Cartoonists With Attitude

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When someone is unfamiliar with my comic strip and asks what it’s about, I tell them that it’s a series of illustrated fart jokes. It makes me sound more fun than a dude who bitches an moans all the goddamn time. Also because I don’t like getting dragged into political discussions. That shit is boring:

Blah, blah, my opinions! I don’t like certain aspects of our government! Let’s uncomfortably disagree about things!

No thanks to that.

Next Week: Rejected McCain Running Mates

Real quick Moron post for this week’s ‘toon, as I’ve got about eight different (animated) balls in the air…

• Brave New Films has an entire website devoted to sending old turd blossom to jail.

• David Iglesias:
  

  It is unacceptable in a country where the rule of law is the cornerstone of our jurisprudence that a former White House official fail to appear to claim privilege before Congress. Rove should have appeared before Congress and claimed privilege. Rather, he thumbed his nose at a co-equal branch of government and showed his utter disregard for their powers. His actions are contemptuous per se and he should be held in contempt by the House. The language of 18 USC § 1503(a) is broad since it speaks of “influencing�? an “officer…of the United States�? in the “discharge of his duties�? including the “due administration of justice.�?
  Applying this test to the allegations concerning the Siegelman matter, for instance, the evidence suggests that Rove influenced a U.S. Attorney in the discharge of her duties. This is a very serious matter and needs to be fully investigated since a non-attorney policy adviser has no business influencing the indictment of an elected official.

• In case you missed it, the House Judiciary Committee did indeed vote to hold Rove in contempt of Congress. So, this means the Democrats are totally getting serious now and he’s gonna be in a jail cell by the end of the week, right?

  Uh huh…

  Pelosi says the full House isn’t even going to think about it until September, by which time the Dems will be in full-on election mode. Close Obama adviser Cass Sunstein has already “cautioned against prosecuting criminal conduct from the current administration,” or even the “slight appearance” of such attempts.

The difference between eating fruit and vegetables from plants you know, and buying the plant parts at a grocery store, is like the difference between making love with a beloved friend, and having sex with a piece of factory-shaped latex or plastic (not that I would know what THAT’s like! ahem). In all cases the physical needs are met, but without the relationship with living beings, emotions are missing and it just isn’t as good or fun.

I miss my garden.

Most of us don’t have any sort of relationships with the plants who feed us. It’s very sad and wrong and unnatural and mechanical and impersonal. Do people miss that if they’ve never known it?

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I often wonder how much “brainwashing” is willful ignorance and denial. I’m losing patience with people who refuse to face reality. I’ve often blamed the system and the ruling class because they’re soooooo gooooood at waging propaganda and teaching people how not to think, but for crying out loud, it’s not THAT hard to visit a library or browse in a book store. There ARE books and magazines sitting right out there in the open, from which it’s not TOOO hard to find out the truth, or at least challenge the prevailing view of truth.

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In the Minimum Security comic from 7/31, Fluffy and Bunnista sort through their treasured possessions. Click on the fragment below for the full cartoon at comics.com:

The more you click on my cartoons at comics.com, the better the chances they’ll appear in daily city papers, some day in the unknown future. If you like Minimum Security, please see a new cartoon each weekday!

And why FactCheck.org misses the boat. The WSJ has an article about the Bush administration’s efforts to define birth control as “abortion”:

Dozens of Congressional Democrats — including presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama — have signed letters of protest blistering the proposal. His Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, declined to comment. [Emphasis mine]

Administration supporters say the left’s concerns are overblown and very few women would have real difficulty getting birth control. Still, some on the religious right are hoping the regulation would create some obstacles.

If the draft regulation were to prompt some insurance companies to drop coverage for prescription birth control, “that would be fantastic,” said Tom McClusky, a strategist with the conservative Family Research Council.

Don’t think it could happen? The past seven years have made me realize anything is possible, no matter how egregious. There’s a lot more to McCain’s long, awkward pause than a simple brain fart.

Including a behind-the-scenes photo and everything!

My newest cartoon is online at Dollars and Sense.

Also on D&S, “Ask Dr. Dollar” argues that the insanely high CEO pay in the US isn’t about productivity, and not just about crony capitalism: It’s also about political power.

And from Chuck Collins:

While average wages for all workers rose 3% in 1996, the average CEO salary and bonus rose 39% to $2.3 million — and that is without stock options. Benefitting even more than average were the top managers of the 30 U.S. corporations that laid off the most people last year, according to a new study, “Executive Excess: CEOs Gain from Massive Downsizing,” by the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy. The axmen who laid off between 2,800 and 49,000 workers last year upped their own compensation by 67%.[…]

Most corporate leaders would say any government regulation of CEO pay is an outrageous interference in the free market. But the government is already involved in CEO pay — through the U.S. tax code. The tax code allows businesses to deduct “a reasonable allowance for salaries or other compensation.” The catch is that the code doesn’t define “reasonable.” So companies can — and do — routinely deduct the entirety of grotesque executive pay packages. Corporations pay less in taxes than they should, and regular taxpayers pick up the slack.

Read the whole thing.

1) I’m not convinced McCain’s campaign purposely played the “sexually available white women” card. Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t; it doesn’t seem like a slam-dunk case to me either way.

2) But it doesn’t matter much. Even if the racist connotations weren’t intentional, they still reflect the McCain staff’s gross insensitivity or indifference to racist connotations. (If McCain’s staff included lots of Black people who give a damn about racism, this ad would have died on the drawing board.)

3) It’s not coincidence that our two most famously vapid celebrities are women. Britney and Paris are so famous for vapidity and partying because the media is extremely eager to trumpet those traits in young female celebrities (making them even more famous — a vicious cycle), not because no male celebs are vapid partiers.

4) It’s ironic that McCain’s ad — which presents the least substantive argument (”Obama is like Britney and Paris! So vote McCain!”) made in any political ad so far this election — suggests that Obama is the vapid one. Got that plank out of your eye yet, John?

Cartoon for July 31

Even as the war in Afghanistan becomes more deadly, Obama pledges to send more troops.