Yellow Jacket

In solidarity with the French revolutionaries of the Gilets Jaunes.

Much of the US Left points to the Gilets Jaunes as proof that protest works, but they couldn't be more wrong.

Protest doesn't work; insurrection does.

The Gilets Jaunes didn't put Macron on the run and achieve a rollback of the regressive "carbon tax" by putting on a big police-permitted march on a Saturday afternoon and returning to work on Monday; they did it by totally disrupting business as usual, by tearing up the streets and burning the motherfucker down, by making the posh shopping districts unshoppable, and making the country ungovernable week after week.

10x17 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 699kb

...or Democracy Gets It!

Apropos of nothing, I suppose... just coming up for air after wrapping up a big-ass fun design gig for a friend's cannabis start-up that's launching next year – and seeing all the Donuts on Twitter, bitching about all the Leftists who aren't voting Democratic, and often staying home altogether.

In case you haven't noticed, the smell of 2020 is already in the air – the Left-punching Donut accounts are out punching the Left, the Sanders-punching Donuts are out punching Bernie, and they're all out pimping the Democratic Party because... democracy. Basically, if you're not voting Democratic, you hate Democracy™.

The Donuts are all real gung-ho for the exercise of democracy n'shit, but then when you actually vote your values, like vote Green or Socialist or something – that is, actually participate in friggin' democracy – they get their panties in a twist because you didn't vote for the goddamn Democrat, even though the Democrat in the race also sucked on toast.

12x9 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 786kb

Social Media Shit-Take Quote Template Art

Back again, in the fine new tradition of the Smashed Old TV comes this new Social Media Shit-Take Quote template art. Hold up your favorite social media star's queefage in style. Shown here is a "serving suggestion" on the letter-size screen-resolution template. The typeface here is Gotham family Book and Medium, but any clean, modern sans-serif face will work.

Blank templates:
Letter-size medium-res .jpg image for inkjet/laser printing, 656kb
Letter-size screen resolution .jpg image for Web, blogs, social media, 219kb

The Primo Nutmeg Interview

Hey, folks! My interview on the Primo Nutmeg show just dropped; I'm talking cartooning, media, politics, and it's... well, primo. Give a listen...

Blue Wave no. 3: Pukin' Blue, No Matter Who

Welp... I've finally nailed it down. Between Ocasio-Cortez waffling on Palestine, Andrew Gillum flip-flopping on Medicare For All, all the ex-CIA types running as Democrats and all the doorknobs screaming "vote Blue, no matter who", I think I've finally figured out what the Blue Wave is going to be: the Democratic Party choking to death on its own vomit.

11x17 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 1.3mb

It's Da' Bomb!

So, this is how it ends – not with a whimper, but with a bang.

All year, we've heard all manner of cocky smack talk out of the Democrats about a "Blue Wave" and how they're going to sweep back into a majority on the Hill... but here we are less than two weeks out, and suddenly they're getting all jittery and revising expectations downward, it seems. In the past couple of weeks or so, the cocky talk has been replaced by increased amounts of desperate scolding, hectoring, pleading, shaming, browbeating, practically screaming at us to vote.

Mind you, the Democrats haven't given us anyone or anything to vote for since about 1972, and nowhere was this fact more glaring than in the past twenty-odd years since Bill'n'Hillary showed up and sucked all the oxygen out of the place.

So, here they are now, with no real record of progressive achievement in the past thirty years to point to, no real vision of a better future, pretty much nothing except to run against Russia and constantly scream at us to vote all friggin' day and night.

12x9 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 909kb

...and, while inspired by the Post headline, here's the song that was stuck in my head as I drew this; everybody has sappy old tunes they love in spite of themselves, and this is one of mine:

TV Talking Head Quote/Meme Template Art

Fresh off the drawing board, a new quote/meme template for all those favorite TV news talkers' hot shit takes on Twitter and elsewhere. Included here is a "serving suggestion" on the letter-size screen-resolution meme/quote template. The typeface here is Gotham family Book and Medium, but any clean, modern sans-serif face will work.

Aside from the quality of the journalism, another thing I hate about TV these days is the total lack of satisfaction you get from snatching your set off the table and pitching it through the window into the street. Those old CRT sets with the big-ass tube and the transformer in 'em had some real mass, and required a major revolutionary commitment to pick that sucker up and heave it.

Blank templates:
Letter-size medium-res .jpg image for inkjet/laser printing, 799kb
Letter-size screen resolution .jpg image for Web, blogs, social media, 264kb

Christ The Redeemer (after Paul Landowski)

To nobody's surprise, as part of its long-standing tradition, the Wall Street Journal has endorsed fascist Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil's upcoming Presidential elections. This is a politician so horrible that even Marine Le Pen won't touch him with somebody else's ten-foot pole.

"Forgive them, Father – but get me the hell out of here!"
–Christ the Redeemer

11x14 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 1.1mb

Pussy Hats II: This Time, It's Brunch

Imagine my delight when I learned that the Million Hillary March was going to be returning here to Washington, DC next January – a fresh, new blue wave of vindictiveness, bitterness, denial, exploitation, and all the goddamn astroturf you can handle. Why, the very thought of all this vibrant feminist energy makes me want to charge into the streets and ask to speak to the manager.

Imagine also my amusement to discover that this chickenshit outfit has actually published an "oral history" with the assistance of their comrades at Condé Nast, which is about as grassroots as you can get, kids. Two whole epic years of demonstrative Liberal indignation, laying astroturf, and accomplishing absolute zero – now, there's some serious-ass oral history. Hot damn, hold me back.

11x17 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 1.5mb

Guardian Of Law

Just going to leave this here... not addressing the Kavanaugh nomination specifically, but more of a general commentary on a long-decrepit American institution.

(Inspired by James Earle Fraser's "Guardian of Law" at the West Steps of the Supreme Court Building.)

11x14 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 1.3mb

Planned Grifterhood

This little nugget was inspired by one of my peeps over on Mastodon, covering the current state of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex – Planned Parenthood in particular – and the derangement currently afflicting Steinem-era Liberals.

9x17 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 1mb

11x17 inch medium-res color .jpg image, (vertical format) 1.2mb

News Is Not Your Friend

While the US Left was busy filling every pair of BVD's in the drawer over Alex Jones, Facebook was busy suppressing Leftist media outlets like Electronic Intifada and TeleSur -- with the blessing and assistance of right-wing think tank and NATO lobbyists The Atlantic Council.

Rightists own pretty much all the major media in this country, drench the airwaves in toxic right-wing talking points, and scream the loudest about "censorship" while, in the meantime, Leftist journalists and publications -- doing the job that journalists should be doing -- take most of the heat from rightists and centrists in the major US media and political establishment.

"Fake News Is Not Your Friend" shout the oppressively bland billboards in our cities; it's perfectly obvious now that the subtext here is actually just "News Is Not Your Friend".

11x11 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 762kb

Meanwhile, in Yemen...

Needless to say, yesterday's conviction of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort for tax and bank fraud made for what Liberals call "a juicy news day".

No doubt everybody in Flint, Yemen and all of Jeff Bezos' employees who are living in their cars are absolutely thrilled to pieces over this news.

11x16 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 883kb

Proposed US Space Force Logo

As most of you have heard, last week the comedy team of Trump and Pence announced an $8 billion splashdown for a new military branch, the U.S. Space Force -- and are also apparently inviting submissions for the logo design.

So what are they gonna do, fight giant bugs? Actually, I'm thinking the Space Grunts are gonna be guarding Elon Musk's gated Martian colonies for the rich.

12x14 inch medium-res color jpg image, 1.1mb

It's Official: The Democrats Don't Care

So, this makes it official: the Democratic Party doesn't care. They aren't running in the midterms on the issues of skyrocketing college tuition, income disparity, police terrorism and murder, or any other issues directly affecting anyone remaing who bothers to vote -- they think they're going to surf that "Blue Wave" into a majority on the Hill by ramping up the krazy on their empty, hollow conspiracy theories and bargain-basement McCarthyism.

Those of you from outside the US looking in on the state of politics and media discourse here might guess that you were watching a community theatre production of an Ionesco play, and you would be absolutely right. The worst of it, though, is that those of us living here are all pretty much trapped in the play whether we like it or not.

11x17 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 896kb

UPDATED: The Raving Donkey "Tripping Balls Mix" now available as an 11x17 poster (150 dpi) and as an 11x17 meme template (72dpi). Here's a "serving suggestion"; the recommended fonts are Gotham Book and Medium, to match Democratic Party branding. Have at it, funsters!

Blue Plate Special

A little over a month ago, Democratic Party "rising star" (spit) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted "this is a massacre", referring to the Israeli slaughter of unarmed Palestinians in Gaza. Needless to say, as soon as the establishment pushed back, she immediately started waffling her ass off and folded faster than Superman on laundry day, saying that she posted that tweet "as an activist" and not a Congressmember. However, now that she's a member of Congress, she's apparently willing to "learn and evolve" -- which, as someone who grew up in Washington DC, I understand to mean "flip-flop", or "do an Obama" as we say these days.



Granted, the focus of her activism was on economic issues, but still -- if you're going to run for Congress, you also need to keep up on lots of other issues as well, such as the 70 years of brutal occupation of Palestine and the Gaza Strip by Israel, and the ongoing mass murder of Palestinians in Gaza.

What especially galled the hell out of me is that initially, Ocasio belted out the straight, raw truth -- but when the pushback hit, her first instinct was to backpedal rather than show some backbone and stand her ground in solidarity with the people of Gaza against Israeli barbarity. All the walking back, backpedaling and explaining she can possibly do now will do her no good because, as the saying goes, you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

At least we found out early.

11x14 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 757kb

#MeltICE

Schumer never once publicly criticized the Democrats who voted with the GOP to deregulate banks, give Trump more surveillance powers, or confirm a torturer as head of CIA. But this... https://t.co/LUilExPUWM

— Trevor Timm (@trevortimm) June 26, 2018

So, while the ICE has gone full Gestapo -- separating immigrant families, caging their children -- and people are in the streets taking direct action, occupying ICE offices, blocking detainee transfer buses and confronting officials in public, what are the Democrats doing? Well, along with hopping aboard the bandwagon for votes, they're lecturing us about "civility", with Chump Schumer and Nancy Pelosi being the worst of the bunch.

And, as usual, Democrats are waffling and mealy-mouthing, calling for "reforming", "restructuring" and re-imagining the American Gestapo; the most irksome of all has to be Kamala Harris who, after knocking herself out defending ICE, has suddenly started talking about "re-examining" ICE. Sorry, Ms. H., but "re-examining" and "reforming" are not abolishing.

11x16 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 1.5mb

Blue Box Chardonnay

Because It's Always 2016 Somewhere In The World.

So, according to Senator Support Our Troops, the Donkeycrats are in danger of veering "too far to the left", and that the issues Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ran on -- and won -- would somehow "alienate" Midwesterners.

Yeah, that's right, you heard it here first -- folks in Iowa City, Flint or Milwaukee don't give a rat's ass about the cost of housing, education or healthcare, or about depressed wages, or collective bargaining rights, or the quality of their water.

Keep on swigging that Centrist Chardonnay, Senator.
Wine, spoh-dee oh-dee, drinkin' wine.

11x17 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 1.3mb

BREAKING: DNC 2020 Campaign Art Leaked!

Just going to leave this here...

I love how all these "white, privileged, straight…" #StillWithHer Liberals are claiming that until Cinnamon Hitler is out of office, they're each and every kind of oppressed minority.

That is… until the cops show up. Or they need to speak to the manager.

— Robert D. Skeels, JD 🎋 🇵🇸🔻 (@rdsathene) June 7, 2018

On pondering the "I'd like to speak to the manager" mindset popular among Liberals these days. Seems to be your basic Liberal style of activism, about as radical as they get -- when they aren't busy calling the cops on kids for running a lemonade stand without a permit or something.

11x7 inch medium-res .jpg image, 406kb

the Wine Stasi

By now, you've all heard the tale of Permit Patty, the San Francisco woman who called the cops on an 8 year-old girl for selling bottled water in front of her home; calling the cops on black kids doing normal kid stuff seems to be a big trend among the pasty these days. It's also interesting to note that Patty is also a Hillary Girl; it figures that she's a Demanding To Talk To The Manager kinda gal.

Talk about the banality of tyranny; the American Stasi has turned out to be a bunch of middle-aged white women with mobile phones.

11x17 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 1.3mb

Keeping Families Together

WASHINGTON — President Trump caved to enormous political pressure on Wednesday and signed an executive order meant to end the separation of families at the border by detaining parents and children together for an indefinite period.

–New York Times, 06.20.18

So, Mr. T has decided not to separate immigrant children from their parents in the detention camps at the border, but to keep immigrant families together -- in detention camps.

In the Democratic Party, this is known as a landmark victory.

And, needless to say, the Democrats are setting a new record for jumping on an issue and co-opting it for votes, beating their previous personal best set by the March For Our Lives.

12.5 x 14 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 1.5mb

Phantom Pain

I'm honestly lost for anything ironic or pithy to add to this, so I'm just going to leave this here:

"Maher Harara, 48, from the Shujaiya neighborhood east of Gaza City, told Human Rights Watch that 'he saw a woman’s finger shot off as she was making a victory sign' as she stood about 40 meters from the fences."

-- "Impose Sanctions on Netanyahu for Gaza War Crimes, says HRW",
Electronic Intifada, 06.14.18

11x17 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 644kb

Introducing: Democratic Donuts!

If you've been involved as long as I have with the Dirtbag Left -- or, as us old folks call it, the Left -- you're intimately familiar with the infamous Donut Incident at the DNC Galactic HQ on Capitol Hill:

...The grievances converge around a recent trip to deliver petitions to the party’s headquarters in Washington, where Turner and other progressives were greeted by barricades, security guards, and an offering of donuts and water, which she saw as an empty gesture indicative of an institution that isn't "smart enough, humble enough, to say, 'let’s take a step back and really listen to the people'."

– Nina Turner, quoted on BuzzFeed, 08.09.17

Where's Melania?

So... Flint, Michigan still doesn't have clean water, at least half of Puerto Rico still doesn't have electricity months after the hurricane, the Israeli army is shooting first responders at the protests in Gaza, we're still funding Saudi atrocities in Yemen, and what are the US media yelling about...?

I can't even, man.

Horizontal format, 8x17 inch medium-res .jpg image, 926kb
Vertical format, 9x14 inch medium-res .jpg image, 930kb

The Last Donut

So, yesterday, Democratic Party hacks Chump Schumer and Nancy Pelosi proudly unveiled a vague, tepid economic reform package called "A Better Deal". It's kind of adorable, really, the way the Democratic leadership is suddenly discovering the crushing income inequality in the US and, in typical lame-ass Democratic fashion, tries to claw its way back to relevance with Left and progressive voters.

And that slogan -- dear god, how many focus groups did it take to come up with that, anyway? "A Better Deal" -- man, that just inspires the living hell out of me.

11x12 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 812kb

Bipartisanship No. 2

So, anyway, just so we're clear on this... the GOP are worried that defense contractors will lose their jobs if we aren't bombing Syria (or Yemen, or Iran); the Democrats are still "resisting" their weak little asses off, but when it comes to Syria "there's no one more red, white and blue", as Phil Ochs says.

There, done.

16x16 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 1.3mb

Cops and the Klan, Hand in Hand

From Sacramento to Newnan to Charlottesville -- it should be clear to one and all at this point that the police are there to "protect and serve" corporations and fascists. Now, as always -- cops and the Klan go hand in hand.

12.5 x 14 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 1.6mb

Blue Wave II: Banzai Pipeline

Well, the latest news from the "Blue Wave" midterm election scene actually isn't looking that good for the Democrats. Despite a Reuters poll showing a 9% drop in Milennials' support for the Democrats and – on top of that – the Chump Schumer DACA sellout, the Doug Jones disaster, their support for a massive war budget and the bombing of Syria, their continued support for Saudi brutality in Yemen and Israeli barbarity in Gaza, the collapse of the Russiagate freakshow and the whole Joy Reid hot mess, the Democrats are still acting all cocky and talking smack about a "Blue Wave" this November that will supposedly flood the House of Representatives with new and better Democrats.

Uh huh. I'll go heat up the Jiffy-Pop.

13x12 inch medium-res color .jpg image. 1.6mb

Mission Accomplished, no. 3

Just before the latest round of US bombing in Syria, I found myself appalled at a sabre-rattling op-ed in the Washington Post bearing the bloodthirsty declaration "We Need To Go Big In Syria. North Korea Is Watching". Never mind that we're bombing Syria again despite no real evidence of chemical attacks, and before the OPCW inspectors could get in to investigate -- hell, evidence is for squares these days -- the US media have totally shifted from the issue of fabricated chemical attacks to this tinhorn in North Korea who we're supposed to be scared to death of despite not being able to get his missles to work and whose nuclear arsenal isn't even 1/10 the size of the US -- the only nation in history to have actually used nuclear weapons.

Yeah, let's make an example of this tinhorn in order to put the fear of god into this other tinhorn -- classic crass schoolyard bullying. What else could you expect from an old GW Bush flunkie?

12x14 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 1.1mb

Blast From Yer Past: "A16"

Oh, that good old Spirit Of Seattle. Turtles’n'Teamsters everywhere.




The mood and solidarity between different parts of The Movement — folks like old-skool unionists and environmentalists discovering common goals and realizing they were fighting the same fight against the same enemy — were electric and invigorating in the months following Seattle, and none quite like the personal charge I got when, just a couple of weeks afterwards, I saw the action call posted in alt.activism for the April IMF/World Bank Mobilization in Washington, DC, for April 16, 2000 — the now-legendary “A16".

Blast From Yer Past: "A16" IMF/WorldBank Mobilization, 04.16.00 from Mike Flugennock on Vimeo.

At last, no more watching for little shreds of TV coverage, of scouring another city’s IMC postings — the revolution circus was coming to my town, and I was going to actually be in it, and photographing and taping it, and telling the story of that week for everybody else out there… and, the wheatpasting. Oh, yeah, the wheatpasting...

Yaser Murtaja, Presente!

In memory and solidarity with Yaser Murtaja, the Palestinian photojournalist murdered by the IDF at the Gaza Land Day protests last week.

11x17 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 1.3mb

Blue Wave

From all the howling in the MSM these days, you'd think they were expecting not just a "Blue Wave", but a "Blue Tsunami" -- except the numbers say they'll be lucky to get a "Blue Ripple", and in Texas right now it's looking more like a "Blue Tidepool", pitting a bland corporate-looking white-boy Democrat against an incumbent whose head is sculpted entirely of suet pudding.

This on top of the fact that on social media, the Democratic Party politburo, trolls and fangirls are going with the formula that worked so well for them last time:

• Run a bland, donor class-approved corporate Centrist.
• Threaten and shame Left voters.
• Gaslight, insult, and lie to Left voters.
• Bully and smear Left electoral challengers.
• Hope the GOP candidate is revealed to be a pedophile.

Cowabunga, dudes.

11x14 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 988kb

"Bring It Home": it's About Where You Live

National Days of Action, April 2-4, 2018

Initiative 71 allows residents of and visitors to the District of Columbia to possess, grow, and give a limited amount of cannabis to other adults. However, the District, like many other states that have legalized cannabis, is preempted by Federal Law, and landlords who rent their properties can limit or prohibit a tenant’s adult use of cannabis, even for medical purposes, on their property...

Banana, Banana, Banana, Banana

Welcome once again, folks, to the latest episode of Russiagate Nothingburger! According to the venerable CNN and Washington Post, a billion-dollar plus major Presidential election campaign was basically blown over by 13 people with a bunch of weak, dank-ass memes.

Needless to say, this mess was revealed to a big, hot, sloppy bucket of nothing in record time -- the total cost of the dank-ass meme campaign turned out to have been about $500k (David Brock's "Correct The Record" spent millions to troll and harass Leftists and Sanders supporters), the dank-ass memes in question had a reach of about 1%, most of the dankness wasn't even seen until after the "election", and the indictment contained no evidence of the "election" being affected in any way regardless.

Still, it's really nice of CNN to take a break from shouting the same lies over and over until it sounds like the truth in order to run a promo warning viewers about people who shout the same lies over and over until it sounds like the truth.




Jeezus, man; the Democrats must be getting pretty goddamn bored with all that winning, huh?

15x13 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 1.6mb

The Distrust, It BUUURRRNNNSS

For something that's supposed to be a such a big ol' hot, sloppy bucket of nothing, the infamous Nunes Memo sure has the Democrats screeching about how it's sowing "distrust" of institutions like the FBI. Yep, Liberals love them some FBI now, just like ol' Phil Ochs said -- 10 degrees to the left of center when things are good, 10 degrees to the right when it affects them personally.

Now, as someone who's been involved in Left activism and activist media for nearly 40 years and knows the FBI's history of disrupting and suppressing popular movements, I can tell you for free that I don't need some babbling memo from a GOP Congresscritter to make me fervently distrust the goddamn FBI. Really, folks, let's get serious, here. They have a history.

Between this drooling love for the State and feverishly trying to rehabilitate George W. Bush, I'd say the Democrats are pretty well cracked.

11x14 inch medium-res color jpg image, 993kb

#Yippie50

"This is a personal statement. There are no spokesmen for the Yippies. We suggest to all reporters that they ask each and every Yippie in Lincoln Park why they have come to Chicago. We are all our own leaders. We realize this list of demands is inconclusive, they are not really demands. For people to make demands of the Democratic Party is an exercise in wasted wish-fulfillment. If we have a demand, it is simply and emphatically that they, along with their fellow inmates in the Republican Party, cease to exist. We demand a society built along the alternative community in Lincoln Park, a society based on humanitarian cooperation and equality, a society which allows and promotes the creativity present in all people and especially our youth." – A. Yippie

For those of you "in the know", I don't have to explain the big anniversary coming up this summer.

For those of you who aren't, here's a quick introduction:

At Wikipedia: The Youth International Party
At Wikipedia: The 1968 Democratic National Convention protests
At The Anarchist Library: Revolution Towards A Free Society: Documents from Chicago 1968

8.5 x 11 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 413kb
1280x800 pixel screen-res wallpaper, 234kb

Jaws 2: This Time, It's Personal

Just when Jeff Sessions thought it was safe to go back into the water...

As you'll recall a week or two back, AG Jeff Sessions rescinded the Cole Memo, which prevented Federal authorities from interfering with the policies of states which had legalized marijuana.

Much to most everyone's delight, Sessions' action seems to have the opposite effect; Vermont passed a legalization law this week, and Massachusetts is continuing with its plans to begin commercial sales after legalizing this past year.

If the sonofabitch wants a war, he's got one. Bring it.
Free the heads, jail the feds.

11x17 inch 150dpi color .jpg image, 1.4mb

Russiagate Hangover

Well, here it is, the morning after, and maa-aaan, did the Democrats and US Media get pants-pissing blackout drunk on Russiagate Bombshells this year. They're sure paying for it now, though, huh? The smoking guns turned out to be shooting blanks, the bombshells were duds, the Mueller investigation's turning out to be a double nothingburger with extra cheese, their bargain-basement neo-McCarthyite smear attempts against the Left are getting laughed out of the place, and their Great Alabama Hope has already turned on them. It's hangover time.

11x11 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 810kb