Apology Tour

After a week of scolding our European allies and listing the E.U. first among our "greatest foes," Donald Joffrey Trump has a top secret meeting with his handler, and his tone changes completely.

Unedited photo of the Trump-Putin press conference live

"I think the U.S. has been foolish, I think we've all been foolish; we all should've had this dialogue long time ago," said Mr. Trump when asked if he holds Russia accountable for anything.

One More RFK Cartoon

Maybe this belongs in the "Editors Who Don't 'Get' Editorial Cartoons" file.

On June 6, 1968, the same day that the Cuero Record of Cuero, Texas, ran this front page:

...a full day after running this front page:

...the editorial page editor, copy editor, editor-in-chief, and all the guys down in the composition room somehow let this syndicated cartoon by Alfred Buescher run on the editorial page:

Q Toon: Legal Briefs

It ain't easy defending Defense of Marriage Acts around the country these days.

State lawyers arguing in favor of Utah's ban of same-sex marriage had planned to cite that Mark Regnerus study so thoroughly dismissed by the U.S. District Court Judge Bernard Freeman in Michigan. Last week, Utah's lawyers wrote the 10th Circuit Court to ask them to forget anybody ever mentioned Mr. Regnerus. (See my cartoon about Mr. Regnerus here.)

Just days later, Southern Ohio District Court Judge Timothy Black ruled that Ohio must recognize marriages of same-sex couples legally performed in other states, stating that "The record before the Court ... is staggeringly devoid of any legitimate justification for the Ohio's ongoing arbitrary discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and, therefore, Ohio's marriage recognition bans are facially unconstitutional and unenforceable under any circumstances."

Further cases are pending in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Wisconsin, Virginia -- well, almost every state that still clings to mixed-sex marriage supremacy. And time is running out for those desperately searching for evidence out of marriage equality pioneers Massachusetts, California, and Iowa that marriage equality leads to juvenile delinquency, the heartbreak of psoriasis, uneven breast growth, crab grass, holy fucking shitballs, or rising sea levels.

Q Toon: I See Your Punt

One thing I like about this cartoon is that it's not just a tribute to a cartoonist who was one of my earliest influences: he just happens to be from St. Paul, Minnesota.

The back story is that Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe spoke out in 2012 against a proposed Minnesota state constitutional amendment excluding gay and lesbian couples from marriage rights; he also spoke out rather emphatically in support of the Ravens' Brendan Ayanbadejo. According to Kluwe's account on Deadspin, Vikings owner Zigi Wilf expressed approval of Kluwe's outspokenness, but head coach Leslie Frazier and Vikings General Manager Rick Spielman cautioned him to tone it way down.

While Kluwe is critical of Frazier and Spielman for being wishy-washy, he portrays Special Teams coordinator Mike Priefer as a completely loathsome bigot:

"We were laughing over one of the recent articles I had written supporting same-sex marriage rights, and one of my teammates made a joking remark about me leading the Pride parade. As we sat down in our chairs, Mike Priefer, in one of the meanest voices I can ever recall hearing, said: 'We should round up all the gays, send them to an island, and then nuke it until it glows.'"

Kluwe alleges that Priefer had it in for him over Kluwe's pro-gay stands, and that's what eventually led to his being cut from the team. Vikings management has launched an investigation into Kluwe's charges.

Q Toon: This He Said, And Nothing More

As Marylanders have been preparing to vote on a referendum to overturn their state's marriage equality law, Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendan Ayanbadejo spoke out strongly against the measure back in March.

"Gay and lesbian couples want to marry for similar reasons as we all do: love and commitment. It’s time to allow them the opportunity to build a family through marriage. It’s a matter of fairness. This is why I’m asking Marylanders to join me in supporting marriage equality for same-sex couples.
“Having the freedom to marry means committed couples and their children will have the same crucial protections under the law as other families. Churches can always have their beliefs, but government is supposed to treat everybody the same, and that’s equal. America is supposed to be the land of the free but in order for this to be true for all of us, then we must have the ability to marry whom we love regardless of their gender."

More recently, Ayanbadejo offered two tickets to the Ravens' first home game of the season this past Monday as part of a Marylanders for Marriage Equality fund raiser. Delegate to the Maryland legislature Rev. Emmett C. Burns, Jr. (D-Baltimore County), who is also founder and pastor of Rising Sun First Baptist Church, wrote a letter to Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti expressing his outrage:

"I am requesting that you take the necessary actions as a National Football League Franchise Owner to inhibit such expressions from your employee and that he be ordered to cease and desist such injurious actions. I know of no other NFL player who has done what Mr. Ayanbadejo is doing."

 Burns cc'ed his letter to the media, and has since learned of at least one other NFL player who agrees with Brendan Ayanbadejo.

"I've also been vocal as hell about the issue of gay marriage so you can take your 'I know of no other NFL player who has done what Mr. Ayanbadejo is doing' and shove it in your close-minded, totally lacking in empathy piehole and choke on it. Asshole."

So wrote Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe in a very profane but otherwise quite eloquent broadside to the preacher-turned-politician-turned-censor.

 "What on earth would possess you to be so mind-boggingly stupid? It baffles me that a man such as yourself, a man who relies on that same First Amendment to pursue your own religious studies without fear of persecution from the state, could somehow justify stifling another person's right to speech. ...

 "'Many of your fans are opposed to such a view and feel it has no place in a sport that is strictly for pride, entertainment, and excitement.' Holy fucking shitballs. Did you seriously just say that, as someone who's 'deeply involved in government task forces on the legacy of slavery in Maryland'? Have you not heard of Kenny Washington? Jackie Robinson? As recently as 1962 the NFL still had segregation, which was only done away with by brave athletes and coaches daring to speak their mind and do the right thing, and you're going to say that political views have 'no place in a sport'?"

It is Kluwe's letter on Deadspin that has turned this story from a local one to a national, but I've chosen to highlight the original center of controversy.

Besides, I'm a Packer fan. It's really, really, really, really, unbelievably, stupendously, insanely, Herculeanly hard to force myself to say anything nice about a Viking.

Remember When the Posse Comitatus Was a Fringe Group?

How are we as a nation supposed to have civil discussion about our political disagreements when elected conservatives are nothing short of fucking nuts?

It's not just idiots like Congressman Todd Akin, who thinks that his only mistake in describing how a woman's hormones will protect her against pregnancy during a "legitimate rape" was using the word "legitimate" when he meant "forcible."

There's Tom Head (pictured at right), who has been a county judge in Lubbock, Texas, since 1999. He was being interviewed on the local Fox affiliate on Monday, and defended a proposed 1.7-cent  tax increase to fund the sheriff's department and courts because Barack Obama's reelection will result in civil war -- and Judge Head wants to be in the front lines of the armed insurrection:

"He's going to try to hand over the sovereignty of the United States to the [United Nations], and what is going to happen when that happens? I'm thinking the worst. Civil unrest, civil disobedience, civil war maybe. We're talking Lexington - Concord - take up arms and get rid of the guy. Okay?

"Now what's going to happen if we do that? He's going to send in U.N. troops. I don't want 'em in Lubbock County, okay? So I'm going to stand in front of their armored personnel carrier and say 'You're not coming in here'. The sheriff, I've already asked him, I said, 'Are you gonna back me?' He said, 'I'll back you.'

"I don't want rookies. I want trained, equipped and seasoned veteran officers to back me."

So now we know what it takes to get one of these Red State Republicans to support a tax increase. *

If this longhorn moron were the only Republican talking about armed insurrection, that would be one thing. But here's something from the Greene County (Virginia) Republican Committee newsletter, written by its editor, Ponch McPhee:

”[W]e shall not have any coarse [sic] but armed revolution should we fail with the power of the vote in November.  This Republic cannot survive for 4 more years underneath this political socialist ideologue.”

This editor could use a copy editor.

Passage of the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") was greeted with death threats against Democrats in Congress and vandalism to their home district offices, including that of Arizona Democrat Gabrielle Giffords -- who would be shot in the head by a deranged assassin a few months later.

Over a year after those shots were fired in Tuscon, the Supreme Court upheld the ACA this past June. Matt Davis, formerly a spokesman for Michigan's Republican Party, sent out an email with the somewhat less radical view of Gee, I Hope It Doesn't Come To That:

"If the Supreme Court's decision Thursday paves the way for unprecedented intrusion into personal decisions, then has the Republic all but ceased to exist? If so, then is armed rebellion today justified? God willing, this oppression will be lifted and America free again before the first shot is fired."

How about an elected Republican that you've actually heard of?

“I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back,” --Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN)

And who can forget Nevada senatorial candidate Sharon Angle proposing "Second Amendment Remedies" to change Congress in 2010?

So much of the vandalism, death threats, and plans for armed insurrection came in response to health care reform -- people willing to take up arms to defend their right to have private health insurance companies price them out of the health insurance as they have kids, grow old, file claims, and become less profitable to the corporate bottom line.

Contrast that to the uproar over state governments' crackdown on union workers these past two years. As vitriolic as the confrontations in Wisconsin and other states were, I don't remember any elected or party officials calling for "Concord - Lexington - take up arms" "Second Amendment remedies."

The most violent reaction? Some jerk poured beer on Wisconsin State Representative Robin Vos (R-Burlington) in a bar.
_________
* UPDATE: I had wondered whether antitax crusader Grover Norquist would approve of Judge Head's little tax hike. Apparently not.

QToon: Don't Say Gay

Republican legislators in Missouri and Tennessee are pushing "Don't Say Gay" bills, which prohibit any mention of homosexuality in sex education or, for that matter, any mention by a gay or lesbian teacher of his or her personal life at school. From a Huffington Post article:

[Missouri] House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Andrew Koenig (R-Winchester) told HuffPost. "It is a pretty political subject. I know there are a lot of parents that do not want the homosexual agenda taught in the schools." Koenig said he has heard of what he called a "homosexual agenda" being taught in elementary school, but when questioned, said he did not know of specific incidents "off the top of my head."

From that same article, there's this little insight into the mindset of the people who come up with this stuff:

State Rep. Steve Cookson (R-Fairdealing), the bill's principal author, was not available for comment. Cookson's assistant, Agnes Rackers, said Cookson rarely speaks to people from outside his southeastern Missouri district.