Q Toon: Democratic Response

Republicans in this election cycle can't run on the economy, what with an unpopular war started by the most unpopular president ever that has sent fuel prices ballooning, furthering inflation sparked by his ill-conceived tariffs. Many of them are therefore running on culture war issues, number one among them trans-bashing.

(Alabama's Tommy Bubbaville has tried to expand the culture war to include airplane pilots who are "furries" in their off hours. I'm not sure where he came up with that one, although he claimed, "You can't make this stuff up." We know it's not something he read somewhere, because he proudly announced that in order to keep from being confused, he doesn't read. Perhaps he vaguely remembers seeing Chewbacca at the controls of one of them flyin' machine contraptions a while back.)

In a perfect world, Democrats would ignore Republican efforts to divert the electorate's attention away from their party's disastrous record. Instead, we live in a world where Republican-slanted media and Elon Musk-funded PACs doggedly try to keep distracting voters toward Republican talking points.

James Talarico, a target of one of Musk's "He's For They/Them Not You/Us" ads, is running to become the first Democratic Senator from Texas since Talarico was four years old. This week Talarico told  Fox Noise, "As a former public school teacher, I care a lot about our student athletes. I care a lot about our students. And so I will oppose trans athletes playing in girls' sports if it risks safety or fairness.”

Talarico's decision to throw trans student athletes to the wolves has disappointed his trans supporters who had been attracted to his earlier sympathy for the trans community.

As a state representative, Talarico voted against GOP restrictions barring trans student-athletes from playing on sports teams that align with their gender identity. He said such proposals amounted to a push for the government to "police people's private parts" and would harm "the least of these," a reference to Jesus' remarks in scripture. And he compared the justifications offered for the bans — that trans athletes had a genetic advantage and excluding them would promote safety — to rationales historically used to bar Black athletes from competing in professional sports.

Ohio gubernatorial candidate Dr. Amy Acton announced that she " doesn't support boys playing in girls' sports," and Representative Marcy Kapture voted for a Republican bill to require schools to notify parents of a student's request to change their gender, pronouns, or preferred name, and to deny federal funding to schools that "teach or advance concepts related to gender identity." 

Rob Sand, the Democratic candidate for governor in Iowa, has also come out against transgender athletes participating in school sports, although he also promises to veto any “stupid culture-war-Trump bill”

Iowa's Republican legislature has no intention of rescinding its 2022 law criminalizing transgender athletes, so it's not an issue likely to face the state's next governor. At a campaign stop in September, Sand echoed Talarico's faith-based stand on transgender rights in general:

“Now, I’ve been clear … the civil rights repeal for transgender people was wrong,” Sand said. “It was wrong. You should not be fired from your job in the state of Iowa for being different. You should not be evicted from your apartment in the state of Iowa for being different.

“This to me is a question of faith. My faith is all about the outcast, it’s all about the people who are pushed aside, who are not favored. And I think that we have to be making Iowa a place where state government is as welcoming as Iowans are.” 

When pressed at the same event to justify his position on transgender athletes, Sand sidestepped the question.

“This is a conversation I’m interested in having,” he said instead. “I’ve met with One Iowa, I’ve talked to a lot of other trans advocates, and I’m listening to them. I’m open-minded about it. I don’t have anything different to say than what I’ve said before. But again, hearing from you is important, and I don’t think that we recognize how important it is that we just talk to each other. Right?

“Everybody is welcome here. Everybody is welcome at this event, everybody should feel welcome in the state of Iowa. I might not offer you full agreement with everything you believe … I’m doing my best to do what I think is the right thing to do, but I also want to make sure that it’s doing the right thing. Which is why I’m interested in listening to people about that, and I’m going to continue to listen to people.”

As Sand moved on to the next questioner, someone in the back of the crowd called out, “Coward!” Sand heard the voice, but apparently misheard the word, thinking it was “louder.”

These are close races, and Democrats can't really afford to turn off the 1% of voters who are trans (even if the percentage of voters who are trans student athletes is much smaller). Many of us in the cisgender 99% realize that when Republicans get tired of demonizing transgender persons, they will come after some other minority — gays, lesbians, bisexuals, Roma, Latinos (oops, sorry, we're already there), Moslems (ibid.), atheists, Quakers, Unitarians, countertenors, low-T southpaws, vegan paraplegics,  type AB– librarians...

And of course, furries.

The Long, Slow Race to the Finish

Our Graphical History Tour today finds the 1924 election campaigns heading into the final stretch, wrapping it up with a bow, and firing their last salvos. 

"Trying to Attract the Attention of the Enemy" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, Oct. 17, 1924

From John McCutcheon's perch in the Republican stands, the U.S. presidential contest had come down to one between his party's incumbent President Calvin Coolidge and its defector to the Progressive Party, Senator Robert LaFollette. He cast Democratic nominee John Davis as the third-party also-ran.

"I Don't Believe That Chap Can Read" by Clifford Berryman in Washington [DC] Evening Star, Oct. 6, 1924

Democratic partisans put a brave face on things — such was their job, after all — in spite of polls and straw votes giving a marked advantage to the Republicans.

Straw votes in presidential contests date back one century further to 1824; and if the press generally reported them as indicating present mood rather than forecasting the official vote, editorial cartoonists were not alone in reading them as predictions. The straw polls might be limited to the students at a particular university, or members of a certain profession, or just passers-by at a busy street corner.

Opinion polls came along more recently, and supposedly were more scientific; the Literary Digest poll, launched in 1916, had successfully predicted the presidential races in that year and 1920. The first truly national poll, the Literary Digest mailed post cards around the country and tallied the results of those that were returned.

"The Dark Outlook" by Tom Foley in Minneapolis Daily Star, Oct. 20, 1924

Tom Foley, who favored LaFollette, posed a scenario that minimized Republicans' chances by overstating LaFollette's and Davis's. In the end, LaFollette carried only his home state of Wisconsin; and Davis failed to win New Mexico, Arizona, Missouri, West Virginia, Maryland, or Delaware.

I won't even get into Foley's forecast of Upper Michigan casting separate electoral votes from Lower Michigan.

"Who Was It Who Traded Their Birthright..." by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, Oct. 31, 1924

For the time being, Republicans' main worry was the possibility that LaFollette's candidacy could result in none of the three major presidential candidates reaching an electoral college majority. In that case, the election of a President would be decided in the House of Representatives, and the Vice President chosen in the Senate.

By the way, the answer to Darling's question was Esav Ben-Yitzchak, if you're wondering.

"What It Will Mean" by Charles Kuhn in Indianapolis News, Oct. 24, 1924

GOP stalwart Charles Kuhn devoted nearly a dozen cartoons in October of 1924 to dire predictions of chicanery and chaos if the election were to be given to Congress to decide. (And still Kuhn had not ventured a comment on the Klan-ridden statewide races in his home state of Indiana.)

The Republican congressional majorities in both houses included some Progressives who could not be counted on to support Calvin Coolidge. Prominent Progressives Hiram Johnson (R-CA) and William Borah (R-ID) promised to support the Republican ticket, but Iowa Senator Smith W. Brookhart stirred things up by declaring himself for LaFollette.

"They've All Gone Wrong But Me" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, Oct. 3, 1924

Charles Kuhn may have had no opinions about Indiana politics in the summer and fall of 1924, but other editorial cartoonists were happy to take note of races close to home. In Ohio, Governor Alvin "Honest Vic" Donahey had some reliable campaign help as he ran for a second term...

"This Looks Pretty Good to Me" by James "Hal" Donahey in Cleveland Plain Dealer, Oct. 14, 1924

His younger brother, James Harrison Donahey, was the front page editorial cartoonist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. From that perch, "Hal" repeatedly sang the praises of his older brother...

"My, What a Clatter" by James H. Donahey in Cleveland Plain Dealer, Oct. 24, 1924

...and pooh-poohed the corruption charges against "Honest Vic" made by his Republican opponent, former Governor Harry L. Davis. (I could have made a post here made up of Donahey's in-kind contributions to his brother's campaign, but I might not have been able to come up with much to say about the cartoons after the first four or five of them.)

"The Little Stick" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Oct. 4, 1924

Speaking of family, New York Republicans nominated as their gubernatorial candidate against Democrat Al Smith Theodore Roosevelt III, son of the late president. Sullied by the Teapot Dome scandal while Assistant Secretary of the Navy in the Harding administration but cleared of any wrong-doing, he returned criticism from his cousin Franklin: "He's a maverick! He does not wear the brand of our family."

"With All the Heirlooms" by Rollin Kirby in New York World, Sept. 26, 1924

As we discussed last week, elections were held across the pond in the United Kingdom, too. The specific issues forcing Ramsay MacDonald's Labour government to stand for election were reported in the U.S. press, but I'm not finding many American cartoons getting into the particulars.

"We Got Company" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. Oct. 16, 1925

There was certainly delight in some quarters, however, at his fall. 

"Well, Well, Still They Come" by Dorman Smith for NEA, ca. Oct. 25, 1924

Germany was headed for a snap election as well. The Reichstag was dissolved on October 20, with elections set for December 7. Given that it was Germany's second election that year, Americans probably greeted the news with a yawn — just another change of government in hapless Deutschland — but Germany was in fact just then entering into its so-called "Glückliche Zwanzigers," the brief period of economic recovery that ended with the global crash at decade's end.

"The Dancing-Master and the Bag-Piper" by K.A. Suvanto in Daily Worker, Chicago, Oct. 8, 1924

If you caught last week's sampling of cartoons by Montreal Star cartoonist A.G. Racey, you remember that the opposition to the Labour government charged that MacDonald failed to prosecute a communist newspaper for advocating mutiny in his majesty’s armed services and that he was an unwitting dupe of Soviet Russia. 

The commies at the Daily Worker in Chicago argued instead that MacDonald was a stooge of British capitalists.

"Took Me Just Three Weeks" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, Oct. 30, 1924 

The British Parliament dissolved on October 9, and its Conservative Party won in a landslide on October 29. This Berryman cartoon just goes to show that Americans' longing for a shorter election season is nothing new.

And yet, our election season just keeps getting longer and longer, anyway.

Toon: Pet Peeve au Poivre

Allow me to chime in to the tintinnabulation of the Trump-Harris Debate Cartoons.

If there is a God, future historians will look back upon Corrupt Former President Donald Trump's clinging — doggedly — to the false allegation that Haitian immigrants have been killing and eating the household pets of Springfield, Ohio, as the moment that Trumpism died.

It's a lie told by Trump's running mate, J.D. Bowman Hamel Vance, picked up from some racist Ohioan's social media spewage, repeated from the rumors told about Vietnamese refugees in the 1970's, hearkening back to the old wives' tales slandering Chinese immigrants in the 1800's.

Given that history, it's probably overly optimistic to hope that the cost of keeping such a racist trope alive will be an ignominious end to Trumpism — which, after all, thrives on that sort of bilious excreta.

The Springfield angle to the story apparently grew out of the nativist uproar after an unlicensed driver from Springfield's Haitian immigrant community collided his minivan into a school bus last year, causing the death of an 11-year-old white boy. White Springfielders demanded that their city council stop any more Haitian refugees from coming to their town, and spread horror tales demonizing the Haitians already there.

At the city’s Haitian Community Help and Support Center on Wednesday, Rose-Thamar Joseph said many of the roughly 15,000 immigrants who arrived in the past few years were drawn by good jobs and the city’s relative affordability. But a rising sense of unease has crept in as longtime residents increasingly bristle at newcomers taking jobs at factories, driving up housing costs, worsening traffic and straining city services.

To their credit, the bereaved parents of that 11-year-old boy have spoken out against politicians and rabble-rousers exploiting their tragedy to stoke fear and hatred. The Father, Nathan Clark, went so far as to tell a city hall forum that he would rather his son had been killed by a 60-year-old white man, because "if that guy killed my 11-year-old son, the incessant group of hate-spewing people would leave us alone."

“This needs to stop now. [Politicians] can vomit all the hate they want about illegal immigrants, the border crisis and even untrue claims about fluffy pets being ravaged and eaten by community members,” Clark said. “However, they are not allowed, nor have they ever been allowed, to mention Aiden Clark from Springfield, Ohio. I will listen to them one more time — to hear their apologies.”

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By the way, those Haitian immigrants are not in Springfield illegally, and Trump did not actually call them "illegals" in that part of the debate. But he has devoted much of his political career to making "illegal" into an noun, synonymous with "immigrant."

As far as I'm concerned, Mr. Trump's 34 felony convictions make him an "illegal." And, as I told a Trump loyalist a while back, "You may be comfortable voting for an illegal. I'm not."

August Four the People

You've been waiting all month to find out what cartoons I drew in Augusts past, I can tell. So let's rummage around in the old storage bin and see what we can find, shall we?

Back in May, I posted a cartoon I'd posted of Ronald Reagan preparing to tell jokes at the funeral of U.S.-Soviet détente. When I had selected it for that week's Graphical History Tour, I thought I had drawn it after Reagan's "We begin the bombing in five minutes" joke. Looking the quotation up, however, I found that I must have drawn the cartoon about something else he said.

August, 1984

This was the cartoon I drew shortly after the actual bombing joke.

In case you're not familiar with the story, Reagan was in the habit of making pretend announcements during the sound checks before his television and radio speeches. The sound checks were not confined to the studio, but went out to all the stations that would carry the speech live. Usually, the media overlooked those flippant pseudo-announcements except for the technicians checking for feedback, hiss, and warble.

This time, ears perked up at Reagan's joke: "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes." In spite of a standing agreement with the media that Reagan's mic check jests would be their little secret, this one leaked out, was reported by Gannett newspapers, and became world news.

The Soviet government (should I have explained that this was when Constantin Chernenko was spending the last few months in his mortal coil being President of the U.S.S.R.?) was officially mum about the incident, but their state media condemned Reagan's joke as "unprecedently hostile," and proof that he wasn't interested in improving U.S.-Russia relations. Some unknown Soviet officer in Vladivostok returned the joke by sending a coded message that "We now embark on military action against the U.S. forces," knowing the message would be intercepted by U.S. intelligence. U.S. and Japanese militaries were briefly on high alert, but afterward, everybody had a good laugh over it.

Just kidding.

I still haven't figured out what incident prompted my earlier cartoon, but it was the better one; and that's why it was the one printed in the first UW-Parkside Ranger of the fall semester rather than this one.

Any cartoon that depicts bullets flying at a president of the United States (or any other real person for that matter) runs the risk of becoming in bad taste if that person does in fact get shot. Which, as you surely know, Ronald Reagan had been three months into his first term. Even though Reagan was known for his roles in B-grade western movies, Americans don't like watching their leaders get shot at.

Could've been why no TV network would broadcast Reagan's film The Killers (1964) while he was president. 

in Journal Times, Racine Wis., August 22, 1994

In June of 1994, I confidently drew a cartoon assuming that the Republican Party would have a tough time finding a candidate to run against my district's Democratic Congressman, Peter Barca. Barca had won a special election one year earlier to succeed eleven-term Rep. Les Aspin after the latter was appointed Bill Clinton's first Secretary of Defense.

As it turned out, the 1994 election would see a rematch between Kenoshan Barca and Mark Neumann, a real estate developer from Janesville. And Neumann would coast to victory in the Gingrich-led Republican "Contract with America" wave in November, putting an end to the longest stretch of having Democrats in the First Congressional District seat.

Neumann was (and presumably still is) a hard-line right-winger, solidly anti-abortion and against President Bill Clinton's attempt to reform the U.S. health care system. The GOP talking point against the Clinton reforms was that Americans would be denied the right to make their own health care choices — ignoring that their Contract with America also called for denying women the right to make their own reproductive health care choices.

Which was a fine and dandy campaign slogan for Republicans until their Supreme Court justices granted their wish and Republicans had to deal with women upset by government control over their uteri.

Wisconsin's First Congressional District has had two Congressmen, both Republicans, since Mark Neumann's failed run for Russ Feingold's Senate seat in 1998. In the meantime, Peter Barca served as Bill Clinton's Midwest Regional Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration, then went back to representing Kenosha in the Madison legislature, and later headed the Wisconsin Department of Revenue.

And now, thirty years later, he's running for his old congressional seat against incumbent Republican Bryan Steil. My better half and I talked with him at an open-air party in downtown Racine last month; he liked my Kamala Harris For The People button.

I neglected to mention that I had been drawing cartoons about him for the Journal Times thirty years earlier.

Hearkening back to 2004, here are a couple of people you did not see at the Republican National Convention last month:

for Q Syndicate, August, 2004

Come to think of it, I don't think we saw any former Republican nominees for President or Vice President on the Republican National Convention dais except for the current ones. Although to be fair, if Al Gore, John Kerry, or John Edwards spoke at the DNC this week, I missed it.

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I couldn't think of a good segue to any of the cartoons I drew in August of 2014, so here's some eye candy.

for Q Syndicate, August 2014

"That's So Gay" was the motto of the 2014 Gay Games, held in Akron and Cleveland, Ohio, that August.

By the way, given the kerfuffle over two female Olympians who had aspersions cast upon their gender, you might be interested to know how the Gay Games address transgender and non-binary-identifying athletes.

The Sydney Gay Games in 2002 defined gender by social identity: In the game of netball at those Games, the solution was for women’s, men’s, mixed and transgender competitions, with negotiations of rules and membership according to the gender that participants lived. These measures included removing the burden of proof from athletes to provide documentation, and instead assuming that all are genuine in their gender category selection. This was the most inclusive gender policy developed at that time, and it remains in place today.

The Gay Games were scheduled to be held in Hong Kong in 2022. They were pushed back a year due to COVID-19. New Chinese laws criminalizing "effeminate men," as well as concerns by Taiwanese athletes that they risked arrest, plus pandemic-related travel restrictions, led to a decision to split the 2023 games between Hong Kong and Guadalajara, Mexico. 

If you missed (or miss) the Paris Olympic Games this summer, the Gay Games in Valencia, Spain, are just two years away.

 

Q Toon: Just Say No-hio

In that week between Christmas and New Year's when nobody pays attention to such things, Ohio's Republican legislature sent their Republican Governor a bill outlawing gender-affirming care for transgender youth. The bill also bans transgender athletes from participating in school sports.

Governor Mike DeWine vetoed the bill, but kudos from the LGBTQ+ community were short-lived. DeWine issued instead an executive order instructing the Ohio departments of Health and of Mental Health to implement a 120-day ban on gender-affirming surgeries for minors and to require that an endocrinologist and psychiatrist must prepare a "detransition plan" before patients of any age can receive gender-affirming care.

As I’m sure the state of Ohio requires for all other forms of corrective surgery.

On January 10, the Ohio House overrode DeWine's veto anyway, and the state's Senate is likely to do the same when it convenes on January 24.

Well, you know what those Republicans always say. They're from the government, and they're here to help.

Q Toon: Moatalitarianism

The thinking that went into this week's cartoon involved not just Texas Governor Greg Abbott's razor wire flotilla in the Rio Grande, but also Anne Applebaum's article from The Atlantic about how having complete power of all the branches of government in a state is never enough for today's Republicans.

Her column on Republican totalitarianism discusses the Tennessee legislature's ejection of Justin Jones and Justin Pearson for having the temerity to bring a megaphone to the statehouse — a move made because Republicans routinely shut off Democrats' microphones. Republicans there have divided Nashville among three majority-rural congressional districts, thus depriving the citizens of the state's largest city of any true representation in Congress.

Seeking to prevent passage of a state constitutional amendment by popular vote protecting abortion rights, Ohio Republicans put a measure on the ballot this past Tuesday requiring popular constitutional amendments to pass by a 60% supermajority. The legislature didn't pick that percentage at random: polling shows abortion rights are supported by 58% of the Ohio electorate. If support had polled at 62%, Republicans would have required passage by a 2/3 supermajority.

Republicans had to act fast to get this "Issue 1" onto a special August 8 ballot; the abortion rights amendment comes up for popular vote in November.

Republican supermajority lawmakers couldn't get their 60% voter approval idea onto the state's May primary ballot, so in February they came up with a new plan — an August special election.

There was just one problem: Republicans had voted to eliminate most August special elections in a law they passed in December. [Ohio Secretary of State Frank] LaRose, who testified in support of that law, said it shouldn't be an issue.

And to keep amendment referenda Republicans don't like from getting onto future ballots in the first place, "Issue 1" would have required citizen groups to get voter signatures in each of Ohio's 88 counties, up from 44 required previously.

Happily, Ohio voters rejected Issue 1 — albeit by a majority that would have been insufficient to repeal the 60% threshold if it had already been in effect. 

In Florida, several school districts announced that they would no longer offer Advanced Placement Psychology courses for college-bound high school students, thanks to repressive legislation by Gov. Ron DesAntis and his minions in his state legislature.

These decisions came after the College Board, which administers the Advanced Placement program, announced that the state had “effectively banned” AP Psychology because state legislation, commonly referred to as Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, doesn’t permit instruction related to sexual orientation and gender identity, which the College Board considers essential for completing the course.

Florida officials have countered that AP Psychology hasn’t been banned, but rather that the College Board is playing politics by telling school districts they can’t offer the course unless it’s taught in full.

Well, if there's anything Republicans love these days, it's censoring educational materials. Especially if they can keep LGBTQ+ people out of sight, and therefore out of impressionable teenage minds. We'll tell you what you can teach, the totalitarian Republicans say to those meddlesome academics. Just teach our Officially Approved curriculum!

In a similar vein, Arkansas Republicans passed a law under which librarians and booksellers could be criminally charged for providing "harmful materials" to minors. A U.S. District Court Judge has temporarily suspended that law, but it's flabbergasting to realize that they find nothing wrong with providing guns to minors, but are scared spitless at the prospect of a kid finding Heather Has Two Mommies on a bookshelf.

In "red" states around the country, legislatures' attacks on transgender citizens have included requiring state-issued ID's to identify everyone by the gender assigned to them at birth. This is sure to hamper transgender voting every time a poll worker is handed an identification card that doesn't appear to match the person handing it to them.

Which will have the added bonus (as Republicans see it) of slowing down those long voter lines in urban areas where many Democrats live. If they only disenfranchise transgender people, that's a win for them. Bogging down those urban polling places is just gravy.

If they make voting enough of a hassle, they might not even need that 60% threshold business anyway.

This Week's Sneak Peek

So I was in Columbus for the annual convention of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists — the first in-person meeting since COVID-19 canceled the Toronto convention. I did bring some bristol board, a pencil and eraser, but no pen or ink, or I might have spent Sunday night as I usually do, cartooning.

But never fear. I left a cartoon with my editors for release this week.

Now that I'm back home, I'll have a few pictures to share about the convention on the blog — although I don't think I can improve on the coverage by Mike Peterson at Daily Cartoonist here and here — and I'll start with one observation about downtown by a visitor.

I don't know how cruisy Gay Street is but High Street is aptly named. Now that pot is legal in Ohio, the head shops there are quite open and upfront. So are the kids smoking as they walk down the sidewalk, and so is the bar boasting "beer, booze & blunts."

Apparently, 4-20 is quite Poplar.
 

Q Toon: Is There a Doctor in the House?

                                      

In a cynical effort to gin up their base, Republicans continue to bash transgender persons in state after state after state. They have a two-pronged approach: criminalizing gender therapy for youth, and forcing transgender athletes to give up sports.

Legislation slithering its way through the Ohio legislature would open the door for Karens and Darrens to force any student athlete to undergo medical genital examination, simply by accusing them of being transgender.

Whether they are or not.

It would be cruel enough merely to ban transgender students from girls’ and women’s athletics. But this bill opens the door to something worse: using weaponized genital exams to expose an imagined invasion of transgender girls. ...

The proposal also gives anyone — whether a parent eager to eliminate their child’s competition or a national activist looking to make local trouble — the standing to challenge an athlete’s gender, and provides no disincentives for making false reports.

Beyond the ways in which the measure would harm young trans athletes, there is no check on the vicious ways in which hypercompetitive parents might use this bill to hurt not just trans girls but any young women. And we know those ruthless parents are out there.

Parents have sued after their children were cut from varsity teams. They’ve subjected opposing teams to racial abuse in an effort to rattle them. Wanda Holloway notoriously hired a hit man to knock off her daughter’s rival for a slot on the school cheerleading squad, as well as the girl’s mother.

We're not just talking about requiring someone to hand over their birth certificate, either. State Republicans want more than just a note from their doctor.

During a press conference led by Democratic state representatives, Dr. Anita Somani held up a speculum, used for vaginal exams, as she explained the details of procedures that could be required of children if a coach, official or even a parent questions the gender of child on a sports team.

“It’s invasive and uncomfortable even for adults who have a trusting relationship with their physician,” Somani said.

She said the requirements in House Bill 151, the bill that would ban trans youth from sports and allow gender verification regulations, go beyond typical sports physical examinations would be “legally forcing children to undergo medically unnecessary exams.”

... “Let me perfectly clear, this extreme legislation, which would require children to have genital exams to play high school sports is nothing short of state-sanctioned sexual abuse,” [Rep. Jessica] Miranda [D-Forest Park] said.

There is still a possibility that Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, might veto this bill, as Indiana's Republican Governor, Eric Holcomb, did to another transgender-bashing bill in Ohio's neighbor to the west last month. Governors have to answer to all the voters in their states, including those whose kids would be subjected to "state-sanctioned abuse."

But the Republicans making up the supermajority in the Indiana legislature only have to answer to the voters that they carefully selected to be in their districts, so they easily overrode Gov. Holcomb's veto.

There's an unshakable Republican supermajority in the Ohio legislature, too.

Third Party Poopers

For this week's episode of S̄ī̀ s̄ib pædback Saturday, let's take a look at third-party options in the 1920 presidential election for those voters disenchanted with the choice between the pair of Buckeyes heading up the major party tickets.

"A Question" by Burt Thomas in Detroit News, June, 1920

For the fifth time, the Socialist Party of America nominated as its presidential candidate International Workers of the World founder Eugene V. Debs. Burt Thomas's cartoon, above, was drawn before the Democratic National Convention, when red-baiting Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer was still in the running for that party's presidential nomination.

"There Are Worse Places Than a Front Porch" by Clifford Berryman in Washington (DC) Evening Star, October 11, 1920

Debs would garner 913,664 votes in November, even though he was stuck in the Moundsville Federal Penitentiary in West Virginia, serving a ten-year sentence for sedition on account of antiwar passages in a speech he had given in Canton, Ohio in 1917. Berryman here compares Debs's campaign with the lackadaisical "front porch" campaign of Warren Harding.

"Now It's Triplets" by Billy Ireland in Columbus Dispatch, July, 2020

After they had been turned down by William Jennings Bryan, The Prohibition Party nominated Ohio minister Aaron Sherman Watkins as its presidential nominee. Watkins thus was the third Buckeye on those November ballots where the Prohibition Party appeared.

With Prohibition already the law of the land, enshrined in the Constitution and confirmed by the Supreme Court, Watkins came in fifth in November with 189,339 votes, the poorest showing for the Prohibition party since 1884.

"The Common Nurse" by Winsor McCay in New York American, July, 1920

As early as January 1919, a group calling itself the Committee of 48 (the name referred to the number of states then in the Union) began organizing toward nominating a leftist candidate for president. The Republicans were committed to a conservative agenda of high tariffs on imports and reducing taxes on the rich; yet while the Democratic platform promised to continue liberal policies of President Wilson's administration, they too were beholden to moneyed interests. "Our country is menaced," the Committee of 48 announced, "by the growing power of an autocratic and reactionary minority at home."

"All Aboard" by John Knott in Dallas News, July, 1920

The committee's manifesto, "Revolution or Reconstruction? A Call to Arms" vowed, "It is the purpose of the Committee of Forty-eight to summon from all parts of the country the leaders of its liberal thought and of its forward-looking citizens, to meet in conference. We hope that out of this assemblage of the scattered forces of Americanism will come a flexible statement of principles and methods that will permit effective cooperation with organized Labor and Agricultural workers in the tasks of social reconstruction."

"Look Who's Here" by Bob Satterfield with Edmund Vance Cooke for NEA, July, 1920

A list of those liberal policies included public ownership of transportation, stock yards, grain elevators, public utilities, coal, oil, natural gas, mineral deposits, timber, and water works. The "Forty-eighters" platform called for "Equal economic, political, and legal rights for all, irrespective of sex or color. The immediate and absolute restoration of free speech, free press, peaceable assembly, and all civil rights guaranteed by the Constitution."

"The New Party" by Harry Westerman in Ohio State Journal, July, 1920

Prominent leaders of the group were J.A.H. Hopkins and attorney Dudley Field Malone; other members of note were historian Will Durant and Rush Limbaugh Sr., grandfather of the conservative radio asshole.

"Plenty of Assistant Cooks" by Ted Brown in Chicago Daily News, July, 1920

The Forty-Eighters convened in Chicago on July 10 with the aim of merging with the Labor Party convention scheduled there on the twelfth. They were joined by Single Tax advocates, who pushed for raising public revenue from land and privileges rather than from income and sales. Other participants included the Northwest Farmers' National Council, the Triple Alliance of the Northwest, the Consumers' League, and the socialist Non-Partisan League (off on a tangent about which I would like to go next Saturday. Stay tuned I hope you will).

"Now All Together for Victory" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, July 12, 1920

The merger got off to a smooth enough start. On July 13, the Forty-Eighters, Non-Partisans, and Single Taxers voted to merge with the Labor Party. Delegates at the Labor Party convention voted overwhelmingly to accept them in, and the Farmer-Labor Party was born.

"The Frog's Banquet..." by Jay N. "Ding" Darling in New York Tribune, July 16, 1920

But the harmony was short-lived once everyone sat down to work out a party platform. Derided by Illinois Federation of Labor president John Walker as "plutocratic philanthropists, lawyers and professional men who endeavor to solve the problems of the working people without themselves being members of that class," the leadership of the Forty-Eighters found themselves outnumbered by the more radical elements of the new party; even its name was a rejection of Committee of 48 desires.

"Not Conservative Enough for Me" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, July 17, 1920

The very next day, the Single Taxers pulled out from the new party over what appeared to be the likelihood of it nominating Bob LaFollette for president, and the rejection of a single tax plank in the party platform. Adopting their own single-plank platform, the Single Taxers nominated Robert Macauley of Philadelphia instead. (He, and running mate Richard Barnum of — wait for it — Ohio would get a measly 5,750 votes in November. By comparison, even American Party candidate James Ferguson, who was on the ballot only in Texas, got 47,968.)

The remaining Farmer-Labor delegates, however, insisted on a party platform LaFollette could not accept: in favor of the League of Nations, Irish independence, recognition of Soviet Russia, and nationalization of all industry and raw materials. He declared that he would not be their candidate. With that, the Forty-Eighters, save for a few western members, also quit the party.

"Getting Nowhere" by John H. Cassell in New York Evening World, by July 23, 1920

John Cassel here makes reference to the America's Cup race underway at the time.

Assessing the damage and answering IFL president Walker, LaFollette confidante Gilbert Roe told the press, "There isn't a more intolerant intellectual in this country than the labor leader is. You must understand you are not going to dictate to the intellectuals any more than the intellectuals are going to dictate to you."

The Forty-Eighters recognized that running their own candidate for President was pointless, but they lent their support to a handful of successful midwestern candidates in 1922 and LaFollette's 1924 presidential candidacy on the Progressive Party ticket.

"The Third Party" by Edward Gale in Los Angeles Times, July/August, 1920

Meanwhile, the Farmer-Labor party drafted Utah lawyer Parley P. Christensen as its standard bearer in the 1920 election, and he pulled a fairly respectable 265,398 votes in November. Would you like to guess which state his running mate was from?

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: Pumphandle Hold

You may remember Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan as the guy schooled by Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein for accusing him of threatening to subpoena phone calls.

The Freedom Caucus Republican is also in the running to replace Paul Ryan as Speaker of the House, but is now dogged by accusations that while he was Assistant Coach of the wrestling team at The Ohio State University, he ignored and even laughed at multiple reports of the team doctor's sexually inappropriate examinations of team members.

That's in addition to a problem the department apparently had with staff and students who would ogle team members as they showered. The situation was serious enough to prompt the head of the athletic department to move the wrestlers' locker room to another building.

John Aravosis counts nine accusers who have come forward publicly so far, but with a possible 1,500 victims in The Ohio State wrestling and other team sports, OSU's liability could potentially dwarf the $500 million settlement reach in Michigan State's Larry Nassar case.

Jordan has denied any knowledge of the complaints, and called at least two of the men liars. He's even said that the scandal is the invention of Rod Rosenstein and the Deep State.

 “They know what they’re saying is not accurate,” he told [Fox News's Bret] Baier. “I know they know what they’re saying is not true. I know they know that. And they’re saying it anyway.”
... “What is driving these guys to say this now?” Baier asked. “The timing is suspect,” Jordan replied, citing his recent interrogation of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein about the investigations into Hillary Clinton’s email server and possible Russian collusion with the Trump campaign. Jordan added that the law firm in charge of OSU’s sexual abuse investigation, Perkins Coie, was “Hillary Clinton’s law firm,” the same firm that found “an ex-British spy to put together a dossier to go after President Trump.”

In April, The University began an investigation of the doctor, who committed suicide in 2005. Spokespersons for the University are not commenting on the accusations while the investigation is underway.

Some of Jordan's current colleagues are not so circumspect.

“This is the same Jim Jordan who as a Congressman has self-righteously demanded investigations of anything and everything under the sun,” [New York Democrat Sean] Maloney tweeted Saturday. “Well, times’s up, Jim. We need to hear these victims and investigate Jim Jordan now.”