Too Sexy

For those still waiting for the Golden Shower video to surface, here's a little sneak preview.

WARNING: Yikes. If this pic ever does surface, I'd be sure to get out my solar eclipse glasses while trying to view it. Otherwise you'll have that image seared into your mind's eye...for-EVER. And folks, it ain't gonna be pretty, let me tell ya.

Truthfully, there's nothing much newsworthy here. Just one more opportunity for me to poke fun at our arrested adolescent Mooner-In-Chief. If I had to weigh in with something meaningful, I would point out once again the the GOP's low bar for moral depravity. Just this past year, we had (the now Justice) Brett "Kegger" Kavanaugh remind us just how much he enjoys beer...and the occasional sexual assault; Stormy Daniels inform us about the president's proclivities whilst in bed (T-M-I); and yet another example of how when you appoint yourself as the judge, jury and prosecutor of your fellows, the arc of the universe is long but it bends towards kicking your hypocritical, sanctimonious keister.

Ah, hypocrisy...the fertile ground of all editorial cartoons...and the proverbial glass house of the powerful. Who needs mirrors in a place like that? I know someone who does. None other than the T-Rump-asaurus Rex, the terrible lizard himself. I tell you what he clearly doesn't need - his shirt. As this pic, once it surfaces, will eventually show us: he's just too darn sexy for it.

The Circus Is Coming to Town

Just when you thought you could exhale after a heinous 2018 campaign that featured Donald Trump and his merry band of GOP enablers playing to the cruelest, most vile tendencies of White American racism and xenophobia, it's time for the 2020 campaign! What better to kick off this election cycle than giving a tacit thumbs up to the murder of two innocent asylum seeking children. Not that anything like that would ever cause the white supremacist GOP to pause just for a minute...just for a minute...to consider their utter lack of morality in executing their Auslander Raüs! immigration policy, as custom crafted by Trump's favorite Fake Jew, Stephen Miller. Certainly not after Homeland Storm trooper Barbie Kristjen Nielsen reassured us through clenched teeth and pursed lips that the blame for these innocents' deaths laid with the victims themselves: 

“Our system has been pushed to a breaking point by those who seek open borders,” she said. “Smugglers, traffickers, and their own parents put these minors at risk by embarking on the dangerous and arduous journey north.”

Pretty astonishing when you consider that the U.S. remains party to international treaties (read: U.S. laws) that obligate our government to provide safe, dignified treatment to all asylum seekers, regardless of where they're coming from or where they enter the U.S.. Why are Central Americans seeking asylum, anyway? I don't know. Maybe it's because their countries have devolved into a living hell after more than a century of U.S. imperialistic interference and commercial domination to secure transnational corporations' unfettered access to and exploitation of Central American labor, land and other natural resources. Used to be that the U.S. would offer just enough foreign aid to provide a veneer of "Giving a sh!t," a palliative band aid on the societal kneecaps we had smashed with our militaristic lead pipes (and phosphorus bombs and other military weapons, training and materiel).

And before anyone might start clucking their tongue and tsk-tsking me for picking on the Republicans, let's not forget about the role played by the party of the former Deporter-In-Chief, Barack Obama. Nancy "the Best Speaker of the House (EVER!)" and her affable slouch of a sidekick, Senate Minority Leader Chuck "Facebook is Our Friend" Schumer, have extended their "Stay on Message" discipline to squash any serious talk about the crimes against humanity being committed by ICE and the CBP. Remember, it's more important to stay focused on health care and jobs for disaffected (read: racist) working class white men than to bother yourself with any moral dilemmas you might encounter over the treatment of brown folks trying to exercise their basic human rights. 

I'll pause and dispense with the snark just for a minute to remind folks that any reasonably objective read of recent American political history will show that people of color and the poor are only marginally less worse off under Democratic Party rule than that of the GOP. The Democratic Party, in response to getting its fanny regularly spanked by the GOP during the 1980s embraced a Neo-liberal policy agenda that shifted its moral center from representative government to the free market (Thank you, Bill, Hill and all the DLC corporate sellouts!).  Basically, what the Democratic Party has been offering up for the past 30 years has been a gentler, kinder version of Milt Friedman's trickle down economics with a feeble embrace of the need to preserve some form of a social safety net and modicum of environmental protections. 

How that translates into immigration policy has been to appease economically insecure whites with border crackdowns while still mouthing fidelity to international humanitarian norms. No wonder the GOP is so much better at staying on message. It's not hampered by having to talk out both sides of its mouth. It's enough to make you cry, but I'd prefer to laugh. And what better place to do that than the circus. The big tent awaits! Bring on the clowns!

Darth Respirator

Amidst all the hubbub of other important news - Trump declaring premature victory over ISIS in Syria, tanking the stock market with his infantile whining, letting go of the one cabinet member who could put his pants on correctly, and allowing his jack-booted ICE storm troopers to murder yet another asylum-seeking child, there's this important policy development: 

The EPA will soon announce a terrible proposed rule that will start the process to rollback the 2011 rules to clean up mercury and air toxins from coal and oil fired power plants. Electric generators were and are still complying with the rule, which makes it a good example of effective environmental policy.

Oh, right, but it was "that guy's" rule. And anything he did must be bad, especially for Trump's beloved base, most members of which would gladly take cut off their noses to spite their faces.  The fact that this rule actually helps them, their children and their well-being is meaningless. That eliminating the rule only benefits Acting EPA Administrator Andy Wheeler, the Coal Barons like Bob Murray simply does not figure into their equation.

Just a bit of science so that folks can appreciate what's going on here. Mercury is a potent neurotoxin that, when it gets in the food chain and poisons baby's and children's brains results in low IQ and other irreparable neurological harm.  Pollution controls to clean up toxic acid gases also reduce direct PM2.5 emissions and SO2 that forms lethal PM2.5 in the atmosphere. When EPA adopted the rule  in 2011 they estimated it would prevent up to 11,000 premature deaths each year. No wonder Trump is eliminating the rule. After all, he loves the poorly educated people. This must all be some ploy to kill off people with IQs over 70 and replace them poorly educated who will form the next generations of Trump voters!

Where's my tinfoil hat? 

Trumpster Fire

It's that time of the year...actually, it's always that time of the year with the Trump administration. Out with the not quite so new, and in with the...wait, is there anybody left. We've seen this play out many times before. Somebody in the Trump Administration gets the boot - or piles up so many investigations into their conduct while in office - and then they go slinking off into the night back into the swamp from whence they came. Then the mad scramble begins to find some other halfwit, goose stepping bottom - o'- the-barrel scraper to fill in, either as "acting," "pretending" or whatever...

For this round it was Ryan Zinke, the Secretary of the Interior who was conveniently able to operate in the shadows of Greg Pruitt's sh#t show and wreak as much havoc and destruction on our country's greatest assets as he could in his brief tenure. Eliminate and/or reduce our national monuments? Sure! Open them and other public lands up to extractive industries? Why not? Kneecap and push out career scientists who served as the department's technical leaders and institutional memory? Absolutely! Fish for some sweet development deals from said extractive industries on land he and his family owns? Show me the money!!!

Just another day in the office for the Trumster Fire Misadminsitration...

Where's Smokey the Bear when you need him? Oh yeah. The U.S. Forest Service is part of the Department of Agriculture, not Interior. I kinda doubt Smokey would be willing to break out of that bureaucratic silo, certainly not to put out Zinke's hot mess of corruption and cronyism. He's too busy putting out real forest fires, caused by all of those lazy good for nothing eco-terrorists, who were just too lazy to rake between the trees they're so insistent on hugging.

As Smokey would say, "Only you can make Trump retire."

Lil' Donnie's New Toy

Ever since I took "Global View," a class on international history from a Global Southern perspective, in my sophomore year of college I've been hooked on international development. After college I joined the Peace Corps and since then I've devoted the last 30 years to bringing the best that the United States has to offer to the rest of the world, learning from what folks overseas have to offer to us, and then sharing that with my fellow Americans. I guess it's been a bit of a vocation for me.

So when Donald Trump decided to nominate the eminently unqualified Heather Nauert to replace Nikki Haley and become the next U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations I thought, wait for it....

"Well, that makes sense."

Think about it. Donald Trump is nothing if not consistent, especially when it comes to trashing institutions that don't fit neatly into is crayon-colored black and white (mostly white) dystopian picture of the world. He takes great delight in hiring folks to lead these institutions (or in Nauert's case, represent the United States) the very people who can best serve as human wrecking balls to smash to smithereens the credibility of said institutions. The list is long and is only growing longer as Trump scrapes the bottom of the barrel to find some random right-wing clown to fill these critical posts: Scott Pruitt (and now Andrew Wheeler), EPA; Ben Carson, HUD; Betsy DeVos, Education; Ryan Zinke, Interior; Jared Kushner, Saudi Tyrant Whisperer; and Ivanka Trump, ...????.

And if denigrating the institutions weren't enough, Trump insults the very class of people from which he has selected his nominee. Of course, it's important to nominate women to the highest levels of the executive branch. I don't need to remind any of you of just how woefully inadequate Trump has been with respect to diversity and inclusion in his cabinet. But can anyone tell me with a straight face that Heather Nauert is the most qualified person, never mind woman, available for this post? She brings... let's see...wait a minute, let me think...hold on...well, she once...no, that's not relevant. Ah, right! She worked at the U.S. State Department where then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson thought so much of her as a spokesperson for the department that he refused to let her tag along on his official trips overseas.

It reminds me of how former President George H.W. Bush (RIP) chose to replace Thurgood Marshall, one of the greatest lawyers of the 20th century, with "Fifteen Cents," aka, Clarence Thomas. N.B. My wife corrected me, Clarence Thomas was a worse choice and has probably done more damage to the credibility of the Supreme Court as an institution than Heather Nauert is likely to do at the U.N. But (don't tell my wife I disagree) it isn't just the United Nations that she'll be trashing, it's the institution of diplomacy and international relations. What message does Trump send the rest of the world by nominating someone who clearly is way out of her depth, has had no relevant experience and whose only credential is her unwavering commitment to repeat and forcefully advocate for whatever nonsensical lie comes of Trump's combed-over, empty head?

Hint: It probably won't get him invited over to the UN Secretary General's for Xmas dinner.

No the real answer is that this decision is yet another move by Trump and his white nationalist brain trust (bust?) to intentionally undermine the U.S.'s global leadership.

I'm now officially tired of winning.

Kaep's Got Nothing on Me!

Hey, Sportsfans! It's been a month since my last 'toon. Work travel and the holidays, blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada...Whatever.

Ever since my family moved to the Washington DC area in 1972, I've been a diehard 'Skins fan. Growing up in the 70s and 80s, the Skins were actually good, in fact, really good under Joe Gibbs, winning three Super Bowls. After a lost decade in the 90s, something akin to football purgatory, we wound up in football hell when Dan "the Danny" Snyder bought the team and proceeded to gut it while turning it into a mostly winless money making plaything for himself.

I won't rehash all of the boneheaded moves the team has made over the past two decades. Professional sportswriters - my favorites being Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser - have already documented the rapid descent of the team to the depths of mediocrity. What I will highlight today is the extent to which the team has lost its soul.

Now, before we get too much further, let's be brutally honest about this franchise. First, back in the day it was first owned by George Preston Marshall, an unrepentant racist, until Baalzebub saw fit to bring him back home. Thanks to that SOB, the Redskins were the last team in the NFL/AFL to integrate, resulting in the many Washingtonians becoming fans of the much-hated Dallas Cowboys, which was the first to do so.

Second, there's the name, which has to be the most vile, racist name of any major franchise in professional sports here in the U.S. To make matters worse, the Danny has dropped major coin to fight legal battles to protect the team's right to retain it, which the vast majority of Native American nations have rightfully insisted to be a grievous insult on top of the injury of their peoples' genocide at the hands of white European colonists.

Okay, I think we've established that this franchise is obnoxious and repugnant. Why do I still root for them? That'll be the subject of another post. The Point Is...Just when you thought the 'Skins couldn't go any lower, they went ahead and claimed Ruben Foster, who is currently charged with multiple counts of domestic violence, off of waivers. And, yes, let's back it up a bit. The 'Skins already are starting a known child abuser, Adrian Peterson, as their star running back.

Just top this crap sundae off with a chunky cherry-flavored nugget, the 'Skins have repeatedly, publicly made clear that they will never sign Colin Kapernick, a very good quarterback, despite having lost their starting quarterback to a gruesome leg injury.

All that is just to point out the obvious fetid, shameless hypocrisy on the part of the Redskins:

Child abuser? No problemo!
Wife/girlfriend beater? Hakuna matata!
Principled protester against racial injustice? Never!

I truly wish that all of this revolting behavior was enough for me to swear off watching this team or any football team for that matter - concussions anyone? it's not as if the rest of the NFL is made up of saints - but it probably isn't. I'm sadly stuck as diehard fan and I'll most likely watch them again and again and again. But that won't stop me for registering my disgust with how this franchise continues to plumb new depths in rotten, inexcusable behavior. It's enough to make me feel all (black and) blue.

AND He's Better Looking

The attack on Jews worshipping at their Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh underscores what no American Jew, including this one, ever wants to admit: we're not safe in our own neighborhood, or in our own country for that matter. Who can we thank for this miserable predicament? Why our very own president, Donald Trump, of course, along with his gel slicked spawn, Don Jr. They have both been shamelessly flogging anti-Semitic tropes since the 2016 presidential campaign, spreading virulent hatred to activate their (i.e, the Republicans') "base."

Predictably, Republican party "leaders" have taken one of two tacts. They've either run for cover, complicit, even while they continue to cosign the rhetoric and actions of this amoral bloated gasbag of a president who famously described neo-Nazis as "very fine people." Or, alternatively, they have puffed up and assumed an even more sanctimonious pose, as if that were even possible, and insisted that all sides tone down the rhetoric and return to civil dialogue.

They assume this same pose while mouthing the platitudes about our nation being a tolerant one, and then, just like Trump, quickly return to vilifying people of color, immigrants, women or whomever they need to demonize to mobilize their base of six-fingered, knuckle-dragging, tea-bagging, sister-shagging, false flagging moral degenerates. Meanwhile, while we all fume and sputter at the audacity of it all, they go right back to their real mission - to populate the judiciary with as many racist, fascist judges who will institutionalize white minority rule for generations to come.

So what if a few Jews get massacred in in the process? Nothing will get in their way of achieving the Republican solution to the slow, steady colorization and resultant diversification of our society. Solution, eh? Where have I heard that one before...? I'm sure the "Fake Jews" in the Trump family -  Jared, Ivanka and their brood - aren't sweating it...They'll just hop in their private jet and skip town while the rest of us are left in this seething cesspool of antisemitism that is America.

Oh, the Horror!

In a few evenings, all the little buckaroos in our neighborhood will be turning up on our front porch for some Grade A sugar bombs, packaged and marketed oh so lovingly by the humanitarians at Big Agriculture. I'll certainly be glad to do my part to feed these kids' budding (raging?) sugar addiction.

Meanwhile, the 24/7 Horror Show that is the Trump Administration doesn't need a single, special day in the year set aside for scaring and terrorizing Americans. With Donald Trump, every day is Halloween. For our dear friends on the right of the political spectrum, it's a nonstop, year-round binge. Every time they say their boy, bellowing and braying at his enemies, real or imagined (mostly imagined), they gobble down that strychnine-laced white supremacism he feeds them, hoping his next empty, spiteful act will satisfy their craving for the ultimate white rage high.

For my brothers and sisters on the left, it's another anxiety-filled day, wondering when the nightmare will ever end. All too understandably distracted by the daily geyser of white hatred, they fail to see that much of what Trump is clumsily rushing to do - rollback of civil rights for people of color and LGBTQ folks; demonization of immigrants and asylum seekers; dismantling of environmental, worker and consumer safety regulatory frameworks; and the degradation of the basic norms of our democratic institutions - is part and parcel of a process that began long, long ago.

Fredrick Douglas told us that power concedes nothing without a demand but he may not have realized just how quickly power lashes back against any progress - however incremental or just it might have been - once it has been accomplished. That's what I've experienced in my lifetime. I was born too late to witness the major gains of the 1960s' liberation movements; instead, over the past 50 plus years, I've watched the power elites plot and carry out their slow, steady claw back. Sure, it's scary. Yes it's hurting and even killing people, innocent people, but let's not fool ourselves. It's nothing new, and it's unlikely to stop anytime soon, and certainly not with the election of scary clowns from the other side of the aisle.

On that note, the best way to overcome our fears is to laugh at them. Here's my contribution. Enjoy the 'toon!

Wake Up, Little Susie, Wake the BLEEP Up!

"Whoa, Nellie! And it's Barf Throwitup as our newest member of the U.S. Supreme Court in a 'Squi-ker!'"

By just a few votes, cast by a handful of particularly spineless Senators, the Republicans were able to ram the Kavanaugh nomination through the Senate on a collision course with the U.S. Supreme Court. I was going to write something about the Supreme Court being the last pillar standing in our democracy, but that really isn't or has been true. Whatever institutional integrity the place might have still had was jettisoned long ago with the infamous Bush v. Gore ruling. The best democracy (Republican) money can buy, yessiree Bob (Corker)!

It's with some reluctance that this week's rant 'n' rave is reserved for Susan Collins. While I don't want to single her out, I'm gonna single her out. For the men who fell in line, I'm not at all surprised - gender equality and gender equity are probably #4,391 on the list they actually give a hoot about. They'll simply bumble along with the rest of their white, entitled lives in utter, blissful ignorance of how much harm they just caused the nation with their scruple-less act of misogynistic white supremacy.

Back to Susie Q. As has been written much more eloquently, Senator Collins sold out her gender and her soul. For what exactly I'm not sure. Is she such a loyal patriarchy-loving fool that she simply fell in after a good solid mansplaining from the triple-chinned blunder, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell? Was she offered a carrot - maybe a cabinet position, a committee chair or some campaign financial assistance to counter the likely avalanche of contributions her 2020 opponent will receive? Was she threatened with a stick - the denial of all of the above?

I guess I'm asking for a little help here. One thing is for sure. Women, people of color, recently arrived immigrants - legal and undocumented, non-evangelical Christians, people living with disabilities, and yes, you too - "blue collar" working class folks - we're all in for world of pain and suffering. Unless, of course, we stop focusing on what separates us and instead on what will bring us together.

Let's all try to have some patience with each other and realize that all of us are traumatized by living in this savage, winner-take-all society, the "leaders" of which are always multiple steps ahead in their centuries' old strategy of divide and rule. Whatever Alex de Tocqueville might have thought he saw here almost 200 years ago is now only hanging on for dear life. Time for all of us to start doing some serious non-rapey CPR on our social fabric so that we can restore bonds of mutual tolerance, acceptance, trust and, dare I say it, love. Our nation's survival depends on it. And yeah, Donald "Pop a Couple of Tic Tacs" Trump is hereby banned from this collective exercise, unless Susan Collins is still looking for her big fat wet sloppy "thank you" kiss.

Animal House (of Justice)

Well, that was something...I admit that I watched/listened to chunks of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in which both Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford and Judge Brett Kavanaugh had opportunities to tell their respective stories. Dr. Blasey-Ford's testimony was filled with an incredible combination of raw emotion and scientific precision...a peer reviewed journal article, told with grace from a still-wounded heart. Judge Kavanaugh chose instead to borrow a page out of his patron's, Donald Trump's, play book, and color it in bile and vomit with liberal (can I use that word?) splashes of orangutan orange, rage-filled red, and snot-hued greens, a veritable Picasso of putridness and self-pity.

And that is what white entitlement looks like, smears of bodily effluvia: blood, spunk and chunks of Ralph. And that is what Donald Trump, George Bush (père et fils) and Ronald Reagan have used to decorate the Supreme Court, smearing it with this toxic mix of white supremacy, plutocratic disdain, and savage unrestrained hyper-capitalism. Throw into the mix the stench of skunk beer, a few ripped panties and one-piece swimsuits (and multiple established precedents) and, voilà! The transformation is now complete: what was once the Corinthian-columned heart of U.S. jurisprudence and the rule of law, has now become the Animal House of Justice!

When's pledge week?

Here's the toon:

He Pled the (Twenty-) Fifth

I wonder if Mel Brooks has one more movie left in him, some combination of the Producers, with the  big hit number being "Midterms for Hitler." Probably not, he rightfully deserves to spend his last years on earth just enjoying his health. That means the rest of us schlubs have to pick up the slack.

Here's my contribution. It turns out that Rod Rosenstein, whom Trump and the Republicans would surely love to show the door, might well have been plotting to unseat the Donald. I'm not sure what his motive was - after all, he chose to serve in this administration - but I'm guessing it's because he felt "used" by Trump when Trump used Rosenstein's memo as his justification for firing Comey.

Thins soup, I know, but I just can't see anyone in the Trump cabinet (or in Rosenstein's case, just below) having the intestinal fortitude to chuck the Orange Menace from the White House. Maybe I'm wrong, in which case Rosenstein's days are surely numbered. I guess he's okay for now, since Trump's toadies (you can't spell toadies with "aides") convinced Trump not to jettison anymore high ranking officials for fear it might give the "wrong impression" that the White House really is a chaotic shambles. Wouldn't want anyone getting that idea.

I do miss Mel Brooks. His humor formed/warped my own when I saw his string of hits in the mid-70s as a young kid. And I need that sense of humor - never mind to cartoon - but just to be able to get through each day without plummeting into a deep depression over the sorry state of affairs we're in. But not to despair, the midterms are almost upon us, and hopefully our very own comb over Hitler will be put into a deep freeze.

That's Not What Michelle O Meant

I don't think that's what Michelle Obama meant during her stirring speech at the Democratic Convention a little over two years ago. Talk about appropriation...

And it's only getting uglier - "it" being the battle over the nomination of Brent Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. The Republicans continue to try to railroad it through the judiciary committee, while it becomes increasingly apparent that what we really need to do is to hit the pause button so that an impartial investigative body - i.e., NOT the Republican-controlled judiciary committee - can get to the bottom of exactly what happened 36 years ago. Right, like that's actually going to happen.

Part of me wants to say, "C'mon. It's inevitable. There is no way the GOP will not vote on Kavanaugh before the midterms, so let's just get it over with." But, wait a minute. Make that several minutes, hours, days and weeks. Besides the obvious desire to see some semblance of a fair hearing I also wouldn't mind a delay just to watch the Republicans dig themselves a deeper hole with the electorate. Maybe I'm delusional, but I'd like to believe that the longer they and their misogynistic, authoritarian tendencies are on display, the more voters will be utterly repulsed and vote the Dems in...

Wait...who did we vote into the White House and who is STILL there?

Right. Never mind. Same as it ever was and will be.

It Takes One To Nominate One

OOPS...Looks like Brett "Boy Scout" Kavanaugh turned out to have a few skeletons in the closet after all. Does it matter that his alleged assault of a teenage girl took place 35 plus years ago? I don't know. What I do take issue with is the instinctive denial by his and his patron (President Trump) of the event while immediately launching a campaign to smear the survivor of his alleged assault.

And then, of course, there's the vast majority of the Republican Senators' disingenuous accusations of political hackery by the Democrats, accusations that don't stand up to the cold hard light of day. Of course, sexual assault survivors don't report the assault immediately; they're traumatized. Of course, some survivors take years, decades in this case, to work through that trauma to begin, often piecemeal, to disclose their experiences to others. And, of course, the survivor in this case tried as best she could to protect her privacy, until it was simply no longer possible to do so, which delayed the public release of her story.

All of these details are in consequential to Republicans who are hellbent to ram through Kavanaugh's nomination for the judiciary committee's and full Senate vote's. Setting bogus deadlines and rushing the process are all needed so that they can install a multigenerational conservative majority in the Supreme Court. What about justice for the survivor of Kavanaugh's alleged assault? Justice, in any meaningful sense of the word, has nothing to do with it. Rather, the reassertion of fully institutionalized white supremacist plutocracy is the real objective here. Speaking of which, once they've done the deed, they'll have to change the name of the court back to its original name:

The White Supremacy Court.

Fore Play

I'm looking out of my study window and it's blue sky and sunshine. A few hundred miles south, and the good people of North and South Carolina are facing some of the worst flooding and landslides they have seen in years. I cannot even imagine how horrific it must be. I've seen in the news examples of real grit and resilience as communities come together to take care of the most vulnerable to pull through this disaster.

Good thing, too, because I wouldn't want to wait around for Trump and the Traveling Clown Show to come to my rescue. The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency is currently under investigation for misusing official cars. Nothing like the irony of a disaster of a public administrator trying "manage" this disaster. At least he didn't fly down first class in a private jet to the scene of the disaster or engage in insider trading. I guess we should all be thankful that there are many shades of slime when it comes to corruption in the Trump administration.

Still, if you're a Carolinian, it has to be anxiety-provoking to wonder if you'll get the Harvey or the Maria treatment. My guess is that individuals and communities of color will get the latter, while whites and predominantly white communities will get the former, since institutional racism has always influenced the quality of public services delivered in general and, sadly, even and particularly in the U.S. Government's response to disasters.

Meanwhile, you can be rest assured that Trump is on top of all of this...in between rounds of golf...

Gone With the Norms

Gone With the Wind had to be one of the most horribly racist films ever made, never mind held up as a "classic" of American film making. It glorified the all aspects of the antebellum South and the Confederacy, including the vicious, dehumanizing and brutal violence embodied by slavery.

Kind of like Brett Kavanaugh and the Republican-controlled Senate's judiciary committee's consideration of his nomination.

Norms be damned, frankly, because there was never any intent by the GOP to have a serious examination of Kavanaugh's views, writing or record. They were all too busy licking their chops for the day when they could usher in another 30 years of control of the Supreme Court by a solid block of right-wing white supremacists. Yes, that includes Clarence Thomas, too, who reminds me of Clayton Bigsby, the black Klansman on the Chappelle Show. I guess that justice really is blind.

Anyway, I won't recap the clown show that passed for a proper vetting of Kavanaugh. All he had to do was emulate his patron, Donald Trump, and lie, lie, lie and lie some more. Nobody, certainly nobody with any kind of real political power, was going to do anything about it. I read somewhere that the Republicans felt justified in carrying out this travesty because they considered it revenge for the way the Democrats treated (and defeated the nomination of ) Robert Bork over 30 years ago. Really? WTF? Bork was one of Nixon's willing executioners, sticking the sword right in the back of Lady Justice to help his overlord try to escape accountability for the Watergate break-in. If anyone was patently unqualified to be appointed to the Supreme Court it was him. Now, Kavanaugh is very ably filling the same mold, albeit a bit more photogenically, trading Bork's evil professor look for that of a prep school rowing team captain.

But, at this point, intellectual dishonesty is probably the least of the Republican faults, considering what's on tap once Kavanaugh is confirmed, and let there be no doubt, he will be confirmed. Get ready for further dismantling of women's rights - both in general and reproductive rights in particular; destruction of voting rights - to safeguard the rule by a white minority for the foreseeable future; removal of environmental protections and worker safeguards - to allow unfettered pollution and exploitation of workers; and the elimination of structures to maintain church-state separation - to enshrine the Christian doctrine of deport thy neighbor.

Makes me want to curl up and escape by watching old movies. And why fool around with Gone with the Wind when you can cut right to the chase. Triumph of the Will, anyone?

You've Done a Heckuva job, Donnie!

Over the past week or so, a report was released, updating the death toll figures for last summer's hurricane Maria. It has now climbed to close to 3,000 people with some saying it is likely to climb even higher. I'm not at all surprised. What has surprised me is that it took this long for such figures to finally come out. I'm not sure it would have made much difference anyway even if they had been announced while our bloated combover gasbag "presidente" was huffing and puffing while taking his premature victory lap. He would have simply said or done something equally if not more heinous to distract us, and all of our ears and eyeballs would have quickly shifted to spend a minute on his most recent act of asinine, corrupt behavior.

Still, it bears mentioning that the Orange Menace is now responsible for a failed response to a hurricane with a fatality count that has surpassed that of W.'s personal fiasco, Hurricane Katrina (1,833 dead). You've done a heckuva job, Donnie! With his administration's (intentional?) lagged response one could almost consider it criminal. It's too bad some enterprising attorneys don't try to make that case. But, hey, what's one more lawsuit for Trump? He's so used to suing and being sued, he probably gets all fidgety and disoriented when he or one of his corrupt businesses isn't involved in some form of protracted legal dispute.

In any event, one thing we'll never hear from Trump or his white supremacist goons is an apology, which is certainly due to the people of Puerto Rico. I'd say that the Trump administration revels in treating them second-class citizens but they're all so morally bankrupt and intellectually deficient, most of them don't realize that Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. Not that it matters to them, they just take great pleasure in sadistically depriving people of color of their basic human and civil rights, regardless of their citizenship status.

This is what it feels like to be "governed" by fascist sociopaths, and that's nothing to sing about.

(c) 2018 www. imperial wardrobe.blogspot.com

Reverse Self-Incrimination

Donald Trump must be having the time of his life. Sure, he's facing legal headaches as his administration implodes under the pressure of multiple investigations, but where else but in America can you regularly unleash torrents of racist bile with impunity and actually be adored for doing so. Only in America where white evangelical "Christians" have locked arms with this decidedly immoral, second-rate wannabe mafia don whose claim to fame is serial sexual assault of women and a lifelong track record of fleecing his fellow man. Clearly, he must be "second coming" material.

Recently, at a fundraiser, he warned this core of his debased base, these white evangelical "Christians," that if the Democrats won the midterms, they would "quickly and violently" reverse all of their hard fought efforts to destroy any reasonable safeguards in state-church relations, populate the federal judiciary with unrepentant Scalia doppelgangers and return the U.S. to its white supremacist roots.

I guess that I could state the obvious - that white evangelical "Christians" have sold their souls to the devil - but I think that's off for two reasons. First, it's giving Satan bad name. I mean, c'mon, Satan clearly has more class than Trump; he's the Prince of Darkness, not just some bloated combover with three-card Monte game on a side street in midtown, right? Second, I'm not sure these bible humpers ever had much of a soul left after decades of tirelessly defending white supremacy. Point being, they're just much con artists as the Donald. And that's why the only thing left to say is that they prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that life truly imitates (con) art.

Enjoy the toon...

Planted by the Ape

I know, I know...every one's attention is absolutely riveted on the latest to come out of the various investigations into Donnie Trumpano and his wise guy "administration," aka, the family. Meanwhile, Trump and the Republicans continue to kneecap any reasonable effort to address social issues across any number of fronts, including and especially mitigating climate change.

We've read about his administration suspending automobile fuel efficiency standards, putting Soviet-style incentives in place in favor of increased coal production, and, of course, the biggie...pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Treaty on Climate Change. The sum total of all of these actions is a stubby middle finger being raised to our children, their children and all future generations. And, for what? A marginal increase in profits for the extractive industries? Hardly worth it.

I just hope that the various activists who call themselves the resistance are able to walk and chew gum at the same time. By all means, take to the virtual streets of social media and push back on each racist, xenophobic, misogynistic tweet, but please, please PLEASE don't forget to keep track of what's really going on behind the curtain: the systematic dismantling of every bit of progress, however incremental and unsatisfying, we've made over the last 55 years.

Now THAT is something worth screaming about. Enjoy the toon!

EVERY-body's Crazy

I guess I should be more riveted, obsessed and fascinated about the Manafort trial...but I'm not. Maybe I'm just too impatient to wait and see how this and subsequent trials play out and just want this whole nightmare to come to a quick end. Or maybe I'm just thinking that all of this strum, drag and angst are likely to amount to a big fat goose egg. The endemic, systemic corruption of our institutions being so engrained and deeply rooted at this point, it seems as if we're just all standing by as we watch them in their death throes as they flail, fail, flounder and eventually fizzle out.

Boy, do I need a vacation.

Okay, let me rouse myself from my cynical stupor. Clearly, Trump is deeply fatootzed about the Manafort trial and what it might produce and lead to. Clearly, the Republican Congress is doing everything in its power to thwart Mueller from proceeding any further. And, clearly, with everyone's attention riveted by the drama in and outside of the courtroom we are once again allowing the Trump administration to get away with a long list of heinous policy crimes: the continued separation and incarceration of  children from their asylum seeking parents as well as the continued systematic dismantling of our flimsy safeguards against institutional racism, industrial pollution and fraudulent corporate practises. It just wears me out, and all I can do is hope that there are good people out there who make these and any number of other compelling issues their cause and pursue them doggedly to seek justice and accountability.

Me? The best I can do in this lousy mess we've created for ourselves is to muster a bit of inspiration from the bearded Texan rockers of my adolescence to produce the latest toon. Hope you enjoy...

Goin' Retro and Partying Like It's 1969

I guess that it's only befitting that thanks to a little belated karmic justice Trump should get tripped up by a little tactic used so famously by his idol and role model: Richard "Tricky Dick" Nixon. It turned out that his self-styled consiglieri/fixer/sleazeball attorney, Michael Cohen, was taping their conversations unbeknownst to the Donald. And then, surprise!, it turns out that Trump really was lying about his affair with Karen McDougal, his knowledge of it, and whether or not he actually paid her off. Thanks to good chum, tabloid mogul David Pecker(wood), the owner and publisher of the National Inquirer, the story of his one-year affair with McDougal, tastefully carried out after the birth of his child, was squashed.

To paraphrase MLK, Jr., the boomerang of the universe is long, but it will eventually come back to knock you upside your combed-over head. I hope this is the beginning of many, many boomerangs of universal justice. Heck, I hope Trump faces a whole swarm of them. And, truth to be told, I'm getting a little tired of raising the hypocrisy issue when it comes to the sanctimonious right-wing's enabling of his reprehensible behavior, but I'll just summon a little energy to remind all of you one more time. The Republican Party and all of its right wing conservative supporters, donors and pundits have happily hid their shameful heads in the sand while Trump has gone about systematically shredding their so-called values and platform. As long as he can further institutionalize their guiding principles of white supremacy and social Darwinism, it's all good.

And with another Herculean effort, I'll repeat one more time that I cannot say that I'm much more pleased with the Democrats. Their establishment seems to be doing nothing more than wringing their hands about any number of ongoing Trump efforts to roll back civil and voting rights, environmental law and regulations, and worker's and women's. I won't even mention immigration, because the only major differences between Barack Obama, aka, "The Deporter in Chief," and Trump is that he barbarously imprisoned the entire families rather than barbarously separate the parents from the children. That's what is supposed to make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside about the Dems? Sheesh.

Oh wait, was that thing on? Can I pay you for not publishing that? Really? Great! Do you take cash, check or plastic?

PDS

Much has been said about what the Donald did whilst on his most excellent European Vacation - trashing our allies, bullying female prime ministers, whining about how unfair it is that our NATO allies make us pay a disproportionate amount for our collective defense, blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada. And then he went to Helsinki to meet his bromance BFF, Pooty, to give his Boyar boyo some love, respect, and who knows what else during their 2-hour private confab.

Treason? I dunno. Probably not. Just more examples of how Trump is physically incapable of ever, EVER saying so much as one bad word about Russia or its leader. That's not what caught my attention this week. It was the reaction of the Republican party. Again, no surprises here, given their primal fear of saying "boo" against anything Trump says or does. I get it - the polls show that all of the knuckle-dragging, tea-bagging, mouth-breathing masses, aka the GOP base, love everything Trump does by wide margins. Still, one has to wonder why the GOP has really lost its gusto for promising its base the world and then screwing it over in favor of lavishing more love on the super-wealthy (for future explanation, see Frank, Thomas. What's the Matter with Kansas? 2005).

Then we read about the red-headed Russian "unregistered agent," Maria Butina, who spent the past 5 years rubbing shoulders with the leadership of the GOP base's main political platforms, including the National Rifle Association among others. Now I get it. I begin to understand the GOP's reticence. It's not that Trump has sold his soul to Putin & Co. He has. It's that the entire GOP has been doing exactly the same thing. No, it's not all about the money. The Russians have yet to become the GOP's biggest sugar daddy - not by a long shot. Rather, it's the optics of one of America's two major parties, sullying itself by sidling up to the Bolshoi Gangsta to cement their white supremacist minority rule through political PsyOps, the very same the U.S. Government used on multiple countries during the Cold War - Iran, Guatemala, Greece, El Salvador, Chile, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, etc., etc.

Talk about karmic justice. I guess the chickens have finally come home to roost in...in Trump's Mar-el-Lago Florida Dacha.

Send in the Clowns...Wait They're Already Here...

What up, London? The same folks who gave us Spike Jones, Monty Python, Spitting Image and the like, have now given us the Baby Trump Blimp. And big shout out to Sadiq Khan for showing the integrity and the intestinal fortitude to remind the world that political satire is a form of free speech, which he refused to compromise by way of accommodating our thin-skinned, fat-headed, Nazi-loving, knuckle-dragging, mouth-breather, crotch-grabber of a president, aka, the Donald.

Trump did his best to trash the transatlantic alliance by, among other things, leveling misogynistic attacks against Angela Merkel, and then going after Theresa May by embracing his mop-headed upper class twit brother from another mother, Boris "the Spy-der" Johnson. Now, after a few rounds at his "failing" golf resort in Scotland, Trump is off to stoke up the fires of his bromance with his true love, the love...of...his...life. No, not Wendy, Jack. It's, of course, Vladimir Putin. I'm sure the sparks will fly, and the Orange Menace will swoon before the manly, bare-chested horse-riding charms of Czar Vlad the Comb-over.

Can't wait to see what he'll give up in return for...being blackmailed to do more of the same...

Oh, and to all of my hardcore leftist brothers and sisters who argue ironically (or not, just like Trump) that "who are we talk?" given our own shameful history of imperialism and violence, I would just say this: you are correct. We do have a shameful history of imperialism, and the only real difference between Russia and the U.S. is that Russia doesn't make a big production out of wrapping itself in some sanctimonious, self-serving BS about liberal democratic values. But that still doesn't mean we should give Pooty or anyone else a free pass. What it does mean is that we have to work even harder to end this reckless, exploitative behavior both here in the U.S. as well as anywhere else it's being used to rob people of their dignity (and, often, their lives). Enough with the false binaries.

Alright, time to get off my soapbox. Here's the toon. That's what you came here for:

All the World's A Gangsta...And All the Diplomats Are Merely Playuhs

Mikey "the Friendly Ghost" Pompeo just got his "culetto" handed to him by the North Koreans so that he could hand deliver it to the Donald. So much for sleeping well tonight or any night. It turns out that the North Koreans are either (a) doing exactly what they've always done during negotiations with the U.S. and/or (b) really ramping up their nukes program with even greater vigor just to show Trump what a clueless sucker he's been during this entire process.

After the mandatory verbal smack down - North Korea called the U.S. "gangster-like" - which was just another way of the North Koreans telling Pompeo not to let the door hit him on his way out of the negotiations - Mikey came up with a comeback that was right up there with Trump's very own, "No. You're the puppet." He told the North Koreans that "the world is a gangster." Not sure what that's supposed to mean. Charitably, he might have been saying that all diplomats have a little gangster in them as they defend their respective countries' national interest with the sangfroid of a gangster.

Or, maybe Pompeo was just giving props to his boss and sputtering some incoherent nonsense. You be the judge. Meanwhile, enjoy the toon!

The Supreme Grab

It appears that Christmas came early for the Donald. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has decided to retire in enough time to allow him to ram some right-wing knuckle dragger through the Senate for approval and eventual confirmation prior to the midterm elections. That will make two Supreme Court justices nominated, approved and confirmed, all within the first half of Trump's first term in office.

Talk about supremely lucky...

Chances are good that the nomination will sail through the Senate, since the Democrats have no leverage to stop it. There's a slim chance that (a) they'll stick together and all vote no and even slimmer chance that one or two weak-kneed, so-called "moderate" Republicans will join them in opposing the nomination. Ain't gonna happen, mostly because the Democratic senators from states that Trump won in the last general election are already getting all wobbly and will likely support the nomination to save their political hides.

So much for taking one for the team, as in the common good of this country.

I'm mostly resigned to this likely outcome, but I sure wish that the Democrats could muster some intestinal fortitude to put up something of a fight when they question whichever narrow-minded mouth breather Trump manages to parade before them. Meanwhile, the Democratic "establishment" continues to wring its hands over twisted notions of "civility," poo-pooing progressive activists when they use forms of direct action to make their voices heard. All this, of course, while Trump continues to run circles around the Dems, carpet F-bombing them (and all of us) back into the 19th century.

Depressing, indeed.

God Bless the Child...Just Not in the U.S.

I wish that I could have chosen another topic for my weekly toon, but this is it. The barbarity of the Trump administration, the enabling cowardly Republicans and, lest we forget, the Democrats who were only too happy to support similar policies under the Obama administration...all out of fear of looking "weak."

How exactly does anyone look weak by protecting vulnerable children and adults? Does anyone have any idea of what asylum seekers have had to go through before they ever reach the border? It was only with the heart-breaking images and sounds of children being snatched from their parents and kept in holding pens that so-called "leaders" finally spoke up to voice their opposition to Trump's Zero Tolerance policy. You didn't hear them making too much noise 4 years ago, when unaccompanied minors were fleeing from the terror of their homes in Central America.

News Flash. Keeping families together in ICE detention centers has proven hazardous to asylum seekers' and immigrants' health. There are high rates of incidence sexual abuse and exploitation, dehumanizing treatment and then there's just the trauma of being incarcerated for the "crime" of trying to escape the violent conditions and consequences created by decades of militaristic U.S. foreign policy in Central America.

And while many of us would all like to focus on Trump for being the source of this amoral policy, many of us would also like to ignore the United States' long, ignominious history of brutalizing children with the enslavement and trade of Africans, the genocide of Native Americans, and our continued refusal to pull children out of poverty, choosing instead to spin nonsensical myths to justify our callousness, which are really just exercises in blaming the victim.

So, yes, let's criticize Trump and the Republicans. Yes, let's make them pay in the upcoming midterms, But let's not think for one minute that even if they were all swept from office tomorrow that we, as a nation, would finally do right by our children.

Nativism Scene

Just back from a vay-kay in Belgium. While I took a break from work, I kept up with the news. Big mistake. It's already cliche to say that the Trump administration can't go any lower. Well, it's gone lower...again. Its decision to implement a policy of separating parents from children when refugee families, seeking asylum in the U.S., cross the border has been rightly called barbaric. Sadly, it's only the logical extension of the same policies that the Obama and Bush administrations had in place. So, of course, leave it to the Trump administration to take it to a whole new level of cruelty, abuse, nativism and national abasement.

I don't really have much more to say, except that for every day we tolerate this policy, we are revealing ourselves for who we really are as a society. Let's see if I'm forced to repeat myself again next month during the next round of our nationwide limbo dance to hell.

Let's all see just how low we can go.

Flashback to High School English

What was the book they made us all read in 9th grade? ...Maybe as a not-so-subtle warning to all of us hormone-addled teens: there would be consequences if we were all to go on and conform to our peers' cruel, savage behavior in the hallways. Oh yeah, that one. Lord William Golding's classic, Lord of the Flies. If I remember correctly, our teacher even showed us the black and white film adaptation, which reminded me of a mash up between a Hitchcock film and an episode of Survivor, except that with its depiction of the gruesome goings on between the "tribes" on the island it was hardly PG-rated.

Which brings us to the Donald and his tribe of savages, er sorry, the Republican Party, which has mindlessly followed him down the primrose path to iniquity and utter institutional degradation. Together, they've managed to ramrod through the most far-right policy agenda, which is setting this country back decades and rolling back the socioeconomic progress so many fought so hard to achieve.

Not to let the Democrats off the hook. They have had that deer in the headlights look with no coherent strategy to combat this onslaught on our values and institutions and no viable alternative. Maybe it's because the Democrats' policies were only marginally less abhorrent and unjust. Anybody remember Obama as the "Deporter in Chief" or Hilary advocating for deporting Central American children fleeing violence that bipartisan U.S. foreign policy had aided and abetted?

Anyway, along the way, the GOP has not only swallowed but vociferously supported Trump's 3,000+ lies. Job well done, fellas. Job well done.I guess I should be somewhat heartened that now Trent Gowdy, of the Benghazi Fake Scandal fame, and other GOP "leaders" are now backing off Trump's latest distracting lie: that the Obama administration was "spying" on the Trump campaign. But I'm not. Instead, my question to these amoral hypocritical hacks is what made this lie any more unacceptable than the other 3,000+ he's told since he's been in office? I'm sure they have some self-serving bit of flimflammery to justify their decision. Can you say midterms, boys and girls?

Okay, 'nuff said. Here's the toon. Enjoy and G-d bless.

Ready for Some Football?

No, I'm not. And if I didn't have an excuse earlier, watching the National Football League's mealy-mouthed response to President Trump's blatantly racist attacks on black athletes expressing their views on police brutality...If watching the NFL give a free pass to wife beaters and child abusers until they were shamed by the media into doing something about it...If watching the NFL allow players to beat each other into a bloody pulp with irreversible brain damage and then suppressing evidence of concussions...If, if, if. As if I needed yet another excuse.

I have run out of excuses. I'm no longer going to watch or read about the NFL, after being a die hard fan for over 45 years of the team with the most racist names in professional sports.

The NFL's shameless, spineless kowtowing to the Orange Menace and then exerting its control over the players, 80% of whom are men of color, their bodies and their constitutional rights to free speech were all too much for me to stomach. Stick a fork in me. I'm done. No more. No más. Ça y'est. Bas!

I'll stick with hoops, maybe even learn to enjoy ice hockey now that the Washington Capitals are in the Stanley Cup, after largely ignoring them for the past 45+ years. I'll just take it one Sunday at a time, because I don't want to willingly provide the NFL with one more media hit or dollar of advertising revenue. They don't deserve all of the unfair, competitive advantages they've been gifted only to abuse this privilege to further fill their purses while exploiting players with impunity.

The NFL and its owners are, with few exceptions, greedy, entitled old white men who still treat players like chattel and fans like marks. The owner of the team I rooted for for 45+ years is the poster child of this vile form of narcissism, but he's still a distant second this country's narcissist-in-chief, who has never lost an opportunity to unload his deep-seeded hatred of people of color for political gain. All of these plutocrats are despicable, and I hope that one day karmic justice delivers to them what they deserve, a taste of their own vile medicine.

Not Tonight - or Any Night - She's Got a Headache

In his tireless mission to make America hate again, the Donald has decided to reinstate the "gag rule" domestically. For those who may not be familiar with it, the gag rule is an oldie but goody from the Republican Party's Top 10 policies for denying women their right to choose which forms of reproductive health they can access and use.  The way it works is that if a health care provider offers a woman an abortion (and soon, wait for it, modern day contraception) or refers her to someplace where she can access it, then that health care provider will lose federal government funding, effectively shutting them down.

The upshot is that women who are economically better off will have no problem accessing whichever care options they prefer; it will be the poorer women who will have their choice denied and their health worsened as a result. That's why Republican administrations usually begin with reinstating the gag rule overseas, because (white) Americans don't give a toss about women of color, especially poor ones who are sight unseen. It's a slam dunk - white Americans get a three-fer. They get to express their heartfelt racism, xenophobia and misogyny all at the same time. Best of all, it enables them to feel better about themselves for being unrepentant white supremacists.

Oh, and lest we forget, in their twisted vision of what's right, the gag rule helps keep as many women as possible in their "place" - barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen - again sight unseen.

I'm sure there will be law suits filed, and I've heard the pundits opine that this move is just more red meat for the Trump base so that they can bellow and roar about sticking it to those effete coastal snobs. I just hope that once they're all done a' hootin' and a' hollerin' they might take a minute to notice that it won't be so easy to take their own mothers, daughters and sisters to get the health care they need, because - SURPRISE! The same clinics that safeguard women's rights to choose are often times the very same ones that provide preventative primary health care services, especially to lower income women. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face. Hope they can find a doctor to patch THAT up.

Sending Our Very Best

This past week, another "fringe" GOP candidate went down to defeat, after Trump bowed to pressure from the "mainstream" Republican Party elites and tweeted to his troll army to vote for Don Blankenship's opponents instead. It must have hurt Trump to do that, because it went against every fibroid in his rotten core to have to tear down a fellow xenophobe/racist, his brother from another mother.

Blankenship was another failed business man who, like Trump, showed blatant disregard for his employees, even covering up fatal violations of mining law and regulations that ultimately led to their demise. Not that Blankenship showed so much as an ounce of remorse. Instead, like most right-wingers, he wrapped himself in the blanket of victimhood, whining about oppressive government regulators and insisting on a free pass for his murderous behavior that cost 29 men their lives.

He'd make good company with another failed GOP candidate - Roy Moore. His serial crime of preference was having sex with underage girls. And, like Blankenship, he shamelessly plagiarized the Trump campaign script of fear, hatred and disregard for norms. Not surprisingly, in the deep red state of Alabama, he came within a few votes of actually winning his race.

All of that got me to thinking...what if these two "malcreados" showed up at the U.S.-Mexican border? Would our neighbors be willing to let them enter into their country? After all, even if they are a murder and a rapist, they don't represent all Americans, some of whom the Mexicans probably assume, are good people. Still, one good turn deserves another. La policia would give them a taste of Mexico's vaunted justice system and let them enjoy the hospitality of Mexico's finest prisons, where they no doubt belong.

Show Me the Money...Shot

Thank goodness President Trump provides such an excellent role model for our children of how NOT to behave. The constant lying, the cruel objectification, exploitation and disposal of people, the bullying, and the total lack of anything resembling a moral compass. He makes parenting so much easier for all of us. "Keep it up and you'll wind up like you know who...No eat your dad gum peas!"

The crickets have been chirping up a storm because I have yet to hear a single peep from any member of the Republican Party after Trump all but admitted that he had lied and had broken the law with his acknowledgement of having previous knowledge of the payment of hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels. That came after his new consigliere, Rudy "Tutti Fruiti" Giuliani, put his foot into it on the Hannity Show. That was must-see TV, watching Sean Hannity drop a nutty deposit in his Depends as Giuliani hammered one nail after another into the Trump administration's coffin.

What ensued was the predictable scrambling by Trump's aides, trying to walk back this catastrophic admission and even new, more creative ways of denying what just happened while throwing Rudy under the bus for not knowing what he was talking about, and then denying that as well. So many clowns, so many pratfalls, so sad, so very sad.

I think it's time we rename the Potomac after that river that runs through Egypt.

Shit Bird

Will he or won't he? Well, he's pled the fifth, so maybe Michael Cohen won't sing for Robert Mueller, but I'm betting at some point he's going to have to decide if loyalty to his abusive boss, aka, the Donald, is worth spending some quality time in the Federal Pen. I'm guessing...he'll sing. Unless, of course, there's already been a deal in the works for him to receive a presidential pardon. Probably. Heck, if Trump could give one to Arpaio before he was even sentenced, then there's a good chance that he'll do it again for Cohen, his personal shyster and muzzle.

Regardless, it's all just another hot (sticky, stinky) mess at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, which is to say business as usual for the most dysfunctional administration in recent memory. You wonder how long this can go on. I guess it can continue as long as there's still some flunky willing to lie, cover up and fall on her/his sword for Trump. It's hard to say what the incentive is for them to keep on keeping on. They are either real believers or maybe they just don't give a damn. After all, they're already on permanent poopy patrol, having to clean up one mess after another. It's all just another day in the septic pool that is the Trump administration. I guess it's either shit or get shat upon.

Check please.

Tastes Like Candy! Yow....

Hey Sports Fans! Spring has finally sprung in Charm City. The flowers are all blooming the trees are budding, and that means...it's time for another cartoon!

Normally, as a cartoonist, I should produce a cartoon that is timely and relevant to the current news cycle, but these are not normal times. And, besides, I've been obsessing about how to use this gag. So without too much commentary, I present the Donald Trump PREZ dispenser, guaranteed to satisfy all of your warped impulses and twisted cravings. Parental advise is advised for children under...well, any and all children, to be honest. Better yet, just hide them.

He's a Superfund Freak, a Superfund Freak - That Man is Kinda Freaky

Scott Pruitt, the Donald's prized eco-troll has gotten himself and the Trump Administration in some not so clean hot water. Pruitt's ethical lapses are too many to list and describe, so I'll let Lisa Friedman of the NY Times have that honor. Instead, I'll just observe that in an administration comprised of the slimiest, sleaziest and most loathsome band of miscreant toadies, Scott Pruitt manages to take the prize. He's gone after environmental protection regulations, all of which balance safeguarding public health with allowing industry as much free rein as possible to operate profitably, with a zeal that can only be explained by his ongoing serial relationships with myriad polluters in multiple sectors. This slimy toady sure gets around!

And now we're learning that John Kelley tried to show Pruitt the door only to have the rug pulled out from underneath him by Trump, who considers Pruitt to be one of his top performers. I guess the systematic destruction of the country's environment is right up there on Trump's bucket list, along with shtupping as many  porn stars, playmates and other various and sundry, especially right after his wife has given birth to his child. I can now see why Trump adores Pruitt so much, because Scotty's behavior demonstrates how these seemingly unrelated vocations all go hand in...well, let's just say, "hand." This reprehensible behavior manages to meet the Trumpian triple bottom line:

1. Environmental - Pruitt, with Trump's unconditional support, is out to destroy the nation's air, water and land, all so businesses are allowed to operate without any concern for safeguarding the environment, our communities or the people who live in them.
2. Financial - with no care for laws or ethical norms, Pruitt, like Trump, operates using an unashamedly transparent quid pro quo - exchanging cash and in-kind favors for favorable deregulations and policies.
3. Social - Pruitt, in dispensing with such norms, behaves in a way that exemplifies Trump's M.O. - white entitlement run amok - along with all of its toxic inter-sectionality with misogyny and plutocracy. 

And, as if I needed to mention it, Republicans are doing what about all of this? Yeah, I thought so. Nothing. Nada. Rien, Nichego. They're only too happy to be riding the Trump Clown Train until it runs off the rails, crashes and burns in a dumpster. Meanwhile, they get to realize all of their wildest dreams by building this dystopian paradise of massive inequality, white supremacy and environmental degradation. 

Beam me up, Scotty!

Meanwhile, on the Left Coast...

With all of the nonsense emanating from Chaos Central at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, we haven't heard nearly enough about the latest cold-blooded murder of yet another black man by the police. The officers of Sacramento's finest who murdered him, first claimed that Stephon Clark had a gun, then they said he had some sort of tool, until they finally admitted that all he was just carrying his iPhone. And that admission came how many days after they shot him dead, firing more than 20 bullets at him while he was trying to take shelter in his grandmother's backyard?

The more I read about police and policing in this country's history, the more I am ashamed to realize what I never understood to be true. The systematic murder of black people in particular and people of color in general has been no accident. It is intentional and baked into the institutional design of our police forces, which were set up with the explicit purpose of safeguarding slaveowners' "property." They were charged with tracking down runaway slaves and snuffing out any attempt at rebellion. They killed first and asked questions later. The only difference, 150 years later, is that now they occasionally have to answer for their actions when questions are asked of them.

Still, real accountability is probably generations away from eve becoming a reality. With few exceptions, most police officers who have killed children, youth and adults of color continue their careers if not in the same police force than another one somewhere else with little or no punishment. The families and friends of victims may or may not receive damages for their loss, and how can that amount ever be enough to replace the loss of a loved one? This is impunity, pure and simple, which in this country is just another way of saying white privilege.

Today children of all races and ethnicities are protesting against gun violence in the "March for Our Lives," ostensibly against domestic terrorists and other criminals who commit mass murder. But where is the protest and outcry against the terrorists and criminals who wear a uniform and are protected by the "legitimacy" of state-sanctioned violence? We'll certainly hear nothing from the Trump Administration, from President Donald "Orange Menace" Trump or his lackey, Attorney General Jeff "Deputy Dog" Sessions. Both have made it their mission to roll back whatever attempts at police reform the Obama administration initiated. I guess, as with many social issues in America, one small step forward has been buried by several leaps backward.