And This Year’s Award for Biggest Jerks in Congress … The Envelope Please

the sequester--coming soon to a government near you

A shoo-in for a Razzie for 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 ...

Well, the Academy Awards were last night and, just in case the fright-wing had any doubts about the liberalness of Hollywood, Michele Obama was on hand to deliver the Best Picture Award to ARGO. I’m sure Rush et al will be making hay out of that for the next week.

Actually, the reason the FLOTUS was there was to present an award to a movie that celebrated one of the few times when the CIA got one right. With liberal dollops of help from Canada, eh? Hey, Ben Affleck! Canada says you didn’t give it enough credit–how aboot a big “I’m sore-ry.” Teehee–couldn’t resist twitting my Canadian relatives.

The BIG SERIOUS news tho is the dreaded SEQUESTER that is aboot–err, about–to descend upon the American people. Yes, that’s right, once again the American economy is about to be wrecked by the Tea Partiers who love America–unless a last-minute rescue worthy of THE PERILS OF PAULINE gets performed. Said last-minute rescue will naturally screw everyone in the United States except the 1% of the 1%–but that’s OK because the sequester will screw EVERYBODY and push us back into the Great Recession. Might as well save SOME people! Too bad it’s the ones who already have life rafts.

At this point, I almost wish the SEQUESTER gets performed. It will be the first time the Pentagon actually loses money and MAYBE, those damn tax-hating nincompoops will see what havoc their ideology shall wreak. But I don’t have any confidence in that. The one thing that invariably happens when you prove a true believer wrong to his face is that he will retrench and believe all the harder. Sort of like saying “I do believe in fairies” to save Tinkerbell, only screaming it.

In any case, yours truly had a great weekend at Katsucon last week. I didn’t get to see too many friends because the weekend was so good for sales, I did not dare leave the table for more than a few minutes at a time. I premiered a new work based on the HELL GIRL anime which my friend Charles Dunbar showcased in his “Dead Like Us/Remixed” presentation at the con. Thanks to Kevin and Peter of A Kawaii Boutique for their company and for taking care of my table when I needed a break. And thanks to all the cosplayers and artists who dropped by to say hi and especially the ones who bought something!

ANNOY YOUR FRIENDS! CONFOUND YOUR ENEMIES! PRESS ONE OF THESE BUTTONS--OR ELSE!

Vote Early, Vote Often, but VOTE!

Need I say WHICH legislatures?

It’s going to be a tougher election than it should be. Tough voter ID laws have been enacted in far too many states specifically designed to make it tough for “brown” people, poor people and college students to vote. Two important states, Ohio and Florida, have precipitously cut back their early voting hours. And the United States is still filled with idiots who think Barack Obama is an atheist Muslim born in Kenya.

Mitt Romney SHOULD lose. After all, his entire plan for the country is to bankrupt it and all citizens with incomes less than a million a year and then sell it off to China. That’s his M.O. You’d think people would have caught on to it. Certainly not the Fox News-watching crowd–you know, the ones who didn’t know how big Hurricane Sandy had gotten and when they DID hear, thought: “Good–it’s time for them America-hating New Yorkers to suffer like the rest of us.”

Chris Christie got thrown under the bus for actually deigning to appear with President Obama as they toured the devastation in New Jersey. The GOP better hope the bus doesn’t overturn–Christie is a big bump in the road.

So on Tuesday, as one commentator said, America gets the choice of turning back the clock–by fifty years. Let’s hope that we as a nation are not THAT INSANE. You liberals thinking you won’t vote because you are mad at Obama for not closing Gitmo, not getting universal health and waging war by remote control–think of the alternative. Now go out and vote.

THIS WEEK, yours truly will be in the Artists Alley at ANIMEUSA in Washington DC. Anyone who is an animefan and is going to the con, please drop by my table! I’ll also be giving panels on inking your comics and how to plan your manga. And, in connection with this, I inaugurate my new Facebook Fanpage. LIKE it and get news about my other artworks as they are produced and get progress reports on my graphic novel HANAKO-SAN, now being storyboarded.

Have a good week and VOTE. See you soon.

Please to remember the 5th of November, gunpowder treason and plot,
I see no reason why gunpowder treason ever should be forgot…

A penny for the old Guy!

ANNOY YOUR FRIENDS! CONFOUND YOUR ENEMIES! PRESS ONE OF THESE BUTTONS--OR ELSE!

You Have To Hit These Semantic Points JUST Right!

Barack Obama prepares to smack down Mitt Romney with a giant debate point/mallet

Where'd he get that mallet from?

Well, Barry was on point the other night. He not only went toe to toe with Mitt, but he managed to call one of his remarks “offensive” and look at one point like he was going to slap Willard silly. Americans are ALWAYS impressed by that kind of stuff. He got in the point about the 47% Romney doesn’t care about at the very END of the debate when Romney couldn’t make a comeback, AND he scored the rhetorical point of the evening.

Now, all the critics have pointed out that Obama’s score was a semantic point. Yes, Willard was right that it took us two weeks to determine if the Benghazi incident was a terrorist plot and this was because we got caught with our pants down. With all the cost-cutting, we didn’t have the security in an area where our diplomats were well-liked. Or the intelligence. And President Obama DID call the incident an “act of terrorism” while speaking in broad generalities in the Rose Garden the next day.

But let’s look at this a bit closer. What was Mitt comparing it to? Well, the most likely event that he was comparing it to was that horrible incident some 11 years ago when a bunch of terrorists flew some airplanes into some really big office buildings–that’s right, “9-11”. And we knew then, moments after it occurred, that not only was it an act of terrorism, but we knew WHO was responsible. And why did we know this?

Because Bush and Company had been asleep at the wheel. Intelligence had been advising them since day one of the administration that al-Qaeda and Bin Laden were planning something big, something within the borders of the United States, something that involved stealing jet planes, and the official response was, “Yeah, yeah, you covered your ass–now let’s get on to more important stuff like cutting taxes.”

How many times has something rotten happened that you snapped your fingers and said, “Man, I KNEW THAT was going to happen.” And why did you know? Because you’d screwed up and not taken it into account. So sometimes, speed in declaring something a terrorist act is NOT a very good thing–like when it’s an an indication of stupid complacency. So I’m more than willing to let Barry score on this one. Mitt deserved the mallet from Hammerspace.

What is Hammerspace? Glad you asked–it is the critical name for that extra-dimensional portal out of which a cartoon character grabs a giant mallet to smack down his opponent. I think we can thank Tex Avery for the discovery of the portal as a cartoon device, usually accompanied by a boi-oi-oing sound effect as the mallet strikes and loud music from Carl Stallings, but the name for it is much more recent and too obscure for the wiki to say who first used the term. Anyway, Mitt, welcome to Hammerspace–when you walk into one, you deserve it.

Now let’s see what happens in the next one.

And another sad event. Our condolences to the family of George McGovern, another lion who acted on what he stood for. The last generation of politicians who weren’t all completely beholden to financial interests is fast fading into memory.

ANNOY YOUR FRIENDS! CONFOUND YOUR ENEMIES! PRESS ONE OF THESE BUTTONS--OR ELSE!

The No-Compromise Compromise, or, 3-D Chess finally works out

Chief Science Officer Obama's 3-D chess playing pays off -- Fascinating.

How often have we heard the following statement about President Obama: “Oh, you don’t understand–he’s playing a 3-D chess game. You couldn’t possibly follow his strategy!” If you were a progressive (or, in hushed whispered tones, a “l-i-b-e-r-a-l”), probably a lot. Why was single payer health insurance taken off the table before the negotiations even began? 3-D chess move! Why no public option? 3-D chess move! Why no investigation into the Bush era torture policies? 3-D chess move! Bank investigations? 3-D chess move! Fascinating!

An astute observer might have noticed that all these 3-D chess moves appeared to variations on the Nimzovich strategies–instead of fighting for the center of the chess board, you concede it and allow your opponent to get overconfident so you can rush in and take advantage of his over-extended supply lines! Of course, it’s hard to overextend your supply lines on an 8×8 chess board so these openings seem to have fallen into obscurity. Nonetheless, our chessplayer-in-chief appears to be devoted to showing that they can work.

The only problem was, while Spock was playing 3-D chess, the Klingons were playing poker. Ah-HAH! I take your knight! Big deal, Full House beats one of a kind! Whoopsies!

However, we’ve finally had a situation where Obama’s chess playing has finally paid off. The brouhaha about Obamacare forcing poor religious zealots from denying women the choice of contraception. Why that’s against the freedom of religions to force their moral standards on people who need not even be members of said religions. Specifically, Catholics, the largest single church in the US–who usually vote Democratic. How quickly the Republicans rushed to their defense! I wonder how quickly they’d rush to the defense of Muslims objecting to universal health care based on Shariah law?

So Obama compromised. The church run hospitals would not have to provide contraception coverage. The health care companies would do it instead. GREET! Oops, many Catholic hospitals are self-insured! Too bad!

Mitch McConnell is furious and threatens a vote … on something. Problem is–the Catholic BISHOPS are against the idea, but Catholic women seem to applaud it. Oh, well. It gets interesting, don’t it?

On personal notes: I will be running an artists alley table at Katsucon at the Gaylord at National Harbor Friday through Sunday this coming weekend. And being as it’s a Monday holiday, there will be no cartoon until the next week. My dental problem is in the middle of recovery (I needed an extraction and implant) and it’s good not to feel the pain that has been with me for many months now. And finally, there is a very sweet kitty cat who is very ill and needs your best wishes. Thanks 🙂

ANNOY YOUR FRIENDS! CONFOUND YOUR ENEMIES! PRESS ONE OF THESE BUTTONS--OR ELSE!

Corporations Are People Too

Mitt Romney sings a paean to corporations to the tune of 'People'.

With apologies to Barbra Streisand

Ah, Mitt! You’re our favorite candidate named after a piece of baseball equipment. And sticking up for the poor corporations like you did! Why, of course, they’re people. People who can live forever as long as they make money, who make scads of money but don’t have to pay taxes on it as long as their HQ is somewhere outside of the 3 mile limit, and who can commit all sorts of crimes, but never be sent to jail! Why, that just makes them SuperPeople. I’m certain the Roberts court will agree.

Enough, here’s the lyrics to ‘Leeches’ in case it’s too small to read on the monitor:

Leeches
Leeches who leech people
Are the luckiest leeches in the world,
Bloodsuckers, needing all you “suckers”,
With statements geared to mislead
they hide unrestrained greed,
Acting more like bandits
Than bandits.
Bankers are very special people,
They’re the luckiest people
In the world.
With two journals, two very special journals,
A mortgage deep in the hole
which should be crap,
looks like gold
Making profits untold
for corporations
Who’re just people.
Leeches who are people
Just the luckiest people
In the world!