Cameo
Tuesday, January 10th, 2012 by Matt BorsCanadian editorial cartoonist J.J. McCullough says he modeled the cartoonist in the last panel of his latest after me. Looks accurate, but he missed out on some beard opportunities there.
Archive for the 'Idiot Box' Category
Spare A Rib?
Monday, January 9th, 2012 by Matt Bors
While most political observers seem to agree this election is about the depression we’re currently mired in, Rick Santorum is holding it down for Americans who yearn for more Old Testament laws. What good is a job if queers can marry? Santorum wants to ban gay marriage even in states that have already legalized it, re-institute DADT, and force all women, including minors and rape victims, to give birth even if it kills them.
The there’s the issue of the blah people getting our damn tax dollars.
Like any good moralizer, things get a little complicated when we look at Rick’s past. There’s a debate over what procedure his wife went through, exactly, and whether it was an induced labor, a spontaneous abortion, or something else. We don’t have all the details because Mrs. Santorum’s medical privacy is still a concept that is respected under law–at least until her husband becomes president. But here’s the key point:
Rick Santorum’s stance on abortion would have killed his wife. Had she not gone into spontaneous labor, she would need an abortion (or induced labor of a nonviable fetus) to save her life — and Santorum’s politics wouldn’t have let that happen.
Ladies, get your “Women For Santorum” bumper stickers on display.
Wednesday: More Santorum!
Quote of the Day
Sunday, January 8th, 2012 by Matt BorsBut David S. Addington, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, said all of that was beside the point. The president, he said, violated constitutional law.
Friends With Benefits
Wednesday, January 4th, 2012 by Matt Bors
Things turned out alright for Larry Craig. After the mandatory two year cooling off period former lawmakers must take before engaging in legal bribery, Craig has returned to Washington with a cush gig lobbying his buddies on behalf of the coal industry. Tap your foot two times for deregulation!
My two cartoons from Craig scandal can be read here and here.
Just Trust Him
Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012 by Matt BorsAdam Serwer has good write-up on Obama’s New Year’s Eve signing of the NDAA and what exactly it does and does not do.
In his statement, Obama says he wants “to clarify that my Administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens.” … Note what the president does not say: that indefinitely detaining an American suspected of terrorism would be unconstitutional or illegal. Obama’s signing statement seems to suggest he already believe he has the authority to indefinitely detain Americans—he just never intends to use it.
Obama is basically saying exactly what I put forth in my PCLD comic: Indefinite detention is legal, but don’t worry because he means well. I mean, the guy’s a Nobel Peace Prize winner.
Exquisite Newsletter
Monday, January 2nd, 2012 by Matt Bors
I decided to do this comic the way Ron Paul does his newsletter: packed with racism, paranoia, and conspiracies, but authored by other people that I didn’t oversee. Hey, I’m just signing my name to it!
I get that Ron Paul didn’t personally pen the diatribes against blacks and gays in his newsletter, but his defense of merely being publisher is a bit odd. Publishers are responsible for what goes in the publication they publish. I read a lot of publications and somehow the publishers and editors all manage to keep out editorials on “Hate Whitey Day.”
Thanks to Ted Rall, Shannon Wheeler, and Jack Ohman for the art, which I now must disavow if I am to mount a presidential run in the future. If you would like to pretend this comic is a fund raising newsletter, by all means drop your gold coins and Liberty dollars in the tip jar on the right.
PCLD
Friday, December 30th, 2011 by Matt Bors
I first cartooned on this malady some years ago and I fear things have only gotten worse. As Obama has ensconced some of the worst civil liberties violations of the Bush era into law and even expanded some (such as assassinating a US citizen in Yemen with a drone plane), the level of denial needed to continue thinking Obama has any principles on civil liberties has reached a worrying height.
Surely president John McCain and vice president Palin acting out the exact same policies would draw cries from most of the Democratic base that we live in a fascist state on the verge of throwing up Big Brother posters at every bus stop. As it is, many can barely muster a grumble.
PCLD is a dangerous affliction and there is always an uptick in cases during election years, when the need to ignore the fact that candidates don’t actually represent your values is the greatest. Symptoms include loudly declaring that Republicans are even worse, insisting Obama has a Liberal Master Plan, and randomly reminding people that Ralph Nader ruined the 2000 election.
There were a lot of comments on this comic today over at Daily Kos. While many understand the point made, you can see the illness creeping up in a number of people.
If you know anyone suffering from PCLD, please reach out to them. A daily dose of Glenn Greenwald can help return them to happy, principled political functionality.
Point of Process
Tuesday, December 27th, 2011 by Matt Bors
Next year, as the 2012 election looms, it will be interesting to see whether Occupy fizzles, is sucked into the Democrat’s reelection machine, or reemerges as an even stronger, broad-based movement. I’m counting on the latter. Buying bumper stickers and putting your hopes in a slick politician is so 2008. These days people take to the streets.
As Occupy plans its next move, there’s a lot of talk about what the movement means, meant, should do, and did wrong–much of it valid. Much of it from people with a vested interest in the system as it currently is. At this point, politicians are entirely unresponsive to almost all actions that don’t involve lobbyists putting cash directly into their hands. Voting does little. The choices–of parties and the issues they are willing to address–have become increasingly narrowed.
That’s not to say there is absolutely no difference between the two parties permitted to participate in politics. The future makeup of the Supreme Court, for instance, is incredibly important. But the days of Democrats and their apologists holding the threat of Republican rule over the heads of everyone who advocates for real progressive change as a means to get them to fall in line has to end.
Campaigning for politicians only encourages them, but unless there’s a complete revolution, at some point there has to be legislation enacted to make this all worth the effort. The usual channels are worthless. The task at hand is to put enough pressure on this system so that it is forced to change against its will. That takes more than holding your nose and voting for the lesser of two evils on election day.
So don’t vote for Obama this time. Or do, but do other things as well.
Me, the only nose holding I’ll be doing in 2012 will be in a cloud of tear gas.
Iraq-gate
Friday, December 23rd, 2011 by Matt Bors
With the apparent end of the Iraq War (never mind the thousands of armed contractors still there) and the latest developments at the Large Hadron Collider, I got to thinking about multiverses. Surely there could exist a slightly more sensible timeline where we never invaded Iraq and Saddam was overthrown in the Arab Spring. One of the last excuses used by apologists for the war was that we had to kill hundreds of thousands of people and create millions of refugees in order to stop that madman from killing his own people.
There’s no guarantee the Arab Spring would have overthrown Saddam, but I like thinking about how the contradictory ways people would react in slightly altered timelines. For example, I’d love to check in on a reality where President McCain assassinated a US citizen in Yemen with a drone and signed the latest defense bill to see if liberals might have more of a problem with it than the mild annoyance they currently muster.
The inclusion of a Stargate in this comic is owed entirely to August Pollak.
Scheduling
Wednesday, December 21st, 2011 by Matt BorsNo new cartoon today but I should have one Friday. We’re approaching Christmas time and celebrating it underground, away from the openly gay military, has thrown me off schedule.
