Q Toon: Prison Break

Out of the blue, Shittiest President Ever Donald Dump  Trump announced on the Ministry of Truth Social that he had commuted the prison sentence of disgraced former Congresscritter George Santos, a.k.a. Anthony Devolder, a.k.a. Kitara Rivera, who was less than three months into serving a five-year sentence on multiple federal charges of identity theft and wire fraud.

Commutation of Santos's sentence also means that he gets out of paying fines and restitution. And if you think that’s outrageous, just wait until you witness Infinitely Corrupt Emperor Trump awarding himself over a quarter billion-with-a-B of your tax dollars while the whole government is shut down.

Santos says that he's a changed man, which should alert everyone in the country to check whether they have just become a victim of identity theft.

"George Santos was somewhat of a 'rogue,' but there are many rogues throughout our Country that aren't forced to serve seven years in prison," Trump wrote. Trump likened what prosecutors had called Santos's "mountain of lies, theft, and fraud" to Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CN) having stolen Vietnam service valor, which he called "far worse than what George Santos did, and at least Santos had the Courage, Conviction, and Intelligence to ALWAYS VOTE REPUBLICAN!"

So there we have the essence of Trumpism: loyalty to Boss Donald gets you absolved of all felonies and misdemeanors, whereas anyone who has ever crossed him gets persecuted by the full weight of the Department Formerly Known As Justice, the masked jack-booted thugs of ICE, and the Red State National Guard.

Should Zohran Mamdani win the mayoralty of New York as expected, count on Generalissimo Shit Dumper to issue an executive order naming George Santos-Devolder-Rivera-YourNameHere Emergency Military Mayor of Occupied New York.

Everything Auld Is New Again

I robbed Mike Peterson of 1923 Christmas cartoons last week, so I'll let him have the year-end ones — except for this one that has nothing to do with New Year's Eve, but presages a certain meme:

"'Twixt Love and Duty" by Sam Armstrong in Tacoma News Tribune, Dec. 31, 1923

Instead, it's time for your humble scribbler's annual review of my favorites of my own work from the rapidly fading year. And as long as we're mimicking memes...

✍

Former Senator from Wisconsin Herb Kohl passed away this week, so I have to acknowledge his career here before the year is up.

in UWM Post, Milwaukee, Wis., Sept. 20, 1988

I featured my home state Senator in only a few cartoons over the years, starting in 1988 during his first run for the seat of retiring Bill Proxmire. There were occasional rumors about the lifelong bachelor's sexuality, and I drew referencing that — once — for the LGBTQ press. 

But for the most part, he only appeared as one senator among others in my cartoons — sometimes with a basketball to make sure that Wisconsin readers would recognize the owner of the Milwaukee Bucks. I might just as well have alluded to his grocery or department stores instead.

Curiously, I never had occasion to draw him for the Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee in the nine years that I drew editorial cartoons there. Even when the week's editorial was about the Milwaukee Bucks, the focus was on the stadium board or local government or the players' union. I drew more cartoons for the Beej about our other Senator, Russ Feingold.

That's because Senator Kohl wasn't one to crave the limelight as much as some other politicians. Yet he worked hard on behalf of the state, and put more skin in the game than most team owners do when it came to keeping the Bucks in his hometown. 

Kohl may be the last politician here to gain popularity across the political spectrum. After a modest but respectable victory over then State Senate Majority Leader Susan Engeleiter in 1988, he carried all but nine Wisconsin counties in 1994, and all but eight in 2000. In his last reelection campaign, in 2006, he won each and every county in the state.

For a billionaire, he had the common touch, and kept in touch with his constituents from day one and then some. This was the first year since 1988 that Mr. Kohl did not send my dad a Christmas card.*

Vayanuach b’shalom, Mr. Kohl.

___________

* I stand corrected: Dad did receive a holiday card from Senator Kohl this year.

Q Toon: There's Always Room for One More

The House Ethics Committee has found that Long Island Republican Representative George Santos, a.k.a. Anthony DeVolder, a.k.a Kitara Rivache, a.k.a. Baron Munchausen,  

knowingly caused his campaign committee to file false or incomplete reports with the Federal Election Commission; used campaign funds for personal purposes; engaged in fraudulent conduct in connection with RedStone Strategies LLC; and engaged in knowing and willful violations of the Ethics in Government Act as it relates to his Financial Disclosure (FD) Statements filed with the House.

According to their investigation, Santos used campaign funds on hotel stays in Atlantic City and Las Vegas, on Botox treatments, and subscribing to the mostly-porn site OnlyFans. Committee Chair Michael Guest (R-MS) and Ranking Member Susan Wild (D-PA) have called for Santos to be expelled from the House, something that has been done to 20 Congressmen in U.S. history — 17 of them for supporting the Confederate States of America during the Civil War.

Comedians are saddened at the prospect of losing such a handy generator of punch lines, but never fear. The House is still swarming with poltroons from Marjorie Taylor Greene to Lauren Boebert to Derrick Van Orden to Gym Jordan.

And now the QAnon Shaman, Jacob Chansley, fresh out of prison for his roll in the January 6 Insurrection, has announced a run for Congress from Arizona.

Well, maybe I shouldn't have said "never fear."

Just before sending this cartoon off to Q Syndicate Monday morning, I came across this cautionary note from John Stewart, discussing Santos on The Problem with Jon Stewart back in January:

“The thing we have to be careful of — and I always caution myself on this, and I ran into this trouble with Trump — is we cannot mistake absurdity for lack of danger. Because it takes people with no shame to do shameful things.”

Okay, then. Be afraid.

Be very afraid.

Q Toon: Goblins, Ghouls, and Grifters

With all that's going to hell in a handbasket in the world today, it may seem frivolous to focus this week's cartoon on the cartoonish Congresscretin from Long Island. And maybe it is.

On the other hand, it's important, at least to his constituents on Long Island, not to overlook the astounding degree of grift and fraud of which George Santos stands accused. According to the federal indictment:

“As alleged, Santos is charged with stealing people’s identities and making charges on his own donors’ credit cards without their authorization, lying to the FEC and, by extension, the public about the financial state of his campaign.  Santos falsely inflated the campaign’s reported receipts with non-existent loans and contributions that were either fabricated or stolen,” stated United States Attorney [Breon] Peace.  “This Office will relentlessly pursue criminal charges against anyone who uses the electoral process as an opportunity to defraud the public and our government institutions.”...

“The defendant — a Congressman — allegedly stole the identities of family members and used the credit card information of political contributors to fraudulently inflate his campaign coffers,” stated District Attorney [Anne T.] Donnelly.  “We thank our partners in the US Attorney’s Office and the FBI as we work together to root out public corruption on Long Island.”

Those of us who did not personally donate to Mr. Santos's 2022 campaign may have to wait until a court of law has judged the case against him, but apparently people who did donate are not granting him the benefit of the doubt. Newsday reports that his 2024 campaign is deep in debt, refunding donors more than it receives.

So let's just say that he certainly appears to regard the leader of his party as a role model. From the indictment:

[B]etween approximately December 2021 and August 2022, Santos devised and executed a fraudulent scheme to steal the personal identity and financial information of contributors to his campaign.  He then charged contributors’ credit cards repeatedly, without their authorization.  Because of these unauthorized transactions, funds were transferred to Santos’s campaign, to the campaigns of other candidates for elected office, and to his own bank account.  To conceal the true source of these funds and to circumvent campaign contribution limits, Santos falsely represented that some of the campaign contributions were made by other persons, such as his relatives or associates, rather than the true cardholders.  Santos did not have authorization to use their names in this way.

For example, in December 2021, one contributor (the “Contributor”) texted Santos and others to make a contribution to his campaign, providing billing information for two credit cards.  In the days after he received the billing information, Santos used the credit card information to make numerous contributions to his campaign and affiliated political committees in amounts exceeding applicable contribution limits, without the Contributor’s knowledge or authorization. To mask the true source of these contributions and thereby circumvent the applicable campaign contribution limits, Santos falsely identified the contributor for one of the charges as one of his relatives.  In the following months, Santos repeatedly charged the Contributor’s credit card without the Contributor’s knowledge or authorization, attempting to make at least $44,800 in charges and repeatedly concealing the true source of funds by falsely listing the source of funds as Santos himself, his relatives and other contributors.  On one occasion, Santos charged $12,000 to the Contributor’s credit card, ultimately transferring the vast majority of that money into his personal bank account.

But unless Santos turns out to be Joe Biden's bastard son, he's likely to remain in Congress until 2025. Even, that is, if he gets found guilty on all charges. Miss Thang knows no shame, and Gym Jordan (or Paul Gosar, or Marginal Taylor Greene, or whomever the MAGAverse vomits up next as its next candidate for Speaker of the House) needs his vote, and Santos knows it.

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?

This Week's Sneak Peek

As promised:

 

Q Toon: Send Out the Clowns

When I drew this cartoon on Sunday night, Donald "Spats" Trump had teased us with the prediction that he would be arrested by the Manhattan District Attorney on Tuesday.

As we now know, the Manhattan D.A. wasn't quite ready to put Diamonique Don in handcuffs just yet. The threat of MAGA mob action, however, prompted D.A. Alvin Bragg to warn against any efforts to intimidate his office.

For the moment, that intimidation is coming from congressional Republicans, several of whom are demanding an investigation of the the D.A.'s office for what they call a politically motivated prosecution. Three House committee chairs and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy have called for Bragg to turn over communications and documents from his office and to testify before their committees. McCarthy also complained, "You are reportedly about to engage in an unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority: the indictment of a former president of the United States!"

So says the political party that hired a prosecutor to investigate charges of realty chicanery in Arkansas, and when all the guy found was semen stains on a dress, they decided, "Okay, then, let's just impeach Bill Clinton for that."

I'm not particularly interested in the whole porn star hush money business in the first place. The alleged transaction in question took place before Trump became president, so we know that he wasn't having Ms. Daniels spank him with rolled up highly classified documents. Stormygate may be great fodder for late-night TV comedy, but it doesn't rise to the level of, say, colluding with Russia during a presidential campaign.

Or pressuring a foreign government to dig up dirt on the family of a president's political rival. 

Or pressuring a state official to pull 11,780 votes out of thin air. 

Or instigating an attempted coup.

But as the most corrupt president in the history of the Republic, Trump is going to be arraigned for something or other one of these days — unprecedented or not. 

The presidential oath of office does not include a free and full pardon for all high crimes and misdemeanors past, present, and future.

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.