Today's Cartoons

Please see post below for safe voting options.

(click on images to enlarge)


(J.D. Crowe, Alabama Media Group)


(Darrin Bell, Counterpoint)


(Matt Davies, Newsday)


(Bill Bramhall, New York Daily News)


(Kevin Necessary, gocomics.com)


(Steve Breen, San Diego Union-Tribune)


(Lalo Alcaraz, LA Weekly)


(Chris Britt, gocomics.com)


(Kevin Kallaugher, The Economist, London)


(Tom Toles, Washington Post)


(Signe Wilkinson, Philadelphia Inquirer/ Daily News)


(Bob Englehart, caglecartoons.com)


(Jeff Darcy, Cleveland Plain Dealer)


(Dave Granlund, davegranlund.com)

"A F*cking Moron" Ad Buries Trump

The Never Trump Lincoln Project has a new ad, "Unprecedented," that uses the words of the sadder but wiser people that worked for him and thought they could contain the malignant narcissist. Share it.

"Four Ways To Safely Cast Your Ballot"

As we continue to watch the on- going efforts of the Trump regime to suppress mail- in balloting and short- circuit the November 3 vote, please read this and share it:

Voters concerned about the current crisis facing the USPS and what it could mean for their ballot arriving by Election Day have several options:

1. Vote early in person. Early voting allows voters to vote in person without waiting in crowded or long lines. Forty-one states have some form of early voting in place and may start as early as 45 days before Election Day. Many states also have weekend early voting options. Make sure to check with your local election office to see if they extended early voting due to the pandemic.

2. Use a ballot drop box. Many states and counties provide ballot drop boxes as a secure and convenient option for voters to return their sealed and signed mail ballot. Drop boxes skip the mail process entirely, allowing voters to drop off their mail ballots and have them be taken directly to county offices. Boxes are placed in many convenient locations such as outside community centers, near public transit routes or on college campuses. Check with your local election office to see if there are ballot drop boxes in your community.

3. Drop off your ballot at an election office or polling location. Almost all states permit voters to return a delivered ballot in person at their local election office, but not everyone lives close to their election office. That is why many states allow voters to drop off their signed and sealed ballots at any in-person voting location in the county. Check with your local election office to see if you can drop off your ballot at a polling location closer to your home.

4. Organize community ballot collection. Many states allow designated organizations, election officials or family members to collect a voter’s signed and sealed ballot and submit the ballot on behalf of the voter. This option is vital for high-risk voters who are unable to leave their home to cast a ballot. Check who can collect your ballot in your state.

We can’t let the current crisis facing USPS lock millions of Americans out of our voting process. With the current absentee ballot rejection rate reaching as high as 8-10%, how we cast our ballots this year matters. To beat Donald Trump and the Republicans in November, especially in battleground states, we must make a plan to vote and look to other available methods of voting—like the ones listed above—to ensure every ballot counts.

As we've noted earlier, our personal choice is #1, depending on circumstances at the time.  Our state (Maryland) is not going to be in play for Trump, but it's important wherever you vote that, if you feel comfortable casting your ballot in person, it could blow up the Trump plan to challenge or halt the counting of mail ballots in multiple states in order to declare a fraudulent victory.  There's time before deadlines arrive to decide what your strategy should be.  The more votes, and the more votes that are counted on Election Day, the less likelihood the malignant menace in the White (Supremacist) House will be able to claim a fraudulent win.

BONUS I:  Princeton Election Consortium has a good write up on how hard it would be to steal an election by mail.  Interesting.  Modestly hopeful.

BONUS II:  We're Hackwhackers and we approve this message --

If you're in a state where you have the option to vote early, do that now. The more votes in early, the less likely you're going to see a last minute crunch, both at polling places and in states where mail-in ballots are permitted. Then tell everyone you know.

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 14, 2020

(h/t LGM)

Weekend Music

Former Byrds, CSN and CSNY founder David Crosby is 79 today.  Given his life history and fragile current circumstances, we try to note that remarkable occasion every year with a song or two from his catalogue.  We've featured both of today's songs in the past simply because we grew up with them and, of course, we like them.  The first, "What's Happening," from the "Fifth Dimension" album (1966), is one of the first compositions Crosby made for the Byrds catalog (his vocals nicely complemented by Roger McGuinn's 12- string Rickenbacker riffing and majestic coda).  Sometimes considered the "great lost Byrds hit," the second is  1967's "Lady Friend," the only Crosby composition to appear as an A-side Byrds single.  It likely would have appeared on the Byrds' "The Notorious Byrd Brothers" album (1968) but for bad vibes from the recording session, its disappointing sales and the fact that by then Crosby had been fired from the group.  (If you listen closely, Crosby says "Can't even talk, how can I sing" as the tape starts to roll.)  Happy birthday, Croz!  Hang in there.

Keep Asking Trump This Question

This question, asked by HuffPo reporter S.V. Dáte at yesterday's clown show, should be asked by a reporter every single day to pathological liar and con man Donald "Individual 1" Trump, even though he won't answer.

Question: Do you regret at all the lying you’ve done to the American people? pic.twitter.com/FUh5jYHs0o

— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) August 13, 2020

The Washington Post's latest tally of Trump's lies and misinformation one month ago exceeds 20,000.  With him lying virtually every time he speaks, that figure will grow exponentially as the 2020 campaign heats up, and as his re-election hopes dim.

Michael Cohen's "Disloyal"

The Foreword to former Trump fixer Michael Cohen's book "Disloyal" has been released.  Here's a sampling:

There are reasons why there has never been an intimate portrait of Donald Trump, the man. In part, it’s because he has a million acquaintances, pals and hangers on, but no real friends. He has no one he trusts to keep his secrets. For ten years, he certainly had me, and I was always there for him, and look what happened to me. I urge you to really consider that fact: Trump has no true friends. He has lived his entire life avoiding and evading taking responsibility for his actions. He crushed or cheated all who stood in his way, but I know where the skeletons are buried because I was the one who buried them. I was the one who most encouraged him to run for president in 2011, and then again in 2015, carefully orchestrating the famous trip down the escalator in Trump Tower for him to announce his candidacy. When Trump wanted to reach Russian President Vladimir Putin, via a secret back channel, I was tasked with making the connection in my Keystone Kop fashion. I stiffed contractors on his behalf, ripped off his business partners, lied to his wife Melania to hide his sexual infidelities, and bullied and screamed at anyone who threatened Trump’s path to power. From golden showers in a sex club in Vegas, to tax fraud, to deals with corrupt officials from the former Soviet Union, to catch and kill conspiracies to silence Trump’s clandestine lovers, I wasn’t just a witness to the president’s rise—I was an active and eager participant.  [snip]

... As the months passed by and I thought about the man I knew so well, I became even more convinced that Trump will never leave office peacefully. The types of scandals that have surfaced in recent months will only continue to emerge with greater and greater levels of treachery and deceit. If Trump wins another four years, these scandals will prove to only be the tip of the iceberg. I’m certain that Trump knows he will face prison time if he leaves office, the inevitable cold Karma to the notorious chants of “Lock Her Up!” But that is the Trump I know in a nutshell. He projects his own sins and crimes onto others, partly to distract and confuse but mostly because he thinks everyone is as corrupt and shameless and ruthless as he is; a poisonous mindset I know all too well. Whoever follows Trump into the White House, if the President doesn’t manage to make himself the leader for life, as he has started to joke about—and Trump never actually jokes- will discover a tangle of frauds and scams and lawlessness. Trump and his minions will do anything to cover up that reality, and I mean anything.

There are other passages in the Foreword that hint at more sleaze to be revealed, as if more evidence of Trump's malignant narcissism, venality and amorality were needed.  Of course, none of this should be surprising to anyone who has been paying attention for the past 4 or more years.

But here's a takeaway from how he describes the fealty of Republicans toward this rotten p.o.s.:  the one trait they are most attracted to is his ruthlessness.  They believe his ruthless amorality is his greatest strength, because it allows him to pursue raw power on their behalf, regardless of niceties like the truth, the Constitution, the law, the general welfare, etc.  He's their means to an end -- political power regardless of popular sentiment, from the town halls to the state legislatures to the governorships to the national government. That's all they've been interested in for decades -- power simply for the sake of power, not to govern in the best interests of the people, but to use power to comfort the comfortable and to afflict those who don't look or believe or think like them.

Cohen's book, when it's released, will be yet another in a long series of narratives about the rotten p.o.s. that's occupying the White (Supremacist) House.  But it will also be another mirror held up to his malignant party and all who support him, all the time knowing what he's done to our country and what he's still capable of doing.

BONUS: It appears that the hashtag #UrineTroubleTrump is trending, along with #GoldenShowersTrump, after Cohen's tease about the Las Vegas escapade.

Tweets Of The Day -- What Voting Rights?!

News item:  In addition to sabotaging aid for the USPS in any coronavirus stimulus package, White (Supremacist) House chief "economic" advisor and Trump's Baghdad Bob Larry "Double Martini" Kudlow said the quiet part loud about another dealbreaker that's keeping money out of the pockets of the unemployed:

Here is the President’s chief economic adviser describe “voting rights” as part of “really liberal left wishlists” that the President will oppose pic.twitter.com/ToiK4kSw6R

— Don Moynihan (@donmoyn) August 13, 2020

Larry Kudlow says that “voting rights” are a “liberal left wish list.”

Trump says he wants to defund the post office so that Americans can’t vote by mail.

— Jonathan Allen (@jonallendc) August 13, 2020

 

Voting rights are a liberal wishlist item?

— Leslie McCarthy (@LeslieM3355) August 13, 2020

Says party of Q.

— Survivingnsweatpants (@Mominsweats) August 13, 2020

 

We’re in that authoritarian world where killing democracy isn’t just something done by stealth, it’s an explicit part of the right’s political platform.

Democracy is recast as the social disorder the left wants; soon it’s going to be what foreign agitators are needling for. https://t.co/Us3ZmXoAq2

— Taniel (@Taniel) August 13, 2020

 

Today's Cartoon -- Kamala Harris Edition

(click on images to enlarge)


(Adam Zyglis, The Buffalo News)


(Chris Britt, gocomics.com)


(Steve Breen, San Diego Union-Tribune)


(Walt Handelsman, The Times-Picayune, New Orleans)


(Mike Thompson, USA Today)


(Jeff Bagley, The Salt Lake Tribune)


(Ed Hall, Artizans.com)


(Drew Sheneman, The Star-Ledger, Newark, NJ)


(Jeff Stahler, gocomics.com)


(Ann Telnaes, Washington Post)


(Steve Sack, Minneapolis Star Tribune)
 
Michael de Adder, Counterpoint)


(Dave Whamond, caglecartoons.com)


(Bill Bramhall, New York Daily News)

Is Trump Looking At Martial Law Post-Election?

Speculation about what lawless demagogue and autocrat Donald "It Is What It Is" Trump would do if and when he's defeated in November may have taken on a new sense of urgency yesterday. Reportedly, Trump has been privately discussing firing Defense Secretary Mark Esper after the November election, creating a scenario where he could appoint a loyal stooge to order the military to impose a form of martial law while he undoes the election results. You'll recall that Esper opposed Trump's invoking of the Insurrection Act to deploy troops in response to Black Lives Matter protests after the murder of George Floyd. Esper also ran counter to Trump over displaying the treasonous and racist Confederate flag at military facilities, with Esper issuing a ban undermining Trump's desire to use the flag to stir up his racist base.

Dems are noticing the firing reports, and are looking at the sycophant Trump could use after Esper departs:

"Earlier this month, the White House installed a senior policy official at the Pentagon who falsely called Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, a Muslim and a terrorist.

Anthony Tata, a retired Army brigadier general who had been a staunch defender of Trump on Fox News, had failed to secure a Senate confirmation for a more senior post amid controversy over his comments and qualifications."

There's no question that Tata would do exactly what Trump orders. Whether the Joint Chiefs of Staff would fall in line is another story.

Trump Sabotages Aid Package Over USPS Funding [UPDATED]

It's been clear for months that malignant narcissist and corrupt autocrat Donald "Mango Mussolini" Trump is losing his grip on power, facing defeat in November. It's also been clear for months that, due to the pandemic, millions of voters will be using the U.S. Postal Service to mail in their ballots, and that is a direct threat to the cheater-in-chief. He's saying that he'll block funding for the Postal Service to handle the increase in ballots in order to rig the election in his favor, as he indicated this morning:

"Trump said Thursday he does not want to fund the U.S. Postal Service because Democrats are seeking to expand mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic, making explicit the reason he has declined to approve $25 billion in emergency funding for the cash-strapped agency.

'Now, they need that money in order to make the Post Office work, so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,' Trump said in an interview on Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo. He added: 'If they don’t get those two items, that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting, because they’re not equipped.'”

Negotiations between Sen. Chuck Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi and White (Supremacist) House representatives Mark Meadows and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin have collapsed over the size of the aid package, despite Dems' willingness to reduce their top line by $1 trillion if the Trump regime will increase the package by $1 trillion. However, Trump sees the funding for the Postal Service as a mortal threat to his re-election:

"...Trump told reporters he would not approve the $25 billion in emergency funding for the Postal Service, or $3.5 billion in supplemental funding for election resources, citing prohibitively high costs. But he went further in remarks Thursday morning, blaming Democrats’ efforts to make it easier for Americans to vote amid the pandemic."

It's also worth noting that millions of people are relying on the Postal Service for everything from prescriptions to annuity checks, but Trump is typically focused only on himself. Both Meadows and Mnuchin had previously raised no objection to the funding for the Postal Service in their negotiations, a position favored by the Trump-appointed Postal Service board of directors.

Any pretense that Trump will spare no outrage to disrupt the election and tip it in his favor is long gone.

BONUS:  Keep in mind there are ways to foil Trump's plans.

UPDATE: VoteVets.org has this stinging ad that goes to how Trump's war on the Postal Service impacts veterans.



(Cartoon:  Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

A Battle For The Soul Of This Nation

Here's the first official Biden-Harris ad:



And this --

Kamala Harris will be campaigning from inside Donald Trump’s head. No word on what social distancing is like in there.

— Dan Rather (@DanRather) August 12, 2020

 

Trump's "Nasty" Women

(click to enlarge)

 
(via democraticunderground.com)

Today's Cartoons

(click on images to enlarge)


(Dave Granlund, davegranlund.com)


(Ken Catalino, catalinocartoons.com)


(Andy Marlette, Pensacola News-Journal, FL)


(Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Journal-Constitution)


(Tom Toles, Washington Post)


(Dan Wasserman, Boston Globe)


(Adam Zyglis, The Buffalo News)


(Kevin Siers, Charlotte Observer)


(Heng Kim Song, Lianhe Zaobao, Singapore)


(Signe Wilkinson, Philadelphia Inquirer/ Daily News)


(Andy Marlette, Pensacola News-Leader, FL)


(Bill Bramhall, New York Daily News)


(Jack Ohman, Sacramento Bee)


(Michael de Adder, deaddernet.com)

Trump Triggered By Maher's "Eulogy"

HBO's Bill Maher can be irritating when he goes "contrarian" over what he sees as "political correctness." But every so often, he strikes satirical gold, like this segment where he delivers a mock "eulogy" at sociopath and con man Donald "Boob Tube" Trump's "funeral." It was biting enough to attract an outburst from the TV-addicted giant toddler this morning on Twitter, along with some reactionary racist claptrap about "suburban housewives".

The Believers And Their Golden Calf

There are two amusing pieces out, one a Twitter thread by Brian Tyler Cohen, the other an op/ ed by never Trumper George Conway (of course, the unfortunate husband of Kellyanne) on Trump and his supporters.  Take a few moments to go to the links and check out the full pieces if you can.

Here's a part of Cohen's thread, as if written by Mango Mussolini himself:

We won the Revolutionary War by taking the airports. We took the airports. And we had the biggest hurricanes, from the standpoint of wetness and water. So much wet. But that's what many people say. He's stuck in the basement. You have to wonder why. Person man woman camer

And they were spying on us. They admitted it. "Sir," they said-- and they were crying also. "We spied on you." The deep state I call it. And you get cancer just from standing near a windmill. And if you're a bird, forget it. Biden and AOC want to kill the birds. Check the manual.

Biden is confused but also an Antifa supersoldier who will turn your neighborhood into Portland. He is sleepy and diabolical and he didn't write that tweet. Ask him to take the test, he won't. The last five questions are impossible, the doctors fainted. Biden hates the suburbs.

Here's a small part of Conway's op/ed, as if written by a dead- end MAGA dolt:

I believe that if Biden is elected, there will be “no religion, no anything,” and he would confiscate all guns, “immediately and without notice.” He would “abolish” “our great,” “beautiful suburbs,” not to mention “the American way of life.” There would be “no windows, no nothing” in buildings.

I believe the news media would have “no ratings” and “will go down along with our great USA!” if the president loses — and that this would be bad even though the media is fake.

I believe it’s normal for the president to say “Yo Semites” and “Yo Seminites,” “Thigh Land,” “Minne-a-napolis,” “toe-tally-taria-tism,” “Thomas Jeffers” and “Ulyss-eus S. Grant.” I believe it’s Biden who’s cognitively impaired.

I believe the president “aced” a “very hard” impairment test, and that his “very surprised” doctors found this “unbelievable.” I believe it was “amazing” he remembered five words, such as “person, woman, man, camera, TV” — in correct order. I believe he took the SAT himself.

Sometimes you have to take a break and laugh, and these are two good places to start.