Trust Issues

You have to hand it to Joe Biden. When asked if he’d discussed Burisma Holdings with Hunter, Slow Joe responded in the negative, and when asked why, said, “Because I trust my son.”

Anyone else might, just might, have trust issues with someone who had taken up with his dead brother’s widow, knocked up a stripper and married a stranger, pretty much simultaneously. Or maybe the wrecked rental car with the crack pipe, or the revolving door trips through drug rehab, would make someone a bit curious about the millions of dollars that foreign corporations in sectors that he was utterly unqualified in were paying him. After all, this is the guy who wangled an age waiver to join the Navy, not as an enlisted member, but as a directly-commissioned officer, and lasted less than a month before blowing hot for cocaine in his first urinalysis. Now, maybe I’m wrong, but, after a dishonorable discharge from the Navy and less than honorable discharge into the stripper, if I were Hunter’s dad, I’d be just a bit concerned that maybe, just maybe, the people paying him millions had an ulterior motive, like cozying up to his father, who was, you know, the Vice President of the United States. After all, some of those guys might expect that he might intervene on their behalf to, say, oh, I don’t know… have a prosecutor fired to protect his son’s bosses when they were embezzling state funds and laundering money. I would certainly have wanted to know what he was doing for all of that money. But, not Joe. He trusts his son. And if you don’t like it, you can do some pushups.

California Screamin’

California just unveiled its latest budget, and I’m so happy that we moved out of that horribly mismanaged state. Imagine living under a government that has doubled its budget in a decade, while the population has stagnated. Worse, even with a $2 billion tax hike, the state has a shortfall.

And what do Californians get for their astronomical tax burden? The highest poverty rate in the country, crumbling infrastructure, hobo feces and syringes in the streets and a return of diseases not seen in North America in decades. Amazing.

You can read the awful details at the link.

Largest Budget in CA History ‘Falls Short’: $2 billion in New Tax Increases and Lots of Pork

Letter From Facebook Jail

Every once in a while, I get a piece of feedback that lets me know that my cartoons have made an impact. I’m not talking about likes on Facebook or Twitter (although those are nice), or even shares, retweets or positive comments on American Thinker, which has been kind enough to publish me. No, I know when my cartoon has left a mark because t outrages the people that it’s aimed at. In this case, the cartoon was the one featuring Himmler and Eichmann standing over a murdered concentration camp inmate, and Eichmann saying that it’s easer when you think of them as clumps of cells.

Now, was I saying that pro-abortion advocates are Nazis? No. What I was saying is that the use of dehumanizing euphemisms makes it easier to destroy life, whether it’s “Lebensunwertes Leben” (life unworthy of life), or a “clump of cells.” Abusing language to hide the reality of an act is what makes a horrific act less horrific to the public, and therefore more acceptable. This cartoon certainly generated some thought on the subject, perhaps too much as far as Facebook was concerned, because they removed it, claiming that it violated their community standards, and then gave me a three-day stay in Facebook jail when others shared the cartoon. I still don’t know exactly which community standard I violated, or how it came to their attention, although I have some ideas. Obviously, someone reported the cartoon, and the commissars of Facebook took it down and sent me into a short exile.

Okay, I get it, Zuckerberg. I committed wrongthink, and you’ll punish me as you see fit, because you can, and because that’s what petty tyrants and aspiring tyrants do.

Funny thing is, the guys who took down this cartoon think that we’re the tyrants. They think that by calling us Nazis, they can do whatever they want to us, and a certain percentage of Americans will go along with it, because Nazis. They think that they can suppress speech, exile dissenters and otherwise act like the fascists that they’re claiming to hate, without consequences, but there are always consequences. Look at how quickly the big social media platforms have become pariahs. People still use them, but alternatives are cropping up, and sooner or later, those alternatives will become the preferred brand.

The time to set up your accounts with these alternatives is now. Go to MeWe, Gab and Parler and set up your place in the lifeboat.

Substitution

You have to admire the major west coast cities; they sure have their priorities in order.  They’re hip deep in syringes and feces, but when it comes time to protect the environment, do they take steps to clean up the very obvious health hazards of discarded syringes and human waste?  Of course not!  They ban that scourge of civilization, plastic straws.

Now, before you go all green on me, a few statistics:  The US produces less than 300,000 metric tons of oceanic plastic waste.  China produces 8.8 million metric tons, and Indonesia produces 3.2 million metric tons.  By the time you get to the US, the worst offenders account for more than 22 million metric tons of plastic waste, or roughly 30 times as much waste as we do.  And, plastic straws account for less than 1% of US oceanic plastic waste.  In other words, this ban, which is inconvenience at best, will accomplish less than nothing, because we’re already among the most responsible users of plastic on the planet.  But, at least the idiots who fought for this ban can pat themselves on the back for caring about the oceans, just not enough to actually accomplish something.

Meanwhile, what about people who need straws to drink?  Drivers who don’t want to wreck their cars by blocking their vision with a cup, or parents of small children?  Why, that’s easy!  As I pointed out in the cartoon, there’s a substitute readily at hand.  Simply pick up one of the discarded syringes on the street, pop out the plunger, stick it into your drink, and suck away.  Because you’ll get in a lot less trouble with the local authorities for leaving a syringe on the sidewalk than you will for leaving a straw.

Democratic Fascism?

The recent primary victory of a member of the Democratic Socialists of America in New York raises an interesting question:  Does socialism become any less coercive when you add the adjective Democratic to it?  Or does that just obscure the fact that socialism is, by its very nature, undemocratic?  Let’s try a thought experiment.  During WWI, Benito Mussolini broke ranks with the Italian Socialist Party over Italy’s entry into the war (Mussolini favored it).  He then formed his own party, which he named after the symbol of Roman civic order, an axe wrapped in a bundle of sticks, known as the Fasces.  Mussolini’s Fascisti were nationalists, unlike the internationalist socialist parties, and took on the idea of Syndicalism, in which major industries are formed into groups, which are then managed by the government.  Unlike the socialists, who sought to abolish private property, Syndicalism permitted titular ownership, with all of the responsibilities implied by that, but the government ran the show.  The endstate was the same, except that when a government policy failed, the owners of the companies were convenient scapegoats.

In the 1924 election, the Fascisti crushed the opposition, racking up more than 60% of the popular vote, more than twice the totals of the next two parties combined.  Mussolini formed his government, and kept power until 1943.  But, having taken power through a democratic election, could Mussolini have claimed to be a Democratic Fascist?  And is democratic fascism, like democratic socialism, an different from the undemocratic version?  Ask a self-described democratic socialist this, preferably from outside of the range of a swinging bicycle lock (Antifa types don’t like intellectual engagement).

The Narrative Shift

 

Seems like only a couple of weeks ago, the DOJ IG report was dominating the headlines, with daily revelations about how the FBI and DOJ abused their authority to overturn the election.  We learned that the FBI had placed a spy in the Trump campaign, had that spy feed information to a Trump campaign worker, who was then set up to repeat that information to a foreign diplomat (who then turned around and told the FBI, which became the basis for investigating him), and a whole bunch of other goodies:

• The “accidental” meeting on the tarmac between Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch had been planned in advance and was supposed to be kept secret, but was exposed by a local journalist.
• The NYT journalist who’d been breaking stories was a twenty-something woman who was sleeping with a congressional staffer who was twice her age.  During those exchange of bodily fluids, quite a bit of leaking occurred.
• The FBI actively sought to hide the text messages between Szdrok and Page, apparently because his promise that he would use his position to ensure that Trump wasn’t elected might have, you know, illegal.
• Rod Rosenstein threatened the congressional oversight committee members with investigations if they continued to demand that he cooperate with their oversight.

Frankly, the list could go on, but the point is that the FBI and DOJ came off looking like the security services of third world dictatorships, where elections are decided before the votes are cast.  The Democrats needed a change of narrative, and fast, so they pulled a bunch of photos of Obama-era detention facilities (which were overwhelmed by the 65,000 unaccompanied minors, including quite a few gang-bangers, who just happened to arrive at the border after the administration put out an ad for persons to act as facilitators for 65,000 unaccompanied minors who were expected at the border).  Within days, every media outlet was alternately frothing at the mouth or tearing up over a policy that Trump had inherited.  The hysterical rage eventually culminated in demands for public shunning, harassment, kidnapping of the children of Republicans and the abolition of ICE.

Then, Anthony Kennedy retired, and the narrative shifted again.  Now, the Democrats were screaming about Trump appointing a Supreme Court Justice, because apparently only Democratic presidents can do that.  Meanwhile, the bad actors at the FBI and DOJ, who sought to rig an election, remain in place.  The details are dropped down the memory hole by a compliant media, but the rage that’s been stirred up continues to grow among the unhinged left.

 

The face of malice

PJ O’Rourke once took a “Peace Cruise” up the Volga with a group of American leftists, and wrote a brilliant description of one of the peaceniks, a woman who he described as ugly, but “not the kind of ugliness that’s an accident of birth but the kind that is the result of years of ill temper, pique, and petty malice. These had given a rattish, shrewish, leaf-nosed-bat quality to her face.” Every time I draw Maxine Waters, I’m remined of that quote.  Her face seems to radiate that kind of “ill temper, pique and petty malice” that we’ve come to associate with the social justice set.  She is ugly to the bone.

No Deal

A few points about the Iran deal:

1. It sucked.  No, really.  We lifted sanctions, gave them money, facilitated their nuclear program and turned a blind eye towards the regime’s terrorism sponsorship.  In return, Iran…  well…  They did exactly what they’d been doing, only more so.  There was zero oversight of their program,  and no mechanism for inspections of the most critical sites.   It was the worst deal since the Red Sox traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees in return for a couple of obscure utility players.
2. It was corrupt.  In order to pass the deal, Ben Rhodes, a failed novelist with zero foreign policy experience, blatantly lied about the deal to congress, the media and anyone else who would listen, then openly bragged about how stupid the people that he lied to were.  Only, instead of going after him, the media dupes closed ranks to try to protect the deal.
3. It was even more corrupt.  The Iranian spokesmullahs have openly stated that they bribed various western government personnel to advance the deal, and have threatened to out them (with the amounts or other considerations that they were given) if they don’t fight to reinstate it.  Can’t wait for that list to see the light of day.  This will make the UN’s Oil for Graft program look like a West Point Honor Court.
4. There’s plenty of incompetence to go around.  Not only did the Israelis get the goods on the Iranian deceptions, they were able to smuggle a ton of records out of Iran, right under the facial hair of the state security apparatus.  The Iranians obviously learned their OPSEC from Hillary Clinton’s server team and John (PASSWORD) Podesta.

The deal is done, over, finis, kaput, and the way that you can tell that is by watching John (un-American Gigolo) Kerry making the rounds of Iranian diplomatic circles to advise them in a desperate bid to get them to do…  something.  The only thing that would make this more pathetic would be if he dragged James Taylor along.

Harvey Weinstein, the Droit de Seigneur and the Second Amendment

In Medieval Europe, there was a widespread belief that feudal lords had the right to bed any woman on her wedding night, under the droit de seigneur, or right of the lord.   It was also known as the jus primae noctis, or right of first night.  The droit ended in the west as capitalism supplanted feudalism and relatively inexpensive firearms proved superior to expensive armor.  It’s hard to impose your will on a peasant when he owns a blunderbuss that can reduce your armor to scrap metal.  But, I digress.  The point is that as the west became more egalitarian, the rights of feudal to sexually humiliate their subjects waned.  Until now.

Progressive Hollywood, and Harvey Weinstein in particular, have taken the casting couch to levels that would have appalled the old studio heads.  Weinstein’s power extended far beyond women who wanted his influence in their careers.  He abused A-List actresses, even allegedly raping one.  He was able to humiliate journalists (http://socialmich.typepad.com/blog/2017/10/harvey-weinstein-allegedly-masturbated-in-front-of-a-tv-reporter-ejaculated-into-a-nearby-potted-plant.html), allegedly courageous crusaders against corrupt powers, but actually pathetic sycophants.  The lord of the manor was limited to the wedding night of his peasants, but Weinstein wasn’t.  He took who and what he wanted, without constraint.  He was protected, not just by the incestuous relationships throughout the media, but by his contributions to powerful Democratic politicians, who could not have been unaware of his reputation, but whose own behavior was often equally vile.   It’s no accident that Weinstein was a close collaborator with the Clintons, for example.  Weinstein mouthed all of the proper progressive pieties, including odes to feminism (remember that when you think about his treatment of women), and paid off anyone who might have had the power to bring him to heel.  Is there any doubt that if Hillary had won, the NY Times wouldn’t have touched this story?

This is an example of the divide in America, between the elites, who see themselves as morally, ethically, cognitively and financially superior to us, and the people who they disdain.  He and his fellow elites think of themselves as royalty, and us as serfs, to be disarmed, plundered and violated as the whim takes them.

This, BTW, is why progs hate guns in the hands of the likes of us.  Weinstein abused women, roughed up their boyfriends and treated people like garbage because he knew that he wouldn’t suffer any consequences.  He was protected, not just by politicians, but a personal security detail that would have stomped anyone who tried to resist.  And, he acted exclusively in progressive enclaves where everyone but celebrities, politicians and their bodyguards have been systematically disarmed.  This, too, evokes the droit.  Only the nobility were permitted to bear arms, the better to exert their will on the peasants.  The next time that some proglodyte demands that you disarm yourself, picture Harvey Weinstein demanding that your daughter go up to his office to join him for a shower, and think about whether you are a peasant, subject to the whims of the Earl of Miramax, or a free man or woman.

 

Hugh Hefner

I’m of two minds about Hugh Hefner.  On the one hand, he was a genuinely sophisticated man, who hired and nurtured some of the greatest artists and writers of his generation, and produced a magazine that, in its heyday, was one of the most influential in America.  Playboy was always more than just a skin magazine, and people really did read it for the articles as well as the women.  On the other hand, it was because I read the articles that I ended up dropping the magazine, which had declined in quality as it became increasingly liberal, as opposed to libertarian.  At the same time, Hefner’s personal life, which had once seemed on the cutting edge, descended into parody.  What was cool in his thirties and forties was pathetic in his eighties.  He continued to date beautiful women, often in groups, but their youth contrasted with his geriatric priapism.  In the end, he seemed to me to be a pathetic figure who never grew up.  RIP.

 

J’Accuse

A partial list of those that Hillary Clinton has blamed for her electoral loss in November:

• James Comey and the FBI
• Vladimir Putin/Russia
• ‘Anti-American forces’
• Low information voters
• Pollsters
• Barack Obama
• People wanting change
• Misogynists
• Suburban women
• The New York Times
• Cable news
• Joe Biden
• The Democratic National Committee
• Bernie Sanders

The irony is that many of these groups were so in the tank for her that they couldn’t have done more to try to get her elected if they’d personally gone out and physically assaulted Trump supporters (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/06/03/ugly-bloody-scenes-in-san-jose-as-protesters-attack-trump-supporters-outside-rally/), firebombed one of his campaign headquarters (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/10/17/north-carolina-gop-headquarters-firebombed.html) or repeatedly published unsourced, dishonest and hysterical screeds masquerading as news (http://www.cnn.com/).  This is rank ingratitude, not to mention obviously false (I know, I know, Hillary telling a falsehood is inconceivable), but she either believes it, or thinks that we’re stupid enough to believe it, and neither speaks well of her, especially since the people on her side that she’s now blaming for her own failure are not likely to come out for her again.  The willingness to throw her own supporters to the wolves in order to avoid taking responsibility for her own failures is a typical Clinton response (remember those trumped up charges against the Travel Office staff, because simply admitting that she wanted to replace them didn’t look good?  How about her “Vast Rightwing Conspiracy” that was so fiendishly clever that it was able to get her husband’s penis into an intern without either of their knowledge?  Or the videographer that she had jailed to take the heat off her dereliction of duty in Benghazi?  The list goes on), and one that goes straight to her lack of character.

Leaders accept responsibility for their actions.  Malignant narcissists deflect blame on others.

America dodged a bullet when we kicked this harpy to the curb.

Olbermann’s Syndrome

Reading Keith Olbermann’s Twitter feed is increasingly like listening to a parrot with a vocabulary made up exclusively of obscenities.  Mind you, he was never exactly known for being temperate in his speech, but lately, he seems to have gone off the deep end.  Did he miss his rabies and distemper shots?  Or is he suffering from a particularly acute and vicious form of Tourette’s Syndrome, one so severe that the verbal tics bleed into his writing?  Or maybe he’s dictating his Tweets to an assistant because he can’t type in the straightjacket.  Who know?  Who cares?  It’s not like he has anything to say that we haven’t seen before on a bathroom wall.

Get well soon, Keith.  Really.

Springtime for Hitler

A few days ago, Mitt Romney expressed the very courageous position that Nazis were bad.  Of course, he did this in the context of trashing President Trump, who is only the latest Republican to be tarred with that brush.  In fact, if Mr. Romney had any memory of his presidential run, he’d recall that the media was expressing their fears that his campaign had also evoked “troubling” Nazi parallels.  In fact, it’s hard to find a Republican since Goldwater who hasn’t been called a Nazi by at least some portion of the media.

 

Oh, right, I have a blog, don’t I?

I suppose that if I’m going to have a blog on this page, I ought to occasionally write about something.

So, I’ve picked up a new sketchbook, which is the closest thing to the ones that I used to get at the PX.  I have no idea why they had them (the Army was not a hotbed of fine arts activity), but they were hardcover books with toned parchment/vellum paper, and they were the best sketchbooks that I ever had.  Naturally, something that good couldn’t last, and I’ve been on a quest to find something as close to those books as possible.  No luck.

Still, this sketchbook, a Daler-Rowney hardbound book with toned paper, is okay, but those other books were almost indestructible, had absolutely perfect drawing paper for tonal sketches and were the perfect size for a cargo or jacket pocket.  I have to keep looking.

It’s that most wonderful time of the year.  Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Kwazy Kwanzaa, Super Solstice…

Welcome

I’ve been procrastinating (I know, whoever heard of an artist procrastinating?  Shocking!) about putting together a website since, well, a certain former vice president invented the Internet, but I finally bit the bullet.  Maybe it’s because, with my army retirement coming up this month, I felt the need to play Ozymandias (“Look upon my works, ye mighty, and try to keep a straight face.  No, really!  I this is my life…  yeah…”), or it could just be a crass, commercial means to promote myself as I look for my next paying gig.  Personally, my money is on the former (but feel free to direct your money towards the latter.  I’m not proud.)  Anyway, welcome.

Graphic Design Page

I’ve added a new page for graphic design work at https://mikeharrisartwork.wordpress.com/graphic-design/.  I’ve done a lot of graphic design over the years, coming up with cover layouts, logos and even industrial designs for superhero hardware, and don’t get me started on logo parodies.  But, I never really thought about it that way until I had to start applying for positions.  Anyway, more to follow.  Enjoy.

Political Cartoon

Thanks to popular demand (okay, I like it), I’ve added my political cartoons to my site.  The one above was the first, and there are about forty on my political cartoons page.  Enjoy.