Toon: Hocus Pocus

This year's vice presidential candidates more or less held their own during their debate performance the other evening, or at least that's the conventional wisdom so far. They voiced agreement with each other several times and mostly avoided patently obvious lies on a Trumpian scale.

Which, since Trump got his whopper about Haitian immigrant petivores from his running mate, is remarkable.

For vice presidential candidates, Job Number One is not to fnck up. Check, and check.

Job Number Two is to brown-nose the boss. For JD BH Vance, that meant pretending that the Corrupt Trump Administration™ was a halcyon quadrennium of universal peace, bipartisan comity, and economic miracles. (Pay no attention to Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Nigeria, Sudan, impeachments I and II, Nancy Pelosi tearing up a state of the union speech, cramming dogmatic right-wingers onto the Supreme Court, and a nation struggling to find toilet paper, diapers, infant formula, and places to bury COVID fatalities.) 

Why, Trump even saved Obamacare, and we didn't even notice it at the time! It just goes to show what a modest fellow Donald J. Trump truly is.

Late in the debate, after Vance risibly claimed that Trump “peacefully gave over power on January the 20th,” Tim Walz tried to get Vance to confess that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. But Vance refused to take the bait, replying instead, “Tim, I’m focused on the future.”

His focus on the past is mighty gauzy, that's for sure.

Q Toon: Above All, D'Oh!

While liberals (and not only a few conservatives) were celebrating the defeat of Trumpism at the ballot box last week, right-wingers were able to celebrate the triumph of Trumpism in the courts.

Trump appointee Matthew Kacsmaryk struck down a Biden administration ruling that LGBTQ+ patients were covered under Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) protections against discrimination. The Obama administration had also stipulated these protections for LGBTQ+ patients, only to have them erased by the corrupt Trump administration.

Kacsmaryk's ruling came in a case brought by a pair of doctors — medical professionals, mind you — who think providing professional medical care to transgender patients is icky; and so, backed by a right-wing legal activist group looking for any way to destroy the Affordable Care Act, they went to court.

Now, if you're a transgender person, and you're looking for a doctor, you probably shouldn't go to a doctor who personally objects to treating transgender people. It's highly unlikely that such a doctor has bothered to learn anything about the medical needs peculiar to transgender patients. You might as well ask your ophthalmologist to perform root canal surgery.

But we're talking about Texas here: home to vast, wide open spaces sparsely populated by people who think that Ted Cruz is a marvelous senator. You may not have a lot of choices when looking for a doctor there.

Texas, moreover, is ruled by a Republican Party from Governor Abbott on down who are determined to make health care for transgender persons a crime; so even if you've had a country doctor who is considerate and caring (they call that "woke" in these parts), the best she can do is refer you to someplace out of state. 

If the statehouse hasn't already made that illegal, too. 

Q Toon: Texodus

Texas authorities are spewing hostility in all directions this year.

Where to start?

In a ruling issued September 7th, District Judge Reed O’Connor voided a mandate under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) which requires employers cover certain preventive healthcare products and services if these violate their religious beliefs. ...

In this instance, O’Connor is striking down an ACA requirement that insurers cover pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, which prevents transmission of the HIV virus, as well as contraception, the HPV vaccine (which prevents cervical cancer), and screenings and behavioral counseling for illicit drug use as well as sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). According to O’Connor’s opinion, “compulsory coverage for [these] services violates [employers’] religious beliefs by making them complicit in facilitating homosexual behavior and [illegal] drug use.”

O'Connor, a George W. Bush appointee, would no doubt approve of an employer with a religious belief in Zero Population Growth denying maternal, paternal, and family leave to its employees — to say nothing of suddenly converting to a religion that doesn't believe in modern medicine at all. Flipping off teh gays is just icing on the cake.

Moving along to panel two: 

On the morning of Aug. 30, a 13-year-old transgender boy was pulled out of class by his school’s administrators, his mother says. While his classmates continued their studies, he sat in a conference room at a Texas middle school where a Department of Family and Protective Services investigator began asking personal questions, court records state.

The reason: The state agency was probing his family following a February directive from Gov. Greg Abbott (R) to investigate the use of gender-affirming care in minors as child abuse, according to court documents.

The nearly hour-long interview touched on a range of personal topics — from the teen’s medical history to his gender dysphoria diagnosis to his suicide attempt years back, court records state. The interrogation left the boy — identified under the pseudonym Steve Koe — shaking and distressed, according to a signed declaration from his mother, named as Carol Koe.

And of course, Gov. Greg Abbott is forcibly busing immigrants to New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and elsewhere, as if immigrants had not already been coming there:

Five more busloads of migrants who crossed the border from Mexico into Texas reached New York City on Wednesday as Gov. Greg Abbott escalated his feud with the city’s mayor with a victory lap op-ed in the New York Post.

The latest group of buses is the biggest to reach the East Coast city in one day since Abbott began the policy in early August, according to Fox News.

According to New York officials, Abbott even hired security guards to keep passengers from getting off his buses before they reached the Big Apple (although some did so anyway).

Whatever. All things being equal, there's a good chance that Coyote Abbott was doing some of those immigrants a huge favor. A free ride out of Howdy Arabia doesn't sound like such a terrible thing.

Toon: Pence Flies Off Topic

Considering how many cartoons I drew with Mike Pence in them during the 2016 campaign and in the early years of the Corrupt Trump Administration, it has been a surprisingly long time since I've drawn him lately.

Never fear. After this week's Vice Presidential So-Called Debate, it was only natural that he should make another appearance — if for no other reason than to celebrate the fly that perched on his head for two minutes and nine seconds, during which it held a nation's undivided attention.

The main difference between these so-called debates and an actual debate is that in an actual debate, you have to respect whatever time limit you have been given, which Mike Pence and Donald Typhoid Mary Trump completely ignored. Short of getting the Oscars' orchestra to start playing candidates off when they prattle on too long, however, there seems to be nothing the moderators of these things are able to do.

You don't get to interrupt the person on the other side of the debate, either, but I guess Pence gets points for interrupting Kamala Harris only a small fraction of the number of times Trump interrupted Joe Biden.

But most importantly, You Have To Stick To The Question You Have Been Asked. Wander off into a completely different topic, and you flunk the debate right away. If you're in a spelling bee, you don't get to choose some word you'd rather spell instead.

Harris evaded a couple of Susan Page's questions about whether Democrats were going to "pack" the Supreme Court and so forth, but Mike Pence didn't just wander off topic, he vaulted over the fence, sprinted far afield, and blatantly refused to answer any question when he felt like talking about something else.

38:57 PAGE 

Senator Harris just said that climate change is an existential threat. Vice President Pence, do you believe that climate change poses an existential threat?

39:07 PENCE

As I said, Susan, the climate is changing. We’ll follow the science, but, once again, Senator Harris is denying the fact that they're gonna raise taxes on every American...

Or, at 14:21, Page asked Pence, in light of Trump's current health crisis, "...have you had a conversation or reached an agreement with President Trump about safeguards or procedures when it comes to the issue of presidential disability? And if not, do you think you should?" Pence ignored the question and went on and on about promising a coronavirus vaccine and warning that the 2009 swine flu epidemic would have been a lot worse if it had been a lot worse.

I do wonder about the debate prep these people go through. For the Harris-Pence event, the candidates prepared with former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi playing the part of Senator Harris and former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg standing in for the Vice President.

Do these stand-ins play their parts honestly, or do they act out the partisan caricatures they perceive of the other side?

Do they charge ahead over their allotted time and talk over the candidate they're training?

Yeah, that they probably do.

Q Toon: Selective Service

Members of the Corrupt Trump Administration are enjoying more home-cooked meals these days.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Policy Adviser Stephen Wormtongue Miller were hounded out of Mexican restaurants (¿Qué tan irónico es eso?) over the administration's internment camps for refugee children. The staff at a Virginia restaurant refused service to Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the owner explaining that "the restaurant has certain standards that I feel it has to uphold, such as honesty, and compassion, and cooperation."

Next, Congressman Maxine Waters (D-CA) urged an audience to harass Trump cabinet members whenever they're seen at restaurants, department stores and gas stations. Called to task for that, she resorted to the same Whatabout tactic usually associated with Trump and his Trump l'oeilists.

I won't condone Rep. Waters's advocacy of shocking, shocking behavior, but at least she wasn't calling for people to commit physical assault, "Second Amendment solutions," or armed insurrection. Apparently that sort of thing is just fine with some people.

We are becoming the United States In Name Only. There are those who think it's okay to proclaim "F*¢k Trump" on live national broadcast television, while others are calling the cops to arrest Black Americans for the most innocuous activities. You boycott Chick Fil-A for being antigay, or Sara Lee for being antigun. Either you get all your news from MSNBC, Mother Jones, Huffington Post, Now Next and Colbert, or you get it from Fox, Sinclair, Newsmax, Breitbart, and Russian internet trolls. And promptly repost, retweet, or otherwise regurgitate the juiciest stuff.

That crazy aunt who used to send all those unhinged fwd:fwd:fwd:fwd:fwd:fwd:fwd: emails? She's everyone now.

My husband and I have relatives and friends whom we love dearly, but with whom we just can't discuss anything remotely political any more. It's no problem in the Real World, but becomes trickier on social media. He recently shared a 1947 film that was made to combat the racism, bigotry and divisive rhetoric of the KKK, Jim Crow, and what would later be named McCarthyism; someone then promptly told him it's all the fault of liberal Democrats who refuse to compromise on immigration so they can win this year's midterm elections.

(Trump, McConnell, Ryan and the Tea Party are always willing to talk compromise, you know.)

It is certainly true that a growing number of liberal Democrats see less and less point in compromise. Looking back at eight years of the Barack Obama administration, which started with his naming more members of the opposition party to the cabinet than any administration since World War II, what did his willingness to compromise get us? A health care plan that lacks the comprehensiveness needed for it to fulfill its promise. More arrests of immigrants than any previous administration. A centrist Supreme Court nominee that Republicans refused the courtesy of consideration for nearly a year so that Donald Trump could fill the seat with a doctrinaire conservative instead (and a solid majority who just ruled that hostility to Christians is unconstitutional, but hostility to Muslims is meh.)

Given that Hillary Clinton got 2.8 million more votes than Donald Trump in 2016, and Democratic Senate candidates totaled 6 million more votes than their Republican counterparts, and Republicans still won the presidency and Senate, some frustration was bound to appear. Republicans felt just as aggrieved over the 2008 and 2012 elections, and they had to resort to making up reasons out of thin air why they should have won. (And, by the way, they praised a baker who refused service to Vice President Joe Biden.)

Have we reached the point at which the center no longer holds? Have we been on this road for too long to turn back? Even people who want to blame Donald Trump for bludgeoning civility to death with his non-stop petulant churlishness can't really believe that civility will miraculously come back to life once he's out of office.

So our side will eat at the Red Hen. Your side can eat at Papa John's.

They Did Warn Us

The Republicans did warn us there would be death panels, and sure enough...

Q Toon: Small Minds Rule!

This cartoon could have been one big mess of labels.

I had initially thought that the reporter talking to Pope Francis (I shouldn't need to label him, should I?) ought to have the name of the magazine in which the "small-minded rules" interview appeared. But the magazine's name is American, and having that as the label would be confusing in its own way.

But how to label the cabal in the larger panel of the cartoon? "American Catholic Conservatives"? Admittedly, I have enough room in the panel's pan-handle for that, but it's awfully clunky. It would be clunkier still to label them each individually, although I really can't expect any reader to be able to identify all of them. Two of them have never appeared in my cartoons before.

Here are the answers to the American Catholic Conservative Quiz.

From left to right: Minnesota Archbishop John Nienstedt. Nienstedt has required Catholic students in his diocese to attend lectures expounding the evils of marriage equality, has issued orders to priests that if they disagree with his antigay stands they should shut the hell up about it, and has declared that condoms are the work of the devil.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Is there any need to explain his virulent antigay streak?

House Speaker John Boehner. He "can't imagine" ever supporting gay marriage. And then there's the allegation by former Congressman Bob Ney that on an overseas junket, Boehner said of a staffer, "Yeah, he's a good guy. I think he's a fag." I needed a Catholic politician currently in office (other than Scalia), and Boehner seemed like the most recognizable of the lot -- enough so that I could put him in the back of the crowd.

Former Senator, 2012 presidential candidate, and frothy mixture Rick Santorum, who famously equated same-sex marriage with "man-on-dog" bestiality.

National Organization for Marriage harridan Maggie Gallagher. I've drawn her often enough now that my caricature of her is actually my caricature of my caricature of her. If she hasn't been in your state lately to man the battlements against marriage equality, her face might not be familiar to you; I've been criticized before for not identifying her.

Catholic League blowhard Bill Donohue. This is my first try at his face, which should be familiar to prime-time cable crosstalk-fests and South Park devotées. Whenever anyone slights the Catholic Church in any way, no matter how justified the slight may be, Bill Donohue is on TV quicker than Gloria Allred to defend its integrity to the death.