Garbage, no. 2 (...garbage out)

So, that was the “October Surprise” this time around, huh? That was really it? Old Uncle Joe, movin’ kinda’ slow, suddenly decides to pipe up about some of Trump’s throwaway trash talk and immediately shits out a Basket Of Deplorables moment, right out on live TV in front of god and his cat and everybody, less than a week before the “election”? Well done. Even if MSNBC immediately changed its format to All Abortion Rights Horror Stories All The Time, it probably still wouldn’t be enough to save the DNC’s asses.

Just trying to imagine the scene around the DNC campaign offices right now… imagining Uncle Joe, still and quiet for all these weeks — they really thought they had him buried this time — suddenly clambering clumsily out of the grave like Tor Johnson in Plan 9 From Outer Space to drop a big, hot steaming Gaffe From The Beyond.

Mind you, I’m not arguing with the truth of El Presidente’s blabbage about Trump supporters being garbage, here; that’s as maybe — but, still, when you’re a sitting President of the United Snakes Of Amerika who’s had to drop out of a re-election campaign after your brain fried out on live national TV, and who’s proudly facilitating and defending the brutal, venal crimes of two of the most garbage human beings walking the Earth at the moment, and whose actions in the past year have at last fully revealed American/Western traditions and institutions to be complete garbage… you might want keep a lid on that name-calling shit.

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Cheap Groceries

On top of this CNN Town Hall shartage, my regular “Random 15″ from MSNBC included Kay-Kay speaking at a rally where she makes the big buildup to the working class, only to cap it with a declaration that she will ban price gouging on groceries…

all in that classic delivery of hers, that sounds as if she studied public speaking under Hillary Clinton, like a foreign actress who had to learn her lines phonetically. Dear GOD, just listen to that scolding junior-high principal voice, so full of passion and conviction when she talks about goddamn CHEAP GROCERIES. …and the crowd’s going wild for that shit; just listen to ‘em, as if cued by an electric sign, like a game-show audience.

This, apparently, is going to be her signature achievement if she wins the “election”, if her hands aren’t too full with the goddamn GENOCIDE. Yeah… not a Great Society, or voting rights, or going to the Moon… nahh, just cheap groceries.

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It's A Miracle!

It's a Sunday morning as I write this, and I can't stop imagining Liberals all over Amerika seeing Genocide Joe's grinning mug on slices of burnt toast and considering it a clear sign that he should stay in the race — when what it actually means, of course...  

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Doubts In The Donor Class

 

Ever since the last “debate”, I and millions like me are walkin’ on sunshine because finally, at long last, the mask is finally off. After that classic episode of Must-Not-Unsee TV, there’s no getting around the fact that our ruling class is entirely incompetent, that democracy and the “rules-based order” are s sham, and that Amerika and the West have fallen and can’t get up.

MSNBC, CNN and the New York Times are boiling with Liberal panic and denial right now — panic and denial so thick you can smell it through the TV set — and I can’t pretend I’m not enjoying it. Joe Scarborough was priceless; dude was shouting — like, really yelling — about how insanely awesome Joe Biden is, how he could leap tall buildings and has x-ray vision and rescued the economy and is the only thing standing between us and fascism, yelling so loudly that you could hear the echo in the studio; absolutely hilarious. You could almost see the little wisps of cartoon steam coming out of his ears.

In the “weighing how to respond” department, I hear that most rich-ass DNC donors have been upping their day-drinking game when lacking the cajones for suicide.

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Netanyahu's Comin' To Town

“The invitation of Netanyahu, signed by the ‘bipartisan leadership of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate,’ is a political provocation against mass opposition to the genocide in Gaza, in the US and throughout the world. It is a declaration of political and moral solidarity with a murderer who has been accused by the top prosecutor of the International Criminal Court of war crimes.”
—from the Statement of the World Socialist Web Site Editorial Board, 06.10.2024

“All over, people changin’ their votes along with their overcoats;
If Adolf Hitler flew in today, they’d send a limousine anyway!”
—The Clash, 1977

The Editors of the World Socialist Web Site blog are calling for a mass mobilization to greet Israeli Führer Benjamin Netanyahu when he comes to slime Washington, DC on July 24 and I, for one, am absolutely down for giving this sonofabitch the welcome he deserves when he comes barging into my city.

So, here’s my contribution to the propaganda effort, complete with “your message here” space, suitable for printing — and wheatpasting — at 11×17 on any walk-up digital color copier.

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Dear U.S. Left: Stop Asking Me To Vote

Dear US Left:
With all due respect — I really do love ya, we’ve worked together and hit the barricades and been ride-or-die n’all that, but — you’ve just gotta stop this shit right now, y’all, ‘cos it’s the biggest waste of time ever at this point. Seriously, for myself and all of our comrades, I’m here to tell you, you just gotta STOP IT, brah.

Stop asking us to VOTE.

Stop asking us to play in a crooked rigged casino, to participate in a phony “democracy” and vote in a useless “election” in which the candidates and platforms are already decided by the Party and the permissible issues and voices already decided by the media. Stop asking us to drag ourselves off to participate in an empty ritual in an empty institution which has achieved absolute zero.

Stop insulting our intelligence by asking us to participate in the “democracy” of a nation in which the State, the Party and Establishment institutions have at long last finally, thoroughly, utterly and completely alienated us and then relentlessly implores us to participate in their useless, capitalist media-controlled “democratic” institutions. After doing their level best to beat down and silence the dissent and outrage of billions across the nation and the Earth, they’ve got the spectacular gall to try to shame, frighten, and browbeat us into slinking back to their polls for “abortion rights” — for affluent, professional-class American women, of course; not the reproductive rights of working-class and poor women, nor immigrant women, nor Afghan or Iraqi women, and for goddamn sure not the reproductive rights of PALESTINIAN women…

 

#DemocratsDeliver

Been out of town for a while, been sick for a while, finally getting my tired old ass to the drawing table again.

So, I’d been noticing this #DemocratsDeliver hashtag crawling like a rash all over Facebook as the “election” freak circus cranks up, and thought I’d have some fun with it — like, yeah; I know what the Democrats “deliver”, alright.

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It's Always Sunny At The DNC

If there were a sure sign that the Donkeycrats are pants-shitting panicked at the prospect of traditionally-Leftish/progressivish voters abandoning their worthless asses en masse at the polls over the genocide in Palestine, it’s the fact that the likes of MSNBC and the Washington Post just can’t stop the tubthumping over the economy and the “consumer confidence” polls just out this week.

Never mind the piss-poor public health response to COVID19, or the historic re-enactment of the fall of Saigon in 2021, or the piss-poor disaster response in Maui last year, or the metric fuckton of cash flushed down the shitter for a bunch of Ukrainian Nazi hillbillies, the wide-open support of fascistic ethnic cleansing in Palestine, the continued attempted instigation of world war — nahh, screw that shit; the consumer confidence numbers are in and the economy is rockin’, so let’s turn that frown upside down, ya’ fusty proles.

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Happy Goddamn New Year

“REGRET From Military”, it says here.
That’s right — REGRET for “unintended harm”.

Oh, for Christ’s sake, why do these goddamn thugs even bother? Who do they think they’re kidding? Do they think that after nearly 3 months of genocidal brutality, fascistic bullying, threats and media lies, Genocide Joe’s little buddy actually expects us to believe that they REGRET this goddamn horror show?

The threat of the Bad Old Rethuglicans taking over stopped scaring me nearly 30 years ago, and right now it scares me even less, if such a thing is possible. Four more years of Trump? Big goddamn deal; we’ve ALREADY been through 4 more years of Trump, so I could give the slightest molecule of a rat’s ass who “wins” your goddamn “election” next year. For all I care, the Democrats can get their asses shredded so goddamn bad that they have to be identified via dental records. At this point, I don't care so much about defeating Trump as I do about defeating America.

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#EjectIsrael

So, late last week, I’m hearing all this bullshit bubbling in the news about Genocide Joe calling for a “pause” in the Israel-Palestine “conflict” so that the hostages can get out safely — god bless their exceptional asses — and maybe also so that any Palestinians remaining who are actually able to move can also get out, and probably end up being bombed on the highway to the refugee camps, or bombed at the camp once they get there, or both; thanks so much, Joe.

And as I was starting to work on this piece the night before the big mobilization for Palestinian solidarity here in DC this past Saturday, I was seeing a lot of chatter on the Web about how Israel should be expelled from the United Nations for this horror — an excellent idea, though they’d never get it through because Israel’s big, fat, rich asshole Uncle has veto power at the Security Council. Still, what an awesome thought — drum the bastards outta the UN.

But, aaaanyway, yeah; El Presidente wants a “pause”.

“Pause”, my goddamn ass. Time to hit “Stop” and “Eject”. Israel is the scuffy, overplayed, worn-out, hissy old British post-punk mixtape tangled up in the Earth’s 1989 cassette/CD combo boombox, and no pencil made can save it.

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A Strong Primary Challenge

Well, kiddies, for those of you following the little Democracy™ game, it’s no secret that DNC voters are about as enthusiastic over Joe Biden next year as they’d be over having to eat glass. So, for all those desperate Dems who can’t seem to bust out of the electoral prison, the idea of a primary challenge sounds made of awesome.

So, who do they get — a fresh, bold progressive insurgent in the Bernie Sanders mold? Nahh, hell no, man — they get a xenophobic antivax Kennedy spawn and a bougie self-help guru who’s the “spiritual adviser” to Oprah. OPRAH, f’crissake. Hell, man, if that’s not a prime qualification for the White House, I’d like to know what is.

Hello, Second Trump Administration.

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Thanks For Covering Our Debt — Suckers!

And so, yet another Debt Ceiling Wrestlemania comes to a close — and as predicted, the ruling class gets the payoff, Zelensky gets new toys, and we get austerity.

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Finishing The Job

It is with anxiety, chagrin and dread that I present this, my first cartoon of the 2024 Presidential “election” slog…

…and despite the massive disappointment and lack of enthusiasm of huge swaths of Democratic voters, Gropin’ Joe announced his re-election campaign kickoff with a promise to “finish the job”… at which point yours truly, like millions of others, is cringing and asking themselves: what job would THAT be — immiserating the poor and the working class? Terrorizing immigrants and bullying our next-door neighbors? Fattening up the war profiteers and Wall Street? Beating down anti-war dissent in public media? Dragging us into World War III?

Lotta big jobs to finish there, Joester; guess you’re going to need four more years to thoroughly screw things up, huh?

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Pigs On The Wing

…Smerconish then asked, “What about our role as liberators?,” to which Waters replied, “You have no role as liberators.” When Smerconish pointed to the US intervention in World War II, Waters observed, “Thank God, the Russians had already won the bloody war almost by then. Don’t forget 23 million Russians died protecting you and me from the Nazi menace.”
— Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters vs. CNN’s Michael Smerconish, 08.06.2022

In the past fifteen or twenty years I’ve seen some pretty sick-ass bastards’n'bitches drop some sick-ass takes right out in the open, not giving a damn who heard or cared and thinking that they were just the hottest goddamn shit on two legs. I’ve seen George W. Bush sending thousands of Americans to die for his lies and goading the Iraqis to “bring it on” from the safety of the Oval Office. I’ve seen Hillary Clinton gloating over the death of Gadhafi, burbling “we came, we saw, he died” and cackling like a goddamn witch, and I’ve seen Hillary melting down over the 2016 email leaks and demanding the assassination of Julian Assange.

Nothing, however, matches the absolute rock-bottom bloody filthiness of a US-funded Ukrainian neo-Nazi outfit called Myrotvorets, which has also apparently claimed responsibility for the car bombing assassination of Daria Dugina (daughter of a noted Russian fascist type) about which the Washington Post made a right snotty show out of how few fucks they gave about it. These scum have compiled a friggin’ dossier on Roger Waters — y’know, Pink Floyd, that Roger Waters — and included him on their “kill list” for speaking out on Ukrainian neo-Nazism and human rights abuses, and the hypocrisy of US/NATO imperialism in Ukraine. Yeah, a goddamn kill list, f’crissake.

Above and beyond the comic-book bluster of Hilldawg and Dubya, the bastards at Myrotvorets are actually claiming credit for assassinations of dissident journalists, with the funding and blessing of the US, and are doubling down with threats against some of the most prominent dissident artists of their generation.

As an artist and political dissident myself — and as someone who’s old enough to remember the night John Lennon was stolen from us — my disgust is off-scale. Seriously, man. Roger Fucking Waters. Bastards.

If you #StandWithUkraine then THIS is what you stand with. Enjoy it.

“Hah, ha, charade you are…!”

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Information Terrorist

…Some three weeks after Schumer helped push the (Ukraine aid) bill into law, on July 14, Andriy Shapovalov, a Ukrainian civil servant whose salary was paid for by U.S. taxpayer monies, convened a “round table” in Kiev on “countering disinformation.”

Shapovalov, in his role as the acting head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, published a list of the names of 72 people whom he accused of deliberately spreading disinformation about Ukraine. Shapovalov labelled them “information terrorists,” adding that Ukraine was preparing legislation so that such people can be prosecuted as “war criminals.”

—Scott Ritter, reporting at Consortium News, 08.03.2022

Yeah, kids, isn’t that a flabbergaster? One helluva humdinger of a doozy. I thought Biden — who never met a US war of aggression he didn’t like — had pretty much destroyed my Goofy Meter when he called Putin a “war criminal”, but this shit’s got Goofy Meters exploding worldwide.

Just so we’re clear — any journalist reporting the truth from on the ground, any journalist or essayist whose reporting or opinions contradict the official US/NATO Western media narrative? That’s right, an “information terrorist”, a “war criminal”. Ben Norton? Aaron Maté? Rania Khalek? Alina Lipp? Eva Bartlett? Lee Camp? Yep, that’s right. Information terrorists, war criminals.

The Gallup numbers, which I peeped not soon after, really drove the goofiness home. After 70-odd years of lies about Hiroshima, the Tonkin Gulf, My Lai, Cambodia, Laos, the Drug War, Kuwaiti incubator babies, Iraqi WMD’s, Afghanistan, Havana Syndrome, Russiagate, trust in US media is at an all-time low, and I’m an “information terrorist” for doing these goddamn cartoons? I’M a goddamn “war criminal” for calling out the US state and media on their lies?

Bwah ha ha ha ha hah. The West™ can’t collapse a day too soon for me.

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Fortune Cookie

“Those who play with fire will only get burnt... We hope the U.S. side can see this clearly.” — Xi Jinping, to Joe Biden, 07.28.2022

Y'ever get Chinese carry-out and play that stupid game with the fortune cookies where you scribble the phrase "in bed" at the end of the banal faux-Confucian "fortune" in a childish effort to make it sound "dirty" somehow?

Oh, c'mon; I know y'all have done it. I've done it a bunch — and that kind of puerile, low-brow joke seems a fitting analogy to portray the arrogance, hubris, hypocrisy, belligerence, recklessness and straight-up stupidity of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her Provoke World War III If It's The Last Goddamn Thing I Ever Do Tour this week. It's as if her staff went out of their way to script the most irksome, provocative, sabre-rattling batshit takes they could possibly come up with for her, as if they just followed her around with an mp3 recorder and transcribed everything the old bat queefed out.

The really sad thing about Pelosi, Blinken, Biden and their ilk, though, is that they really, honestly think they're the greatest goddamn thing on two legs. They really do think people are impressed with this horseshit. 

Still, as an American, I have to appreciate the Speaker keeping me briefed in on who "America" is standing with right now. Between standing with Israel, the Uyghurs, the Ukraine, and now Taiwan, it's looking like this "American" is booked pretty solid these days.

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Bone Deep

“You don’t need to be a Jew to be a Zionist,” said Biden in his opening remarks. “The connection between the Israeli and American people is bone deep... I am proud to say that US relations with Israel are deeper and stronger than they have ever been.” —Al Jazeera, reporting on 07.13.2022

 

"Bone deep"? ...as opposed to the connection between the Ukrainian and American people, which is more "skin deep", I'm guessing...?

Yeah, the sonofabitch said our connection to filthy, murdering Israel is "bone deep".

He's actually more or less right, y'know.

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Vote Harder!

"Kristi Parrott is joining the Subcommittee on Environment from HBW Resources, where she lobbied Congress on behalf of an astroturf group for oil majors..." —Donald Shaw at Sludge, 07.01.2022

This was inspired by the lead foto in this article I caught at Sludge a few days ago.

This, kiddies, is the party people are expecting to fight for reproductive rights — the party who couldn't get you universal healthcare, or decent COVID relief, or housing relief, or an unemployment benefits extension during the pandemic, who's instead shoveling cash into a capitalist proxy war in the Ukraine, now signing up Big Oil lobbyists for the House Environmental Subcommittee.

If you think the DNC is going to lift a finger for women, or the working class, or the poor, or anyone else who's really struggling in this goddamn country, you're as stupid as you look.  

Vote harder! 

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That's Right, Kiddies! It's PUTIN'S...

Gropin' Joe has made it abundantly clear at the AFL-CIO convention a week or so back that he plans to beat that "Putin's Price Hike" horse until it's either dead or people actually start believing that horseshit. We promised Gorbachev we wouldn't expand NATO, then promptly spent the better part of the 1990s expanding NATO to Russia's front stoop and fomenting pro-US regime-change "color revolutions", but yeah, sure, Joe — it's Putin's war. Sonofabitch plans on distracting us from his horrid performance and our wartime austerity pain by blaming Putin for everything but the Mariners dragging ass in the AL West.

So — you heard it here first, kiddies. Supreme Court just stripped your reproductive rights? Putin made 'em do it. That asshole boss at Starbuck's who just canned you for union organizing? Putin did it. Those pals of yours who promised to help move that sofa last Saturday flaked on you? Putin. That raging hottie you've been dating for the past 2 months just put you in the Friend Zone? Yeah, that's right, my dude — fucking Putin. 

Dude's been one busy motherfucker lately, gotta give credit where it's due.

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Night Of The Living #StandWithUkraine

While y'all were hanging your Ukrainian flags out in front of your houses and putting little Ukrainian flags in your Facebook profile fotos and screaming about the dirty Rooskies and chewing rags over those poor little old Ukrainian ladies mixing Molotovs in their basements, this is what happened to your unemployment benefits extension and your rent relief and your eviction moratorium and your Covid "stimulus" and your healthcare.

Inspired by the top two stories in the Washington Post of May 20, above the fold like a shot and a chaser: we're pissing your healthcare away on a NATO/US proxy war in the Ukraine, and forget about baby formula anytime soon. Love that reference to "firm public support" in the Ukraine Care Package story. Bwah hah, "public support"... what do you mean "we", white man?

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