Toon: War Is Over If You Won It

Let me start off by saying that I have little patience for reporters, pundits, and politicians who want our military officials to tell them when a war that is impending or underway will be over.

That's not how war works. 

War is by its very nature out of control. The Pentagon generals, admirals, and think tanks can plan, contingency plan, strategize, and contingency strategize 24/7 until the cows come home; but, as we supposedly learned in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the enemy doesn't necessarily cooperate.

I watched most of the press conference by Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff General Dan Caine and Secretary of Defense, War, or Whatever We're Calling This Now Pete Hegseth, and I would have liked to see reporters ask what the goal of Operation Epstein Fuckery is, now that Iran's sclerotic leaders have been blown to smithereens.

Is it to wipe out Iran's defenses? To inspire the youth of Teheran to rise up and overthrow sharia law? Is it to install the highest bidder as viceroy and make Iranian oil production another wholly owned subsidiary of Trump Inc.?

Only time will tell. Hegseth certainly won't.

P.S.: Do not ask Ambassador Mike Huckabee.

This Week's Sneak Peek

In lieu of a snippet from this week's cartoon, here's one from September of 2015, since we were just the other day mentioning Ted Cruz's presidential campaign from that year.

Now he's sporting a scraggly beard, Ambassador Mike Huckabee is hawking sleeping pills on late-night TV, and Kim Davis... well, tune in again later this week.

Saturday through the Looking Glass with Alice

Detail from cartoon in Manitou Messenger, St. Olaf College, Northfield MN, Oct. 23, 1980

This week's syndicated cartoon was a parody of an illustration by Sir John Tenniel of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. That is a source I've drawn from quite a few times over the years: Carroll's psychedelic absurdities fit all manner of political shenanigans, and Tenniel's artwork set the standard for Aliciana. (Besides, one doesn't have to contend with Disney Inc.'s lawyers.)

 

"You Are Old, Ronald Reagan" is a parody of Carroll's parody of a poem; the original extolled the benefits of virtuous living for longevity. 

There was considerable talk about Ronald Reagan's age when he ran for president in 1980. Reagan was 69 years old on Inauguration Day 1981, taking the title of Oldest President At Inauguration from the previous record holder, William Henry Harrison (aged 68 and still the record holder for Briefest Presidency). 

Pikers both! Joe Biden is 78, and thus older today than Reagan was on the day he left office. Trump is 74. And of the other candidates we could have elected, four are older than Reagan was when I drew the above cartoon: Bernie Sanders is 79, Elizabeth Warren is 71, and Michael Bloomberg will celebrate his 79th birthday in February.

Unpublished, February, 1987

Here are two excerpts from a Lewis Carroll themed cartoon I started, but never finished, to comment on the Reagan administration in 1987. The Tower Report depicted the president as disengaged from the Iran-Contra scandal; meanwhile, it was supposedly First Lady Nancy Reagan who had insisted upon the firing of Don Regan as her husband's Chief of Staff.

Unpublished, February, 1987

In Through the Looking Glass, Alice encounters Humpty Dumpty, who sermonizes on his idiosyncratic definition of the word "glory." 

in NorthCountry Journal, Poynette WI, April, 1988

It is not one of the better known episodes in Carroll's books, and certainly not as popular as the nursery rhyme about Mr. Dumpty's fall. I have nevertheless used it twice (here and in a cartoon about Mitt Romney) because it comes in especially handy when Republicans give their policies an intentionally misleading name: such as crafting legislation to make polluting easier and calling it "The Clear Skies Act of 2003," for example.

in Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee, October, 1997

Elsewhere in Through the Looking Glass, Alice's encounter with Tweedledum and Tweedledee is well-known, if only because editorial cartoonists find it the perfect metaphor for any two entities that are supposed to be separate and distinct, but aren't. Indeed, the danger in using such an obvious metaphor increases the possibility that some other cartoonist might use the same image to express the same point about the same news item.

Q Syndicate, March, 2011

One way to avoid that possibility is to take the reference and stretch it out beyond its original limits.

Finally, I made use of Carroll's "Jabberwocky" a couple of times this year, in the background of a pair of cartoons about the presidential and vice presidential debates.

Q Toon: Blame Games

In the space of one week, Americans were shocked and horrified by mass shootings at a Gilroy, California Garlic Festival; an El Paso, Texas Walmart, and a Dayton, Ohio entertainment district.

The Gilroy shooter was interested in white supremacist ideology in the days leading up to his attack. The El Paso gunman left a screed online echoing Donald Trump's anti-immigrant bluster. The Dayton shooter compiled "hit lists" in high school and followed antifa posts on Twitter. What the three had in common was being hate-filled white males wielding rapid-fire semi-automatic rifles that no civilian has a legitimate use for in public.

By the way, I'm not forgetting the seven people killed in a drive-by shooting in Chicago in the same week. I keep seeing opponents of gun control citing this as something gun control advocates are overlooking, as if additional gun violence wouldn't buttress the argument in favor of stricter, stronger, and more stringently enforced gun control. As far as I'm concerned, this qualifies as a mass shooting, terrorism, whatever you want to call it; the only difference is the color of the gunman's skin.

I've singled out House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) in this cartoon, but he's not the only Republican to try distracting attention from the U.S.'s gun problem by blaming violence in video games. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (who has graced this blog before) did the same, also faulting the lack of mandated prayer in schools. And an Ohio Republican, State Rep. Candice Keller, went so far as to blame "transgender, homosexual marriage and drag queen advocates, and Mike Huckabee (R-Fox News) said this kind of thing wouldn't happen if people were religious.

And, of course, whoever wrote Donald Trump's televised speech Monday morning also cited video games, mental illness, and a bunch of other stuff that weren't guns.

Now, while it would strain credulity to think that these gunmen have never played video games, cleverer cartoonists than I have pointed out that video games are hugely popular from Portugal to Japan to Australia to Argentina to Canada, yet nowhere else have they resulted in hundreds of mass shootings every year. Not even close.

The American Psychological Association has so far failed to list racism, bigotry, misogyny, antifa sympathies, or gang membership as mental illnesses, and right-wing media would howl in protest if they did. (Yes, even in the case of gang membership. Right-wing media wouldn't want gang-bangers getting to plead insanity in court.) None of this week's gunmen were ever diagnosed with any mental illness, and even if they had, one of Trump's first executive actions as president was to repeal a regulation preventing people with certain mental health issues from buying firearms.

Nor do I think marriage equality crossed the minds of any of this week's gunmen. The Pulse shooter was antigay to be sure, but blaming "transgender, homosexual marriage and drag queen advocates" for that 2016 massacre is akin to blaming wife-beating on her serving chicken when he wanted steak.

As for religious values, there is a great deal to be said for spirituality, and I'd like to see more people show up in the church, synagogue, mosque, prayer room, what have you, of their choice. But much evil has been done in God's name as well: ISIS, Boko Haram, the Klan, the Irish Republican Army, the Crusaders, Jehu, Hazael and Elisha all pray or prayed quite regularly.

Republicans can't keep arguing that gun laws don't work and proposing instead a whole bunch of other solutions that won't work. Requiring a clean bill of mental health to own a gun might cut down on some of the carnage, but you can't force people to pray and you can't outlaw "Call of Duty."

To paraphrase a certain firearms lobby, video games don't kill people. Guns kill people.

Q Toon: Through the Eye of the Needle

I take a risk any time I draw a cartoon like this one on the weekend before a presidential primary or caucus, knowing it won't be published until after the votes are counted and their entrails analyzed beyond recognition.

It's too bad I didn't draw it a week earlier. I have been at a loss to understand the fulsome praise heaped upon Donald "Two Corinthians" Trump by Liberty University President Jerry Falwell, Jr. (I didn't realize they had a history together.). Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Dallas has also come as close as he can get to officially endorsing Trump without risking his megachurch's tax-exempt status (and I guess those two have no history together to explain what Jeffress sees in The Donald). An NBC News/Survey Monkey poll taken before the Iowa caucuses led one to believe that evangelicals were "flocking to Trump."

Among white evangelical Republican voters nationally, Trump earned the support of 37 percent, while Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, whose father is a pastor and has played a key role in recruiting faith leaders to support his son, is at 20 percent. In the same survey conducted the previous week, Cruz registered 9 percentage points higher. Below the top two contenders, Ben Carson earned 11 percent among evangelicals, and Marco Rubio took 10 percent.

What do these people who think President Obama is the Antichrist see in the guy often described as a thrice-married casino mogul? It can't be his powers of insightful exegesis:

Trump was raised Presbyterian and has often fumbled in his attempts to appeal to Christian and Evangelical voters. He declined to discuss his favorite Bible verse in August, after claiming the Bible was his all-time favorite book. He later tried to recite a verse that didn't actually occur in the Bible. He has also said he never asks God for forgiveness, and when asked which book of the Bible was his favorite, he said he likes the Old and New Testament equally.

On the other hand, they probably appreciated his promise to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn the current Court's rulings for marriage equality. The Muslim-bashing didn't hurt his standing with them, either.

But the evangelicals could get that stuff from nearly every one of the candidates in the Republican party. They bought it from Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum before -- two Iowa caucus victors who are now stranded in the wilderness wondering how they let some Richie Rich from Noo Yoark Sitty swipe their schtick.

Q Toon: Ossified Officers' Club

President Obama last week nominated Eric K. Fanning to be Secretary of the Army. Fanning, 47, has held a variety of Pentagon posts throughout the Obama administration. If confirmed, Fanning would be the first openly gay head of any branch of the U.S. military.

Presidential wannabe Mike Huckabee (R-1947) reacted to Fanning's nomination as if Obama had named Neil Patrick Harris to the post.

"It's clear President Obama is more interested in appeasing America's homosexuals than honoring America's heroes," the former Arkansas governor said in a statement released by his campaign. "Veterans suicide is out-of-control and military readiness is dangerously low, yet Obama is so obsessed with pandering to liberal interest groups he's nominated an openly gay civilian to run the Army. Homosexuality is not a job qualification. The U.S. military is designed to keep Americans safe and complete combat missions, not conduct social experiments."

Putting aside the detail that Veterans' Affairs is a completely different cabinet department these days, I'd like to address a few words to the former Arkansas governor.

Now, then, Mr. Huckabee, I lampooned you last week. You may be kind of fun to draw, and you may need all the publicity you can get, but I only get one opportunity per week to draw something for syndication. You don't get to be in my cartoon two weeks in a row just because you found something else to get your homophobic panties in a bunch about.

Try pacing yourself. Even if you have to drop out of the race before the Iowa caucuses, that's still four months away.

Let Rick Santorum throw one of these antigay tantrums. I haven't drawn him since 2012, and his campaign probably won't even make it to Columbus Day. Or perhaps Lindsey Graham, who, unlike all the other Republicans left in the race, has some military service in his record. I'm sure he would love the attention as well, although I hear he might be a little soft on the antigay schtick.

So anyway, Mike, I appreciate your kind consideration in trying to keep me supplied with fodder for my LGBT cartoons, but you really are in danger of becoming a Johnny One-Note, and after a while, that's just no fun to draw.

Q Toon: In Chains for Christ

At long last, it's finally time for my Kim Davis cartoon. Now that every other editorial cartoonist in the country has taken all the good cartoon ideas and has moved on to last night's performance of A Chorus Line, I'm getting around to sifting through the ideas that are left.

At the AAEC convention earlier this month, I was asked several times about the Kim Davis story, comments usually running along the vein of "Boy, you must be having a lot of fun with her!" And while three of my cartoons in July and August were on issues related to local clerks and so-called religious liberty, the cartoons I'd sent to my editors before leaving for the convention were on other topics.

So, while I was away from my drawing board, Davis went into and out of prison, greeted by an adoring throng waving their crosses. Just the sort of crowd someone seeking to be America's Evangelist In Chief would want to get in front of, so there was Arkansas Minister-Governor Mike Huckabee, who vowed to go to jail in Davis's place, now that she was being let out anyway.

Huckabee wasn't the only presidential contender there to bask in the adulation of the theocratic masses, but he was the only one getting onto that stage, if his folks had anything to do about it. And they did.

The Long Road to Overnight Victory: Part III

Part 3: The Republicans Don't

In today's Walkback Wednesday feature, we look at the Republican party's role in doing everything possible to thwart marriage equality, marriage equivalence, marriage parity, marriage approximation, and on and on and on.

Once the federal "Defense of Marriage Act" was passed in 1996, battles over marriage equality were mainly fought on the state and local level. Nationally, it was a big issue for the religious right, but as for congressmen and senators, it was just one more component of an antigay agenda along with keeping gays out of the military and the Boy Scouts, and making sure we couldn't adopt children. Oh, and there was impeaching President Clinton to keep Republicans busy.

There are a few antigay politicians in the above cartoon from January, 1998: Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC), Pat Buchanan, Congressman Bob Barr (R-GA), and House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX) are closest to the foreground. Barr was the author of the DOMA, although he would repudiate it as presidential candidate of the Libertarian Party ten years after this cartoon was drawn.

With the election (by five lawyers) of a president who was a friend of the religious right, Republicans continued their pushback against marriage equality. When he came up for reelection, George W. Bush, with his Brain Karl Rove (and gay quisling Ken Mehlman) needed an issue to fire up his base, and Republicans were ready, willing and eager to run with it:

A more liberal Republican, namely California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who didn't have to worry as much about appealing to Christian conservatives as Republicans who might aspire to the highest office in the land do, dared to warm to the idea of domestic partnerships. But that was about as far as it went.

Schwarzenegger, however, was pretty much an anomaly in the Republican party. He was never going to run for office outside of California, and Republicans were relieved just to have one of their own in charge of a solidly blue state, so he didn't have to toe the GOP's hard-core antigay line. The party's presidential hopefuls last time around, on the other hand, were not at all shy in that regard.

It didn't take much to remind LGBT voters that while it didn't make any difference which Republican ended up getting nominated for president, it makes a world of difference who sits in the Oval Office when the election is over.

Q Toon: P.E. Eww

If you're a public official, and you want to tell a joke, it had better be a good one. If the joke is even slightly off, we inkslingers may never let you hear the end of it.

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee was regaling guests at a religious broadcasters' conference with his God Guns Grits 'n' Gravy Elitist opinion of  Caitlyn Jenner, né Bruce.

"Now I wish that someone told me when I was in high school that I could have felt like a woman when it came time to take showers in P.E. I'm pretty sure that I would have found my feminine side and said, 'Coach, I think I'd rather shower with the girls today.'"

I'd say that at least Huckabee was finding some facility to fret over besides public rest rooms, the obsession of every conservative from Phyllis Schlafly to Larry Craig, except that he used "Omigosh There'll Be Trannies Flashing Kids In The Lavatory!" as the lead-in to his shower joke.

I'm just guessing, but I'd be willing to bet that Jenner has given more thought to what it means to be a man or a woman than Huckabee has. And to put it in language that even the former Governor might understand, I'm sure that Jenner didn't put herself through all this public notoriety just so she could enjoy the longer lines for the ladies' room.

Q Toon: Contempt of Court

In discussing last week's "Ground Hog Day" cartoon, I mentioned that state lawmakers were proposing new anti-marriage laws in anticipation of the Supreme Court ruling for marriage equality.

The Texas legislature is considering a bill by Rep. Cecil Bell (R-Waller Co.) to garnish the salary of any government official who issues a marriage license to a same sex couple or in any way respects the rights of such a couple married out of state.

In Oklahoma, well-known homophobe Sally Kern (R-Oklahoma City) has vomited forth bills that states that “No employee of this state and no employee of any local governmental entity shall officially recognize, grant or enforce a same-sex marriage license and continue to receive a salary, pension or other employee benefit at the expense of taxpayers of this state.”

Kern's bills are on such constitutionally shaky ground that they include a provision demanding that state courts automatically dismiss any legal challenge to them. (Why, if only Obamacare or McCain-Feingold had had such a provision!)

Q Syndicate✒Jan 29, 2015

Kern's fellow representative Todd Russ (R-Cordell) tries another tack around the court with a bill prohibiting government officials from issuing any marriage licenses -- and nobody but "an ordained or authorized preacher or minister of the Gospel, priest or other ecclesiastical dignitary of any denomination" would be allowed to perform marriages and issue "marriage certificates." If you're agnostic or atheist couple, you're shit out of luck (but then, living in sin shouldn't bother you anyway.) You can bet that there's something in the bill's language to disallow certificates of same-sex couples even if signed by clergy.

When I initially proposed this week's cartoon idea to the editors at Q Syndicate, I had the TV host wondering whether there was something unconstitutional about the laws proposed by my fictional state lawmaker, Jim Beautron (R-Menda City). I realized that I needed to take a different tack when I read that Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) is pushing a constitutional amendment prohibiting American courts from overturning anti-marriage laws.

Governor Bobby Jindal (R-LA) likes Cruz's idea. On the flip side of the coin, presidential aspirant Mike Huckabee (R-AR) thinks states should just give American courts the finger and ignore any ruling that they don't like. I guess if you think that the Constitution is irrelevant, why bother amending it?

Of course, I know that these elected officials (R-Wherever) don't think the Constitution is irrelevant. They still believe that the Constitution explicitly prohibits whatever President Obama does from the milk he pours on his breakfast cereal to the pajamas he wears to bed. And it will be no different if Hilary Clinton is president.

But these you-can't-challenge-my-law provisions and let's-pretend-courts-don't-matter arguments are pretty clear signs that the Republicans making them know they don't have a legal leg to stand on.

Q Toon: Running on Empty

My cartoons, although posted on Thursdays, are drawn on Sunday, so mine is one of only two or three cartoons on the AAEC site today that are not about the assassinations at Charlie Hebdo.

The word cloud on the AAEC site this morning

So, soldiering bravely on:

Q Syndicate✒Jan 8, 2015

I've already explained in This Week's Sneak Peek the difficulty in determining what to draw about when all the newspapers, web sites and blogs I scour for inspiration are reminiscing about the year that is Old News. This time, I leaped right over the New Year and into the next one.

But with an awful lot of Old Baggage.

Q Toon: GOP Line-up

Unless the Republicans end up going for Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, or Rick Santorum, this could well be my first cartoon about next year's GOP nominee for President.

Santorum, for anyone struggling to figure out who is who in the cartoon, is the one barely in the frame. When I draw smut, I try to be tasteful about it.

This Week's Q Cartoon

It pisses off my husband when I draw nurses in these old-fashioned caps, but...

For the sake of those readers who think this issue is irrelevant, or giving gays and lesbians special rights, or just some socialist way to tyrannize religious hospitals, consider the case of Clay and his partner, Harold:

Clay and his partner of 20 years, Harold, lived in California. Clay and Harold made diligent efforts to protect their legal rights, and had their legal paperwork in place—wills, powers of attorney, and medical directives, all naming each other. Harold was 88 years old and in frail medical condition, but still living at home with Clay, 77, who was in good health.

One evening, Harold fell down the front steps of their home and was taken to the hospital. Based on their medical directives alone, Clay should have been consulted in Harold’s care from the first moment. Tragically, county and health care workers instead refused to allow Clay to see Harold in the hospital. The county then ultimately went one step further by isolating the couple from each other, placing the men in separate nursing homes.

Ignoring Clay’s significant role in Harold’s life, the county continued to treat Harold like he had no family and went to court seeking the power to make financial decisions on his behalf. Outrageously, the county represented to the judge that Clay was merely Harold’s “roommate.” The court denied their efforts, but did grant the county limited access to one of Harold’s bank accounts to pay for his care.

What happened next is even more chilling: without authority, without determining the value of Clay and Harold’s possessions accumulated over the course of their 20 years together or making any effort to determine which items belonged to whom, the county took everything Harold and Clay owned and auctioned off all of their belongings. Adding further insult to grave injury, the county removed Clay from his home and confined him to a nursing home against his will. The county workers then terminated Clay and Harold's lease and surrendered the home they had shared for many years to the landlord.

This happened in California, not Hicksburg, Mississippi or Baptists' Perch, North Carolina, and to a couple who had beforehand done everything possible under the law to protect their mutual interests in exactly such an eventuality. Younger couples have had to deal with estranged parents reappearing to keep them apart when one is in the hospital, but the NCLR summary indicates that none of Harold's relatives intervened to enforce their antigay religious convictions on the couple; I assume that at Harold's age, his parents' approval of his lifestyle was a moot point.

~ ~
Yesterday, I challenged readers to figure out who the standing nurse was patterned after. She's an amalgamation of former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (who recently spoke out against allowing same-sex couples to adopt on the grounds that children are not puppies, and has likened homosexuality to drug use and incest) and Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Since Nurse Ratched wore an old-fashioned nurse cap in the film, that's how I drew her. And since she had to wear one, so, it followed, should any other nurse in this hospital.

As troublesome as those old-fashioned nurse caps are to my husband -- a nurse -- what offended him even more was that neither nurse appears to be busy. So the next time I draw a nurse discussing politics (or sex, or Ricky Martin, or whatever), he or she will simultaneously be lifting a 350-lb. patient out of bed, stopping a bleeder, and administering CPR. Without any old-fashioned cap.