A couple of days ago, Gawker’s Alex Pareene penned an excellent article about the quality and attitude of the reporting at Washington political rag Politico, specifically referring to their article “The Drama Queen Caucus”. Over the past couple of months or so, I’ve been spending a lot of time reading Gawker for their excellent reporting on the O’Keefe/Breitbart “ACORN Pimp” scandal as well as their media critiques and — I must confess — their edgy and unique style of gossip reporting; so, when Pareene’s article on Politico appeared, I couldn’t help but play a little bit of Devil’s Advocate regarding the nature of the current Washington scene and the importance of healthy cynicism in this comment:

Awesome article, Alex, and you’re right on about Politico.

Still — I was born, raised, went to school, grew up and spent pretty much all my life and career in and around Washington — throughout Vietnam, Watergate, the Energy “Crisis”, Reaganomics, New Democrats, you name it — and I can tell you that anyone in this town without a well-developed sense of cynicism is easy pickings for the likes of Clinton, Bush, Obama & Co.

I’ve learned to read the Washington Post the way a Muscovite learned to read Pravda way back in the day.

Your characterization of Politico is right on the nose, but, let’s face it — the current ruling class in this country really is a bunch of self-centered, vain, preening sociopaths who really do live for the foto ops, the CSPAN Moments and the Sunday morning talk show gigs. Many years of experience have taught me this.

They may be right totally by accident, like a busted clock, but Politico really is right about Dennis Kucinich: he really is a time-wasting, gutless, pussified faux Progressive attention whore who talks a good game about serious policy reforms, but is totally ready to roll over for the Democratic Party —- especially when it comes in the person of a slick flash bastard like Barack Obama, who probably promised him a new pony, just like he did to the rest of us in ’08. By rolling over for the Democratic leadership on the healthcare bill, he pretty much pissed away any credibility he had left on the Left —- assuming he had any to begin with, after his dickless performance at the ’04 Convention.

Well, imagine my surprise when I logged on to Gawker last night to scan for the latest Teabagger/O’Keefe/Breitbart shenanigans and found myself annointed a Comment Of The Day along with my 2008 Kucinich Campaign Poster! That’s right, gang; the Kid’s a hit in the Big Apple! When it rains, it pours, I guess.

Kucinich ’08: He’ll Waste The Left’s Time, medium-res jpeg image, 516k

Continue reading "Whoa, look out! I’ve been picked up by Gawker!" »

Well, here we are, a year into this glorious new post-racial, post-partisan Hope’n’Change Era, so let’s just pause to take stock of all the momentous Change that President Booker T. Obama has brought us:

The Economy: worse. President Hope has given away absurdly huge buttloads of our tax money to bankers and Wall Street. Bonus? Of course. That’s what the bankers have done to us for the past year or so.

Health Care: worse. To paraphrase a recent Keith Olbermann broadcast, it’s not health, it’s not care, and it sure as hell isn’t reform. President Change’s idea of health care reform involves shutting single-payer supporters out of the “debate”, massive corporate giveaways to the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries, the threat of fines or jail for people who don’t buy corporate health insurance even if they can’t afford it — and if you can afford decent health insurance, President Yes We Can wants to tax the living shit out of your benefits. Still, with any luck, that Coakley woman will lose that special Senate election in Massachusetts, and it’ll be Sayonara Charlie to The Bill That Needs Killing.

Civil Liberties: worse. Some doorknob in Detroit tries to blow up a plane with his underwear, and the next thing we know, President Hope wants to institute Jim Crow for Muslims and make us all to pose for digital x-ray porn. Meanwhile, one of President Hope’s fellow Harvard punks over at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs wants to assign CIA spooks to troll duty at any blogs that happen to bug him.

Illegal Foreign Wars: worse. President Change — or, as Code Pink called him during the campaign, the “Peace Candidate” — makes a big-ass deal out of appearing to seriously ponder the situtation before initiating a 40,000-troop escalation of the war in The Graveyard Of Empires — or, as it’s more commonly called, Afghanistan. The Nobel Prize committee finishes slurping the dregs out of the bottom of the Kool-Aid bowl and awards President Change a Nobel Peace Prize; President Change, on accepting the Prize, gives a pro-war speech. Now, that’s class.

So, congratulations to one and all of you Obamabots who allowed yourselves to be motivated by fear and desperation and fall for the first slick-assed huckster who can speak in complete sentences and knows how to pronounce the word “nuclear”. I just can’t thank you enough.

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T-shirts and Stickers at Mike’s Schwag Shop.

Continue reading "Happy Anniversary, Obamabots!" »

It’s the end of the world as they know it…
but they feel fine!

Those of you who’ve followed my work for any length of time will remember my complaints about the early start of the Presidential “election” cycle (John Edwards announced on Christmas Week, 2006) in the form of the four-part “Jackass Slate for 2008”.

So, here it is, at least a year before the “official” start of the 2012 Presidential campaign season, and here I am already doing a ’12 Election cartoon. I don’t know what else I can say for myself, other than that when the muse visits me, she absolutely refuses to quit pestering me until I’ve committed a creation to paper. It really was a “perfect storm” of events, recently: we had the epic FAIL of the Obama Administration in the areas of healthcare, the economy, and the war in Afghanistan; the Democrats stumbling in the recent elections in Virginia and elsewhere; the GOP hopefuls for ’12 already jockeying for position; Obama’s approval rating finally dropping to a level representative of normal objective reality; the ominous spectre of a sound butt-paddling for the Democrats in the 2010 off-year elections — and a movie just out about the end of the world in 2012, which was pretty much the icing on the conceptual cake.

Now, I’m not into clairvoyance or prophecy or any of that woo-woo, but the events of the past year — most notably the healthcare “reform” debacle — had gotten me to thinking that at least in one respect, the Mayans may have been on to something…

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Continue reading "2012: They Were Warned" »

Rahm Emmanuel? Tom Daschle? Eric Holder? Hillary, f’crissakes? Just in case you’re still wondering – no, you’re certainly not the only one marveling in awe at the number and quickness of the old Clinton mobsters and washed-up old liberal interventionists crawling out from under their rocks to score cushy gigs with the incoming Change Administration.

No goddamn’ wonder President-Elect Change practically broke his neck falling over his wingtips trying to disavow himself from the Donkeycratic Leadership Council when they were giving him big ups way back at the dawn of the last Presidential “Election” campaign – c’mon, you remember the beginning of the last campaign, a little over two years ago…yesssss… two…years …two looo-ooonngg yeee-eeeaars…but, anyway…have any you Hope’n’Change voters out there begun to sober up and realize that you voted against a third term of Bush, only to get a third term of Clinton, except without Bubba himself? Or, perhaps, even worse…? Yes, now, at last, the truth can be told…

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Continue reading "White House Bathroom, Jan. 21, 2009" »