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Tuesday, October 5, 2021

It is a Greater Honor For ME!


 This idea popped into my head after watching Tom Waits’ induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on YouTube. During his acceptance speech, he mentioned that he had been given the Key to the City of El Paso. My mind immediately went to Alaska, where recent per-capita case rate for COVID-19 is the highest in the United States, and higher than any country in the world. COVID-19 is running wild here yet the Mayor has refused to support a mask mandate, and consequently our hospitals now are forced to ration care. People who don’t even have COVID are being turned away from emergency rooms. The Mayor protests that the scientific validation of masks and vaccinations is lacking, He seems to be running an experiment of his own, one that is proving how wrong he is in handing the key to the city to the pandemic.

Star Crossed


 Anchorage anti-maskers abused history in protests against a proposed ordinance requiring masking at indoor events to curb the spread of COVID. Somehow in the minds of the protestors this ordinance became comparable to the Nazi murder of 6 million Jews, with the part of the Jews played by the anti-maskers, who signified their role by wearing yellow Stars of David, as Jews were forced to in Nazi-occupied Europe. The anti-maskers did this to protest an ordinance that will save lives, not mark them for extinction. Our mayor initially backed this tortured symbolic logic saying it was a credit to the Jews. Later he backed off, with a classic faux apology, saying “If I offended anyone, I am truly sorry.” Apparently he is not sorry for backing a grotesque misinterpretation of history.

Saturday, May 29, 2021

Defend Reality, Slap a Republican




























 We have a problem with reality in this country. In the the post-Trump era, facts are downright unwelcome among many of our citizens if they don’t fit their preconceived world view. Instead of changing the worldview to fit the facts, citizens dispense with the facts, preserving their world view. We are left to chart our course by what, astrology? 


This hostility to facts thrives among the COVID deniers, the anti-vaxxers and the “Goop” devotees. And of course Trump’s Republican Party. It’s there in Steve Bannon’s strategy to flood the zone with bullshit. It’s there in the GOP’s insistence that Trump won the election in spite of the mountain range of evidence to the contrary. It’s there in their resistance to a commission to investigate the events of January sixth, when we all saw a right-wing mob storm the Capitol building. A mob now being transformed through the magic of GOP hindsight into a bunch of hyperactive tourists instead of the terrorists they were. 

This eagerness to put party above reality is unpatriotic. Bullshit and hysteria are not the best foundation on which to build. A country cannot have contempt for reality and expect to prosper. That connection between reality and patriotism prompted the image of the famous poster by James Montgomery Flagg on which this cartoon is based. The entire predicament makes me want to slap a Republican to bring them around. Maybe it wouldn’t help, but it might make me feel better. 

Wednesday, May 5, 2021



 Laura Reinbold, a state senator from Eagle River has been kicked off her Senate Judiciary chair, off the  Judiciary committee, out of the capitol building and off Alaska Airlines for her unwillingness to mask up. She claims she is defending liberty and fighting tyranny, but how insisting on exposing your colleagues to potential death from COVID-19 amounts to fighting for freedom is obscure at best.

Monday, January 18, 2021

Lost Boy

 This was inspired by a video of rioters in D. C. Chanting “Emperor Trump! Emperor Trump!” along with that other hit from the riot “Hang-Mike-Pence Hang-Mike-Pence” I began to wonder, for the thousandth time, what in holy Hell were these people thinking? I roughed in some of the obvious mindfuckery responsible, and then got the kicker for the last panel out of thin air.


 


Friday, January 8, 2021

Sensitive Type

This is an idea that has been festering for awhile in my head. I saw a crowd of anti-maskers in a photo and thought I’ll bet every one of them put on deodorant before they left the house for the protest. (Okay, maybe not everyone, but I’d wager a solid majority.) I wasn’t sure how to translate that into a cartoon, when suddenly, I was. The rest was just drawing. Here it is...


 



We Now Return You to Your Regularly Scheduled Outrage





 

 Can I have an outrageous? How about an icky? Sure this is a disgusting image. It has to be to register the offensiveness of Trump’s pardoning of the likes of Roger Stone and Paul Manafort. Not to mention various war criminals, errant politicians and other assorted criminals. Law and order, anyone? Anyone?...


 

Hollow Victory




It’s hard not to make cartoons right now as politics breaks through to new lows. The irony of the GOP, the party of Lincoln, founded to save the Union evolving into the party of Trump and Cruz, bent on undermining and overthrowing the government “of the people, by the people and for the people” is majestic in its awfulness. Trump will soon become an outsider, reduced in his power, and distracted by his efforts to keep out of jail. But the hollowed-out, zombie Republican Party of Trump will continue to rot on the mall in DC, off-gassing noxious fumes.










 

Who WERE Those Unmasked Men?





 


The inspiration for this drawing has three strands. The first is revulsion at the Capitol riot. The second, deep annoyance at the ludicrous assertion by Sean Hannity and others the mob of Trump faithful that forced its way into the capitol was actually an Antifa false flag operation. The third was a thread in my Twitter feed by a number of gay men remarking on the hotness of the Qanon Shaman.  Mix all three, shake well, and bingo! There’s your cartoon.