This Week's Sneak Peek

Instead of the usual snippet from this week's upcoming syndicated cartoon, here's one from a little over 28 years ago:

in InStep, Milwaukee Wis., Dec. 11, 1997

For those of you under drinking age in 1997, Anheuser-Busch had recently replaced a trio of animated frogs who croaked "Bud... wei... ser" in their television commercials with a pair of lizards with a more extensive vocabulary.

As for the reason for the cartoon: Thomas Martin, a former manager at Anheuser-Busch's Los Angeles brewery, filed a lawsuit claiming that he had been harassed and fired for being openly gay. In pre-trial depositions, Anheuser-Busch manager Bob Warner admitted having told Martin that "to tell co-workers that you are gay is unbecoming of a manager and will result in your termination." 

Warner and other managers testified hearing the words "fag" and "faggot" at work often, but counter-claimed that Martin was fired for having committed "sexual harassment and sexual misconduct" of two employees.

The case was to come to trial on December 1, 1997; Anheuser-Busch settled the case out of court for an undisclosed monetary amount.

♫

Here’s another recording of Schoenberg’s “Verlassen.” 

The Odds and Ends of March

We’ll return for The Fall of Indochina, Part Thieu, next week; but first, our Graphical History Tour steps back a further fifty years with a warning that March is almost over.

"This Is April First Anyhow" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, April 1, 1925

President Woodrow Wilson had broken off relations with Russia immediately after the Bolshevik October Revolution in 1917, and that policy continued under Presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover in spite of commercial ties between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. At issue, beside the communist form of government, was the Soviet renunciation of international debts incurred by the tsarist regime.

"Anti-League-ville" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Collier's, April 4, 1925

"Ding" Darling's cartoon will serve to segue from Russia to Germany, which held presidential elections one hundred years ago today.

"Um die Meisterschaft von Deutschland" by Arthur Johnson in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, March 29, 1925

The first round of presidential elections was held on Sunday, March 29 because of the death of President Friedrich Ebert a month earlier.

Johnson pictures seven candidates in this cartoon. The top row are the mainstream party candidates: Karl Jarres (German People's/DVP and German National People's/DNVP), Wilhelm Marx (Center/DZ), Willy Hugo Hellpach (German Democratic/DDP), Otto Braun (Social Democratic/SPD).

Below are the extremist parties: Erich Ludendorf (German People's Freedom/DVFP), and Ernst Thälmann (Communist/KPD). Ludendorf, a German army commander, was prominent in the attempted Nazi putsches of 1920 and 1923, and a firm believer that Germany's defeat in World War I was due to a conspiracy of domestic Jews, Freemasons, and Marxists.

"In der Reichs-Entbindungsanstalt" by Arthur Johnson in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, April 5, 1925

With seven national candidates, none emerged with a majority of the votes on March 30, setting up a second round election a month later. Under the German electoral system, any of the first round candidates — even new candidates — could compete in the second round, and whichever candidate received a plurality of the votes in the second round would be declared the winner.

The Center Party renominated Marx for the second round, and he received the support of the DDP and SPD as well. The DVP's executive committee unanimously endorsed Jarres, but he withdrew in favor of Paul von Hindenburg, despite his having twice declined to run. Convinced by Alfred von Tirpitz to change his mind, and after seeking the approval of former Kaiser Wilhelm Hohenzollern, von Hindenburg announced his candidacy on April 8. He also won the enthusiastic endorsement of the Bavarian People's Party (BVP), a breakaway faction of the Center Party.

"Wilhelm Still Has Some Friends" by Wm. A. Rogers in New York World by March 31, 1925

William Rogers probably made up those four votes for the former Kaiser Wilhelm in his cartoon. It's hard to imagine the deposed emperor putting his name forward for popular election.

The actual results were a resounding defeat for the Fascist DVFP's Ludendorf, the last-place finisher, who thereafter withdrew from politics. 

"Des Feldherrn Abgesang" by Ernst Schilling in Simplicissimus, Munich, Apr. 20, 1925

I strongly suspect that in breaking up the German word "verlassen" in the dialogue, Schilling was making a pun of some sort. If so, there is a vulgar insult "aase" which can mean "bitch" or "swine." (Update below*)

Turning back to America:

"Unbegrenzte Möglichkeiten" by Werner Hahmann, in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, Apr. 5, 1925

Don't be fooled by the printer's choice of colors in Werner Hahmann's cartoons (or a certain saint's day this past week) into mistaking the character on the right is supposed to be Irish. I believe that the hatpin signifies that she is supposed to be a feminist, a harridan in men's clothing.

The six-pointed stars on Uncle Sam's suitcoat are no accident, by the way.

An explanatory note above Hahmann's cartoon states that moves to prohibit the import, production, and sale of tobacco were gaining popularity in the U.S. It is true that there were anti-tobacco activists agitating on the apparent success of the temperance movement, but they were a long way from convincing elected representatives in government to join their cause. 

Tobacco interests weren't giving up without a fight; why do you think that everybody in motion pictures of the era happened to be smokers?

"That New York Mastodon Find" by Orville P. Williams for New York Evening Graphic, by March 31, 1925

Construction crews unearthed a two-foot long jaw bone of a mastodon and other bone fragments during excavation for an apartment building at #2 Seaman Street in Manhattan on March 25.

The beast was believed to have been a baby of the species, but was still considerably larger than a donkey. The first bones in this find were from the mastodon's three-foot-long jaws, including seven of its six-inch-long teeth. At least three of the teeth were seized by passers-by, although one of them was eventually returned to the American Museum of Natural History.

Williams used the find to point out the Democratic Party's misfortunes since Woodrow Wilson's presidency. The Democrats' years in the wilderness would continue as long as Republicans could point to a strong economy and a soaring stock market.

Which brings us full circle.

"The April Fool Pocketbook" by Tom Foley in Minneapolis Daily Star, April 1, 1925

_____________

* My friend Winfried Schmidpott tells me that the dialogue in Schilling’s cartoon references a Bavarian-Austrian song. You can hear Arnold Schoenberg's arrangement of it here. 

Toon: Portrait of the Dorian Trump

In 2019, The Colorado Republican Party commissioned a portrait of Donald Trump to hang in the state capitol along with those of previous presidents of the United States. Sometime this week, while the rest of his maladministration was scrambling to explain why top-level officials had invited the editor of The Atlantic to join their conversation on an unsecure web app about bombing Yemen, Trump became aware of the $10,000 painting.

And he didn't like it.

So he took to Trump Social to complain.

As my colleague J.P. Trostle observed, the portrait does make Trump look like one of those official portraits of Soviet apparatchiks in the mid-20th Century. And appropriately so.

Anyway, Colorado Republicans know better than to incur the wrath of Mercurial Authoritarian Donald Joffrey Trump, so they are taking the portrait down to see if someone can produce a more accurate one.

How about Jane Rosenberg?

Q Toon: A Message from Don Trumpleone

Just when I hoped I could take a break from drawing cartoons criticizing the Trump regime, they pull me back in...

In the spirit of March Madness, the Trump Maladministration has been doing a full-court press against academia, arresting and deporting students and faculty.

Of particular interest to LGBTQ+ collegians (and perhaps my readers at Philadelphia Gay News), the Trumpsters also successfully pressured the University of Pennsylvania to reverse its policy allowing a transgender athlete to compete as her true self.

WASHINGTON -- The Trump administration has suspended approximately $175 million in federal funding for the University of Pennsylvania over the participation of a transgender athlete in its swimming program, the White House said Wednesday. [17.5% of UPenn's total federal funding]

The Ivy League school has been facing an Education Department investigation focusing on in its swimming program. That inquiry was announced last month immediately after President Donald Trump signed an executive order intended to ban transgender athletes from competing in girls' and women's sports.

But the federal money was suspended in a separate review of discretionary federal money going to universities, the White House said. The money that was paused came from the Defense Department and the Department of Health and Human Services.

The Education Department, or what little is left of it, has also opened reviews of San Jose State University volleyball and the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association.

UPenn is the alma mater of swimmer Lia Thomas, who won a Division I title for the school in 2022. Having begun the process of gender reassignment after the onset of puberty, she has since been barred from further athletic competition by World Aquatics, and has been ineligible to compete in  trials for next year's Olympic games. Trump maladministration diktat will, of course, force all transgender youth to wait until adulthood to align their outer gender with their inner one.

Another Trumpster offer UPenn couldn't refuse resulted in the firing of Lecturer Dwayne Booth, who draws under the nom de toon Mr. Fish. Booth has incurred right-wing ire for publishing cartoons critical of the Netanyahu government's wholesale slaughter of Palestinians — especially the one in this blog post. (Nota bene: If one is going to draw Israeli government officials drinking wine, it had better be Chablis or Pinot Grigio.)

The above is only a hint of the authoritarian police state that the U.S. has now become under Trump. His ICE is now disappearing legal residents of this country who have deigned to speak up on behalf of the Palestinian people: Khalil Mahmoud at Columbia, Badar Khan Suri at Georgetown, and Rumeysa Ozturk at Tufts for just three examples (Mahmoud for organizing campus protests; Suri because of his father-in-law's former association with Hamas; Ozturk merely for co-authoring an op-ed). 

The Trumpsters promise more such extra-judicial arrests, and want universities to ban the wearing of masks in order for police surveillance to identify anyone else attempting to exercise their right of free speech. Only the arresting agents from Homeland Security are entitled to keep their faces hidden.

For now, they have been disappearing foreign-born protesters and op-editorialists who mistook the United States for a free country. But at some point, the shadowy, masked government goons jumping out of black vans will be abducting native-born citizens for daring to voice thoughtcrime, too.

This Week's Sneak Pique

We have nominally non-partisan elections coming up here in the Dairy State next week, and the airwaves have been flooded with attack ads for the two candidates for Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Both candidates accuse each other of letting sex offenders off with light sentences. 

It has been the successful tactic of Republican judicial candidates here for decades. Outside groups have also weighed in; they used to tell viewers to “tell” Candidate X to stop being so lenient to criminals— ignoring the fact that the surest way to get Candidate X to stop being so lenient to criminals is to elect him or her to the Supreme Court, where they will never pass sentence on a criminal again.

The tactic has been mitigated only very recently as younger voters, mostly female, have noticed that Republican judges have no respect for their reproductive rights. We have also noticed that when it comes to the actions of our lopsidedly Republican legislature, the Republican justices are nothing remotely resembling "non-partisan."

We are waiting to see how the mutual accusations of criminal-coddling play out this time. Judge Susan Crawford also claims that Judge Brad Schimmel will return Wisconsin's 1849 anti-abortion law to effect, and that he bears (some of) the responsibility for the backlog of untested rape evidence kits that built up while he was Attorney General.

In past election cycles, the Koch Brothers have been the major out-of-state funders of third-party advertising supporting Republican judicial candidates, setting new campaign spending records every year. This year, Elon Musk has stepped into that role, also repeating his 2024 tactic of bribing voters. He's only offering $100 this time, not the $1million he dangled in front of swing state voters for Trump, but it's not as if Schimmel is a 34-time convicted felon who fomented a riot at the U.S. Capitol, pushed snake oil during a worldwide epidemic, and swiped hundreds of classified documents last time he left the White House. 

Oh, and it's not technically offering bribes for votes. No, Musk is merely paying voters to sign his phony petition against activist judges. Just give him your name and address. He's already got your Social Security number.

By the way it just so happens that Musk's Tesla company is suing the state of Wisconsin over a law preventing him from opening Tesla dealerships here.

Ask Not for Whom the Lon Nols...

This week's stop on the Graphical History Tour is the year 1975, marking a half century since the Fall of Southeast Asia to the Communists.

North Vietnam had used the period after the 1973 Paris Agreement, ending U.S. military involvement, to improve and fortify the Ho Chi Minh trail to the South. Skirmishes between the Armies of South Vietnam (ARVN) and North Vietnam (PAVN) prompted South Vietnamese President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu to declare the peace treaty null and void in 1974, just as the Watergate scandal was removing U.S. President Richard Nixon from the picture.

"It Makes a Nice Shield" by Dick Wright in San Diego Union, ca. Jan. 16, 1975

The beginning of the end came as the year got underway. Attacking through Cambodia, PAVN quickly took Phước Binh. Reflecting American sentiment against putting more U.S. lives on the line, Congress refused President Gerald Ford's request for military aid. Demoralized ARVN forces retreated against PAVN advances.

"Rathole" by William "Zee" Zellar in Imperial Beach/Chula Vista Star News, Calif., Jan. 30, 1975

I've had been unable to discover who the cartoonist drawing as "Zee" was [update: see comments below, and thank you to D.D. Degg], but this cartoon perfectly illustrates the American mindset the Ford administration was up against. All that is missing are the lives, American and Vietnamese, lost down the "rathole."

(I did find a fellow Ole — class of '05 — selling a collection of Zee originals on eBay, but they didn't know Zee's identity, either. What I do know is that Zee drew steadily for the Star News papers of San Diego's suburbs from the 1960's until January, 1978, often on local topics.)

"Looks Like a Double-Header" by Bill Mauldin in Chicago Sun-Times, ca. Mar. 12, 1975

Cambodia had been in civil war ever since the U.S.-backed military coup led by Prime Minister Lon Nol overthrew the monarchy of Prince Norodom Sihanouk in 1970. The communist Khmer Rouge continued fighting without interruption in spite of the 1973 Paris Peace Accord amongst North and South Vietnam and the United States, and in spite of a cut-off of arms from North Vietnam.

The alliance between the Khmer Rouge and North Vietnam was an uneasy one of mutual distrust. Still, it was no coincidence that the Khmer Rouge launched an offensive in January, 1975 as PAVN advanced into South Vietnam.

"You've Got to Carry It, Sam" by Bill Sanders in Milwaukee Journal, March 19, 1975

Popular support in the U.S. for the Lon Nol regime was practically non-existent. He had assumed the presidency of the Khmer Republic in 1972 after a blatantly rigged election, and his military (Forces Armées Nationales Khmères, or FANK) was rife with graft and corruption.

"How About Changing Leaders in Midstream" by Tom Curtis in Milwaukee Sentinel, March 12, 1975

Mike Mansfield (D-MT) in Tom Curtis's cartoon was the Majority Leader of the Senate, later U.S. Ambassador to Japan under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

"Towering Inferno" by Mike Lane for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. March 26, 1975

In desperation, Lon Nol sought out the advice of mystics and soothsayers, even sprinkling a circular line of consecrated sand intended to magically defend the capital city, Phnom Penh.

It didn't help.

"See the Light at the End of the Cambodian Tunnel" by Paul Conrad for Los Angeles Times, March, 1975

You didn't need a telescope to see the end of the Khmer Republic. FANK was low on ammunition and morale. By the end of March, the Khmer Rouge controlled all of the country but Phnom Penh and the Preah Vihear Temple on the Thai border, and were known to have an extensive list of Cambodian officials they intended to execute, starting with the man at the top. 

The scale of the genocide that was to follow would be beyond anything imagined by the outside world.

by Wayne Stayskal in Chicago Tribune, April 20, 1975

Nol resigned and fled the country to California by way of Indonesia on April 1, 1975, and died there of cancer ten years later.

Q Toon: Desperately Seeking Leo

Max probably doesn't get a lot of sympathy wearing that cap into a government office.

Plotting out the dialogue for this week's cartoon, I immediately realized that Max and Leo do not have last names; the government worker here should have addressed Max as Mr. Whatever-his-last-name-is rather than by his first name. Unless they already knew each other, I suppose.

In any event, Max is getting a taste of the chaos he voted for, courtesy of the Deepstate Oligarchy's Generalissimo Elon. Musk is bringing the same reckless management style to government that he brought to Twitter: fire everybody and find out.

The resulting chaos is not a bug but a feature. Musk shares with his fellow South African expatriate  billionaire Peter Thiel a contempt for minorities, the working class. Their stated target may be bureaucracy, but it is in fact democracy itself.

That is no exaggeration or hyperbole. In Thiel's own words, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”

The New York Times reported on the Paypal mogul last October:

As the internet blossomed, Thiel began to encourage a new set of even more provocative thinkers. At their center was an ex-programmer named Curtis Yarvin, who blogged under the nom de plume Mencius Moldbug, sketching out the framework for a nascent reactionary movement — later called the new right — aimed at deposing the cabal of liberal elites running the country. Yarvin saw democracy as a “destructive” form of government, instead proposing a techno-monarchy run by a national chief executive. Americans, he said, had to “get over their dictator phobia.” ...

Substacker "Just Plain Kris" ties Musk into Thiel's Make Apartheid Great Again movement:  

Elon Musk, while not a formal part of the neo-reactionary movement, has been linked to its ideas through his actions and statements. Musk’s political philosophy reflects a skepticism of democratic institutions and a preference for corporate-style governance (The Atlantic, 2023). His attempts to influence government operations and his support for far-right political movements align with the neo-reactionary belief that democracy leads to social decline (Financial Times, 2024). 

In Donald Joffrey Trump, the Afrikaners found their ideal front man: a blustering, racist of extremely limited intellect, all ego but no self-awareness, easily malleable with flattery and money (remember how he used to be stubbornly opposed to electric cars, cryptocurrency, and TikTok?). As an added bonus, he is anti-democratic, polarizing, mercurial — and expendable. Back to NYT:

As Thiel became wealthier and more powerful, he continued to help like-minded men accumulate their own wealth and power. They included a lot of Stanford Review alumni, like Josh Hawley, now the 44-year-old senator from Missouri, but also others who came to him via different routes — most prominently JD Vance, who has cited Yarvin as an influence himself. ...When Vance ran for Senate in 2022, Thiel was by far the biggest donor to his super PAC, giving $15 million.

If the day ever comes when Trump overplays his hand, his luck runs out, he outlives his usefulness, or gets to be the star at a state funeral, the Afrikaners' hand-picked protégé is right there presiding over the U.S. Senate. Even without impeachment and conviction, or the 25th Amendment, JD Vance will be the heir apparent in 2028 to continue the dismantling of democracy.

To which end Musk will have all the data he needs on every voter, polling place, and computer system in the country to pre-determine the outcome of any election he wants.

And no pesky bureaucracy in his way.

see also https://www.truthdig.com/articles/elon-musk-and-peter-thiels-war-on-democracy/

This Week's Sneak Peek

The saga continues:

The editorial cartoon is not a traditional outlet for long form story telling, but it's not unheard of. Bill Sanders, for example, devoted a week of cartoons to a continuing story about a couple of student protesters. Harold Talburt made a series of "Klampaigning" cartoons during the 1924 election, adding a new participant to a fanciful campaign parade each day.

The Pulitzer board would add "Doonesbury" and "Bloom County" as examples of serial editorial cartoons — and Sunday's episode of the former would lend credence to that categorization. By the same token, one could add "Pogo" to that list. (But not "Mallard Fillmore." If Bruce Tinsley ever incorporated a continuous story line in his strip, I missed it.)

Recurring series are more common. Tom Toles featured the Continuing Adventures of Ronnie Raygun from time to time. David Low created the character of Colonel Blimp to satirize British conservatism (especially the views of Lord Beaverbrook, owner of  London Evening Standard, Low's employer). My Graphical History Tours have visited Frederick Opper's running series such as Freeneasy Film Company and Sammy and His Pals.

But again, those series didn't tell a continuous story — not even Opper's, running on consecutive days for weeks and months at a time.

Since I'm committed to the Leo In Federal Detention story now, yes, the saga continues.

Sorry, Leo.

What's Shakin', Johnny Canuck?

Today's Graphical History Tour pays another visit to our neighbor to the north. Understanding Johnny Canuck will become increasingly important if we Yanks intend to welcome Canada as our 51st state.

Or declare war on them. Whatever.

"Enter March, 1925" by A.G. Racey in Montreal Daily Star, March 1, 1925

March, 1925 came in with an earthquake centered in the Charlevoix/Kamouraska seismic zone of southern Quebec at 9:21 the night of Saturday, February 28. Measuring 6.3 magnitude, it caused significant damage to buildings, widespread panic, but no fatalities. It was one of the strongest earthquakes ever to hit eastern Canada, and was felt as far away as La Crosse, Wisconsin and Florence, South Carolina.

"Coolidge's Common Sense Policy" by A.G. Racey in Montreal Daily Star, March 3, 1925

When we last took a gander at Arthur G. Racey's cartoons, he was casting aspersions aplenty across the line; but he greeted the inauguration of Calvin Coolidge with this cartoon recommending the American President's policies to Liberal Party Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King.

Racey, a Conservative Party stalwart, had little affection for King, seen here peering over the wall at Coolidge and his woodpile of waste and expensive deadwood. 

Imagine if Coolidge could have been equipped with a chainsaw instead of an axe! He'd have had time to make that wall taller, then tear it down, then build it up again, and down, and up...

"Has His Eye on It" by A.G. Racey in Montreal Daily Star,  March 30, 1925

By the end of the month, Coolidge was the one peering over Racey's fence, envious of a Scotsman's reputation for parsimony. If there was an actual World Thrift Championship in March, 1925, I have not been able to find contemporary news reports of it.

"What Is He Saying" by A.G. Racey in Montreal Daily Star, March 4, 1925

Racey could easily have chosen to take offense at a February 24 speech at a Women's Conference on National defense and Peace Insurance in Washington D.C. by U.S. Navy Rear Admiral William Phelps, but chose to use the occasion to highlight the alliance between the U.S. and the British Empire. Racey's cartoon paraphrases Phelps: "An Anglo-American War is in sight. It can only be prevented by a strong U.S. Navy."

Phelps's address, given with Coolidge’s Secretaries of War and State in attendance, came amid debate in Washington whether to boost defense construction of battleships or aircraft. His views reflected the isolationist views ascendant in U.S. politics, as well as the Anglophobic drumbeat of William Randolph Hearst's media empire:

"One of the primary objectives of the League of Nations, under the leadership of England, is to devise some policy to destroy the American favorable balance of trade. ... There are serious differences brewing between England and the United States over shipping policies. These differences can be prevented from developing into a conflict only by a strong American Navy. That America determines to build up a great merchant marine fleet has created against us the bitter animosity of the English shipping interests."

"The Wasp's Nest" by Sam Hunter in Toronto Star Daily, March 3, 1925

Phelps's superiors quickly distanced themselves from the Rear Admiral's remarks, and Toronto cartoonist Sam Hunter joined A.G. Racey in downplaying their significance. 

The Daily Gleaner of Frederickton, New Brunswick, editorialized on March 3: "We have no doubt [Phelps] succeeded in keeping his audience awake. For the rest, we surmise that the 'brew' came from a brainstorm or something stronger than salt water."

"Whatcha Mean If" by James B. Fitzmaurice in Vancouver Daily Province, March 5, 1925

Suffice it to say that Coolidge's inaugural address contained no such incendiary predictions of a return to the War of 1812. This cartoon by James B. Fitzmaurice leaves me wondering whether he found Coolidge's vision of world peace inspiring or merely quaint. Is this how culturally nice Canadians mock someone?

"Some Demander" by Sam Hunter in Toronto Star Weekly, March 7, 1925 

For a more forthright critique of American foreign relations, Sam Hunter mocks congressional demands that America's Entente allies step up their repayment of wartime U.S. loans. He also took a dim view of the U.S. prescribing its own European peace and reparations plan after refusing to participate in the League of Nations (the brainchild of an earlier U.S. President).

Opium was the fentanyl of the day. I do not, however, believe that the Coolidge administration or Republican Senate were blaming Canada specifically for the supply of opium to the United States, the way that the present maladministration and Congress pretend is the issue from up north. 

Back to Mr. Racey...

"And Easy to Make It So" by A.G. Racey in Montreal Star, March 19, 1925

Here's another Yankee innovation Racey thought Canadians should emulate: Daylight Saving Time. From the standpoint of keeping Québec and New York in the same time zone, it must have made a great deal of sense to him. He might also have been intrigued by the prospect of daylight hours extending even further into the evening than we're used to south of the border.

Those of us still straining to get used to waking up an hour earlier every morning since springing ahead last Sunday might beg to differ that Daylight Saving Time makes everybody happy, however.

Now, lest you think Racey was going entirely soft on the Yanks:

"Such a Fine Business Proposition" by A.G. Racey in Montreal Daily Star, March 6, 1925

Racey remained suspicious of U.S. designs on Canada's electricity and lumber, as you surely remember from this stop on the Graphical History Tour.

"Super Power" in this cartoon refers to U.S. Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover's proposal to eliminate barriers to interstate transmission of electricity, supplemented as well by power lines bringing in hydroelectricity generated in Quebec and Ontario. 

Racey may also have had in mind efforts by a Chicago speculator who had bought controlling interest in numerous electric companies across the U.S. and was interested in acquiring Canadian power companies as well. To counter the Chicagoan, two Montreal stockbrokers founded The Power Company of Canada in April, 1925 to consolidate Canada's many regional power companies.

In case you're ever asked, the United States is the leading consumer of lumber in North America, and Canada is the leading supplier: Canada supplied roughly 30% of the lumber used in the United States last year. The four largest North American softwood lumber producers operate in both countries.

Little did A.G. Racey suspect that 100 years later, that electrical power and lumber would become a weapon in Canada's battle to fend off United States hegemony.

Q Toon: Mar-a-Lago Face

One of the many targets during Prince of Lies Donald Trump's two-hour screed to a joint session of Congress last week was, of course, the transgender community. Much of the commentary since then has mocked his lie that federal funds were being wasted on creating "transgender mice," which was funny, ha, ha. (No wonder he despises our transatlantic alliances!).

Trump was not misreading his teleprompter, however, when he counseled youth suffering from gender dysphoria, “Our message to every child in America is that you are perfect exactly the way God made you,” to which end he called upon Congress to make dissatisfaction with one's own body illegal.

He was apparently oblivious to the people around him who have taken it upon themselves to tamper with their divinely bodily perfection.

The phenomenon, deemed “Mar-a-Lago” face, has seemingly swept the political world overnight, with its trademark fillers and razor-sharp cheekbones already making their way to the corridors of Capitol Hill ahead of Trump’s inauguration in January.

And with Trump recruiting nearly half of his Cabinet from Fox News’ camera-ready roster of contributors and anchors, who are quite comfortable in the makeup chair, the American people are bound to see more “Mar-A-Lago” face broadcasting live from the West Wing.

But what looks good on camera doesn’t always translate well in photos and regular video, and social media users are definitely starting to notice by making memes out of the Mar-A-Lago makeover.

Though the Daily Beast has been unable to confirm whether any members of Trump’s circle have turned to enhancements, Lara Trump, Matt Gaetz and Laura Loomer are among those who have been called out for their beauty journeys.

“Laura Loomer’s evolution from an average-looking human to Jigsaw has to be one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen,” wrote one social media commentator about Loomer’s seemingly changed look.

Laura Loomer didn't make it into my cartoon; instead, I've included Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Don Jr. girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle. I'll confess that my caricature of Guilfoyle is heavily influenced by Ann Telnaes's; you will find none better. You may remember Guilfoyle as the homunculus screeching to the Republican National Convention that THE BEAST IS YET TO COME! 

(I'm pretty sure that's what she said. I couldn't hear her over the chattering cacophony of hellspawn demons fluttering around the auditorium, but you could read her lips from ten blocks away.)

Matt Gaetz didn't make it into this cartoon either; but fortunately, there's Elon Musk to keep this from being a sexist slam against the Real Housewives of Mar-a-Lago.

Photos of Elon Musk before and after plastic surgery pop up on social media all the time these days. The formerly balding broligarch, who has publicly disowned his transgender daughter, has reconfigured himself, experts tell us, with multiple cosmetic surgery procedures. In addition to hair plugs, his transformation has included nose jobs, eyelid surgery, brow lifts, and chin augmentation.

Lip injections can't be far behind.

Musk and Trump, and Reichpublicans from Congress to Village Clerk share an inordinate fear and loathing of transgender persons. There is a possibility, however remote, that Trump is merely taking advantage of right-wingers' transphobia to feed his own lust for power; but I take him literally and seriously on this issue.

If I were a betting man, I'd lay odds that his obsession stems from his having once upon a time grabbed some pussy, as he famously put it, only to have a handful of something extra.

And it wasn't thanks to lip injections.

This Week's Sneak Peek

I don't usually have a sneak peek to offer on Sunday mornings, but here's some of this week's pencil sketch before it gets drawn over and erased.

Usually, I'm still staring at a blank sheet of bristol board on Sunday, but this week's idea came to me earlier than most, and I didn't file it away expecting its topic to be Olde Newse by publication time.

So that better not befall the cartoon this time around. It's already drawn, inked, colorized, and sent to Q Syndicate headquarters.

But dammit, I see one or two things I'd like to go back and change...

Cartoon Like a Lion, Out Like a Light

Having learned last week more than you'll ever need to know about the guy who didn't become Calvin Coolidge's Attorney General, today's Graphical History Tour rummages through my basement in search of new and interesting takes on my own old cartoons.

If we're lucky, we may even find some.

March, 2015

Before there was Project 2025, there was the ALEC Agenda. The corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council was founded in 1973 to create cookie-cutter right-wing legislation for state governments from one end of the country to the other.

The Wisconsin politicians in my cartoon are Assembly Leader Robin Vos, then Senate Leader Scott Fitzgerald, and then Governor Scott Walker. Walker is out of office now; Fitzgerald has gone on to Congress, and you may have seen him as one of the congresscretins confronted by angry constituents at his town hall meeting last week.

The character having the ALEC Agenda rammed down his throat — a term usually used by Republicans to vilify marriage equality, abortion rights, health care reform, and anything else they despise — is the laborer from the Wisconsin state flag.

in Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee, March 25, 2015

I didn't get to draw hard-hitting cartoons of Republicans ramming their agenda down Wisconsin throats during my stint illustrating the editorials of the Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee. Once in a while, however, I got to have a little fun with a topic, such as this one.

Investor Mark Attanasio purchased the Milwaukee Brewers Major League Baseball team from Bud Selig in 2004. The team, which hadn't made the MLB post-season since 1982, had a brand new ballpark, and Attanasio wanted to find out what else it was going to take to attract fans to the game.

The fourth panel is an homage to Richard Guindon, whose self-titled cartoon was a beloved feature in the Minneapolis Tribune when I was in college in Minnesota. Not that any regular readers of the Business Journal had any reason to know that; to my knowledge, Guindon's cartoons never appeared in any Wisconsin newspaper.

While lutefisk night at the ballpark might plausibly be a real thing at Target Field (yet certainly isn't), a more appropriate homage to Richard Guindon would have been for the lady in panel four to have cited her enthusiasm for Bring Your Carp to the Ballpark Night.

in UW-M Post, Milwaukee Wis., March 6, 1995

Jumping back another decade, here's another cartoon that would never have run in the Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee. 

This was the first installment of a two-parter, satirizing some image-polishing television advertisements by a certain multinational corporation. Unlike the weeks that have passed between my current episodes of the Max & Leo Show, the student newspaper at UW-Milwaukee published twice a week; so readers could follow the sequel to the Exxtron commercial three days after the first episode.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Kenosha Wis., March 7, 1985

Finally, let us take a moment to honor the memory of Soviet General Secretary of the U.S.S.R. Communist Party, Konstantin Chernenko. 

Chernenko died on March 10, 1985, just shy of thirteen months in office, of cirrhosis of the liver, chronic emphesema, and congestive heart failure at age 73. He had come to office upon the death of Yuri Andropov, who had succeeded another elderly Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, only sixteen months earlier.

State-run media in the U.S.S.R. had consistently downplayed reports of the three leaders' declining health. On February 25, 1985, aides hauled the obviously ill Chernenko out of his hospital bed so that he could vote for himself (as candidate for Supreme Soviet of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic) on live television. His last television appearance was three days later to read a brief victory statement celebrating his election.

In completely unrelated news, Donald Полезный Идиот Trump is older today than any of those three Soviet leaders were when they checked into their respective mausolea. 

Toon: Beyond Waving Their Little Paddles

I've seen a lot of editorial cartoons, opinion columns, and social media posts complaining that the Democratic Party isn't doing enough to resist the onslaught of ruinous actions from the unelected bureaucrats at DOGE, facilitated by the Brazenly Corrupt Trump Maladministration™, the Freakdom Caucus in Congress, and the Republican supermajority on the Supreme Court, and the Quislings in legacy media.

Well, there's a reason for that.

Given the way the U.S. governing system here are significant tactical advantages Republicans have over Democrats. When Republicans were in the minority in Congress, they had the power to gum up Democratic legislation by threatening to shut down the government. 

Now we have demonstrative proof that shutting down the U.S. government was never just a tactic; it has been the #1 goal of the Republican Party since the days of Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay.

Democrats, on the other hand, are the party of a functioning government able to get things done. What are they going to do when it comes time to raise the debt ceiling, if preventing it forces the government to default on its loans and shut down? Send Chuck Schumer out to chant cringe-worthy slogans again? Flood my e-mail with twice as many dozens of daily pleas for donations?

Even if Democrats can win in 2026 and 2028, despite the baked-in advantages red states have over blue ones, new Republican roadblocks to suffrage, and the mischief Elon Musk and his merry Muskrat minions are making in federal databases, repairing the damage Trump and the Republicans will have wrought will be a formidable task. 

They will need to flood the zone with an agenda every bit as audacious as Trump's gish gallop has been.

Firing Trump as head of the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts will be easy, even if Democrats replace him with Laverne Cox or Elliot Page.

But it will be a heavy lift to restore the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, USAID, Occupational Safety & Health Agency, Department of Education, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Labor, the Civil Rights Divisions of every surviving cabinet department, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, National Parks, Obamacare, Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. Heck, we'll probably need Congress to authorize re-application for membership in NATO.

In the meantime, if Mitch McConnell really wants to be useful in his waning months in the U.S. Senate, maybe he could give Chuck Schumer some tips on how to be an effective leader of The Opposition.

Q Toon: A Letter from Camp

A Letter From Concentration Camp, that is.

Obsessive readers of my toons will recall that Leo here got himself caught up in a dragnet of brown-skinned immigrants at the food pantry where he was volunteering. Having sent him off on this misadventure, I feel obligated to follow Leo’s story line and see where it goes.

I had originally intended for Leo and Max to stand in for our deeply divided country, engaging in a back-and-forth, getting each others' goats, and yet somehow remaining a couple. If I ever get Leo out of Trumplinka, I’m sure I’ll get back to that. 

Americans' divisions cut straight through family lines, as I was reminded during a big pre-Lenten party my husband's family has every year. I'm talking about a huge get-together of a hundred or so descendants of his great-grandparents, who came to the U.S. from Italy in the early years of the 20th Century. 

Most of the family recognizes that their forebears weren't exactly welcomed to this country with open arms. Yet until 1923, all they needed to do to be legal immigrants was secure passage on a boat, and once they came ashore, answer some questions from Port Authorities who spoke no Italian.

Those immigrants and their children opened up butcher shops and grocery stores, and/or went to work in the automobile factory. They built churches, founded social clubs, and went to war. More than a century later, some of the family are solid union Democrats and others are dyed-in-the-wool MAGA Republicans. Even among my husband's immediate siblings, nieces, and nephews, political conversations can get heated.

So, as an in-law, I didn't want to get into an argument when one of the cousins at Sunday's get-together started telling me how she only voted for Trump this time around because she operates a small business and Trump was supposedly good for small business. I wish nothing but the best for her small business, but I can't pretend that the Tigers Eating Faces Party is anything but a disaster for LGBTQ+ families like mine.

Or for Ukraine. Or for Palestinians. Or for our National Parks. Or for airline safety, Social Security, cities, farmers, home and auto buyers, health, the environment, our international alliances, or the price of eggs.

Or for the stock market. Or for the economy.

Or for small businesses.

We're starting to hear from Trump voters who are already getting hurt by Trump maladministration policies and are beginning to second-guess their votes. Unfortunately, the U.S. electoral system doesn't allow for do-overs.

One just has to hope that in 2026 and 2028, there will be enough of these voters who will have realized that there are issues more important to them than persecuting transgender people and Latinos.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Sunday morning, at 3:15, we were awakened by my phone.

It wasn't a phone call.

Or an amber, silver, or severe weather alert.

It was some "Health" app that had decided that 3:15 a.m. was when I ought to get out of bed and start my day.

I have no recollection of installing the "Health" app on my phone. Did it show up when I enrolled in a Medicare Part D plan? Or, since it's on the first screen of the app listings, has it been there since I first bought the phone? Either way, I most certainly never told it to wake me up in the middle of the night — or to go to bed at 9:43 p.m., which I noticed it doing while I was watching TV Saturday night.

The 3:15 alarm used the same ring tone that I had selected back last October on the last night of the AAEC convention in Montréal, the one and only time that I have ever asked my phone to wake me up. It's a sound that resembles a piano, starting very softly and gradually increasing in volume.

I used to have an alarm clock that would wake me up by playing a selected track from a CD. One of my favorite tracks to wake up to was the second movement of Ravel's Piano Concerto in G, which starts out with a soft, slow, minimalist piano passage, eventually joined by woodwinds and the rest of the orchestra. That alarm feature stopped working reliably several months ago, and the alarm clock I bought to replace it with doesn't let me select the wake-up track. It starts playing at the point that I last turned it off.

Anyway, back in Montréal: I'm quite sure that I used the clock app on the phone, not some Health app I was totally unfamiliar with,  to set the alarm so I wouldn't miss my red-eye flight home. It worked, and good thing, too: I never got the wake-up call I had requested from the hotel front desk, and the room alarm clock, sounding a few minutes after my phone, was an unpleasant BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP that would have left me in a foul mood for the whole day.

It's still a mystery why this Health app would suddenly have resurrected that alarm setting five months after the one and only time I had ever used it. Opening the app, I found that it was keeping track of how many flights of stairs I had climbed every day for the past week. It might have logged my time on the exercise bicycle if I owned a smart watch or perhaps strapped the phone to my leg. 

What else might it have been up to? Was it counting my drinks when we were in New Orleans last month? All that southern fried food? Has it been analyzing my trips to the toilet?

Do I really want my phone nagging me to go to bed at 9:43?

I think I've succeeded in turning that wake-up alarm off, or at least changing the time to 8:00. It didn't poke me to go to bed last night while I was still drawing this week's cartoon, and it wasn't alarming after I got up today.

But maybe five months from now...

Inaugural Addresses, and Justice Denied

Our Graphical History Tour arrives in March of 1925 today, just in time for the inauguration of John Calvin Coolidge for his very own full term as President of the United States.

"The Inaugural Address..." by William Ceperley in Davenport Democrat, March 4, 1925

Coolidge's address focused on lauding the peacetime economic boom the country was enjoying. His themes of personal liberties and free markets are bound to show up again and again in Jeff Bezos-approved Washington Post editorials.

American editorial cartoonists paid more attention to Vice President Dawes, who used his inaugural speech to lambaste the Senate rules for "unlimited debate," more commonly known as the filibuster.

"Say, Listen" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, March 5, 1925

Senate rules at the time allowed any one senator or group of senators to prevent any measure from coming to a vote, which the Coolidge administration blamed for failure to get some of its priorities passed into law. A two-thirds vote of the Senate was required to end a filibuster; and invoking cloture against any one Senator's wishes dated back only to 1917. 

Even after 1917, invoking cloture needed bipartisan support; although Republicans held a solid majority in the chamber most of that time, their majority fell short of the two-thirds threshold.

"It's Going to Be a Terrible Strain" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, March 6, 1925

The two-thirds rule survived Vice President Dawes's objections, and wasn't reduced to three-fifths until 1975. That threshold remains in effect today, except for approving judicial and cabinet nominations (lowered to 50% in 2010).

"Something Tells Us This Will Be Worth Watching" by Bill Hanny in Philadelphia Inquirer, March 6, 1925

When the Senate convened in March of 1925 to establish its rules for the upcoming session, however, Vice President Dawes was not present to swear the members in. (Remember how Kamala Harris was responsible for swearing in our current Senators in January?) No matter, decided the world's most deliberative body. The Senators decided to consider themselves all sworn into office regardless.

"But Sheridan Was Forty Miles Away" by Harold Talburt for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. March 13, 1925

Meanwhile, most of Coolidge's new cabinet easily passed congressional approval, with one prominent exception.

His Attorney General nominee, Charles B. Warren, could have been easily confirmed for any other post in Coolidge's cabinet. But he was suspected of not supporting the Sherman Anti-Trust Act dating because of his role as counsel in 1902 for Michigan sugar interests. When the Senate rejected Warren's nomination by a tie vote, Vice President Dawes was again absent — reportedly taking a nap — and did not cast his tie-breaking vote.

"Bet I Know One Vote That'll Be on Hand" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, March 13, 1925

President Coolidge simply resubmitted Warren's nomination, but the confirmation vote in the Senate fell short a second time — even with the Vice President awake and presiding. 

"Maybe Charlie Gave Old Dobbin an Overdose" by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune, March 18, 1925

Just one day after that stinging defeat, the Senate consented to Coolidge's nomination of John G. Sargent, a childhood friend of Coolidge's and a former Vermont Attorney General, to head the U.S. Justice Department.

"Never Stab an Elephant in the Back" by Ed Gale in Los Angeles Times, March 11, 1925

Progressive Republicans had employed their gains in the 1922 elections to take some congressional committee chairmanships. Those deals were now off; Senate leaders punished Wisconsin Senator Robert LaFollette and other "insurgents" who had supported his third-party presidential bid, deposing them from those chair positions and transferring them to less influential committees.

"Al, and William, Come Out" by William C. Morris for George Matthew Adams Service, ca. March 6, 1925

As for the Democrats, Coolidge's landslide victory left them a party in the wilderness. Nominal leaders of the Democratic Party Al Smith and William MacAdoo were still licking their wounds from their bruising convention battle. And as far as cartoonists were concerned, The Democrats' last two presidential candidates, Cox and John Davis, had already returned to the obscurity whence they had come.

"Wouldn't It Be Easier to Catch a New One" by Wm. Hanny in Philadelphia Inquirer, March 10, 1925

The GOP-aligned Philadelphia Inquirer editors and their cartoonist, William Hanny, appear to have spotted an up-and-comer in the opposition. (Even if Hanny didn't quite have a convincing caricature of FDR just yet.)