Cartoonists With Attitude

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Kucinich switched his position on health care reform in the days since I drew this. He is still irrelevant. He’s a fine progressive, but yelling about peace and single payer doesn’t make the legislative sausage. (It makes for good cartoons and blog posts, though.)

On the other hand, there’s Obama, who’s willing to compromise his positions every time a Republican lets out an entitled, vaguely racist queef in his direction. The concessions that dude has made in the name of bipartisanship are too numerous and depressing to list.

Unfortunately, this sad sack of a president who can’t negotiate his way out of a paper bag is the best chance liberals have at getting anything done at least until 2016. It is my hope that passing Health Care Reform will finally get a doctor to help Obama’s testicles descend.

I’m tired of pointing it out, but anyone opposed to HCR because of costs and deficits is a fucking hypocrite pandering to mouth breathers. We’re talking orders of magnitude less than the cost of each of the two wars we’re currently waging for reasons who-the-fuck-knows. That’s not even including the cost-reducing impacts of the bill. You can complain about earmarks and entitlements all you want, but you probably shouldn’t be blowing the gun of a $6.5 million Abrams tank while you’re doing it.

Next Week: Metric System Resistance

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While researching this cartoon, I learned that the clurichaun is a much cooler version of the leprechaun. I also spent too much time reading the insanity of Twilight nerds and fairy dorks who insist on spelling it faerie.

Don’t drink green beer this St. Patrick’s Day. That’s only acceptable if you have a clover tramp stamp or are a date-rapist.

Next Week: Political Blind Items

I’ve been busy and missed this update to my Texas Textbooks cartoon and commentary. The conservative district that Ding Dong McElroy represented on the Texas Board of Education voted him out in favor of the more reasonable Republican, Thomas Ratliff by the slimmest of margins.

But the best thing in the article is McElroy’s stance against teaching Chinese Literature in schools:

“[Y]ou really don’t want Chinese books with a bunch of crazy Chinese words in them. Why should you take a child’s time trying to learn a word that they’ll never ever use again?” He conceded some terms, such as “chow mein,” might be useful, the San Antonio Express-News reported.

I’d love to see a comprehensive list of “foreign” words McElroy deems acceptable. It probably includes chop suey, nacho, lasagna, and bukkake.

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Jen Sorensen’s been covering this territory on her blog for months, and the New York Times recently followed her lead. I felt the subject could use a few dick jokes, so I gave it a go.

The reason why the web is populated with low-rent, sometimes scammy ads is because online advertising is cheap. I don’t know if it’s a fair price or undervalued by out-of-touch advertisers who still think a full page in Cat Fancy reaches more eyeballs than an ad running next to the most recent viral cat video.

Unlike a lot of people, I don’t mind sitting through the occasional ad if it means I can watch or read something useful for free. Producing cool shit takes time and money, and unless you want to buy everyone’s merchandise or wait for a Kickstarter campaign to fund something, ads are a necessary means to entertaining your goldbricking ass.

Next Week: Weelight

Since the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended a redesign of the hot dog, I figured I’d toss my design solution into the ring. I willingly admit that this doesn’t beat the spiral dog.

[Cartoonist Note: It was announced that Jim Bunning ended his filibuster threat while I was typing this up. That doesn't change the fact that he remains a senile turd.]

Bunning is the Grandpa Abe Simpson of the Senate. I don’t have anything to say about how he partially froze the government beyond what Kevin Moore and David Rees have already said. BUT, I have been driven insane by all the baseball puns and clichés used by news outlets covering this story.

I’m sure there have been countless others, all as groan-inducing as a Jay Leno monologue. In the interest of improving the quality of topical Bunning-baseball humor, I whipped up a few jokes:

Government spending caused Jim Bunning to balk, allowing Harry Reid to advance to second base. Olympia Snowe’s breasts were not pleased.

Jim Bunning and Curt Schilling walk into a bar. They wouldn’t shut the fuck up and everyone left before they got to the punchline.

Jim Bunning treated the unemployed to some chin music this week, if you consider the sound of his wrinkly old balls slapping against poor people’s faces to be musical.

Pitchers and catchers reported a couple weeks ago, except for former pitcher Jim Bunning. He was busy eating out a Kentucky Tea Partier’s asshole.

It’s a shame I’m not on anyone’s fax list.

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Due to the economics of textbook publishing, a couple morons on the Texas Board of Education get to determine the contents of textbooks that are used in schools throughout the country. The entire horrifying process is documented in this NY Times Magazine article. It’s similar to how California’s emissions standards set the bar for all cars sold in the US, except Texas is lowering the bar, turning it into a retarded pole on the ground.

There is some hope at the end of the article, which says that one of the leaders of the dumbification movement, Don McLeroy (AKA Don “That Fuckin’ Dum-Dum” McLeroy), is facing a serious challenge from moderate Republican Thomas Ratliff. But who knows. In Texas, isn’t a moderate Republican someone who believes Jesus and Dinosaurs coexisted, but he never rode one?

The election of Scott Brown forces me to issue this disclaimer: Not all Texans are retards, but enough of ‘em vote, just like here in good ol’ Massachusetts, the Bay State of Stupid.

While researching this cartoon, I discovered the “official” website for Footprints in the Sand. It’s INSANE. I’m not prone to giving out free ideas, but someone over there should contact Thomas Kinkade about painting some light coming out of some motherfucking Jesus-footprints.

ANNOYING PLUGS FROM A DESPERATE MAN: Please buy the Big Fat Whale book, Fun Stuff for Dum-Dums, and follow me on Twitter and Facebook.

Next Week: The Worst Ads on the Web

NASA being underfunded is a damn shame. The public is too dumb to find any value in the stuff they do, so their budgets get cut while the Pentagon gets to spend trillions on bombing people and boring-ass places on Earth. Near Earth Orbit will have to be turned into a NASCAR track before enough people give a shit.

And yeah, there are other worthy things the money being pissed away by the Defense Department can be spent on, but none of them produce spectacular wallpapers for my desktop.

UPDATE: Morning Edition on NPR covers NASA’s financial pickle.

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Thanks, Toyota, for letting me revisit a bit I did in 2007 when China was poisoning pet food and putting lead in baby toys.

I don’t have much to say about the actual Toyota recalls except that in addition to the acknowledged flaws, the Prius has major blindspot issues. I drove a rental once, and the fact that its’ blindspots remain year after year without complaint proves that environmentally conscious rich people don’t know how to drive. If you’re driving a normal car on the highway, give those hippies a wide berth, ’cause they can’t see you.

Some ladies (and dudes who only pee sitting down) might be unaware that those of us who are bewanged sometimes get to pee on bumblebees. It is AWESOME.

This is something called a nudge. It gets people to do things without bossy signage that would likely cause spite-pissing. In countries that participate in the dainty sport of soccersball, there’s a more interactive variant.

Next Week: Texas Textbook Excerpts

Outside of porn, more money is spent on friction-reducing at the Winter Olympics than anywhere else. The Winter Olympics will be the undisputed leader once snowman-fisting becomes a recognized event.

If you want more Olympics coverage, David Rees has been hilariously liveblogging them all week.