Category Archives: Blogger
Trump Body Slams CNN Logo
No doubt you’ve seen the clip where President Trump body slams a CNN logo. Naturally, Trump retweeted it. The NYT has a good video back story to the tweet here.
The tweet was beneath the dignity of the presidency. But what else is new?
Media Condemns Trump Body Slam
I thought the clip was amusing. But others saw it as an incitement to violence against members of the media. Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press issued a statement reflecting that view.
As it happens, I’m a member of the steering committee for RCFP. It’s an organization with a proud history defending unpopular speech. This is a case where we should have defended unpopular satire, not condemn it.
Here’s the RCFP statement:
On Sunday, President Donald Trump made a public statement on Twitter that glorified physical violence against members of the press.
Bruce Brown, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, made the following statement:
“We condemn the president’s threat of physical violence against journalists. This tweet is beneath the office of the presidency. Sadly, it is not beneath this president.
“No one should be threatened with physical harm for doing their jobs. Journalists are your neighbors, they’re your friends. Journalists perform a critical function in our society, one the Founding Fathers felt was so necessary that they enshrined it first in the Bill of Rights.
“They wrote that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.’
“Freedom of the press is a cornerstone of our democracy. The press are the people’s window into the halls of power, and most importantly, they are the people’s check on that power. When the president attacks the press, he attacks the people.”
Fear of Bernie Sanders
The NYT reports that Team Clinton is attacking Bernie Sanders for pushing its progressive ideas too successfully.
Chelsea complained that he wants to dismantle Obamacare and move to single payer. Claire McCaskill says if he’s the nominee Republicans will break out hammer and sickle ads. And David Brock, publisher of the left wing Media Matters, called Sanders a Socialist Wackadoodle.
Bernie Sanders
Bernie is 12.6 points ahead of Hillary in the Real Clear Politics new Hampshire poll average.
Best of Bokbluster 2015
Here are 21 cartoons I kinda liked from Bokbluster 2015.
(Click an image to see the full size post. Use your browser “back” button to return to this page.)
Prayer Shaming
Prayer shaming went viral last week. Some on the left seem more upset with Christians, Jews, and Muslims who pray than radical Muslims who kill.
After the terror attacks in France, and San Bernardino, and the shooting at a Colorado Planned Parenthood, normal people and politicians did the only thing they could – they offered their thoughts and prayers.
That was a prayer too far for some in the gun control crowd. And so the prayer shaming began.
This was the front page of the The New York Daily News on December 3. 
The paper complained that Republicans were “preaching about prayer” instead of getting your guns.
The NYT ran its first front page editorial in 95 years demanding confiscation of “assault style” weapons. (NR Online notes that sort thing had zero success preventing the attack in Paris where gun laws are stricter than anything being called for here.)
Even my old Tropic editor at the Miami Herald, Gene Weingarten, tweeted, “Dear “thoughts and prayers people”: Please shut up and slink away. You are the problem and everyone knows it.” He now says he respects people who pray. He claims he was only bashing politicians who offer platitudes instead of action. Gene is a very funny guy. I know for a fact he’s more interested in poop than prayer.
Molly Hemingway in the Federalist, however, is serious about prayer. She says the left prays to its god of government.
If some in the media didn’t want God to “fix this” at least one of the victims did. Townhall says that Holly Petit asked for prayers as the shooting raged around her at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino. She survived.
USO Camp Trip
Welcome to Team Kuwait. I spent the dying days of August with the guys above drawing service men and women in Kuwait, Djibouti, and Incerlik Air Base in Turkey. The trip was sponsored by USO. The picture above was provided by our fearless leader Bruce Higdon. Bruce is a great punster, cartoonist, and former army colonel. Not that we would follow him into battle.
USO
Left to right: Illustrator and Disney animator Chad Frye, Eddie Pittman of Phinneas and Ferb fame, Paul Combs a fire fighting editorial cartoonist (he’s a real fireman), Sam Viviano art director of Mad Magazine and caretaker of Alfred E. Nueman and Spy vs. Spy, the guy in the middle is Col. Bruce, Rick Kirkman draws the comic strip Baby Blues and came up with the name Wanda for the lead character because he thought it was funny – that’s my mother’s name, Ed Steckley a Mad contributor and Mad Men advertising artist in New York City, Michael Ramirez a fire breathing 2 time Pulitzer winning IBD editorial cartoonist, in full battle dress for some reason, dork at the end – me.
The two happy guys at the top own all the oil.
The trip was a hit with the troops and their families and rewarding for us.
They shouldn’t have let us into the Chief Petty Officers Club. We drew on the walls (note Alfred E. Neuman’s head peering over the guy on the far right).
We like gallows humor but this is a real gallows outside the base in Djibouti.
