Recent Comments

1. about 4 hours ago on Tom Toles

   — thanks for the love, but only have the caffeine in the mornings. I follow the news, try to anticipate topical material that might be ripe for current political humor (and yes keep a stock of material on more general political subjects) that I can paste (from my own work) with minor adjustments to the current cartoon de jour.

   But yeah, I love my caffeine, though at this time of night (when I post my comments here on the west coast) I am more likely under the influence of cabernet, margaritas or Irish coffee (oops, there goes the caffeine). But even totally plastered, PROgressives are more cogent than tee-totalers (like Trump claims to be, if you can trust anything Trump ever says) can ever hope to be.

   So, black coffee or straight liberal Scotch (never a McConnell Kentucky bourbon or a Trump / Putin vokda), the CONservatives still can’t respond intelligently to anything a PROgressive posts, no matter how wasted.

   In the meantime, all the CONservatives ever had to drink is … Kool-Aid®*. \s

   *actually, the drink served at Jonestown that led to the Kool-Aid stereotype was not Kook-Aid®. It was a local knock-off brand called “Flavor-Aid.” The first time a news report used the brand name Kool-Aid®, brand owner Kraft should have sued for defamation.

   But what do I know, drunk and wasted as I am since I should have stuck with caffeine… :)

2. about 6 hours ago on Candorville

   I love Kamala Harris. As a California Democrat, I have voted for her in every statewide race she has ever run in, primary and general, for two terms as our amazing Attorney General and more recently as our Senator, where she has not disappointed. Love her lots. In a huge field she is my second choice.

   I don’t have one bad word to say against her, and would enthusiastically support her in a second if my first choice drops out, but I do have one person I love even more — Elizabeth Warren who is, while hard to top Harris, even smarter, tougher and more articulate, and willing to stand up to Wall $treet. I had hoped she would run for 2016 and was so disappointed that she didn’t. As an actual Democrat, I believe she would have won the primary and the general if she had.

   I have (and have actually read) both of Warren’s last two books. She is enormously intelligent, more than all others put together, is fiercely loyal to working people, cannot be bought by corporate money (is not accepting lobbyist or PAC donations), has stood up to the banks and Wall $treet elitists more aggressively than anyone else ever has (calling for prison sentences for those who profited by collapsing the markets in 2008 and specifically the top officers at Wells Fargo), knows the minutiae and most arcane technical details of the financial sector better than anyone (taught financial law at Harvard), and can articulate a message and stick with it. In my 48 years as a registered voter (never failing to vote), I have never been more energized by a candidate (or potential candidate).

   One of the most important things, to me, is that she is admired by both Bernie and Hillary wings of the party and is the one person that could unify the current rift in the Democratic Party.

   And who is Trump most threatened by? Have you ever seen Trump tweet an attack against Joe Biden? Kamala Harris? Bernie Sanders (who I supported in the 2016 primary)? No! He feels most threatened by Elizabeth Warren.

3. about 6 hours ago on Clay Jones

   Steve King, Stephen Miller, Donald Trump — all on exactly the same racist, pro-Nazi page.

   Steve King is only in trouble, not because he made disgusting, racist, vile, offensive remarks endorsing white supremacy, but because he made two big mistakes:

   a) he forgot to use the dog-whistle coded euphemisms they think the rest of us are too stupid not to understand exactly what they are saying, but which they think are oh, so clever.

   b) he said the same thing they say to each other when no one else is listening, but he slipped and forgot he was talking to the New York Times instead of the Nazi rag Daily Stormer.

   Trump is no different from Steve King except he has the power to summon primary challengers, of which the spineless moral cowards of today’s TrumpubliKKKon party are terrified, with a few notable exceptions.

   Once upon a time, the party of Lincoln (who ended slavery), Teddy Roosevelt (who invited the first African American official guest of state to the White House) and Eisenhower (who called out the National Guard to integrate Southern schools after the 1954 decision in Brown vs the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (347 U.S. 483 (1954)) stood up to Racists and Russians.

   Today the “Three R’s” of that party have become “Racists, Russians, RepubliCONs.”

4. about 6 hours ago on Tom Toles

   Russian collusion continued…

   We have also now learned that then-Campaign Chair Paul Manafort, a long-time political consultant to Russian insiders, had promised Russian intelligence personnel campaign briefings and that he provided them with internal polling data they could use in their campaign of social media manipulation and theft of personal data.

   Trump ADMITTED ON NATIONAL TV to Lester Holt that he fired Comey BECAUSE OF THE “RUSSIA THING”

   Trump SALUTED THE GENERAL of a hostile foreign adversary, but spits on the grave of a true American hero like John McCain.

   Financial transaction documents proving Russia PAID MONEY to Michael Cohen through the same shell company (“Essential Consultants”) that was used to pay hush money to a porn star AND money-laundered illegal foreign campaign donations through the DOMESTIC terrorist NRA international money laundering crime ring.

   Life-long REPUBLICAN Robert Mueller is putting together his evidence and already has numerous indictments and convictions of key Trump campaign officials and MORE TO COME.

   Trump incessantly insults everyone — allies, rivals, friends — with one glaring exception: he NEVER, EVER has said a bad word about his puppet master, Vladimir Putin.

   Why would anyone support outright betrayal of the United States to a hostile foreign adversary?

   Barack Obama was the first BLACK president.

   Donald Trump is the first BLACKMAILED president.

5. about 6 hours ago on Tom Toles

   Russian collusion continued…

   And the proof of the link is further in the outcomes — just look at the return Putin has gotten on his investment:

   • The government of the United States — Putin’s greatest adversary — SHUT DOWN for the third time in a year, each time longer than the one before and all of them started while Republicans controlled the House, Senate and presidency.

   • Babies in cages (“tender age” detention facilities).

   • Western alliances in disarray — including a puppet president who is trying to get the U.S. to withdraw from NATO.

   • Trump literally spouting Soviet and Russian talking points regarding Syria and the justifications for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

   • Trump — who has no prior diplomatic experience or expertise — holds multiple secret ONE-ON-ONE meetings with Putin that he tries to conceal even from his own staff sometimes, with no official notes or memoranda prepared, even confiscating and destroying interpreter notes, while Putin is free to preserve HIS interpreters’ notes and possibly even makes recordings — all information good for future kompromat.

   • Total chaos in the White House.

   • Financial markets in turmoil.

   • Tariffs that make U.S. exports less desirable and Russian exports more desirable (China no longer importing U.S. soybeans and Putin rushing to fill the Chinese demand for soybeans that used to be met by American farmers so that U.S. soybean sales to China will never come back.)

   The day after firing Comey, TRUMP MET WITH RUSSIAN DIPLOMATS IN THE OVAL OFFICE (Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov [counterpart to our Secretary of State] and Ambassador to the U.S. Sergei Kislyak), and GAVE THEM TOP SECRET CLASSIFIED INTELLIGENCE entrusted to us by a close ally, and told them that firing Comey would get the heat off on the Russia thing. continues…

6. about 6 hours ago on Tom Toles

   Russian collusion continued…

   Trump CONtinues to lie and deny Russia helped him, even though Putin admitted it outright while Trump was standing next to him. Vladimir Putin, himself, on camera, standing right next to Trump, confirms his desire for Trump to win and that he directed his officials to aid in that effort.

   Reporter: “President Putin, did you want President Trump to win the election, and did you direct any Putin response: “Yes I did. Yes I did,” and then offers excuses as to WHY he commited this outrageous crime.

   https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2018/07/16/putin-yes-trump-election-acosta-reax-vpx.cnnof your officials to help him do that?”

   On July 27, 2016, during the Democratic National Convention, Trump publicly called on Russia to commit a crime and steal digital data from an opposing candidate. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.” And within a few hours, on the same date, Russia began its computerized DNC break-in — literally, a digital Watergate outsourced to Russians.

   Documents in Michael Cohen’s guilty pleas further confirm Trump’s direct involvement with Russia DURING THE CAMPAIGN, in ways he lied about, including a Moscow Trump Tower which was to be funded by the Russian state bank VTB (ПАО Банк ВТБ, Vneshtorgbank). Because VTB was under U.S. sanctions, in order for Trump to do the deal with VTB money, he would need to first get rid of the sanctions.

   Michael Cohen has plead guilty to charges of perjury for lying in both House and Senate intelligence committee hearings about the timing of when the Trump Moscow project was ended. We know that the deal required ending of sanctions, that Russia knew all the details, and when Trump lies — and then Cohen lied to Congress AT TRUMP’S DIRECTION — which Russia, knowing the facts, could hold over Trump’s head as kompromat (blackmail). continues…

7. about 6 hours ago on Tom Toles

   Nah, no evidence of Trump collusion with Russia…

   There is tons of credible evidence about Russian collusion and the use of stolen electronic documents (a digital Watergate).

   Donald Junior provided the e-mails where he said they were going to meet in Trump Tower with a RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT ATTORNEY, Natalia Veselnitskaya, who has admitted she was a lawyer and government informant to provide dirt on Hillary Clinton. That is ILLEGAL and they should have gone straight to the FBI, as Al Gore did when offered stolen debate prep notes in 2000. If it is a “witch hunt,” Don Jr. provided the smoking broomstick.

   We have the extensive trail of evidence of Wikileaks working for Russia for an electronic break-in. Trump praised Wikileaks and even called on Russia in a speech to do more to steal Hillary e-mails “Russia, if you’re listening…”

   Trump’s second campaign manager, Paul Manafort, who got Trump to the nomination was a long-time Russian and Ukrainian foreign agent one of the crimes he is charged with because he never registered under the Foreign Agent Registration Act

   Steve Bannon, Trump’s third campaign manager, established Cambridge Analytica to coordinate with Russian hackers to illegally steal millions of personal social media profiles and plant FAKE NEWS articles and manipulate user data.

   Numerous direct encounters between Trump campaign staffers and Russians including numerous high-level meetings with top Russian officials during the campaign, transition and in the White House.

   High level campaign aides had frequent exchanges with Russian hackers (Roger Stone and George Papadopoulos with Guccifer 2.0 and the “Internet Research Agency” in St Petersburg, Russia.

   Trump campaign received THIRTY MILLION DOLLARS of ILLEGAL Russian campaign contributions laundered through the NRA in collusion with Russian spy Maria Butina. (continues)…

8. about 6 hours ago on Steve Breen

   If Gandhi had tried to raise armies, his movement would have been crushed by the British. Through non-violence, he toppled the greatest empire in the history of the world and set in motion a chain of events that dismantled imperialism around the globe and liberated colonies in Asia, Africa and the Americas.

   If Martin Luther King, Jr. had led riots, he would have been crushed; instead his non-violence led to the collapse of open, legal racial oppression in the South and the passage of legislation to protect civil and voting rights.

   When Nelson Mandela led violent revolts, he was crushed and imprisoned, where he read the teachings of Gandhi and King and learned non-violence, by which he then brought down a racist regime.

   If the Charleston families following the gun massacre at Mother Emmanuel Baptist Church had responded to the act of terror with hatred and rioting, it would just have been one more riot of the last year.

   But the power of the moral goodness in returning good for evil resulted in the immediate action to remove symbols of oppression and accomplish something others had tried to do for decades, without success. It was Nikki Haley, then governor of South Carolina, who had run on a campaign of not removing Confederate symbols, who personally ordered the “Stars and Bars” — the flag, literally, of slavery, treason (armed rebellion against the United States), crushing defeat and total surrender to real Americans, to be lowered and removed.

9. about 6 hours ago on Steve Breen

   Martin Luther King Jr would understand that people like Trump — elitist racists who live off the fruits of unpaid African labor (Trump loves the part about workers not getting paid) — do not listen to words; do not listen to reason.

   While others called for words — sometimes soft, sometimes shouted — King called for direct action. Non-violent. Peaceful. Often silent. Always direct. Always action.

   A minister of the gospel who had studied the words of Jesus of Nazareth and of Mohandas K. “Mahatma” Gandhi, who confronted tyrannical rulers in Rome and the Jim Crow South with direction action strength through the MORAL SUASION of NON-violence that was often silent, but always direct and always action, Jesus and Gandhi taught lessons that King was able to grasp and internalize.

   It was the power of higher moral superiority that galvanized a nation, moved its conscience, and transformed the world.

10. about 16 hours ago on Steve Kelley

    Especially in this case where Nancy Pelosi is actually smarter AND stronger than Trump can ever fantasize about being, and the same goes for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez vis a vis her weak, insecure (and uninformed) critics.