This Week's Sneak Repeat

Instead of the usual snippet out of this week's syndicated cartoon, here is my cartoon published immediately after a hate-filled gunman killed 49 patrons of Pulse, an LGBTQ+ bar in Orlando, Florida, six years ago.

Toon: Yesterday's Gone, Yesterday's Gone

I confess: I still haven't made my way through my copy of Making History yet. So I'm not rushing out to buy Hillary Clinton's latest book, which joins a very short list of best sellers by electoral college also-rans explaining why they aren't living in the White House.

If Mitt Romney, John McCain and John Kerry have unsold manuscripts tucked away in a drawer about how they were mistreated by the media, the stock market, and the FBI, we've been graciously spared the spectacle of them hawking their excuses.

Al Gore, the last presidential candidate to come in first in votes but second in the race, wisely chose to write about Things That Matter when he decided to retire to the authors' studio. Bob Dole surely had a lot to say about the forces that kept him from reciting the presidential oath, but he chose to expose himself to ridicule by hawking erectile dysfunction remedies instead.

So, Mrs. Clinton, I'm really very sorry that you're not President of the United States. Believe me, I'm really, really, really sorry about that. But you've got a Clinton Foundation all set up that you could be running, and I'm sure the experience will give you lots and lots of material for a much more worthwhile book.

Fake Newsmakers

Just read it from left to right.

Now, I really wish I had posted this cartoon before Donald Joffrey Trump's little hour-and-a-half press tantrum yesterday. I had a little problem with my scanner this week, and it was the regular syndicated cartoon's turn to appear here yesterday, so I figured I'd just hold off until today.

Well, nobody's talking about the lies of Stephen Miller or Kellyanne Conway now.

Unless it turns out that they are the people who told Mr. Trump that his 304 electoral votes are more than Barack Obama's 332 in 2012, or his 365 in 2008, or Bill Clinton's 379 in 1996 or 370 in 1992, or George H.W. Bush's 470 in 1988.

Boy, I wouldn't want to be whoever that Trump loyalist was. I'll bet that person is in for a serious finger wagging.

2016 in Headlines

Since ’16back Saturday coincides with New Year's Eve this year, I'm going to post my annual photo of newspaper and magazine front pages here.

I offer my usual caveats: with only newspapers from the midwestern United States to choose from, I can't include many big international stories, such as the impeachment of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. The slow crushing of the rebellion in Syria lends itself more to photojournalism than a banner headline. And I might have included the death of Fidel Castro if he hadn't already turned the reins of power over to his brother years ago.

Meanwhile, I don't have a home paper publishing my stuff that would put together a 2016 in cartoons spread, so here are my own favorites from this crappy year:

Q Toon: Throwing in the Towel

After nearly a month of resisting, North Carolina Governor Pat "Bathroom Bill" McCrory has finally conceded defeat in his reelection bid.

I was seriously considering drawing last week's cartoon about his refusal to recognize that the Tarheel State had voted to replace him with Democrat Roy Cooper, and I'm relieved that I didn't; McCrory conceded the morning after, and promptly trotted up to Trump Tower to apply for work with The Donald's administration.

It was a bright spot in an otherwise utterly crapulent election season. McCrory's defeat holds out the hope, however faint, that in spite of the GOP's best efforts to disenfranchise all but their most devoted voters, the electorate may still hold an incompetent Republican responsible at the ballot box.

As long as Vladimir Putin isn't Wikileaking the other side's emails.

Q Toon: Rising to the Occasion

I typically stew over what to draw for Q Syndicate for an entire weekend before committing ink to the page, but with feelings so raw after last week's presidential election, this idea came quickly and urgently. Kind of like what it depicts.

In case the note under my signature requires any explaining, this week's cartoon is a take-off on Bill Mauldin's famous cartoon for the Chicago Sun-Times after John F. Kennedy's assassination.

There are those who will object to this cartoon and to all who feel this way. Yes, I've heard that Donald Berzilius Trump is now our President-Elect and deserves a chance and some respect. That must be a new thing, because if there was any chance- or respect-giving from the Trump electorate during the past eight years, I must have blinked and missed it.

Trump was a mercurial tyrant, an egotistical bully, a lying con artist and a spoiled bigot up to the eve of the election. At 70 years old, there's not much chance that he has it in him to change.

How the Fork We Got Here

Months ago, Sad!back Saturday presented a retrospective of my Hillary Clinton cartoons. Now that we face the imminent inauguration of a self-absorbed, lying, bullying, impulsive, mercurial con artist tyrant with the emotional and intellectual maturity of a 4-year-old, beloved by white supremacist and Kremlin dictator alike, it's about time I finally got around to assembling my work on the subject of Donald Berzilius Trump.

Trump made a brief run for the Republican nomination in 2011. (This was actually his second run for the presidency, but I did not draw anything about his easily overlooked try for the Reform Party nomination in 2000.) Doing his best to fit in with the others in the race, he came out against marriage equality.

He learned a valuable lesson from that abortive candidacy: rich guys don't get anywhere making golf analogies.

In the crowded field of contenders for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, New And Depraved Trump stood out as the shiny object, capturing hours of free media attention without ever actually having to campaign. Just pick up a phone and chat with Morning Joe or the friendly folks at Fox News, and voilá! Sorry, Governor Perry, there's no time left to discuss your policy paper on expanding oil drilling in the Everglades.

He actually had to show up to the so-called debates in person; and there, too, he sucked all the air out of the room. While most of the other radical right-wingers were trying to present a softer image for the television, Trump relied on the strategy that every successful schoolyard bully knows: be first with the name-calling, and keep it simple. Nobody's going to remember those Poindexters' lame-ass comeback attempts.

Most difficult to understand has always been how the Christian Right fell behind this vulgar, thrice-married casino owner so early in the campaign. By February, Trump was on a roll, and apparently, the tenets of Prosperity Gospel dictated that The Donald must be The Lord's Anointed One.

The Christian Right weren't the only ones taking notice.

For my own part, finding reasons to draw Trump for the LGBT publications which run my cartoons has been a challenge. LGBT issues have not been a favorite topic of his (or of debate moderators this year). This cartoon from May illustrates that the focus of his interest was elsewhere.

Trump remembers his friends, so for his running mate, he repaid his debt to the religious right by choosing Indiana Governor Mike Pence, famous mainly for defending a state bill enshrining discrimination against same-sex couples as an inviolable right of all Christian entrepreneurs.

When Trump's "locker room talk" on the bus with Billy Bush came to light, it looked like the October Surprise that should have done him in. But even if his boorishness and sexual harassment hadn't been (excuse the expression) trumped by exquisitely timed assistance from Kremlin stooge Julian Assange, FBI Director James Comey and the vast health insurance conspiracy, Trump's core support was hardened and impervious. He could have, as he said, shot someone on Fifth Avenue and they would still lead the choir singing his praises.

Q Toon: I No Longer Approve This Message

Offer void in Louisiana.

Donald Trump, and shadowy Citizens United groups supporting him, advertised heavily on my local TV in October, as did Ron Johnson and Russ Feingold vying for one of Wisconsin's Senate seats. Hillary Clinton didn't invest quite as much on TV ads as Trump did; meanwhile, Paul Ryan was the only congressional candidate I saw advertising on Milwaukee TV (a market covering at least three congressional districts).

Perhaps the only bright spot in the advertising mess was a pro-Feingold ad from the Humane Society Legislative Fund, featuring a handsome German shepherd praising Feingold's voting record in favor of animal protection and conservation measures without claiming that Johnson favors animal cruelty and toxic waste. (The negative stuff is all in the press release you probably didn't read.)

While the candidates' ads were overwhelmingly negative, all but one candidate at least included some positive information about themselves or their agenda in at least one of their commercials. That one candidate with nothing positive to say, I'm very disappointed to report, was Hillary Clinton.

I know, I know: negative ads are more effective than positive ones. They tell us that every election season. But anyone who hasn't been hiding under a rock knows that Donald Trump says horrible things about women and boasts about behaving like a sexist pig. We know he mocks, denigrates and insults Mexicans, Muslims and handicapped reporters. It was all over the news. It was all over the late-night talk and comedy shows. It was all over our Facebook feed.

You know what was not all over the news, late-night shows and social media, Hillary? Any of the uplifting stuff in your stump speeches to the people at your rallies who were already planning to vote for you. Nor were there any policy goals for which you might have wanted to claim a mandate come January.

Trump, vile and offensive as he is, included in some of his advertising promises of making America great again and replacing Obamacare with, well, something swell. On your side, we've got, um, let me think... "I'm with Her." It doesn't exactly invite one to say, "Yeah! That's what I'm looking for!"

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I drew that cartoon on Sunday night and wrote the above on Monday, when I had no idea that all that Hillary Clinton was going to win was the worthless popular vote. The verbiage had been stewing in my head for weeks, but I'd decided against posting it earlier because I don't like all the attention the process of the campaign gets during the campaign at the expense of the issues of the campaign.

Clearly, the Humane Society Legislative Fund's ads were no more help to Russ Feingold than Hillary Clinton's ads were to herself. Health Insurance Profiteers, the FBI Director, Julian Assange and the Kremlin, however, were probably more influential in getting Ron Johnson and Donald Berzilius Trump elected than any commercial.

Uncle Sam's New Hat

I'm just putting this one out there linkless today.

The regular Q Syndicate cartoon goes up tomorrow, with a commentary I wrote on Monday. The election has changed how I feel about both of them.

Calling Nate Silver

Q Toon: Gays for Trump

I watched most of last night's presidential debate. I was driving with it on the car radio as it began, then called it up on an iPad once I got home (my husband had the Cubs-Dodgers game on TV). I tried reading the npr.org transcript to catch up on what I missed between car and what they were live streaming, but deciphering the Verb8im Inc. account was rather challenging. Editors have fixed it now, but I kid you not: last night, it had Donald Trump praising the late Justice Coolio.

Anyway, an hour into the debate, my iPad got so upset that it severed its internet connection and refused to go on. So I missed the last half hour of the program; please excuse me if I make some statements below that would be proven false by the final thirty minutes of the debate.

There hasn't been much attention paid to LGBT issues this election cycle (Republican primary roadkill such as Mike Huckabee notwithstanding).

Hillary Clinton mentioned her support for LGBT issues such as marriage equality very early in the debate last night, but discussion for the evening quickly snagged onto her emails, Trump's boorish behavior, whether she lied, and whether he'd accept defeat. Chris Wallace had questions about other things, but nobody is going to remember what they were.

Which is a shame, since there have been so many important issues that have been entirely ignored by the candidates and most of the media. The Veterans Affairs system is a complete mess, even as the nation's endless wars are still producing more and more demand for its services. Or, given how heavily our banking, infrastructure and election systems rely on the internet, what would the candidates do toward shoring up the nation's cyber-security? And how do you solve a problem like Korea?

No, the media are all talking about how Donald Trump wouldn't promise to accept the results of the election. If the question had been whether he thinks it's responsible to keep telling his rabid followers that nefarious forces ("You know what I'm talking about!") are plotting to steal the election from them, that would be one thing. But as phrased, it was just another version of the question every candidate who is behind in the polls gets: "Are you ready to concede the election today?"

Well, at least Trump had his sniffing and snorting under control last night. For the first sixty minutes at any rate.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Oh, let's just go ahead and post the whole cartoon!

What Is a Leppo?

You might not have known what Verdun was in 1906, or Midway in 1936, or Da Nang in 1956, or Aleppo in 2006, and still be taken seriously as a potential leader of the free world.

Add ten years to any of those, and, no, not so much. Sorry Mr. Johnson.

Q Toon: Candidate of Change

She may be behind in the polls by double digits, but I thought this might be a good time to take note of Misty Snow, the Democratic nominee for Utah's Senate seat, currently held by Tea Partisan Mike Lee. Snow is the first transgender candidate to win a major party nomination for the U.S. Senate.

Democrats don't stand much of a chance to win statewide elections in Utah, and it probably doesn't help Snow that she has what sounds like a porn name. Being transgender, she can't blame her parents for that. Officially, she is running as Misty K. Snow, which at least upgrades her name to sounding like the stage name of a satellite radio DJ.

Watson A. Name

"Misty" isn't even short for another name, as Cassie, Cindy, Betsy or Sandy are. Unless there's some female equivalent of Mstislav.

I was trying to think whether any male names presented the same sort of handicap as "Misty," Take-Me-Serious-wise. We've had a Vice President Hubert and a President Jimmy; a candidate could probably get away with a moniker like Chip or Butch. Walter Mondale was well advised not to campaign as Wally; but nobody addresses Bernie Sanders as "Bernard."

The worst male name for public office I've been able to think of is "Scooter," although that's not too far removed from "Scoop," the name of a long-time Senator from Washington. Scoop Jackson was even taken seriously as a presidential candidate in 1976 (just not by actual voters).

Lindsey Graham, perhaps, could only have gotten elected in South Carolina.

Q Toon: Almost There

This week's cartoon was sparked by a recent Washington Post story by Robert Samuels focusing on Hillary Clinton's efforts over the years to finesse LGBT rights issues without upsetting religious conservatives.

While most national politicians have been slow to evolve on gay marriage, Clinton’s handling of it was particularly saddening to some activists because they had expected more. Clinton and her husband, Bill, had stood out as being among the first to actively court the gay community as an interest group and donor base — and yet they were unwilling to stand with the community on one of its biggest civil rights issues.

Framing the issue as I have in this cartoon, I realize that it may appear that I am buying into the right-wing talking point of "Lying Hillary" (which conveniently ignores Donald Trump's fact-free campaigning) just as her poll numbers are coming back to Earth. I can't help but notice how those fund-raising emails in my inbox are getting increasingly desperate.

So I'm sorry to disappoint Ms. Clinton, but she should have known that we liberals do not move in lockstep, unlike certain vast conspiracies one could name. You don't think so?

Having now drawn a cartoon pointing out a weakness of the Democratic nominee for President, I hereby dare A.F. Branco to draw one pointing out any weakness of the Republican nominee.

Q Toon: The Protectionist

As it turns out, Donald Berzilius Trump spent much of this week trying to attract Black and Latino voters with his new slogan, "What Have You Got to Lose." (Considering the priorities of states controlled by Republicans, The Right to Vote comes to mind.)

But earlier this summer, Trump tried to use the Orlando massacre as the basis of an appeal to LGBTQ voters, awkwardly pausing partway through the five-letter acronym. Perhaps he was having difficulty remembering the whole thing. Perhaps he gets out of breath saying five-syllable words. Better page Dr. Harold Bornstein.

As a cartoonist, it's a daunting challenge to come up with things for Cartoon Trump to say that are more outrageous than the things that come out of Reality Trump's mouth. One imagines that Trump's spokesschmucks are taking Botox injections to avoid the inadvertent looks of terror when they contemplate having to explain what they are hearing.

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P.S.: This story broke this week.

It All Makes Sense Now

¿Hispanics Para Trump?

I am not going to second guess the genetic origin of these two delegates to last week's Republican convention, or of any of the others waving "Hispanics para Trump" signs. For all I know, their parents were bankers from Havana until 1959, or lost their government jobs upon the death of Generalissimo Francisco Franco.

And, as someone with only a rudimentary grasp of Spanish, I have difficulty myself knowing when to use "para" and when to use "por," so I'm only taking someone else's word that "para" is the wrong preposition.

(A tweet cited on HuffPo states that "Hispanics con Trump" would be more correct — although I'd suggest that "Trump cons Hispanics" would be better still.)

I'm reminded of a campaign at my alma mater in which a foreign exchange student ran for student government president. The slogan on his campaign literature may have sounded good in the original Ghanaian, but "A vote for [the candidate] is a vote for [his running mate] and a vote for you all" just sounded silly in English.

Returning to the present day, I do know that "Hispanics" is an English word, not a Spanish one.

It took me three seconds on Google Translate to get "los hispanos."

Q Toon: Veep Stakes

Donald Trump threw a bone to his right-wing Christian theocratic supporters by letting them write the most antigay party platform in the Republicans' rabidly antigay history, and by naming Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his running mate.

Followers of this blog (you clearly being a discerning and intelligent bunch) may remember him having signed Indiana's antigay "Religious Freedom Restoration Act," guaranteeing Christian Hoosiers' right to discriminate against LGBT citizens. Blowback from business giants such as Apple, Walmart, and Salesforce – and even the Disciples of Christ and the NCAA – forced Indiana to tweak the law to tone down its antigay hostility a bit.

Although he is not as much of a firebrand as Newt Gingrich or Ted Cruz, former five-term Congressman Pence continues his party's trend of vice presidential picks lurching ever further rightward.

In the 107th Congress (Pence’s first, covering 2001 and 2002), for example, out of 435 members of the U.S. House, Pence ranked #428 – meaning that 427 members were to his left, putting the Hoosier on the far-right-wing fringe. The results were roughly the same in the 108th Congress and the 109th.

By the 110th Congress, Pence was at #432, putting him to the right of nearly everyone in the chamber. The results were roughly the same in the 111th Congress and the 112th.

Let’s put this another way: during his congressional career, Pence wasn’t just more conservative than Paul Ryan. His voting record also put him to the right of Michele Bachmann, Todd Akin, Steve King, and even Louie Gohmert.

Q Toon: What a Friend We Have

After accepting the congratulations of his minions and toadies following the mass murder in Orlando, Republican presumptive nominee Donald Berzilius Trump tweeted:

"Thank you to the LGBT community! I will fight for you while Hillary brings in more people who will threaten your freedoms and beliefs."

Campaigning in Atlanta, Trump appealed not only to the LGBT community, but the communities of gays and lesbians as well:

"The LGBT community, the gay community, the lesbian community — they are so much in favor of what I've been saying over the last three or four days. Ask the gays what they think and what they do, in, not only Saudi Arabia, but many of these countries, and then you tell me — who's your friend, Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton?"

The Twitterverse responded with the hashtag #AskTheGays, in which it seems pretty obvious that Trump hadn't Asked The Gays before speaking on our behalf.

The next week, The Donald held a closed-door meeting with right-wing evangelical Christian leaders and announced the formation of a "Religious Advisory Board" including vocally antigay luminaries such as former Focus on the Family president Dr. James Dobson, Liberty University President Jerry Falwell, Jr., Bishop Harry Jackson, First Baptist Church of Dallas Pastor Robert Jeffress, and Faith and Freedom Coalition founder Ralph Reed.

We're still waiting for the formation of an LGBT Advisory Board for whenever Trump decides to #AskTheGays.