14 May 2017

It's Mother's Day, but hey, it's also 2017 so I'm drawing these fucking asshats. The entire front page, in fact, was hilariously male: There was the pack of GOP politicians (the photo was from their "celebration" in the Rose Garden after they squeezed the universally maligned AHCA through the House, a bill that explicitly defunds planned parenthood and offers up the possibility of pregnancy as a pre-existing condition for which women could be denied coverage. But hey, Happy Mother's Day!), the gruff, gettin'-shit-done miners who dig tunnels for urban infrastructure (a legitimately interesting read, if only for the descriptions of the equipment they use to dig these tunnels), and a photo of the Secretary of the Interior on a fucking horse wearing a goddamned cowboy hat. It was a real Marlboro Man day at LAT. To be fair, there were pockets of gender-neutral reportage on A1 today. The piece about the total solar eclipse that's happening later this year, for instance. I mean an actual solar eclipse, not the metaphorical eclipse of American intellectualism and decency that has kept us fumbling in the dark since January 20. Although maybe I mean that too; it's so hard to tell these days.

13 May 2017

Lee Baca's career seems to have finally reached its dire, sad conclusion, where he will sit in a jail cell for the next few years as Alzheimer's robs him of the only thing that actually matters. I get that the charges of which he's been convicted are really fucking serious, but damn, I can't help feeling a little sorry for the guy; that's a shitty way to spend your winter years. But that's the price you pay when you fuck with the FBI. I mean, what person in a position of privilege and power would be stupid enough to fuck with an FBI investigation?

12 May 2017

This week began and ended as a hot mess. I'm not going to try to unpack it here. I am, however, going to draw a diminutive Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein submerged in a cocktail-sized ice bath, because that's pretty much where he landed after the White House fucked him over. But it's cool. Rod's coming to the Senate next week to talk about Comey's firing. Hey, what's Trump doing this weekend? Working hard, I bet, in the Oval Office on all that legislation to help the poor, rural constituents who voted for him. Ha! I'm kidding, Trump is never in the Oval Office on the weekends. Also, he really doesn't give a shit about any of the poor people who voted for him. The weekends are his time to pretend he knows how to play golf. That's way more important to him than whatever poor people are dealing with.

11 May 2017

Who's that fellow up there pulling the strings of that puppet president? That's Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister who made a visit to the White House the day after Trump fired Comey. The Los Angeles Times featured a photo of the pair's meeting on A1, but they didn't have a staff photographer on hand to shoot the occasion. No, they had to procure this photo from the Russian Foreign Ministry, because no American news outlet was granted access for this visit. Only the Russian Foreign Ministry. Still, as crazy as that little nugget is, it's hardly the most insane thing to happen in Washington in the past 48 hours. I'm not entirely sure what the craziest thing would be, at this point---Spicer hiding from the press in the bushes? Trump contradicting two solid days of spin issued by White House flunkies and the VP about why Comey was fired? Lavrov joking about Comey's ouster? Take your pick, I guess. It's nonstop crazytown over there, and there doesn't appear to be an end in sight.

10 May 2017

I guess there was little chance that I wouldn't be drawing James Comey tonight. I mean, he was literally the only picture on the front page of the Los Angeles Times, so I really didn't have a choice. Not that I would've selected anything else in lieu of our freshly minted ex-FBI chief. I'm sure tomorrow I'll be drawing a selection of the traitors and scumbags who fired him. Anyway, there you go. My gut feeling is that we haven't seen the last of Comey. He is (was?) scheduled to testify before Congress in a few days. I don't know if his firing changes that, but I don't see any practical reason why it should. And if Congress doesn't want to hear from Comey anymore, you know who does? The rest of America. Don't be shy, Comey. Tell us what's on your mind.

9 May 2017

Sally Yates's testimony that she did in fact tell the White House---twice!---about exactly how deep Michael Flynn moral cretinism ran was some pretty bombshell stuff. Of course Trump's own brand of moral cretinism is in a class by itself, and thus he pushed his way into the news cycle with the spectacularly stupid decision to fire James Comey, the FBI director, today (I don't want to say I called, because I totally didn't, but I would like to officially declare my May 4 drawing as some sort of bizarre precognitive act). Nothing quite screams "I am guilty as fuck!" like firing, for the flimsiest of manufactured reasons, the very person who is investigating your alleged crimes, thus allowing yourself the opportunity to appoint one of your spineless flunkies to the newly vacated post. We are in serious trouble as a nation if we don't get a special independent prosecutor on this mess pronto.

8 May 2017

I know, politics weighs heavily on your mind these days, but clear a little corner for the demise of net neutrality, would you? Because it might happen under this regime. Ajit Pai, the current FCC chair, wants to eliminate net neutrality protections put in place by the Obama Administration. So, once more, and I'm sure not for the last time, we have an appointee hostile to the ideals of the department they are tasked to oversee spending their time there effectively neutering said department. That's all for tonight. Go on back to your surfing or googling or trolling or whatever it is you do on the internet while you still have bandwidth to do so.