Today's Cartoons

(click on images to enlarge)


(Rob Rogers, robrogers.com)


(Dave Granlund, davegranlund.com)


(Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Journal-Constitution)


(Tom Toles, Washington Post)


(Chris Britt, Illinois Times)

Pelosi To Trump: No More Witness Intimidation

After Russian asset and crime family boss Donald "Rump" Trump issued barely veiled threats to his former lawyer Michael Cohen, and with Cohen scheduled to testify to Congress next week, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi decided that now's a good time to fire a shot across Rump's large bow:

Michael Cohen will come before the @OversightDems & @HouseIntel Committees next week. Congress has an independent duty under the Constitution to conduct oversight of the Executive Branch, and any efforts to intimidate family members or pressure witnesses will not be tolerated. https://t.co/VDc6zE6lwH

— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) February 21, 2019

Here's something else. We know that Rump is obsessed with TV ratings, so Cohen's testimony (which will be very entertaining) will be competing at times with Rump's vacuous grip-and-grin show with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un in Hanoi. With Rump desperate to look like a world leader while Kim plays him like a broken violin, the embarrassment of Cohen whipping him in the ratings will be icing on Speaker Pelosi's cake.

Trump Leaves Violence In His Wake

Yesterday's report that a white supremacist Coast Guard lieutenant was planning mass killings of Dem politicians and journalists at odds with demagogue Donald "Rump" Trump is another sign that the right-wing Trumpist world is being incited to violence by the atmosphere he has created.

Consider some key examples of the times Rump's rhetoric has led to tragedy and near-tragedy:

-- KKK and American Nazis march in Charlottesville in August 2017 chanting "Jews will not replace us" and one of them rams his car into counter-protestors, killing one and maiming others. Rump then praises "very fine people" on "both sides;"

-- a Florida thug who has decorated his van with Rump decals sends pipe bombs to people that Rump has identified as "enemies" last October;

-- soon after the MAGAbomber, a shooter believing that the "caravan" of immigrants was "invading" the country shoots up a Pittsburgh synagogue because it had provided support to immigrant families;

-- at the recent rally in El Paso, Rump launches into an attack on the media, following which one MAGA thug attacked a crew member from the BBC. His anti-media rhetoric has caused the press to be shielded behind fencing to protect them from Rump's cult at rallies.

Rump's recent "enemy of the people" attack on the New York Times followed their article regarding his attempts to derail the investigation by the Southern District of New York into him and his crime organization. There are numerous articles documenting his blatant incitements over time, for example, here, here, and here.

Too many innocent people have been killed and hurt already by the atmosphere of hate and paranoia Rump has actively created, and more people are going to get killed and hurt as he continues in his reckless, sinister attacks.

Mid-Week Love/Brain Song

Can't let the day pass without wishing megastar Rihanna a very happy 31st birthday. The Barbados-born singer and composer has been honored with 9 Grammys, 13 American Music Awards, and 12 Billboard Music Awards while selling a staggering 250 million albums worldwide. She's also a humanitarian, having raised many millions of dollars for charity, including cancer research, HIV/AIDS, and childhood diseases. Here's her song "Love on the Brain" from three-times platinum album, "Anti."

Tweets Of The Day -- Our Broken Media, Cont.

Following up on our post below, this is from the media columnist at the Washington Post:

CNN’s hiring of a GOP operative as political editor is even worse than it looks. ...My column on what this terrible hire says about 2020 coverage, whether CNN has learned anything (no) and the defensive addiction to both-sides 'journalism' https://t.co/Uik4EjePDO

— Margaret Sullivan (@Sulliview) February 20, 2019

And more --

Qs @CNN needs to answer about hiring GOP operative Sarah Isgur to edit its political coverage:

1. Did Isgur sign a NDA while working for Trump?

2. What was Isgur's role in spreading the Seth Rich conspiracy?

3. Will Isgur have access to the identities of confidential sources?

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) February 20, 2019

Sorry, didn’t get the latest memo after 1,000 experienced + qualified journalists of all stripes were let go w/o warning a few weeks ago and still looking for work: are we still pretending that hires like these are evidence of a meritocracy? https://t.co/Qb9JNgcdT2

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 20, 2019

Congratulations to @CNN on its new era of JournaMAGAlism!https://t.co/8D6XHK5MGO

— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) February 20, 2019

Finally --

wild that so many people treat CNN's hire of Flores as some sort of black swan event and not a thing that's thoroughly in keeping with the organization's well-known level of institutional rot

— Jason Linkins (@dceiver) February 19, 2019

Our Broken Media, Part Infinity

Rethuglicans are masters at the game of "playing the refs," referring to a tactic used in sports to get the ref to rule for you by accusing him of bias for the opposing team. The "both sides" media "refs" have been played for years to such an extent that nutzoid policies and outright lies on the right are given equal air time with expert commentary and analysis (think climate change, for example).

Beyond their "both sides" disease, there must be a masochistic streak among CNN management, one of the major targets of the regime of demagogue and media-basher Donald "Rump" Trump. CNN announced the hiring of a former Rump regime official and career partisan wingnut Sarah Isgur to, incredibly, "coordinate political coverage" of the 2020 elections. Adding to the bizarre nature of the hire, Isgur's been highly critical of CNN over the years for their coverage:

CNN’s new political editor, Sarah Isgur, once referred to her future employer as the “Clinton News Network,” and has used false claims and conspiracies to demean Democrats.

She’ll coordinate the network’s 2020 coverage on TV and online. https://t.co/e5aqudAv1P

— Vox (@voxdotcom) February 19, 2019

A quick review of Isgur's employment history demonstrates her far-right loyalties: staffer for former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, for the Rethuglican National Committee, for Sen. Ted "Tailgunner Ted" Cruz, and senior official for the failed campaign of Carly "Snarly" Fiorina in 2016. Missing is a lack of journalistic experience. That should work out well. Here's a snippet from the linked Media Matters' article:

"According to The Washington Post, Sessions very much wanted to hire longtime Republican political operative Sarah Isgur as his chief spokeswoman, but she had 'criticized [President Donald] Trump, repeatedly, during the 2016 Republican primaries,' and thus her 'prospects for a Justice Department job stalled.' To break the logjam, the Post reported, Isgur paid Trump 'a cordial visit during which she told the president she was on board with his agenda and would be honored to serve him.'” (our emphasis)

Aaron Rupar has a good summation of Isgur's offensive tweets, if you need even more of an insight into her thinking. Suffice it to say, her career path should lead to InfoWars, Breitbart or Fux. That she's been hired at CNN to coordinate their political coverage for f*ck sake demonstrates that there's apparently no one there in management even refereeing anymore.

Today's Cartoons

(click on images to enlarge)


(Steve Sack, Minneapolis Star Tribune)


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


(Jack Ohman, Sacramento Bee)


(Jeff Stahler, gocomics.com)


(Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

Parents Of Smirking MAGA Student Suing The Washington Post

The parents of red hat student Nicholas "Smirk" Sandmann are going after the Washington Post for its coverage of the confrontation between their son and Native American activist Nathan Phillips near the Lincoln Memorial after an anti- abortion rally on January 19.  They've filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit against the newspaper, and it seems their motives are perfectly noble and non- political, just like precious little Smirk's behavior:

The suit alleges that The Post “targeted and bullied” 16-year-old Nicholas Sandmann in order to embarrass President Trump. Sandmann was one of a number of students from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky who were wearing red “Make America Great Again” hats during a trip to the Mall when they encountered Nathan Phillips, a Native American activist. [snip]

“In a span of three days in January of this year commencing on January 19, the Post engaged in a modern-day form of McCarthyism by competing with CNN and NBC, among others, to claim leadership of a mainstream and social media mob of bullies which attacked, vilified, and threatened Nicholas Sandmann, an innocent secondary school child,” reads the complaint. 

It added, “The Post ignored basic journalist standards because it wanted to advance its well-known and easily documented, biased agenda against President Donald J. Trump by impugning individuals perceived to be supporters of the President.” (our emphasis)

To add an exclamation point to their purely non- political, non- racist intentions, the Sandmanns' suit

... calls Phillips “a phony war hero [who] was too intimidated by the unruly Hebrew Israelites to approach them, the true troublemakers, and instead chose to focus on a group of innocent children.” (our emphasis)

"Innocent children."  Oh, the humanity!

Phillips, who served four years in the Marine Corps Reserve during the Vietnam War era, has never claimed to be a "war hero," though there's been some confusion about whether he ever claimed to be deployed to Vietnam.  However, let's contrast that service to the Sandmann family's hero, 5- deferment Cadet Bone Spurs himself, Donald "Rump" Trump:

In a 1997 interview with shock jock Howard Stern, Trump talked about how he had been “lucky” not to have contracted diseases when he was sleeping around. 

“I’ve been so lucky in terms of that whole world. It is a dangerous world out there. It’s scary, like Vietnam. Sort of like the Vietnam-era,” Trump said in a video that resurfaced Tuesday on Buzzfeed, “It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave soldier.”

A wingnut site we won't link to claims the Sandmanns also will be suing Phillips over "lies." How very Catholic of them.  We wonder what the life- lovin' Sandmanns' reaction would be if it turns out their hero, Cadet Bone Spurs, paid for multiple abortions over the years, something Michael Cohen might enlighten us on eventually (spoiler alert:  they'd call it "fake news").

Unless the Sandmanns have very deep pockets, it would seem certain their noble, non- political lawsuit is being underwritten by the same gullible yahoos who underwrite most of these "conservatives are the real victims" actions.  All the more reason to hope the Post prevails.

(Photo:  Social media/ Reuters)

Cyber Smears Against 2020 Dems Begin

Social media was a major tool employed by Russia in the 2016 elections to harm Hillary Clinton and boost their asset, Donald "Rump" Trump. False narratives, conspiracy theories, innuendo and other means were used to discredit Clinton, who was seen by Moscow as a threat to their expansionist plans. As a consequence of their assistance to him, Rump has no interest in countering Russian cyber interference in the 2020 elections, and Politico reports that Russia's interference has already begun to target Dem candidates for the 2020 nomination:

"A POLITICO review of recent data extracted from Twitter and from other platforms, as well as interviews with data scientists and digital campaign strategists, suggests that the goal of the coordinated barrage appears to be undermining the nascent candidacies through the dissemination of memes, hashtags, misinformation, and distortions of their positions. But the divisive nature of many of the posts also hint at a broader effort to sow discord and chaos within the Democratic presidential primary. [snip]  

Not all of the activity is organized. Much of it appears to be organic, a reflection of the politically polarizing nature of some of the candidates. But there are clear signs of a coordinated effort of undetermined size that shares similar characteristics with the computational propaganda attacks launched by online trolls at Russia’s Internet Research Agency in the 2016 presidential election, which special counsel Robert Mueller accused of aiming to undermine the political process and elevate Donald Trump." (our emphasis)

The four candidates noted are Sen. Kamala Harris, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Rep. Beto O'Rourke, with Harris receiving the most attention. And it's not just candidates being slimed with false information, it's false information about voter fraud and immigration:

"A separate Guardians.ai study that looked at the 200-account group’s focus on voter fraud and false and/or misleading narratives about election integrity — published just before the midterm elections and co-authored by Horvath, Zach Verdin and Alicia Serrani — reported that the accounts generated or were mentioned in more than 140 million tweets over the prior year.

That cluster of accounts was the driving force behind an effort to aggressively advance conspiracy theories in the 2018 midterms, ranging from misinformation about voter fraud to narratives involving a caravan coming to the United States, and even advocacy of violence."  (our emphasis)

The linked article is well worth a read. The findings in this report should be pursued by the FBI, if it's not already on the case, and the House Intelligence Committee. Russia clearly hasn't learned lessons from its interference in 2016, and Rump won't be teaching them any. It's time for a look at increased sanctions.

QOTD -- Trump's Obsession

"The story of Mr. Trump’s attempts to defang the investigations has been voluminously covered in the news media, to such a degree that many Americans have lost track of how unusual his behavior is. But fusing the strands reveals an extraordinary story of a president who has attacked the law enforcement apparatus of his own government like no other president in history, and who has turned the effort into an obsession. Mr. Trump has done it with the same tactics he once used in his business empire: demanding fierce loyalty from employees, applying pressure tactics to keep people in line and protecting the brand — himself — at all costs. "--  Mark Mazzetti, Maggie Haberman, Nicholas Fandos and Michael S. Schmidt in The New York Times story concerning Donald "Rump" Trump's (Individual 1) attempts to corruptly influence the Southern District of New York's investigations into the Michael Cohen case (see post below).

Add This To The Articles Of Impeachment

A story breaking today in the New York Times reports that former Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker was approached by corrupt Russian asset Donald "Rump" Trump with a request that he place recused U.S. Attorney for the SDNY Geoffrey Berman -- a Rump appointee -- in charge of the Michael Cohen case. A key quote from the Times story:

"Mr. Whitaker, who had privately told associates that part of his role at the Justice Department was to 'jump on a grenade' for the president, knew he could not put Mr. Berman in charge, since Mr. Berman had already recused himself from the investigation. The president soon soured on Mr. Whitaker, as he often does with his aides, and complained about his inability to pull levers at the Justice Department that could make the president’s many legal problems go away.

Trying to install a perceived loyalist atop a widening inquiry is a familiar tactic for Mr. Trump, who has been struggling to beat back the investigations that have consumed his presidency. His efforts have exposed him to accusations of obstruction of justice as Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, finishes his work investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election." (our emphasis)

Rump's uninhibited desire to derail the multiple investigations into him, his associates and company lead him to bumbling obstruction attempts, which will come out in the Mueller report. After two miserable years of his regime, he still hasn't come to grips with the rule of law and the proper role of the Justice Department and law enforcement. May that failure lead to his removal from office, and his incarceration.

(photo: "Me want loyalty. Me want protection. Me want get out of jail free card!")

North Carolina Republicans Engaged In Election Fraud And Obstruction

(Kevin Siers, The Charlotte Observer)

Republicans -- the expert practitioners of voter fraud and voter suppression -- really outdid themselves in the Congressional race in North Carolina's 9th district. Unfortunately for them, they, uh, really outdid themselves:

State election officials in North Carolina said Monday that a political operative for Republican Mark Harris orchestrated a “coordinated, unlawful, and substantially resourced absentee ballot scheme” in the 9th Congressional District last year, hiding evidence of the operation as it unfolded and obstructing the state’s investigation after the election. 

Those explosive charges opened an evidentiary hearing in Raleigh Monday, where the North Carolina State Board of Elections began listening to witness testimony to decide whether enough ballots were tampered with to taint the outcome of the 9th District race. 

The state board’s executive director, Kim Strach, told the five-member board that Leslie McCrae Dowless, a longtime political operative from Bladen County, paid workers to collect absentee ballots from voters, a felony in North Carolina. Dowless and his employees in some cases forged voter and witness signatures and filled out blank or incomplete ballots, Strach said. They operated in both Bladen and Robeson counties, she said — submitting as many as 1,249 ballot request forms overall in the general election. It’s unclear exactly how many actual ballots Dowless and his associates turned in.  (our emphasis)

More testimony will be taken by the board over the coming days. The 5- member board of 3 Democrats and 2 Republicans would have to have a supermajority of 4 votes in order for them to call a new election.  (Good luck getting a Republican to go along with the Democratic majority, even with overwhelming evidence of a rigged, unlawful election.) Given the lack of interest in the Republican Party in free and fair elections, should the board not be able to order a new election, Congress can step in and do so.  The Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives has already put North Carolina on notice that it won't seat the Republican Harris while the election is under investigation.

To repeat what should be a well- known fact by now, the Republican Party is a collection of anti- democratic, white nationalist, hypocritical fraudsters and moral ciphers (and that's the short list) whose only mission in life is to protect the right- wing white political structure they've created through schemes such as the one that's been busted in North Carolina.  There's no telling how many other elections at the local and state level have been tampered with to provide victories for Republicans.  But we know when they can't pull it off with local talent alone, they contract with a hostile foreign government, who now has their asset installed in the White House.

Emergency! Bing Bing Bong Bong

Stephen Colbert sees what's coming:



Which recalls the Very Stable Genius' bing bing bong bong greatest hits:

Judge Wants To See Roger Stone About That Threatening Tweet

He threatened the judge. Now, throw the book at him!

Oh boy. Judge Amy Berman Jackson doesn't seem happy with Roger Stone. pic.twitter.com/jCS7QJ2X2T

— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) February 19, 2019

“...Further, Defendant is advised to bring his toothbrush.”

— frankGinDC (@frankgindc) February 19, 2019

"And soap-on-a-rope for those awkward prison showers."

There has to be zero tolerance for what Stone did.  His entire history in politics has been one colored by intimidation, threats and contempt for the law.  He's had his chances but he couldn't help but revert to type.  Let's see how the fascist fop cosplays an orange jumpsuit.  Lock. Him. Up!

States To Trump: See You In Court

After demagogue and bigot Donald "Rump" Trump announced his false "emergency" over his vanity border wall that Mexico was supposed to pay for, sixteen states led by California have filed suit to overturn his emergency declaration and unconstitutional diversion of appropriated funds. The other states joining California in the lawsuit, which was filed in the Northern District of California yesterday, are Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Virginia, and Michigan (pdf copy here). California's Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a statement:

“President Trump treats the rule of law with utter contempt. He knows there is no border crisis, he knows his emergency declaration is unwarranted, and he admits that he will likely lose this case in court. He is willing to manipulate the Office of the Presidency to engage in unconstitutional theatre performed to convince his audience that he is committed to his ‘beautiful’ border wall....We’re suing President Trump to stop him from unilaterally robbing taxpayer funds lawfully set aside by Congress for the people of our states. For most of us, the Office of the Presidency is not a place for theatre.”

 Prior to the states' lawsuit, several landowners in Texas as well as environmental groups and the American Civil Liberties Union filed suits last Friday right after Rump's bizarre appearance in the Rose Garden in which he admitted that he "didn't need to do this," referring to wall construction. He said it was all about speeding up the pace in time for the 2020 elections.

With the efforts of these 16 states (and perhaps more to come) behind a challenge to Rump's power grab for political cover, we're hoping that courts can be convinced to see through the ludicrous argument that Rump's made and then undercut himself for his political agenda.