Juxtaposition of the Week

And just by eliminating the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, the Trump administration has completely covered the nominal cost of his golfing vacations of only $3,000,000 and chump change per week!

Q Toon: Rogerino Severino

As the wreckage of the Astronomical Health Costs Act smoldered in the foreground, Donald Joffrey Trump surreptitiously appointed anti-LGBT activist Roger Severino as head of Health and Human Services' Office of Civil Rights last week. While Devin Nunes's Russian clown act has diverted the attention of other cartoonists, I decided that Mr. Severino deserved a little notice.

Severino most recently served as director of The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington. There he focused on "religious liberty, marriage and life issues" at the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society. 

(Why, yes, the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society is where TrumpCorp. found Education Secretary Betsy Devos. But I digress.) ...

Severino has been vocal in his opinions about the civil rights of transgender people. He authored several reports speaking out against LGBT rights, including a 2016 report that criticized a proposed Obama administration rule to prevent discrimination against transgender patients within the healthcare system.
He's also authored multiple blog posts for the Daily Signal, where he consistently spoke out against White House provisions that protected LGBT groups from discrimination.

For example, in this Daily Signal post last year defending North Carolina's Bathroom Bill, Severino complained:

These developments prove that same-sex marriage was merely the start, not end, of the left’s LGBT agenda. The radical left is using government power to coerce everyone, including children, into pledging allegiance to a radical new gender ideology over and above their right to privacy, safety, and religious freedom.

For the Trump administration, whose EPA has declared war on the environment, whose health care reform sought to deprive people of health care, and whose education policy is to defund public schools, it should surprise nobody that they would turn Civil Rights over to the Christian Taliban.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Checking up on the lyrics to "I've Got a Little List" yesterday, I found that there is a long tradition of altering the words to the song.

And no wonder. The second verse is such that I don't feel I can quote it directly:

There's the [n-word] serenader, and the others of his race,
And the piano-organist — I've got him on the list!
And the people who eat peppermint and puff it in your face,
They never would be missed — they never would be missed!
Then the idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone,
All centuries but this, and every country but his own;
And the lady from the provinces, who dresses like a guy,
And who "doesn't think she dances, but would rather like to try";
And that singular anomaly, the lady novelist —
I don't think she'd be missed — I'm sure she'd not be missed!

My parents had an LP of Martyn Green singing "Famous Gilbert and Sullivan Songs," so in the recording I grew up with, the "n-word" was replaced with "banjo," and the singular anomaly became "the girl who's never kissed." The latter works just fine as far as I'm concerned, but "the banjo serenader" is only slightly less racist, Steve Martin notwithstanding, given the rest of the line.

But you can't change "others of his race" without figuring out what other offensive thing peppermint eaters might do.

I don't remember how the second verse was sanitized the first time I ever saw the song performed live, sometime during the Jimmy Carter administration. I only remember that in the third verse:

And that nisi prius nuisance, who just now is rather rife,
The judicial humorist — I've got him on the list!
All funny fellows, comic men, and clowns of private life —
They'd none of 'em be missed — they'd none of 'em be missed.
And apologetic statesmen of a compromising kind,
Such as — What d'ye call him — Thingamabob, and likewise — Never-mind,
And Tut-tut-tut — and What's-his-name, and also You-know-who —
The task of filling up the blanks I'd rather leave to you.
But it really doesn't matter whom you put upon the list,
For they'd none of 'em be missed — they'd none of 'em be missed!

"What's-his-name" was followed by "Y'all-know-who." A few years later, I saw it performed with a Reaganesque "Welll...." in that line, which, frankly, missed the mark because Reagan's reputation was not that of an apologetic compromiser.

Something performers and directors might keep in mind if tempted to interpolate an "I can tell you" or "Believe me" in there.

I've Got a Little List

Mick Mulvaney, Office of Management and Budget

As someday it may happen that a victim must be found,
    I’ve got a little list – I’ve got a little list
Of societal expenses who might well be underground,
    And who never would be missed – who never would be missed!
There's the students who eat breakfast at their schoolhouse every day —
    And the oldsters who get meals on wheels — what bloody use are they?
All writers and musicians and artists of all kinds —
    All teachers dedicated to expanding little minds —
The veteran, the ranger and the foreign analyst —
    They'd none of 'em be missed — they'd none of 'em be missed!

You may put 'em on the list — you may put 'em on the list;
And they'll none of 'em be missed — they'll none of 'em be missed!

We're On Our Way to War

"Pipe Dream" by Wm. C. Morris in Independent, March 19, 1917

SafeForDemocracyback Saturday has been keeping a sharp eye on events of 100 years ago, so here we ago again to the very last days before the United States entered World War I.

By this point, America's editorial cartoonists were gung-ho to go. With the exposure of the Zimmerman Telegram, Kaiser Wilhelm dreams of turning the southwestern United States over to Mexico and Japan in William Morris's cartoon above. Uncle Sam hops over the "Canadian Boundary Fence" which I suppose the Canadians would actually have had to to pay for.

Meanwhile, Harry Keys depicts any opponents of the war, such as Wisconsin Progressive Senator "Fighting Bob" LaFollette, as prized properties of the Kaiser. Former Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan is strangely missing from the collection.

"Berlin's New Hall of Fame" by Harry Keys in Columbus Citizen, March 11, 1917

At the Philadelphia Inquirer,  which added "Support Our President" to its flag on top of page 1, cartoonist Fred Morgan drew daily exhortations to muster support for the war. You may recall that when he thought Wilson had lost his bid for reelection, Morgan excitedly drew four celebratory cartoons for the next day's paper. In spite of the Inquirer's new motto, Morgan's pro-war cartoons this week drew on national symbols; Mr. Wilson did not make an appearance in them.

"Under Which Flag" by Fred Morgan in Philadelphia Inquirer, March 25, 1917

And the jingoism just kept coming. Morris, by the way, was another Republican cartoonist.

"For Humanity" by Wm. C. Morris in Independent, April 2, 1917

Democratic partisan Sidney Greene went to the trouble to remind naturalized citizens of the country that he expected them to be all-American, through and through. And by naturalized citizens, I'm sure he meant German immigrants, although he doesn't go so far as to dress the guy in lederhosen.

"Warned" by Sidney Greene in New York Evening Telegram,  March 25, 1917

The Chicago Tribune had been all in for the belligerent Teddy Roosevelt and his klaxon call for preparedness in the previous year's election campaign. Yet this front page cartoon by Carey Orr hints at some misgivings about War, even as Uncle Sam cleans out his rifle.

"The Bogy Month" by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune,  March 23, 1917

For genuine anti-war sentiment, you had to pick up a copy of The Masses. I recognize Randolph Hearst personifying "Conservative Press" (even though he had been accused of pro-German sympathies) and Teddy Roosevelt, labeled — in quotation marks — "'Americanism.'" "Big Business" may be J.P. Morgan, but I'm pretty sure that "Ignorance" is not Gomez Addams.

"Patrons of War" by Boardman Robinson in The Masses, May, 1917

Turning to views from abroad, this French cartoonist welcomed the U.S. to the fray, but not without gently ribbing the new ally over President Woodrow Wilson's many notes sent to Kaiser Wilhelm to complain about all those ships sunk since the beginning of the war.

"A New Kind of Message" by French cartoonist in Ruy Blas, Paris, March, 1917

I wish I had a better scan of this Louis Raemaekers cartoon welcoming Uncle Sam to the fight; a lot of the detail and shading has been lost. I do try to repair some of the damage sustained by these cartoons in transit from paper to wire service to newsprint to microfilm to digital scanner, but I doubt I could fix this one without going all Borja Ecce Homo on it. In spite of the lousy reproduction here, Raemaekers's point still comes through.

"It May Happen" by Louis Raemaekers, in De Telegraaf,Amsterdam, March, 1917

This Canadian cartoonist was hardly the only one to imagine President Wilson shopping for the "latest spring styles."

"To-Day's Hero" by Lawrence (?) in Montreal Daily Mail, March 29, 1917

If Englishman Edward Reed caricatured an American accent in the dialogue of this cartoon, as was his wont, the American editors of The Independent opted not to retain it.

"The Eleventh Hour Recruit" by Edward T. Reed in Passing Show, London, March, 1917

Reed's war may have been a jolly good romp at first glance, but don't miss the warning on the door.

Q Toon: I Contain Multitudes

In spite of yesterday's terror attack in London, this week's hearings on Neil Gorsuch, and today's scheduled vote on the Astronomical Health Cost Act, today's cartoon is inspired by the cover story in the latest issue of Time magazine.

"Beyond He or She: Infinite Identities" touched briefly on the discomfort some elder gay rights advocates may have with the idea that not everybody feels "born that way" about their gender or sexual identity. The concern is that such an attitude reopens the door to antigay relatives dismissing LGBT identity as merely a phase, or worse, validating the Clockwork Orange "conversion therapy" practiced by religious pseudopsychotherapists.

Personally, I've never bought into the idea that gender/sexual identity can only be nature, never nurture; the mind is an extremely complicated thing and one theory rarely fits all. I've known people who knew they were gay from the age of five or earlier, whereas I wouldn't have had any grasp of the concept back then. Heck, I actually had a crush on a girl in elementary school. I don't personally know anybody who figured out their own sexuality as late in life as Mark Slackmeyer or the central character in In & Out, but I suppose it must be a thing, too.

Children and teens today have more opportunity than previous generations to find their way to their true gender/sexual identity, and good for them. I can't say I understand the distinctions between all 54 genders on Facebook, and I don't know whether "neutrois" rhymes with "bois" in English or French. But adolescence is a tumultuous roller coaster ride of hormonal twists and turns for even the most cisgender kids, so I'm happy to cut them a little slack.

It's not as if there is only one lesbigay lifestyle, either; there must be at least 54 subgenres of sexual proclivity. For that matter, not every person who has sex with persons of the same sex identifies with the words "gay" or "lesbian." In minority and immigrant communities, some see those as White Culture boxes into which they do not fit, so they come up with other words. Or none at all.

I'm glad that being gay is not a choice. There are just too many options to choose from.

This Week's Sneak Peek

 Genderfluid? You could bottle that and make millions.

Calumnated Ruins Domino

I started this week with a caricature of Donald Joffrey Trump's head of the Environmental Plunder Administration. Now that the administration has released its budget proposal cutting EPA funding by nearly a third, let's end the week with a Sierraback Saturday retrospective of the Trump gang's model for environmental policy. My cartoons below date from December, 1981 to July, 1984.

"I know Teddy Kennedy had fun at the Democratic convention when he said that I said that trees and vegetation caused 80% of the air pollution in this country. ... Well now, he was a little wrong about what I said. I didn't say 80%. I said 92%—93%, pardon me. And I didn’t say air pollution, I said oxides of nitrogen. Growing and decaying vegetation in this land are responsible for 93% of the oxides of nitrogen. ... If we are totally successful and can eliminate all the manmade oxides of nitrogen, we’ll still have 93% as much as we have in the air today." —Ronald Reagan, Oct. 9, 1980. (The 1979 quotation Kennedy was referring to: "The American Petroleum Institute filed suit against the EPA [and] charged that the agency was suppressing a scientific study for fear it might be misinterpreted... The suppressed study reveals that 80 percent of air pollution comes not from chimneys and auto exhaust pipes, but from plants and trees." —RR)

Republicans have long had a receptive ear for industrialist complaints that any attempt to protect the nation's air, water, forests, and purple mountain majesties are a job-killing, profit-choking nuisance. While Ronald Reagan's first budget cut funding for the EPA by 25%, it is useful to remember that the agency was established by a Republican president.

My cartoon above imagines that president phoning from his beachfront San Clemente estate to complain about Interior Secretary James Watt's plan to to lease a billion acres of offshore oil fields to petroleum interests.

Watt's fire sale of federal lands and waters also benefited the coal industry and suburban sprawl. Meanwhile, Anne Gorsuch, later Burford, his first head of the EPA (as discussed here a few weeks ago, now that her son is poised to claim Merrick Garland's seat on the Supreme Court), was happy to ignore pollution of the nation's air and water in the interest of protecting commercial profit margins. When scandal forced her resignation, the Reagan administration tapped the first administrator of the EPA, William Ruckelshaus, to return to the agency's helm.

Contrary to my cartoon, Ruckelshaus is generally credited with restoring public confidence the EPA, staffing the agency with competent personnel committed to its original mission. In a later interview since removed from the EPA's web page, Ruckelshaus said, "At EPA, you work for a cause that is beyond self-interest and larger than the goals people normally pursue. You're not there for the money, you're there for something beyond yourself."

James Watt's mission to make sure there was no speck of nature left unspoiled when the Lord returned was foiled by his uncanny knack for making inappropriate statements in public. He snarked that there are two kinds of people in this country, "liberals and Americans"; described Native American tribal rights as "socialism"; and banned the Beach Boys from the Washington D.C. Fourth of July celebration because they would "attract the wrong element."

He might have had a point if the Beach Boys had continued making hallucinogenic music in the mold of Smile. As it was, Watt was forced to back down and apologize. Turns out, Reagan liked the Beach Boys.

The last straw was his claim that his sale of more than a billion tons of coal from federal lands in Wyoming was above criticism because on his federal coal commission "I have a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple. And we have talent."

A friend and colleague of mine at the UW-Parkside Ranger, Rick Luehr, satirized Watt's remark with his Hallowe'en costume that year, donning a wig, blackface, and fake breasts covered by a pair of mogen Davids. The wheelchair was already a part of his daily life.

Aside from providing the template for Donald Trump's Twitter habit, Watt pushed genuinely destructive policies that now find favor in the Very Famous Trump White House. Unlike today, however, Watt faced a Congress willing to push back:

Watt's earlier forays included a declaration that he would open wilderness areas in the West to drillers and miners. Congress put a stop to it: the House voted 350 to 58 to withdraw wilderness lands from mineral development. Fifty-two senators cosponsored similar legislation. Watt also proposed a major dilution of the Endangered Species Act and asked Congress to hold off its review of the law. Congress ignored him and renewed the law without significant weakening amendments.

He was replaced by a long-time friend of the President, jack-of-all-trades William Clark.

Clark's crowning achievement in his two years at Interior was keeping himself out of the headlines. The policies instituted under Watt continued, but without the media-eye-catching bluster and bombast.

Q Toon: Corps Values

For once, a cartoon I drew on Sunday night wasn't old news by Wednesday. Although it aged tremendously by Thursday, thanks to John Miller's leak to Rachel Maddow of Donald Joffrey Trump's 1040 the one year out of the past twenty when he actually paid taxes—a leak intended to distract the media from the attacks from all sides of Paul Ryan's sorry excuse for a health care plan and the cluster fork of the White House defense of Trump's lies about President Obama ordering "wire tapping" of Trump Tower.

🇫🇮

Anyway, if you can remember all the way back to Tuesday, the Senate held hearings on the revelation that U.S. Marines were sharing nude photos of female soldiers on line in a private Facebook group, Marines United. Facebook shut the page down after the scandal broke, but as is the way of the internet, several secret pages sprang up to take its place.

The Marine Corps had known about the Facebook page for years (it had some 30,000 or so followers), but had done nothing about it. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) scolded Marine Gen. Commandant Robert Neller, recounting stories of some of the marines victimized by their peers:

“We have countless victims who have come forward — and they’re not just being harassed online,” Gillibrand said. “Once their name, face, where they are stationed is posted, do you think the harassment ends online? It doesn’t. I spoke to a civilian yesterday who has continued to be harassed in her community because her ex-boyfriend exploited her online. ...

“Who has been held accountable? If we can’t crack Facebook, how are we supposed to be able to confront Russian aggression and cyber hacking throughout our military?”
Neller replied calmly that he agreed the Marine Corps has a cultural problem and then added: “I’m responsible. I’m the commandant. I own this. You’ve heard it before, but we are going to have to change how we see ourselves and how we treat each other. That’s a lame answer, but ma’am, that’s the best I can tell you right now. We’ve got to change. And that’s on me.”

The "cultural problem" is something everyone was warned about when the decision was made to integrate men and women in the military. "Pin-up girls" were a staple of military life long before Al Gore invented the internet; they were an accepted fact even in a more sexually repressed era not just because "boys will be boys," but because a greater number of those boys than their counterparts today would not be coming home.

But those "pin-up girls" posed willingly (well, more or less) with the full knowledge that they would be ogled by strangers. The girls could consider it their contribution to the War Effort.

One of the most memorable scenes in the film MASH, carried over into the TV series, was Major Margaret "Hotlips" Houlihan's shower scene: engineered by Hawkeye Pierce and his buddies, the walls of Army careerist Houlihan's shower tent fall away to expose her to every man in the camp. The sexual harassment is played for laughs, and you are not intended to have any sympathy for her as she tearfully threatens to quit the Army, to a commanding officer who peevishly dismisses her with "Goddamit, Hot Lips, resign your goddamn commission!"

If the men of the 4077th matured greatly over the 11-year course of the TV series, it was because attitudes of society in general were progressing ahead of them. But the boys' club of the military services has lagged behind even as all but a handful of U.S. military occupations are open to women.

For the sake of unit cohesion, leadership has to come from the top and be reflected in every level of command down to the sergeant and corporal. Fortunately, the military is excellently structured to make that possible.

Microwave Photography

Wait, let me try it again. I had the f/stop set on "popcorn."

This Week's Sneak Peek

That "Gays in the Military" stuff was all fixed, wasn't it? So what am I going on about now?

All will be revealed sometime around St. Urho's Day.

Scott Pruittpen

Today's cabinet portrait: Scott Pruitt, Donald Joffrey Trump's head of the Environmental Protection Administration Pre-Apocalypse.

The February Revolution

"Sic Transit Gloria" in Novy Satirikon, Petrograd (St. Petersburg, Russia), March, 1917

This March marks the 100th anniversary of the February Revolution in Russia. (Czarist Russia still adhered to the Julian calendar, which by 1917 had fallen 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar in use in much of Europe, European colonies, and the Americas. Ponder that while you're springing ahead one measly hour tonight.)

A series of workers' strikes and protests against food shortages beginning in early February grew in size, bringing industrial and commercial activity in the capital to a near complete standstill by March 10 (a.k.a. February 25). With much of his army tied up with the war in Europe, Tsar Nicholas II had only a residual force of green or injured soldiers available to quell the demonstrations, and many troops proved unable or unwilling to do so. Troops began to mutiny, and demonstrations grew into riots.

"The Sceptre" by Oscar Cesare in New York Evening Post, March 16, 1917

Attempting to return to Petrograd, Nicholas was arrested by revolutionaries on March 14 (March 1) and abdicated the throne on behalf of himself and his son Alexei the next day. Nicholas nominated his brother, the Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich, as his successor; but Michael saw that the situation was hopeless and declined the crown.

"By Divine Right of the People" by Jones in Boston Journal, March 14, 1917

The center-left provisional government of the Russian Duma and the more radical Petrograd Soviet would spend the next eight months wrestling for power; but for now, it appeared to be a victory for democracy. Among American editorial cartoonists, there was near unanimous approval of the overthrow of the tsar.

"The New Boss of the House" by Wm. Hanny in St. Joseph (Mo,) News Press, March 15, 1917

If it could happen in Russia, C.F. Naughton wondered, where else could popular revolt throw off the shackles of their imperialist overlords?

"Even Russia Wins Liberty" by C.F. Naughton in Duluth Evening Herald, March 17, 1917

John "Ding" Darling imagines that the Russian revolution might even inspire the German people to shake off their own monarchy. After all, "Czar/Tsar" and "Kaiser" derive from the same Latin root!

"Come Off That Fence" by Jay "Ding" Darling in New York Tribune, March 16, 1917

Judging from the cartoons allowed by the German censors, the German government wasn't terribly worried.

"The Czar's Plaything" in Lustige Blätter, Berlin, March 26, 1917

On the cover of Lustige Blätter a month later, the Russian revolutionaries look positively heroic:

"Die Hungerrevolution" (The Hunger Revolution) by Ernst Heilemann in Lustige Blätter, Berlin, April 23, 1917 

Q Toon: Coming Attractions

Bill Condon, the director of Disney's live-action adaptation of "Beauty and the Beast" recently told British LGBT magazine Attitude that the film would include the first openly gay character in a Disney film. Leaving aside the possibility that Gaston's sidekick LeFou was gay in the animated version (you'd have to ask Jesse Corti or Gary Truesdale, and TMZ didn't), there is a long history of characters in children's cartoons, Disney and otherwise, who inhabit the upper end of the Kinsey scale.

You can ask Jafar, Snagglepuss, Hermey the Elf, Velma Dinkley, or any character voiced by Charles Nelson Reilly about their life in the closet.

There is a price to be paid for coming out, and Carol Laney, the owner of the Henagar Drive-In Theatre in Alabama, is leading the charge. She announced that because of her Christian beliefs, she will refuse to show "Beauty and the Beast" on her screen.

"My salvation isn't about money. It's not about men. It's what God wants me to do," she said. "We will not be playing movies that have sex. We will not be playing movies that have nudity. It's my choice."

As the owner of an open-air movie theater, that is certainly her right. She hasn't said which other biblical injunctions will not be allowed on her screen, but the Ten Commandments alone would leave her very little cinematography to choose from.

Since she only recently became owner of the Henagar Drive-In Theatre, I didn't make Laney the antagonist in this week's cartoon, who needed to have been in business since at least 1991. I would like to give her props, however, for retaining the traditional spelling of "Theatre"; I had to force myself against my will to adhere to the Associated Press Stylebook.

Donald Jan Trump

When mercurial American President Donald Jan Trump posts ludicrous lies on Twitter, he's just jealous of the attention other news stories are getting.

This Week's Sneak Peek

No, nobody really wants to see what's covering the floor at the local cinema.

Wilson on the Brink

Soundingback Saturday starts things off this week with a British view of the American president 100 years ago:

"The Intrusive 'Leadsman'" by Edward T. Reed in Sunday Evening Telegraph, London, February, 1917

A frequent feature of E.T. Reed's cartoons is his spelling out of how other people's accents diverge from the King's English. Woodrow Wilson, as I'm sure you know, hailed from Vajinnia, Joejah, South Kehlahna and Noo Joysey; if you're planning a career as a Woodrow Wilson Impersonator, you might want to do some further research before taking Reed's word for how the president sounded. I've tried to make the dialogue large enough to read on line, but in case I've failed, here it is:

President Woodrow Wilson: "Reck'n it looks mighty like as if we're gett'n' vu-rry near harbor. Guess I'll start heaving the lead a bit, anyways."
Lloyd George: "My good man, it's not the slightest use your messing about with that lead! WE know the port WE'RE making for perfectly well, and shan't need YOUR assistance."

For those of you who aren't old-timey sailors, a leadsman uses a block of lead attached to a rope to determine the depth of water, called "sounding."

If it's rather curious that Prime Minister Lloyd George still feels that he shan't need Wilson's assistance, he'll welcome it quite soon enough. The point that Reed is trying to make is that Lloyd George is committed to total victory over Germany, while Wilson would be happy with achieving a more modest truce.

In fact, thanks to the German resumption of "unrestricted submarine warfare" at sea, the Wilson administration was moving closer and closer to joining the Allies. Keeping to a nautical theme, Philly cartoonist Bill Sykes aims his criticism at the U.S. Congress, where there was still reluctance to commit to the war in Europe.

"Goner Let the Water Out, By Heck!" by Wm. Sykes in Philadelphia Evening Ledger, February 26, 1917

The label on the lightning bolt is "U-boat crisis"; on the ship is "Nationalism"; and on the auger is "Petty Partisanship."

On March 1, the Wilson administration revealed to the American public the Zimmerman telegram, in which the German Foreign Secretary urged Mexico to declare war on the U.S., if the U.S. abandoned neutrality in the European war. In return for keeping the U.S. preoccupied in its own hemisphere, Germany promised to support returning Texas, Arizona and New Mexico to Mexico.

The trademark in this cartoon is a bit difficult to read; it says "War Plot / Made in Germany."

"Do You See That Trademark?" by Wm. F. Hanny in St. Joseph (Mo.) News Dispatch, March 2, 1917

The Mexican government of President Venustiano Carranza decided that its army was no match for the Americans. Besides, The U.S. had just given up the hunt for Pancho Villa and had withdrawn its troops from Mexico in January.  Furthermore, even if everything were to go as Herr Zimmerman promised, the Mexican government was having enough problems governing Mexicans without adding a large population of well-armed Norteamericanos to the country.

"Long Distance—Europe on the Wire" by Edward S. "Ted" Brown in Chicago Daily News, February/March, 1917

War wasn't Wilson's only problem; that pesky labor-management dispute at the railroads was still unsettled. With the Adamson Act pending before the Supreme Court, leaders of the four major railroad unions decided that this was their last chance to strike for the eight-hour day before U.S. entry into the war would compel them to stay at work.

"An Annoying Interruption" by Ted Brown in Chicago Daily News, March 15, 1917

(The creator of the previous two cartoons, Ted Brown, filled the editorial cartooning seat left vacant at the Chicago Daily News by the death of Luther Bradley at the beginning of 1917.)

From the other side, here's a German view of the American president, from the cover of the Berlin satirical magazine Lustige Blätter:

"Doppelzüngig" by Carl O. Petersen for Lustige Blätter, Berlin, February 26, 1917

The full title translates "Double-tongued: the Snake from the White House." One fork of the tongue reads "I want peace!" while the other reads "I break relations with Germany!"

So anyway, that's where we stood as Woodrow Wilson settled in for the Inauguration of his second term on March 5, 1917 (the traditional date of March 4 falling on a Sunday that year).

"Beginning His Second Volume" by Wm. F. Hanny in St. Joseph News Dispatch, March 5, 1917 

Syllabust

Yeah, yeah, Donald Joffrey Trump stuck to the script, didn't whine about "fake news," got everyone to applaud the war widow, and sounded "presidential."

Now that we've got that out of the way, could we focus instead on the content of the speech?

Or would you rather discuss his tie?

Milos to Go Before I Sleep

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been rounding up undocumented immigrants who have run afoul of the law lately. In a departure from previous policy, the immigrants do not even need to have been proved guilty of any crime; the mere accusation of an offense, even as trivial as a parking ticket, can now lead to being shipped off to Mexico.

Even if that's not where they came from.

I had been resisting drawing another cartoon about this Milo Yiannopoulos creature. He's an import from Britain who made a splash on this side of the pond as Breitbart News's ubergay senior provocateur against feminism, Islam, LGBT rights and Leslie Jones. He provoked a riot at Berkeley, mocked from on stage a transgender graduate at UW-Milwaukee, and got himself banned from Twitter.

Then he got caught seeming to be okay with sexual relationships between adults and 13-year-old boys. Even Breitbart News has to maintain some minimal standards.

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I wasn't sure readers would recognize the acronym "ICE," which stands for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency of the Homeland Security Department. Many people I work with are well acquainted with ICE, but it may be unfamiliar to people who don't have to deal with it.

In the previous century, we had "INS," Immigration and Naturalization Service, part of the Department of Justice; but after 9/11, the focus was less on "service" or "justice" than "enforcement." The INS was split into three new entities during the George W. Bush administration: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), with all the new regulations required by creating three agencies out of one.

No existing regulations were removed to make way for them, either.