Hope Is Action* Funnies

A week (or so) remaining in the Texas legislative session and after a really abominable performance to date, the worst may still be to come.

Republicans in Congress are once more threatening to compel the nation to perform financial seppuku, and Joe Biden is once again folding like a rusty lawn chair to their austerity demands.

I don't care for Biden and won't be voting for him, but I don't hold animosity for the man in the way that Mike Fluggenock does.

It is with anxiety, chagrin and dread that I present this, my first cartoon of the 2024 Presidential “election” slog ...

…and despite the massive disappointment and lack of enthusiasm of huge swaths of Democratic voters, Gropin’ Joe announced his re-election campaign kickoff with a promise to “finish the job”… at which point yours truly, like millions of others, is cringing and asking themselves: what job would THAT be — immiserating the poor and the working class? Terrorizing immigrants and bullying our next-door neighbors? Fattening up the war profiteers and Wall Street? Beating down anti-war dissent in public media? Dragging us into World War III?

Lotta big jobs to finish there, Joester; guess you’re going to need four more years to thoroughly fuck shit up, huh?

IMHO there are bigger problems in the world that Biden simply has no interest or even the capacity to resolve.  He was wrong for the job four years ago and now has the abysmal track record to prove it.  Joe Biden is nothing more than the product of a dysfunctional system (OTOH, a system that's working perfectly if you're wealthy).  That's why the choices will be presented as 'democracy' or MAGA 2.0.  Fascism or plutocracy/oligarchy.  I will choose neither.

*Madam Secretary needs to work on her gaslighting.

Mothers Day Funnies

My mother transitioned at the end of February this year.  So today's celebrations are more muted than has long been for yours truly.  A wise person said that our ancestors live on so long as there are those alive who knew them and share their recollections -- good, bad, in-between -- with friends, family, and friends and family still to be known.  That wise person was, of course, Mom.

Honor your mother today if she is in your life.  If she is not, do so if your memories of her allow you. (For some this isn't possible and for that I am sorry.)

This is what 10 cm dilated looks like. Get your mother something nice this weekend. pic.twitter.com/o29zDkikVi

— No One (@silentkil_er) May 12, 2023

On to the cartoons.

Media silos have come down to this: each party’s cable TV news network ignores stories that are inconvenient to their party, while amplifying those that are damaging to the opposition.

There's a certain cadre of pundits who get a lot of mileage out of posing as open-minded defenders of ideas and debate, but in reality they are stuck in the right-wing narrative that the threat is from the left rather than overwhelmingly from the right. It should now be obvious to anyone with half a cortex that the right's screeching about "wokeness" and free speech is disingenuous, part of a larger strategy to impose their own radical ideology on America and undo all social progress of the 20th century. Creating a moral panic about public schools and universities is all part of the plan. Somehow these useful idiots (as depicted by the above cartoon character) tend to overlook the fact that today's GOP is openly looking to the illiberal dictatorship of Hungary as a model. Orban has seized control of that country's universities and cultural institutions to promote what he calls "Christian" values and "national identity."

For more on the subject, I highly recommend this excellent essay from Dave Karpf.

Journalism is not a crime - Free Julian Assange
| @rodriguezmonos #FreeAssangeNOW #JournalismIsNotACrime #WorldPressFreedomDay #WPFD #WPFD2023https://t.co/1Kq4izdWAb pic.twitter.com/NiFEkKZpUf

— Defend Assange Campaign (@DefendAssange) May 2, 2023

"What Mothers Really Want", by Emily Flake

And three more wishes here.

Democracy 86'ed Funnies

In the District of Columbia (and two states), drivers over the age of 75 have to take a new road test to show that they are still competent to drive. Meanwhile President Joe Biden, resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, claims that he will be perfectly OK to run the United States military until he is age 86, no test required.

If we had a wide variety of parties and candidates to choose from, it would be credible to say that we the people have the democracy that we deserve. But we don’t.

Ted Rall gets it. Gail Collins doesn't.

Third parties. So tempting. So disaster-inducing.

The lure is obvious. Donald Trump’s terrible and Joe Biden’s boring. Much more satisfying to go to the polls and announce you’re too far above the status quo to vote for either.https://t.co/MjVvCqSE7J

— Gail Collins (@gailcollins) May 4, 2023

Too far below, she means.

Cathy Wilcox, cartooning from Australia where the love of pommy bastards is oftentimes muted, offers this guide to the Royal Stuff, which seems to prove the persistence of memory down there, since my search for oatcake references drew articles about the Duchess of Cornwall from three years ago.

U.S. solar expansion stalled by rural land-use protests

Last: Joel Pett -- one of this blog's very favorites -- won the 2023 RFK Cartoon Award.

Tuckered Out Funnies

Earth Day Funnies

The Biden administration recently approved a major oil project for the Alaskan Arctic that would include hundreds of oil wells and release 300 million tons of carbon over the next 30 years.

Funny, that doesn’t sound like the Joe Biden who was campaigning for president a while back.

The Willow Project was pushed by ConocoPhillips and was originally approved by the Trump administration, which was later blocked in court.

Biden campaigned on protecting the Arctic but seems to be keeping an eye on his political future more than his environmental legacy. Some Democratic advisers are *sigh* once again advocating a move to the middle before the next election.

You know, become more like Republicans so they can keep Republicans out of office.

Meanwhile, carbon levels will increase and ConocoPhillips will attempt to refrigerate the melting permafrost (really!) so their equipment won’t get stuck as they extract more oil.

Does it get more absurd than mechanically chilling permafrost so you can drive your trucks on it to drill for more oil?

Watch 'Joe Biden's Opposite Doctrine', Mark Fiore's animated video, here.

Why is Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin -- chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, through which all judicial nominees must pass before getting a full Senate vote -- letting Republican senators blow off qualified federal judges proposed by President Biden?

Most recently, Mississippi GOP Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith blocked via “blue slip” Democratic judicial nominee Scott Colom, just like last year when Wisconsin’s Republican Senator Ron Johnson blue-slip-vetoed Judge William Pocan, the brother of Congressman Mark Pocan, apparently because he’s gay.

Now Republican Senators Roger Marshall and Jerry Moran brag that they’re contemplating vetoing Biden’s nomination of Jabari Wamble for Federal District Court Judge in Kansas because -- presumably -- he’s Black.

I’d like to be able to tell you why Durbin is going along with this BS from the Senator’s own perspective, but nobody answers the phone at his five offices I called (on April 10. DC - 202.224.2152, Chicago - 312.353.4952, Springfield - 217.492.4062, Carbondale - 618.351.1122, and Rock Island - 309.786.5173)

The Senator’s unavailability notwithstanding, what’s going on here is the result of an arcane bit of Senate tradition referred to as “blue slips.”

Read more at Thom Hartmann's Substack.

A common objection to single-payer health care in the US is that it would lead to health care being rationed. And I wonder: in what parallel universe do they live where the US isn’t already rationing health care?

Americans who can’t afford health care get pushed to the back of the line -- or entirely out of the line. That’s rationing.

Red MAGA media ...

... and Blue MAGA media.