Toon: Meet Mitchell Berman

I thought I'd try caricaturing the Democrat running for Congress in my home district this year, and here's what I came up with. 

Mitchell Berman is an emergency room nurse who won a three-way race for the Democratic nomination in August. The national Democratic Party sees potential for him to oust four-term Republican incumbent Bryan Steil, so Berman has gotten the benefit of some television advertising, unlike most Democratic candidates for Wisconsin's 1st Congressional District in this century.

If Berman were to win election this November, he would be the first Democrat to represent this district since Rep. Peter Barca was defeated in the Red Wave of 1994. (Barca ran again and lost thirty years later.)

Berman's first TV ad showed him fishing from the banks of a small river somewhere with his dog, offering his bone fides as a regular guy. He wasn't wearing his nurse uniform in that ad; he was, however, wearing a holstered gun on his side — a quiet nod to the sportsmen hereabouts. In a subsequent social media video, he explained that he sometimes goes fishing in areas where one might encounter a bear or wolf. Hence the side arm.

In a preliminary sketch for this caricature, I had a holstered gun at Berman's side. I had to scratch that idea when I switched which hand his fishing rod was held in. 

Most of the mail pieces from Berman's campaign show him in his nurse's scrubs and flag-themed do-rag. His latest TV ad depicts him on the job, talking about health care reform.

Steil, and outside organizations supporting him, are attacking Berman with the same charges of being a radical activist that Republicans are flinging willy-nilly at every Democrat. Steil's ads tout his "Stop Insider Trading Act," prohibiting members of Congress (but not Supreme Court justices, Presidents, or their families) from trading stocks while in office. The bill passed the House with a rider requiring voters to show photo identification before voting, but has not passed the Senate.

Steil's bill has "more holes in it than Swiss cheese," according to Berman, because congressional representatives are not required to divest stocks they already own.

Steil is way ahead of Berman in campaign fund raising: the incumbent's war chest is over $5 million, while Berman's was only $713,000 as of mid-September. Outside interest group advertising is similarly lop-sided in Steil's favor.

Q Toon: Remembering Barney Frank

I promised to draw a memorial cartoon for the late Congressman Barney Frank, the first gay member of Congress to out himself, and here it is. 

The quotation in my cartoon is from a January 12, 2009 New Yorker article by Jeffrey Toobin, and it's a slightly condensed version of a statement Barney Frank had made on the House floor the previous March.

It's important to point out that in 2009, none of the rights he was advocating for — marriage equality, the end of "Don't Ask Don't Tell," or Employment Non-Discrimination — were yet the law of the land. And none of them came about by acts of Congress, meaning that any of them could be negated by an antigay president, Supreme Court, or Secretary of Whatever They're Calling What We're Doing In Iran These Days.

Barney Frank made these statements in response to Republicans who charged that advocating these rights was "radical" (a boiler plate response by Republicans to any Democratic proposal, even those that borrow from Republican ones).

But Frank was an incrementalist, which resulted in attacks from the idealists and purists to his left. Transgender advocates are still upset by his willingness to excise them from the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) in order to get Congress to pass workplace protections for lesbians, gays, and bisexuals — a ploy that failed anyway.

He was defensive about that in his final interview, with Lou Chibarro, Jr. in Washington Blade, but confident that the protections afforded by Bostock v. Clayton County would stand:

Blade: Are you saying we may not need an LGBTQ non-discrimination act by Congress for the states that haven’t passed that?

Frank: I would be in favor of that, yes. But again, I think you and I – you have always been pessimistic. There is a political time now that works in our favor. And as I said, on abortion, they burned themselves very badly on abortion. And yes, I’m still for a national anti-discrimination bill. But I do not think the right wing wants to be caught taking rights away that already exist. Because that’s a lot harder than denying them in the first place. And I don’t see any movement for that. You tell me what you are worried about. What bills are you worried about? 

Blade: I was simply saying they haven’t yet passed a federal non-discrimination bill. 

Frank: No, what’s going to change on the Supreme Court? I don’t see a pretty quick reversal on the Supreme Court. So, I think people are just – they have to have a cause. And they are inflating the likelihood that we are going to lose some rights when I see no evidence of it. And in fact, I see a lot of political reasons why those in Congress don’t want to do that.

Perhaps he was correct that "people's rights to get married, join the army, and make a living" are mainstream values now.

That assumes that there is a "mainstream" any more.

"The left and the right live in parallel universes. The right listens to talk radio, the left's on the internet, and they just reinforce one another. They have no sense of reality." ― Barney Frank

The Importance of Being Frank

Graphical History Tour remembers former Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA), who passed away Tuesday night at age 86.

in Q SaltLake, March, 1999

Barney Frank was elected to Congress in 1980, succeeding Rev. Robert Drinan, who had left office in order to comply with Pope John Paul II's call for priests to withdraw from government positions. Q SaltLake asked me to draw the above caricature of Rep. Frank for their cover story on his upcoming speech at a dinner of the Utah Stonewall Democrats, an LGBTQ organization.

Frank earned a reputation as an outspoken, quick- and sharp-witted liberal, but it must be noted that he was very pragmatic, even on LGBTQ+ issues. In the 1990's, he counseled marriage equality advocates that the public were not ready to accept same-sex marriage. In his last public interview, however, he argued that marriage equality is safe because Republicans today would be afraid of the backlash were our marriages to be taken away.

Perhaps the interviewer thought it impolite to bring up the fate of the landmark Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act during Republican rule.

Frank wasn't the first openly gay Congressman; Gerry Studds (D-MD) had been outed at the center of a scandal over Congressmen having affairs with congressional pages. (Studds was censured in 1983 for having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old page ten years earlier; he retired from Congress in 1997.) Frank was, however, the first member of Congress to come out as gay voluntarily, in 1987.

in Ranger, University of Wisconsin at Parkside, Sept. 21, 1989 

The first cartoon I drew of Barney Frank was, unfortunately, when it appeared that his political career was about to be cut short because of a sex scandal of his own. He had befriended Steve Gobie, a prostitute, hiring him as an aide, housekeeper, and driver in 1985. He evicted Gobie in 1987 after their landlord told Frank that Gobie continued operating as a male escort, even bringing clients to their shared home.

This became public in 1989 when Gobie decided to sell his story to the highest bidder, but gave it away to the Washington Times. Frank called for a House Ethics Committee investigation, claiming to have had no knowledge of Gobie's extracurricular activities at their home. Rep. Larry Craig (R-ID) led the push to censure Frank; but in the end, he was merely reprimanded for misrepresenting Gobie's criminal probation record, and for using his congressional office to fix 33 parking tickets Gobie had racked up.

Craig, by then a senator, would have his own gay sex scandal in 2007.

in UWM Post, Milwaukee Wis., Jan. 30, 1995

During a January 20, 1995 radio interview discussing a possible book deal, House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX) said, “I like peace and quiet and I don’t need to listen to Barney Fag, [pause] Barney Frank, haranguing in my ear because I made a few bucks off a book.” 

The slur was reported by several radio networks, whereupon Armey blamed the media for reporting on what he claimed was an audio glitch, not a slip of the tongue or intentional insult.

Rep. Frank refused to accept Armey's excuses, saying, “There are a lot of possible ways to mispronounce my name but that one, I think, is the least common, ... I turned to my own expert, my mother, who reports that in 59 years of marriage, no one ever introduced her as Elsie Fag.”

After a separate incident of Armey making a poor joke about Frank's homosexuality, a reporter asked Frank if he wanted an apology from the Texan. "I’m trying to think of what I would be less interested in than an apology from Dick Armey," he replied. "Maybe the lyrics to the national anthem of Bhutan."

for Q Syndicate, Aug., 1998

Frank's office requested the original of this cartoon. I have no idea whether he still has it.

When Republicans in Congress were holding hearings in preparation to file impeachment charges against President Bill Clinton over his sex scandal, Barney Frank seemed to be the only Democrat willing to speak up in Clinton's defense.

for Q Syndicate, Nov., 1998

Wisconsin's Second District elected Tammy Baldwin to Washington in 1998, the first out lesbian representative in Congress, so I drew Barney Frank offering her some practical advice.

for Q Syndicate, March, 2009

I tried looking up why I included Barney Frank in this cartoon about the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, but it dates from two months before I started this blog. (and I couldn't find it among oocities.com's cached pages of my previous Geocities blog). 

Did Frank call Scalia a homophobe? I guess I wouldn't have put it past him, and I can't think of another reason why I would have drawn him in the foreground.

It is, however, my best example of drawing his famously rumpled couture.

for Q Syndicate, March, 2011

This cartoon caught some ridicule from a web page (now long dormant) dedicated to ridiculing editorial cartoons, in part for daring to run afoul of the litigious Dr. Seuss Estate. The topic was the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a bill proposed in successive Congresses to afford workplace protections to LGBTQ+ private sector employees.

It faced stubborn resistance from Republicans and other conservatives. In 2007, Frank proposed deleting transgender rights from the bill, in what proved to be a futile ploy to attract support from moderate Republicans which succeeded only in deeply dividing the LGBTQ+ community. 

for Q Syndicate, Oct., 2007

Frank's reasoning was that transgender rights could be added back in someday if ENDA ever became law; transgender activists and their allies are profoundly disappointed by what to this day they regard as outright betrayal.

Congress never has passed ENDA in any form. In an interview with Washington Blade's Lou Chibarro, Jr., after he entered hospice care this month, Frank noted that the Supreme Court ruled in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) that employment discrimination against LGBTQ+ persons is illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a ruling Frank was confident the Court would never overturn — and if it did, Congress would step in and pass ENDA into law.

He must never have met Mike Johnson.

for Q Syndicate, Dec., 2011

No, this is not my eulogy cartoon for the Congressman.

The 2010 census resulted in Massachusetts losing a seat in Congress. In the redistricting plan produced by the state legislature, the Democratic stronghold of New Bedford was removed from Frank's district. While Brookline, Newton and Wellesley remained in the district, Frank announced shortly after Governor Deval Patrick signed the redistricting plan into law that he would not run for a 17th term.

My reference, of course, is to the reported last words of Oscar Wilde, another gay icon with a not unblemished history. (In trying to verify the quotation for this post, I've found several variations on its theme, so take it with a grain of smelling salts.)

That was the last cartoon I have drawn of Barney Frank — at least so far. I am likely obliged to draw an actual eulogy cartoon for him for release next week. If not, he's got a book coming out in September.

Given his record, the book is not going to be pablum.

Q Toon: Monkey Business

Congressional Republicans have proposed five anti-LGBTQ+ riders to the National Security and Department of State Appropriations Act, a must-pass funding bill for the State Department.

The riders range from restricting Pride flags in federal buildings to banning transgender healthcare; all attack the rights of LGBTQ+ Americans and have nothing whatsoever to do with funding the State Department or national security.

You might be thinking, wait, haven't Absolutely Corrupt Trump Regime™ executive orders already accomplished all of the crap in those riders? Yes, exactly. 

But the point of Congress passing these discriminatory and homophobic provisions into law would be to prevent some future, more enlightened administration from signing an executive order to return things to pre-Trump conditions. It would take another act of Congress to undo this act of Congress.

So I came up with this literal interpretation of the figurative term "riders." Since primatologists have recently discovered that homosexual behaviors are not exclusive to humans and bonobos, I might have tried to depict the Republican riders as some creature more associated with LGBTQ+ophobia instead. 

But having the bicyclist carrying five GOP elephants would have been a difficult draw.

Besides, pachyderms aren't all that straight and narrow, either.

Q Toon: It's About Time

Say what you will about Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA). Republicans came to Congress with a majority pledging openness and transparency, and Johnson has been very open and transparent about not having taken the time to find out what's going on in the country.

You can ask him about the Trump regime's graft and corruption, Trump's granting pardons to people the President has never heard of, Trump posting scatological videos on Ministry of Truth Social, Trump bombing boats off the coast of Venezuela seemingly at random, Trump bailing out the Milei regime in Argentina and taking in shiploads of Argentinian beef while our own government is shut down and our farmers are losing markets to China thanks to Trump's misguided tariff policies. 

Johnson's answer is pretty much the same.

“I’m not trying to dodge the question,” the top lawmaker said. “I haven’t had time to get the details, OK? That’s still on my list, things-to-do list.”

We know that whatever is keeping Speaker Johnson so busy he can't get around to his things-to-do list, it isn't running the House of Representatives. When Congress failed to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government open, he sent the members home. When Arizona voters sent Adelita Grijalva to succeed her late father in Congress, Johnson told them, "All representatives are currently out of the office, but your call is very important to us. Please hang up and your vote will be ignored in the order you get redistricted."

Why, then, is Speaker Johnson unable to find the time to get anything done, to catch up on the news, to notice that a 34-time-convicted felon is running roughshod over the U.S. Constitution?

You may be holding it in your hands right now.

Every app on your phone is designed to be a bigger timesuck than the others.

I don't know much about that app Mr. Johnson and Mr. Johnsonson use to keep tabs on each other's sexual activity, but you have to know that it sucks its users in and keeps them engaged with the promise that if they just keep reading on, pushing its buttons, racking up higher scores, clicking on those video reels of attractive people abstaining from sex, something really worthwhile is bound to come up on the screen any minute.

By the way, if you liked this cartoon about Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, here are some others you might enjoy.

Q Toon: Where the Decisions Are Made

The story so far: I introduced the characters Leo and Max to stand in for the sharp political division in this country. Leo is the liberal: woke, environmentally conscious, and fully vaccinated. Max, on the other hand, is full-on MAGA and even has his very own presidential pardon for taking part in the January 6 Trumpster insurrection at the Capitol.

In February, I decided that Leo got himself swept up in an ICE raid while volunteering at a food bank. At the time, it seemed likely that he would end up stranded on a tarmac in some random Latin American country among a plane load of braceros, roofers, hotel maids, short order cooks, guitarrónistas, and Operation Enduring Freedom veterans.

The Trump regime’s depths of depravity, however, are more abysmal than anything I imagined in February. Venezuelan immigrants and refugees have been sentenced with no due process to die in a sweltering concentration camp in El Salvador. 

Afghani women and men who assisted our soldiers in their country before Trump pulled the rug out from under our allies there are being sent back for certain persecution and probable stoning to death by the Taliban.

Misappropriated FEMA funds have been purloined for the hasty construction of Florida’s flood-prone-and-that's-hardly-the-worst-of-it Alligator Gulag. 

The Trump team is now shanghaiing people to South Sudan, a country perpetually in the midst of civil war.

All this ethnic cleansing is the wet dream come true of white supremacist ghoul Stephen Miller, aided and abetted by Trump's cabinet of martinets, lickspittles, and wackadoodles, a Congress dominated by knuckle-dragging yahoos, and a right-wing Supreme Court that has ruled that under any Republican President, civil rights aren't worth the paper the Constitution is written on.

When last we saw Leo in Trumplinka Prison, a faceless ICE gestapo trooper was grilling him about a tattoo of Max's initials, which they misread as the Salvadorian street gang "MS13." So WTF am I to do with Leo now? 

Maybe he'll be freed by an AI Marco Rubio imposter. Unless that comes too close making light of our descent into lawless dictatorship.

But how else can I get back to having Leo and Max argue about Big Bonkerful Abomnibus Bills, Zohran Mamdani, and Eau de Trump No. 5™?

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: Bubble, Bubble, Toilet Trouble

Delaware, the First State in the Union, is now also the First State in the Union Represented by a Transgender American.

Democrat Sarah McBride, whose deadname is Nunnoyer Dambizness, won election as the state's one and only Representative in the 119th Congress, and Republican panties immediately entered into wad mode. South Carolina Republican Nancy Mace led the hue and cry that Congresswoman-elect McBride would not be welcome in women's rest rooms anywhere in the Capitol building.

Speaker Mike Johnson, whose duties include assigning toilet stalls, readily acquiesced to Mace's demands, publishing a new rule that lavatory use must align with one's gender as assigned at birth, no matter what changes may have taken place in the meantime. His order gently suggested that members can avail themselves of the personal lavatory facilities in their own offices; and McBride has accepted the crapper command calmly and professionally.

It may not have occurred to the Transphobic Caucus that not all transgender persons have transitioned from male to female. There are some people who have found their peace transitioning in the opposite direction. While none of those persons have yet been elected to Congress, I expect that Congresswoman Mace will suffer advanced conniptions if she ever hears that Chaz Bono has come to lobby the legislature after a heavy lunch.

Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi might offer that Mace's complaints are much ado about chicken shit. We all remember how much deference the Trumpster mob showed to female sensitivities when they came to lobby Capitol Hill to overturn the 2020 election on 1/6.

Toon: Who Laughs Last

I left this cartoon as somewhat of a rough sketch because the idea reminded me too much of a cartoon Pat Oliphant once did of House Speaker Tip O'Neil in the 1980's. In the last month, I've posted extra cartoons aping the great cartoonists David Low and Thomas Nast. Did I really need to add another update of someone else's work?

Well, as I commented when I thanked Mike Peterson for citing yesterday's Matt Gaetz cartoon, Gaetz might be a thoroughly reprehensible excuse for a human being, but he is kind of fun to draw — so here's the cartoon anyway.

With apologies to Pat Oliphant, and to any of my colleagues who had the same idea this morning.

Pride Cometh to North Pratt Falls

It's LGBTQet-al. Pride Month, so let's start today's Graphical History Tour with something in a lighter vein than Thursday's cartoon.

Q Syndicate, June, 2004

Here's a cartoon I drew in time for client publications' Pride Month issues in 2004 (meaning that I drew it in May, of course), observing that Gay Pride celebrations were no longer found exclusively in major metropolitan cities.

"Boy Meets Boy" was one of those "reality" TV shows — on Bravo if I remember correctly. A gay twist on "The Bachelor," the main contestant was presented with several potential male suitors to choose among — the catch being that some of them, unbeknownst to him, were straight.

I have no recollection who the geeky straight contestant was, whether he was the guy picked in the end, or whatever happened to him or anybody else connected with the show. And it's just as well.

in Journal Times, Racine Wis., June 18, 1984

Let's keep talking about sex, but step back 20 more years to 1984.

That year, the Racine Unified School Board voted to reject five recommended textbooks, including two sex education books for teenage readers. Married and Single Life and Living Today offered frank discussion of the sorts of questions real adolescents have about relationships, loving, and, yes, sex. Beyond "When a man and a woman love each other very much they share a special kiss and have a baby."

The ban ignited controversy between Racinians who believed that teens deserve access to books that deal frankly and honestly with sex, and others who believed that frank and honest discussion of sex should wait until after teens grow up, get married, share a special kiss, and have children of their own.

The very night after my cartoon appeared in the local newspaper, the school board voted to reverse the ban on the two sex ed books. But the board upheld their vote on rejecting three American history textbooks for supposed liberal bias. The Journal Times reported that board member Barbara Scott said the textbook flap could have been avoided if the board had had time to review the books.

in Journal Times, Racine Wis., June 14, 1994

Continuing with the local scene: Democrat Peter Barca was elected to Congress from Wisconsin's First Congressional District in 1993 to succeed Les Aspin, whom Bill Clinton had appointed Secretary of Defense. Aspin had represented the 1st CD since 1970, routinely trouncing his Republican challengers.

My crystal ball here proved faulty. Republican realtor Mark Neumann, who had narrowly lost the 1993 special election, won the rematch in the 1994 GOP wave. A series of Republicans have held the seat ever since, mostly with only token opposition whom the Democratic National Congressional Committee never lifted a finger to help.

In the meantime, Peter Barca went back to representing Kenosha in Madison, including six years as Assembly Minority Leader, before accepting Governor Tony Evers's appointment as Secretary of the Department of Revenue. This year, he's running for Congress again, hoping to unseat three-term incumbent Bryan Steil.

For the moment, the DNCC thinks that Steil might be vulnerable to a challenge. Unlike the other Democratic congressional candidates here since 1998, Barca has plenty of governmental experience — although heading the Department of Revenue is a point on his résumé that Republicans will be more eager to emphasize than he will.

June, 2014

And finally, I began sketching this cartoon ten Junes ago after Judge Barbara Crabb of the United States District Court, Western District of Wisconsin, ruled my state’s antigay “marriage amendment” unconstitutional. 

Before inking it, I saw that Wisconsin State Journal editorial cartoonist Phil Hands had published a similar cartoon of the sailor and miner shaking hands. He's syndicated throughout Wisconsin, whereas I haven't been published in my home state since InStep magazine folded in 2003. So I decided not to send this cartoon out to my editors at Q Syndicate, on the theory that few readers elsewhere would recognize the men on the Badger State flag.

But I inked, scanned, and colorized it anyway, and here it is again.

Q Toon: Earmarks the Spot

I've been waiting a long time for a reason to feature my home state Congressman Mark Pocan in a cartoon, and here it is.

Pocan has represented the Madison area in Congress ever since Tammy Baldwin gave up the seat to run for the Senate in 2012. Openly gay throughout his political career and currently the Chair of the House Equality Caucus, he took it personally last month when House Republicans on the Appropriations Committee singled out three LGBTQ+-related projects — "earmarks" — to cut from this year's budget.

Tensions boiled over Tuesday after Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) introduced an amendment to the annual funding bill covering the Departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development to eliminate $3.62 million in funding for three LGBTQ community centers in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.

The amendment, which Cole said Tuesday would crack down on “problematic” spending, also prohibits federal funds from being used to fly LGBTQ Pride flags outside government buildings.

It passed Tuesday in a 32-26 vote along party lines.

Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus and one of 12 openly LGBTQ members of Congress, called the proposal “an embarrassment.”

“This amendment brings this committee to a new low,” Pocan said Tuesday during a markup of the bill. “The fact that you would take away members’ earmarks simply because they refer to the LGBTQ+ community is insane.”

“If you were to take away earmarks because they went to the NAACP or the Urban League, you would rightfully so be called racist bigots,” Pocan said. “But when you do it to the LGBT community, it’s another frickin’ day in Congress.”

I used Pocan's language on Twitter (or Xchan, or whatever it's called now) in my cartoon; he must have had second thoughts about more colorful language. I'm kind of sorry that I didn't keep the "frickin'" in there, though.

As it is, Republicans demanded that Pocan's comments and those of two other Democrats on the committee be taken down, and silenced any further statements he may have wanted to make.

But before that happened, Rep. Pocan pointed out to his Republican colleagues that

"The pride flags that you're so passionate about cost somewhere between, if you look on line, $25 and $40. We are micromanaging, pedantically, dealing with this budget at such a small level, in order to make certain people in your base happy, and in your caucus happy, who have built a brand around hate. So, in doing so, you are doing the silliness of determining whether $25 flags come out of the Appropriations budget."

If the Senate is forced to spend time debating the savings to the nation's budget by prohibiting pride flags at federal facilities, perhaps they could save us even more by prohibiting the Alabama state flag as well.

Take that, Senator Tuberville. 

Q Toon: First Ten Callers Get Brooklyn Bridge Free!

George Santos, the prevaricating Congressboob from Long Island, has been indicted in New York on 13 counts of wire fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds, and "making materially false statements to the House of Representatives." According to the indictment,

"He used political contributions to line his pockets, unlawfully applied for unemployment benefits that should have gone to New Yorkers who had lost their jobs due to the pandemic, and lied to the House of Representatives."

That doesn't count fraud charges pending against him in Brazil, or the FBI investigation of Santos for allegedly taking money from a GoFundMe page that was started to raise money for a U.S. Navy veteran.

In response, his fellow Republican Congresscretins have courageously rejected a Democratic proposal to expel Santos from office, and Santos has vowed to fight on to clear his good name (whichever one that is).

Meanwhile, the Most Corrupt President In History has shown Santos the way to turn a criminal indictment into a quick buck. If a supposed billionaire can shake down his maga minions again and again and again, how hard can it be for Anthony Devolder, Nigerian Prince, to do the same?

The Speaker in a Squeaker

News coverage of poor old Kevin McCarthy's present travails trying to convince his own caucus to elect him Speaker of the House has often mentioned that the last time such an election took more than one ballot was a century ago. So naturally, I started rummaging through newspapers from 1923 in search of editorial cartoons about their experience.

It turns out that their experience was somewhat different from Mr. McCarthy's. The election of Frederick Gillett (R-MA) as Speaker in 1923 took three days and nine ballots; but for one thing, Gillett was already Speaker of the House, and had been since 1919.

"The Only Cloud on the Horizon" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 3, 1923

But, as with the 2022 election, the 1922 election proved disappointing for Republicans. Going into the election with a congressional supermajority, the GOP lost a whopping 75 House seats. Republicans still had a majority, albeit a much narrower one; and a faction of the party — this time, the Progressives — wanted to see changes in party leadership. When the 68th Congress finally began its sessions in December — yes, December!—there were enough Progressives among Republicans to hold the Speaker's chair hostage.

"Wake Up" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Sunday Star, December 2, 1923

Why didn't the 68th Congress's convene until December? Back then, congressional terms began in March, not January. Furthermore, Gillett and the Old Guard, realizing their weakened position, delayed convening the 68th Congress until the fall, by which time President Harding had died and been succeeded by Calvin Coolidge. 

By December, Coolidge wanted to deliver an address on government funding to a joint session of Congress, and he couldn't do that until the House was in session. Gillett couldn't put the election of a Speaker off any longer.

"The Balance of Power" by Roy James in St. Louis Star, December 4, 1923

Progressives coalesced behind a Republican from Racine, Wisconsin, Henry Cooper. On the first ballot, Gillett received 197 votes, Cooper 17, Illinois Republican Martin Madden five, Tennessee Democrat Finis Garrett 195, and "present" four (Cooper, Garrett and Gillett themselves, plus Socialist Victor L. Berger of Wisconsin). Cooper's votes included those of 15 Republicans, plus two Farmer-Labor Congressmen from Minnesota, Ole Kvale and Knud Wefald.

"Trouble at the Club" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 5, 1923

No candidate having achieved the necessary 208 votes, the House proceeded to a second ballot. This time, Gillett held at 197 votes in spite of changing from voting "present" to voting for himself. Cooper's support also held steady at 17 votes, while Garrett picked up a vote. The House adjourned to try again the next day.

"Help, Somebody" by Bill Sykes in Philadelphia Public Ledger, Dec., 1923

Democrat- and Progressive-leaning cartoonists such as Fitzgerald and Sykes took gleefully to their drawing boards.

"Bloc-ed" by Gustavo Bronstrup in San Francisco Chronicle, December 5, 1923

Republican-leaning cartoonists such as Bronstrup castigated the progressive "insurgents," also called "radicals," for thwarting the GOP agenda. In case you're trying to read his cartoon on a handheld device, the ties these insurgents are piling onto the train tracks are labeled "party treason," "party faithlessness," "political bloc," "party treachery," "political perfidy," and "deadlock."

"Anyhow Thy Can't Blame Me" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, December 3, 1923

This cartoon by Clifford Berryman stars a powerful former Speaker of the House, Joe Cannon (R-IL), who had retired from the House at the end of the 67th Congress.

"Quit Your Skidding" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 6, 1923

As a side note, other than Berryman's cartoon of Joe Cannon, none of these cartoons appear to me to feature caricatures of the principals involved. Gillett had thinning hair and sported a goatee; Cooper was wearing a white beard by this time.

"The Fruits of Victory" by Roy James in St. Louis Star, December 6, 1923

Finally, Cooper and the Progressive insurgents accepted promises of a seat on the House Rules Committee and a pledge of opportunity later to freely propose changes to House rules. Speaking on the House floor over another Congressman's objections, Cooper thanked the seventeen who voted for him in each of the previous eight ballots:

"[I]n view of the maledictions — I almost might have said curses — heaped upon the heads of the men who, without asking my consent, proposed me for Speaker — I have never asked anybody to cast a vote for me for the position — I thought I had a right, if not in justice to myself, then in justice to the men who have stood by me so loyally in the midst of this hurricane of slander and abuse, to say a word in extenuation of their offense..."

"Tying His Own Hands" by Grover Page in Louisville Courier-Journal, December 5, 1923

Although two representatives stubbornly continued to vote for Illinois's Martin Madden (who had consistently voted for Gillett), Cooper and most of the other Progressives joined the rest of the Republican Party, and Gillett won the Speakership on the ninth ballot with 215 votes.

"The Elephant Tamer" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., Dec. 1923

Q Toon: Disclaim to Fame

There being already far too many editorial cartoons depicting Congressnewbie-elect* George Santos (R-LI) with a Pinocchio schozzola, my take on the guy here is a reference to the printed disclaimers in television ads where they tell you all the reasons why you shouldn't take the advertiser at their word. The print is deliberately too tiny for you to read (they had to make it smaller as large-screen TVs became more affordable), and, just in case you're sitting up close to the screen, it's gone before you have a chance to read past half of the first line anyway.

I've deemed Mr. Santos worthy of a cartoon for the LGBTQ+ press on the basis of his being gay — what is known in LGBTQ+ circles as a homocon.

The "con" in that contraction is short for "conservative," not "congressman," "con artist" or "convict," but I concede that one could easily be considerably confused.

After his upset win in November, the New York Times revealed that a hell of a lot of what Santos said about himself has been lies. He claimed that his grandparents were survived the Holocaust as Ukrainian Jewish refugees from Belgium; they emigrated to Brazil well before the Nazis came to power. Santos has had to backtrack statements that he's Jewish; he now says that he meant to say he is "Jew-ish." Sources say that he is actually Cathol-ic.

He claimed to have earned a bachelors degree in economics and finance from Baruch College in 2010; the school has no record of it. 

He claimed to have founded an animal rescue charity that he ran from 2013 to 2018; it was never registered with the IRS. He claimed to have worked at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, which has come as a surprise to Citigroup and Goldman Sachs.

Further playing into his purported real estate expertise, Santos claimed, as a landlord, he was hurt by Covid-19 related eviction protections given to renters. He went so far as saying he had not received nearly one year’s worth of rent on 13 properties. Yet, Santos did not list any properties on required financial disclosure forms, only one was mentioned—an apartment in Brazil. What makes this lie particularly spicy is the fact that The Times found that Santos actually faced multiple evictions as a renter, even being fined about $12,000 in a civil judgment.

He claimed to have earned $750,000 plus reaping $1 million to $5 million in dividends as the sole owner of a family firm, a situation that is murky at best. Whatever the firm did and who its clients were, nobody knows.

(I'm not prepared to include the discrepancy between Santos's tweets that his mother was a victim of the 9/11 attacks and that she died of cancer in December of 2016. Plenty of New Yorkers blame their subsequent cancers on the debris of the World Trade Center collapse, and I'm not a medical examiner.)

The fact that the fictitiocity of Mr. Santos's curriculum vitae hasn't come out until after his election may be one sorry result of the gutting of newsroom staffs everywhere. It isn't as if Santos were a complete unknown in 2022; he ran unsuccessfully for the same congressional seat in 2020.

His claims this time around had, moreover, been questioned in the North Shore Leader of Long Island back in September:

...when few others were covering Santos, about his “inexplicable rise” in reported net worth, from essentially nothing in 2020 to as much as $11 million two years later.

The North Shore Leader leans heavily Republican; its publisher is a three-time former candidate for that same congressional seat.

The Leader reluctantly endorsed Santos’s Democratic opponent the next month. “This newspaper would like to endorse a Republican,” it wrote, but Santos “is so bizarre, unprincipled and sketchy that we cannot,” adding, “He boasts like an insecure child — but he’s most likely just a fabulist — a fake.

Now, mendacity is almost a prerequisite for a political career. Joe Biden's 1988 presidential run foundered when he was caught cribbing a British politician's life story as his own. Bill Clinton lied about having sexual relations with an intern.

And of course, neither of them hold a candle to the Prince of Lies who befouled the Oval Office from 2017 to 2021, disgorging some 30,000+ whoppers as President.

Perhaps instead of televised debates between candidates, what this country really needs is requiring every candidate to appear on television, with the fact-checkers from Snopes, Poynter, Politifact, and (not or) FactCheck.org, to defend their prevarications.

With one of those big red X's across the screen and a loud buzzer blaring every time the candidate gives a wrong answer.

______________

* Mr. Santos cannot be sworn into office until after somebody has been elected Speaker of the House. As of this writing, there is no sign of there being a compromise candidate who is acceptable to both the oligarch and fascist wings of the Republican Party.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Normally, I credit illustrations that aren't mine in this blog, but so as not to interrupt the flow of the last sentence in Saturday's post, I didn't explain that last picture.

The picture, titled "Congressional Pugilists," is a woodcut of a February 15, 1798 fight on the floor of Congress between Congressmen Matthew Lyon (DR-VT) and Roger Griswold (Fed.-CT).

On February 15, 1798, Roger Griswold, a US House Representative from Connecticut, attacked Matthew Lyon on the floor of the House of Representatives. Griswold, a Federalist, walked up to Lyon’s desk hitting him about the head and shoulders with his hickory walking stick. Lyon, a Republican from Vermont, responded by grabbing a pair of fireplace tongs and beating Griswold back. A brawl ensued and the men threw fists before Congressional members pulled apart the two.

Griswold’s attack was not a surprise. It followed weeks of bitter turmoil on the floor of Congress over an earlier confrontation between the two men. On January 30, Lyon, a staunch anti-federalist, accused the Connecticut representatives of ignoring the interests of their constituents for their own profit. Griswold took this as a personal insult on his character and retaliated by questioning Lyon’s war record during the Revolution, calling him a coward (Lyon had been temporarily dishonorably discharged from the Continental Army). Lyon’s response was to spit tobacco juice in Griswold’s eye. The Federalists moved to expel Lyon from the House for “gross indecency” spending two weeks debating the issue. When the votes came back along party lines on February 14, the Federalists hadn’t received the necessary two-thirds majority. The following day Griswold defended his honor with his stick. While the brawl resulted from personal attacks of character, the underlying cause of the conflict was Griswold’s support of President John Adams’ military preparations in the event of hostilities with France.