kid in a crowded hospital during a global pandemic. That sounds really implausible to me.
I’m assuming DOA takes place in an alternate universe where the pandemic never happened.
Yeah, until we get things handled enough it ends up behind the sliding timescale, we just have to ignore the likelihood or lack thereof that we’ll have in-person, on-campus-with-dorms classes this fall. I’m just mentally locking the timeframe in 2019 until we can jump it forward. (Also in fairness, I’m pretty sure this arc was written in February at the absolute latest. I think even earlier like December.)
Speaking of which, two weeks from the point the buffer was at when Willis said, several months back, that the comics he’d just written would be exceptionally worthy of damnation. (I can’t check when I added it to my Google Calendar, but I have an event listed May Third that’s just ‘Dumbing of Age will hurt you’.)
Or maybe they just don’t know about it yet! Y’know like in the real world. I assume Trump is president for them right now so he’s probably underplaying the shit out of it. Of course if the pandemic did ever hit the school would have to close so yeah it probably didn’t happen even if I think that would be a cool shake up for a storyline.
The pandemic hit in March. It’s currently, in comic, October. Next year it’ll be October 2021 and so on. The pandemic would’ve been a thing from months ago, she said hopefully.
I don’t think it’s necessarily a dirty cop who will kill him. I was thinking more like a friend from the mob or another mob contact who worked in the hospital already.
Mob goons, a blackmailed nurse, Faz/Faz’s mom…all it takes is an “accident.”
I can maybe believe if a the mob has a nurse or doctor on the take that happens to work at the same hospital Mike went to, even though I think that stretches the believability of Blaine’s influence and the mob’s reach. But if it’s just a guy it’s not as simple as walking into his room and killing him. They’d have to find out the room he’s in at the very least which should raise questions with the staff if you’re not related, plus I do believe at least one of Mike’s parents would be in the room with him. He needed both his phone and wallet to rent one of those scooters so he should’ve been identified very quickly and his parents or emergency contact notified. There’s just a lot of variables I think make it more difficult to believe over Blaine bluffing the threat.
Killing somebody that badly injured and unconscious in the hospital would be relatively easy to get away with, because he can’t defend himself at all and nobody would necessarily think his death was a murder.
Plus, there might be other incriminating evidence on the phone. Not like it’s really necessary at this point, but it never hurts.
The best thing they can do is take it, instead of destroying it. Blaine probably uses a passcode like 12345, anyway.
To be fair, Blaine is in deep denial about many things, has delusions of grandeur, and is good at lying. He might very well believe that he has someone who can pull Mike’s plug on a moment’s notice. Whether that’s true or not is a different question.
Blaine’s impression of his daughter is basically “weak, anxious mess.” He can’t believe AG is Amber not because he can’t recognize her, but because he can’t *believe* it.
Are the bozo brothers still at the top of the stairs?
If not, why not?
They’re probably still up there, but those goons were never presented as ever being competent so it’s a coin toss. They were only in this to get payback on AG and she’s not even there. If it were me I would’ve checked out after she left unless Blaine dropped some serious cash to stay. Even if they are up there if it’s just the two we’ve seen they are outnumbered.
If they are still up there, they wil encounter Sarah, Dina and Joyce.
I don’t really see them as being relevant for anything at this point.
I think Faz will make a surprise appearance…somewhere in this warzone.
“That’s impossible?”
It’s duct tape, Blaine, not adamantium chain.
Neither of those men would accept the idea of a female president. However, that thought is probably not enough to persuade them to put aside their differences.
There are still two mooks somewhere nearby, though.
I was actually wondering about them. You’d think that all of this racket would have drawn them down into this . . .basement(?) right?
If either of them had any sense they’d both have bolted immediately when Ross let Amazi-Girl go. Because it must have been clear at that stage that the things were going on a lot more serious and felonious than could possibly be passed off as a student prank.
But if they had any sense they wouldn’t have joined this criminal enterprise in the beginning. If they had any sense they wouldn’t have been trying to intimidate witnesses against Ryan.
Fucking right you are, Dorothy.
She’s the last one out, and her feet aren’t free yet.
Calling it now: she’s gonna get grabbed.
Dotty kicks ass.
When Dorothy says “support beam”, is she referring to what I call a “handrail”?
Yeah, I can see it.
Apologies. I dunno how that ended up as a reply to a previous comment.
I don’t think there is a handrail, at least I can’t see one on the left side of the staircase. I went back through previous strips to check if there was a handrail on the right side, and there is a post at the bottom of the stairs visible here, which I guess could be called a support beam: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-10/03-when-it-crumbles/deepcut/
So Dorothy might be suggesting to grab that post, which would at least be helpful while hopping up the first few steps.
“what are you,” says blaine, having never met anyone remotely competent
(respect to dorothy but wow blaine really didn’t think any of this through)
Blaine now thinks Dorothy is AG.
People keep saying she looks kinda similar to Amber, all she would need is a brown wig and maybe a little padding
A lot of padding. We’re lookin’ at a thicc vs sticc situation, here.
A competent female?! . . . inconceivable!
His thought, not mine, in case that’s not clear.
You shouldn’t have to clarify.
You’ve used that exact phrase – word for word – at least twice previously, that I’m aware of. Possibly it’s a reference I don’t get.
Absent that, clarification is often necessary. Text is notorious for its lack of nuance. Some people use emoticons to compensate. But I’m an old fogey, not comfortable with such new-fangled inventions.
I say it because sarcasm and parody are dead.
Bets? Common sense.is dead, but then it never had much of a life anyway.
<3 Dorothy.
This is going way too smoothly. I am very nervous.
Was waiting for this comment to come by. We sitill have a lot of comics to go. It cannot go this smoothly now and still take that amount of time to unfold. Feces will hit the fan, soon. Probably in about a week.
Is Becky still headed over there?
There is, at minimum, one plan we don’t know about. Possibly two.
Amber/Amazi-Girl isn’t going home to sleep. She’s going home to change and get her phone. That suggests she has further plans, whether or not she gets a chance to enact them.
Becky, Amber, and Amazi-Girl all talked some, enough to hammer out a plan, if they decided to. They might be coordinating, but they also might not: last we saw, they were not cooperating on an action plan.
We know that Becky called ToeDad. We don’t know what she said, or what her actual intentions are. We only know the impression he took from her words.
Was Becky ever headed over there? Does Becky have a plan? Does she have a plan that involves Amber or AG? Does she have a plan that accounts for Dina? There is a game afoot and we know neither the players nor the rules.
None of Becky, Amber, AmaziGirl know Dina is there.
Congrats, Dorothy, you just got on the board with ‘I am everything, without you/Later, asshole, I’m fucking your daughter’, ‘I die because I am fucking awesome’ (now and likely forever my Crowning Moment of Leslie Bean, and certainly my Crowning Moment of the Walkyverse rivaled only by ‘you make me not want to run anymore’ and that wedding arc,) ‘I’m gonna be a fuckin’ scientist,’ Carla’s pie-in-the-face/name drone gambit, and basically any given moment of Joyce standing up to her fundie upbringing in Iconic Moments of Pure Willisian Awesome. This is your first real entry here, I think? Well, it’s a solid one. Welcome!
Commander in chief? More like Commander of S.H.I.E.L.D.!!!! Dorothy could command a tactical team to fight super human threats!
“What are you”???? u fuckin wot m8? Come the Fuck again and pardon me? Wanna take it another, bucko?
Literally can’t comprehend basic fucking competence and rational thought. What a stupid piece of shit. How does he manage to inhale without catastrophic organ failure? Fucking moron. Absolute fucking buffoon. Complete fucking idiot. Dipshit with a side of dumbass. This guy is so fucking braindead, he can’t tell the difference between asphalt and fucking orange juice. Here’s a guy who uses fucking power tools to clean the strawberry jam out of his fucking ears. Just a total fucking brainless from start to finish, the ignorant fucking prolapse.
But what do you really think? Don’t soften it just for us.
god i love dorothy
Me too.
And I love Dina. Sneak in, convince the criminals that you are harmless and have control over your hands the whole time. Brilliant.
Thanks everyone for your kind words yesterday.
<3
I have said it before, but it bears repeating: this forum is one of the most civil I am aware of. Commentators here have empathy and compassion. It is a safe space.
Of course, I imagine this takes work by Mr. Willis and his team of moderators, for which I am grateful.
FWIW, I too am sorry for your loss.
There’s a team of moderators?
Well, I can’t imagine one person could handle the job. And put out a web comic. Not to mention that most of the comments are posted late at night, which could be unhealthy for one person to try to keep on top of.
So I’m assuming – risky, I know. But it makes sense to me.
If I’m not mistaken, Willis is the only one who moderates the comments. No, I don’t know how he manages it.
It is.
That is to say, it is just Willis.
at the same time as he juggles twins.
Sometimes you have to choose between shit and poo.
You made me laugh. But, yeah, I’m pretty sure that Amazi-Willis is a thing.
Permabans. Swift ones.
And closing the comments altogether if it gets too bad.
There’s just Willis and his unrelenting Hammer of STFU. He also set the system up so commenters have to be approved before their first comment gets posted publicly, which preemptively filters shitheads out (while leaving the opportunity to roast them in screenshots on Twitter).
It works, but to be honest I have no idea how he has the time and energy to do all that and draw the comic and fulfill book orders and help raise twins. The man’s a friggin webcomic machine.
‘How do you draw every second you’re alive?
How do you draw like you need it to survive?’
‘I literally do?’
<3
<3
Vote Dorothy
I know you love showing your work, Dorothy, but you are in the middle of a daring escape.
Eh, you know what, brag away. You have more than earned your right to multitask.
Just don’t brag too long, or Blaine’s gonna scramble over and grab you.
Well done Dorothy but you might just want to dial back the hubris a tad, after all it was very lucky events played out they way they did
Overall very good job though
Or maybe wait until everyone is safe before congratulating yourself…
yes, especially given that she knows he has other goons
That can’t possibly come back to bite them. Nope…
/s
How does Dorothy know where Blaine’s phone is?
Why does she suppose that he won’t be able to use another one if Joyce swipes his usual one? You know, Ross’s, or one of the bozo brothers’, or the house land-line?
Most people don’t remember phone numbers well and Blaine is a bit too busy fighting right now and also very stupid. Killing Mike isn’t really his first priority here when people are actively escaping and it won’t help him regain control of the situation in the way that trying to run everyone down with a car might. Honestly, I think he will get too caught up in trying to kill them to remember that Mike is alive.
Maybe she’s partway up the stairs by that panel and can kind of see into the kitchen? That seems unlikely though, my guess would be that she saw it when they were being brought downstairs and assumed it’d still be there, which I think is a reasonable assumption because it’s obvious by now that Blaine is terrible at thinking ahead
She may have also overheard him say something, like asking one of the other kidnappers “Where’s te phone charger”.
Its one of these things that never gets mentioned explicitly but there are enough reasons to think it wouldn’t be a problem. (Like knowing how to plant a virus on an alien spaceship.)
Dorothy is actually a cyborg with a backdoor into the cell network.
Magnificent.
What exactly is Ross doing to Ball-Peen in the background of the last panel – a hurricanrana?
Jesus, if your plan requires you to call someone on the phone, maymaybe keep it on you? Or buy a burner and keep it in your pocket? Or… utility belt, I guess?
That plan would require Blaine/BallPeen(tm) to not be an idiot, so that’s off the table.
It’s a lot harder to write snarky young adults/teens winning against competent villains.
Out of curiosity: Does US still have landline phones in regular houses? (and don’t people keep the screens of their phones locked – Ross might not give his code willingly)
Even if it is locked I think most cell phones would allow outgoing emergency 911 calls.
They’re still very common, especially for older folks who think of their cell as an addition to their landline instead of as a replacement. Even if you don’t have the old analog lune connected to the house anymore, you’d have phone service through your Internet provider and get the lines connected to the modem.
There are some, but not a heckuvalot of them any more. Usually in the homes of the boomer generation who never got into the portable phone/cut-the-cord mentality.
Because I am aware of the limitations of cell phones, I have one as an emergency fall-back.
I’m a Xennial with a landline, but I’m a nerd who likes playing with old phones and modems and stuff so I know I’m an outlier.
Or people who live where cell service is still spotty – a surprising amount of the country, really.
I have a land line which costs next to nothing because it’s part of a package deal with one of my two Internet providers.
We keep one in our household for, basically, older relatives who know it out of habit and don’t know our cells.
My mom also insisted on my brother and I having landlines (well, the same phone but by the time he needed it I didn’t) when we were at college and living on-campus, just so there was a backup way for people to reach us in an emergency in case our cellphones weren’t functional. Wasn’t used often but made her feel better to know it existed.
I love that Dorothy’s superpower is leadership and planning.
Which is funny because 90% of the time she’s a terrible leader.
I guess crises pull the best out of her.
That 90% of the time, she isn’t acknowledged to be in charge. Charisma isn’t on that list. If she’s got no one to lead, then she isn’t a terrible leader – she just isn’t one to begin with.
That’s part of the point the story is hammering home with her – if people don’t Feel you are worth listening to, they rarely will. Even if you are good leadership material, if you can’t inspire people to follow you, you can’t.
You could say that inspiring people to follow is part of being a leader, but honestly a good administrator we all agreed to follow based on that competence is going to be equally good at steering the wheel as the person with the same skill plus charisma.
Competent leadership can create a nation. Competent inspiration by itself only creates a cult.
Part of being a good leader is being able to inspire (not saying its fair just the way it is) through either words or deeds
Think of Churchill, Richie McCaw, Thatcher, Gandhi,Ho Chi Minh, Lincoln, Winfrey, Washington, King Jnr, Castro, Mandela, Queen Elizabeth II, *Insert your choice here*, all good leaders in different fields
If you want to create a nation though you most likely are going to be spilling blood so you better be able to inspire people to give their lives
Dagnabbit, all great leaders I mean
I did say you could say that. I am aware of all of this.
I’m just taking it in a different direction. We would be better served not framing inspiration as where leadership comes from. It should be a Bonus, or reserved for the head of state whose job arguably involves that as a prerequisite, instead of the head of government(in places where that’s not the same thing. Also, US, take note, it probably shouldn’t be the same thing).
We Used to do it with blood inheritance instead of elections. It’s not like we don’t know different options exist.
As fine as democracy is(definitely in comparison to the past options) turns out it needs to be dry cleaned and by the time we noticed it shrank four sizes in the washing machine. We Could buy a new one, I suppose, but now that we had our test run with it and know where it can fail, maaaybe we don’t stick with it for 3-4 extra centuries and start working on the next one. One where we get uninspiring competent goofballs in charge who keep things running well instead of inspiring ideologues and idiotic demagogues who are good at convincing people to hurt themselves.
Maybe that shouldn’t be part of being a good leader.
Maybe part of having a good leader is recognizing that they don’t need to convince you or charm you.
Maybe it’s about giving your loyalty to someone who makes the right calls in a crisis.
Seriously, how many times has Dorothy pulled someone’s ass out of an interpersonal fire? Competence oozes out of her at almost all times, it’s not her fault no one listened to her.
she Hopp
I swear if this was real and brought up during an election… They win my vote.
As a side-note, Asher is about five minutes away from being potentially on the hook for Felony Murder
Anybody else curious about what the strips will be like in June and July when the buffer catches up to everything going on right now? At the very least, I bet we get some interesting alt text.
I’m assuming it’ll be somewhere around 2070 in the real world by the time Dorothy is old enough to be president in DoA.
Oh crud……With his inability to see the truth, you don’t think he might mistake Dorothy for Amazigirl. I mean the guy doesn’t want to accept the idea of strong willed women, so his mind might just roll them all up into one person.
That would be funny, but I’m not sure if it would actually make the situation any crazier.
okay but what about all of your cell phones and also toedad’s? might not have the numbers blaine needs most but he probably knows at least one number to get the others through
Its possible that some of them never had phones to begin with (like Joyce, some may have left their phones in their rooms when the fire alarm happened.)
But even if Blaine has access to other phones, I think the idea Dorothy has is: Call 911, tell them “We’ve been kidnapped, also the kidnappers mentioned a threat to Mike in hospital”. So even if Blaine called someone, there would likely be some protection for Mike (as well as a big finger pointing against Blaine if something does happen.)
No, because Sarah keeps insisting that calling the authorities is BAD.
With justification. I just don’t think with the “Only Batman can save us” justification levels on display.
Lock screen.
Locked phones still allow 911 emergency calls . (Even if you don’t have a sim card.
You got my vote.
last DOA comic titled “Dorothy 7”
Okay, Dorothy just moved up to my top 3 favorite characters. If she can outsmart Blaine, she can outsmart Russia.
More like if she can outsmart Blaine she can outsmart a rather stupid frog, but she works with the challange at hand.
Blaine’s plans are so bad that when they fall apart people get hit by the shrapnel. Dodie will be doing well if she can guide people out of the way of the catastrophic effects of Blaine’s plan blowing up in his face.
HELL YEAH DOROTHY! WOOO!!
Dorothy to self: “OK, this is it. a challenge worthy of your strategic mind. Think, Dorothy. You need to come up with a plan to outsmart not only one but TWO evil dads. This will take your full concentration and brain capacit…”
*listens two Blaine and ToeDad for like 30 seconds.*
Dorothy: “OK, you know what, maybe I don’t have to concentrate all that much to outsmart those two… I can just as well multitask. anyone wants help with their homework? Walky?”
Walky: “HOW COMES NO MATTER HOW STUPID THE SITUATIONS I END UP IN, THEY ALWAYS END WITH ME DOING MATH?!!!”
I love this.
OK, so Dorothy has the skills, but does she has the willpower to endure the responsibility that comes with commanding-in-chief? Now she’s been elected as AG by Blaine, I hope she will deliver, but I fear she will be brought down by her two known weaknesses: her childish acceptation of super-heroics and her confidence (instilled by her parents) that she can be successful at anything she does.
Good. Mike is safe. For now…
I swear Willis…
Oh crap, Dorothy is in the prime hostage taking position.
I love how badass Dorothy looks here.
Absolutely wonderful!
Dorothy’s course of action is commendable. Its her knowledge of what to do that’s got my attention. How to climb stairs with bound feet under pressure, use of the term “swat” … what kinda kink were she and Danny into before college?
You can’t tell because Willis uses an all-caps font style, but SWAT in this case is an acronym referring to the practice of falsely reporting a situation that demands an armed and hostile response, with the various intentions and consequences of scaring the bejeezus out of the victim or, y’know, murder due to misinterpretation.
It’s bad enough that people who get often targeted also register with their local PD as a high-risk case so that the police know to double-check before responding with force.
You have to admit this will make a great Harvard admissions essay story
Or Yale.
Or a fanfic.
Dorothy and Joyce are drawing two very different kinds of inspiration from this, is what I’m saying.
Not to mention amber. Bucky will spend some time being tied up in a basement pretty soon if I’m any judge.
Julia Gray and the President finally consummate their 30,000 words of simmering sexual tension after the kidnapping Joyce is about to write about as well, I suspect. (They realize their feelings when Julia’s floored by the President’s quick thinking in a crisis and Julia gets to show off her great right cross.)
Five stars, would read again.
that last part of the what are you was a bit forced but nice page over all
I’ve never really felt that strongly one way or another toward Dorothy before today, but at this moment I am so in love with her!
I was her, I wouldn’t have revealed that teeth were the secret weapon. Next time he’ll knock those out.
Let’s hope there isn’t a next time.
Dottie, this was a good idea. Know what would be a better idea? Hop upstairs and slam the basement door on these bozos *before* monologue!
Truth. I mean, we all know that Blaine is more dangerous that smart, but this is straining my suspension of disbelief.
Eh, Toedad is in “beat up Blaine”-mode, and he is not really known for changing directions in a hurry.
also – heroes should totally be allowed a free monologe for each villian speech
Plus both are injured and probably moving slowly as a result.
Also, Becky’s already en route so he doesn’t need them any more.
Comic conventions are strong with this strip. Explanations, gloating, and so forth take zero time… unless it’s funny.
Except just as they go to grab it, Blaine’s phone starts ringing.
Because I called it.
… what the hell? HOW DID THAT END UP LINKING TO THERE?
Grrrrr here. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-10/03-when-it-crumbles/kidnap/#comment-1455499
WTB post preview feature.
Dorothy has my vote!
Dorothy is the exact opposite of the person who has no idea what to do in a situation where action is called for.
That expression, which I got from my Dad, is “fart in a windstorm”.
I forgot how amazing Dorothy was. Let’s hope nothing goes awry – ah hell, of course it will.
Joyce has not forgotten!
Is Becky still headed back there, not knowing their escape?
Oh dear. That could be it.
Apparently somebody HAS died from stubbing his toe. Somebody famous, even. Jack Daniels. So Becky’s dad might be in trouble after all. Beyond that whole “serious concussion and going back to jail for violating parole” thing.
(link is to a meme on a public facebook group)
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=236376484094254&set=gm.2669308743284498&type=3&eid=ARB8zjp5qZozxZMVhUzBejZf1mrM6MsGR0fIYTHq-yKxQSBywWSSuQyac3krWec4S7dqn45mZ2quOvX8&ifg=1
I once read a doctoral dissertation on the medical history of the county where I live; the first operation here, in the 1870’s I believe, was a farmer removing his gangrenous toe on a stump with a mallet and chisel. Don’t know why I thought of that just now.
There’s bound to be a knife in that kitchen. Joyce returns with a knife in her hand – a moment of uncertainty what she intends to do with it. Then in a swift motion she cuts the tape for each of the remaining hostages…
NEVERSurrender, DorothyHell yeah.
What she is is someone with their legs tied up who’s conveniently not getting hit by a hammer despite Blaine finishing up his current hammer buddy.
it’s because dina has the best triangular teeth
Why do I have a feeling that Blaine will think Dottie is Amazi-girl?
Power move, Dorothy.
I’m worried about Dorothy being at the back of the crowd, especially after basically telling him to knock their teeth out next time
…Blaine doesn’t even understand that other people can be more competent than he is, does he. I was going to frame it in terms of belief, but that would imply that he could actually imagine the concept and at this point I don’t think it’s ever occurred to him even as a hypothetical.
Blaine doesn’t even understand that they can be AS competent let alone more.
Fear: they run. Blaine makes the claim he rescued them from their kidnapper. Ehhh, he ain’t smart enough
Let’s hop to it!
These six panels should have a warning label dur to the sheer concentrated badassery they contain.