Cartoon: It did happen here

and loss of essential workers, which is something the Rs care about.

Are they?

When it affects them, personally!?!

And creating a vast labor shortage resulting in productivity losses that will cause inflation.

To them, it’s a feature, not a bug.

Have all the stolen children been reunited with their parents from trump's last stupid immigration project?

Resources To Help Immigrants Learn About US Immigration. Laws, Rules, Links, Videos, etc.

If You're In Trouble, Or Hurt, Or Need, Go To The Poor People. 

They're The Only Ones That'll Help. 

The Only Ones. John Steinbeck 

“I'll Be Everywhere.”

Wherever you can look. Wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there.

Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there.

I'll be in the way guys yell, when they're mad.

I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build, I'll be there, too.

Tom Joad, Grapes Of Wrath. I saw this film in Media class. It’s a real “tearjerker.” We cried all the way through.

It also means a massive amount of money and most likely the creation of concentration camps.  John Oliver did a piece on this.

I agree on both your points. The Enemy knew we were going to finish their uncivil war against us with a resounding win. Then we’d pass strong legislation that would eliminate the dire threat of them installing minority rule. So they pulled out their largest bag of tricks and here we are.

You nailed it, Jen! I have been irritated at people who say that Harris didn’t get her message out. She delivered her message clearly, but some people weren't listening!

Yeah, stupid voters not looking at the teevee debate!

While I agree with the tenor of your meme/poster (about quarter-backing), seriously, the debate was a shit-show.  No sane or insane person would have their opinions changed.

Somehow, Trump managed to get his grossly simplified rabble-rousing bullshit across just fine, so everyone knew exactly where he would stand on anything. 

Harris made speeches and did interview alright, but was so carefully scripted that all it did to conservative voters was convince them that Democrats were not to be trusted.  In the end, they calculated that they could trust Trump to do shit, and not trust Harris to do good.  Weird, illogical and inexplicable, but there you have it and the rest, as they say, is history.

Dems need to stop blaming idiot voters, and change themselves to — you know — actually appeal to idiot voters.

Yeah. We just need to agree with the right-wingers and then we’ll get elected!

About 72 million voters did not agree this time around.

Remember, they’re still counting.  From numbers I searched just now, it looks like she’ll pretty easily have over 75 million votes total.

And who get’s thrown under the bus to appeal to the idiots? Gays? Trans folk? Women?

Yes, that’s exactly what I said: get back into gay bashing and toxic masculinity.  After all, there’s nothing ELSE that Dems could do to appeal to voters, is there?  It’s obvious that pressing for minimum wage increase throws trans people under the bus.  How could I have been so stupid!

I wouldn’t call the Trump/Harris debate a shit show.  She owned his sorry ass.  She exposed just how batshit crazy and totally unfit and demented he is.  His cult members may have not seen Kamala much after the debate because they refuse to watch her.  But if they were interested in seeing their cult leader, they would have to see her, too, on the debate stage.

I think we can attribute this in part to the media drawing people to their respective echo chambers. I’m not surprised that they didn’t know at least some of these things. News media is VERY broken now.

Part of the problem is that (despite bogus claims of “liberal media”) the right has a much bigger bullhorn than the left.

I’ve used a TV-B-Gone to turn off Fox News in a hospital pharmacy waiting area. One dude caught me though, and there was an argument. You gotta make sure no one sees you. When the TV was turned back on, it wasn’t Fox News anymore, so I consider it a win.

We need to do something about that, surely there are people on our side that have the expertise to create very well rounded media that would tell the truth about what is actually happening n the country.

Sinclair is a notorous right wing group, we need something similar on our side.

Or perhaps we all need to become social media warriors, if msm isn't gonna do their job, how else can we get the message out there? Although, if you don't have the temperament to reply with kindness in the face of hate, maybe sit this one out.

Magenta, that’s a very very VERY tall order.

True, I left a cult 8 years ago and got on social media and started getting confrontational with people online who were still in the cult. Then another exmember approached me with kindness and understanding, she got me to see that these other people were most likely having doubts too and arguing with them wouldn't help but a calm, reasonable discussion might. There were definitely still times I responded with anger but now I was more aware and could apologize and re-engage. These people got me through some of the most depressing times of my life and I like to think I helped others leave the cult too. 

I think we need somebody in the know who tells us the truth so we will have details to fight with, though.  Without that, we will just be using rumor or hearsay which can be debunked as not official easily.

Current event wise, yes, leave it up to the people with access. But the facts about climate change, vaccines, etc; and statistics on the economy, crime, etc, are already available and can be cited to combat disinformation on those sorts of topics.

I also went to WHO to check their website with the intention of checking with them about health issues during any trump administration because with that RJK and his brain worm in the government affecting health standards, I won’t trust Washington or the CDC.

There are and it is out there.  But Cons smear it (and all non-fascist outlets) before they have a chance.  And there are far more billionaires funding the fascists than not.

The best least corporate media I can think of right now is DemocracyNow which reports extensively on the Palestinian question and now on trump’s plans for the White House.’

If you know of other media, seriously I would love a list.  I liked NYTimes but their take during the Biden issue kind of soured me on them,

It’s not always Faux News in those places, though. Sometimes it’s NewsMax or OAN! 

/s

Yeah, ya got THAT right.

Blew it indeed.

Thank you for your insightful contributions all along during this election. Going forward:

Welcome to the 2025 Hunger Games. May the odds be ever in your favor!

And to quote Haymitch Abernathy: “Remember who the enemy is.”

The result of this election was 100% due to the media coverage of Trump. No way a guy who has committed the crimes that Trump has can win a presidential election without the media completely covering for him. Until the rest of the country pulls their heads out of their asses and recognize that, we’re going to have no chance to counter it.

“No way a guy who has committed the crimes that Trump has can win a presidential election without the media completely covering for him. Until the rest of the country pulls their heads out of their asses and recognizes that, we’re going to have no chance to counter it.”

Yep, we’re screwed!

You're not giving racism and misogyny enough credit.

Yeah, that prt...

⭐️ Brilliant  ⭐️

I don’t think we did. We blew it when we let Musk e in charge of transmitting vote totals. The fact that several of the satellites that transmitted votes in key areas just happened to self destruct afterward is the mother of all red flags. Anyone who doesn’t see that has no idea how they operate.

Links for this?

Initial reviews dismiss this as misleading.

I would characterize it more aptly as “tell me you don’t know how to do even basic fact checking or plausibility analysis without using those words”. Vote tallies are transmitted securely, the satellites have nowhere near what would be required to do a real-time interception, and they sure as hell don’t bother to store anything that would be so incriminating that they would need to then be destroyed. Also, the nature of Starlink is that its satellites are in a low enough orbit that they it decays over time, which causes a feedback loop (the further it decays, the faster it decays further), and this is fully intentional — they have a distinctly finite useful service life.

Improbable is not impossible, and the motive was there for some kind of interference. Do I believe it alone swung the election? No. Do I put it past them to try? No.

To try? Sure, they could try. Would it have any effect whatsoever? If they’ve managed to break that security, you’ve got much bigger problems to worry about, because a significant portion of the global economy is about to collapse.

While there is, technically, a difference between “unlikely” and “zero”, the numbers we’re talking about aren’t astronomic, they’re beyond that. As in “to try to break it, at absolutely perfect efficiency, would cost more energy than will be output in the entire time between Sol first igniting nuclear fusion and when it ends its red giant phase”.

If you want to argue that maybe they compromised security somewhere, fine, but Starlink would be about the worst possible place to even try to do that. Forget what you’ve seen in the movies, this sort of “hack” would happen the way it did with Tina Peters, or in Georgia. On the ground, at one of the two endpoints.

I am talking about a far larger picture than a simple straightforward hack.

Even so, “they used Starlink” is not a rational concern given the security measures in place. Other things? Quite possibly, though I have yet to see anyone provide any credible evidence (as opposed to just conspiracy theories). But that? No. Starlink falls squarely under the exact sort of thing that secure network transmission protocols have been built to protect against.

How many times can Democrats, progressives and decent people “blow it” before there’s no more “it” left to “blow”? Unless there’s some magic way to block the Trump Reich and ALL of Washington for the next 2-4 years, the nation is going to lose A LOT that might not be recoverable down the road.

Well, at least Don Jr. can blow it . . . especially if he is named ambassador to Colombia.

Our only hope is that MAGAs feel the fascism they are intending for the rest of us.  And that they don’t like it.  Because there’s a fairly good chance they’ll be OK with being harmed as long as trans, gay, women, and minorities are harmed more.

It did happen here, but it can stop here too.

a) Timothy Snyder said it: Don’t obey in advance — STOP saying there’ll be no more elections. See here, here and here.

b) We knew it was going to be a close election, and — voila! — it was. We lost by less than 2 points. THIS WAS NOT A LANDSLIDE.

c) Over 100 million people didn’t bother to vote because they thought they didn’t have anything to lose. The next 4 years of misery could disabuse them of that IF we start working now to connect the dots for them:

• the rights and benefits they rely on every day are only there because people voted for them
• things like Obamacare, Medicaid, free school lunches, student grants, federally-backed loans, disaster assistance and Social Security are not universal laws of physics. Our government does not have to provide them at all — full stop. They are a choice that voters have made that we provide them
• these rights and benefits can easily be stripped away from them (as they’re about to learn) because there will always be those who don’t want people to have them
• the only way to keep these benefits is to vote.

This changes the reason for voting from a choice to a necessity.

b) We knew it was going to be a close election, and — voila! — it was. We lost by less than 2 points. THIS WAS NOT A LANDSLIDE.

c) Over 100 million people didn’t bother to vote because they thought they didn’t have anything to lose.

And don’t forget, this was part of a literally worldwide wave of voters throwing out incumbents because they couldn’t wave a magic wand and bring back the pre-Covid status quo, many of which were landslides.  Even governments that weathered it, like Macron, were severely weakened.  Even tyrants that you would think would be immune to such things, like Erdogan and Modi.  

And of course, don’t forget the racism and the sexism.  Ignoring the effects of those is just being in denial.

And of course, don’t forget the racism and the sexism.  Ignoring the effects of those is just being in denial.

Keith Boykin basically said just that. This underlies (in my opinion) everything else. Economics not going your way? Find a scapegoat. Crime too high for your liking? Find a scapegoat, preferably the same one as for economics, so that your job is easier.

Medias Touch recently sent out a video containing examples of Trump voter waking up (too late) to the consequences of their vote. One guy suddenly realized his undocumented Hispanic parents are in danger of being deported. Another finally learned that the ACA which he needs and likes is the same as Obamacare which he wants to repeal. Of course he blames Democrats for the confusion.

The saddest are the man whose wife served him with divorce papers, and the young woman whose family has cut tie with her, both because the Trump voter refused to recognize how much their vote would hurt women. Sad, but I have no sympathy to spare for them. 

https://youtube.com/shorts/NzgpMwbR9wE?si=Ts0ImPJQ48K4W9J2

Hope this is the right link. 

“ STOP saying there’ll be no more elections.

Sorry, but I don’t believe in lying to yourself. 

Thank you! Imo we should also stop moving to the right and move more to the left. I think some of the people are sitting out because they don't see a major difference between the 2 parties. It needs to be a lot more obvious so even those in the back of the class can see it.

Misogynists, xenophobia, white supremacists, authoritarians, lie spinners, brown skin haters, fear mongers, conspiracy theorists. More?

“Prices are too high.  That's why I voted for Trump.”

Translation:  I don't like women.  And I don't like brown and black people.

If I see one more stupid headline about the economy being the reason, I’m gonna scream. It’s a damned lie.

Also that one about Latino men. Didn’t Mexico just elect a woman as president?

The economy isn’t the reason, but the perception of the economy was the issue. 

The economy was the #1 issue in this election according to exit polls. So no, it's not a "damned lie."

Normally that's  true, but at least in the NBC news exit poll for this election, fear about the future of our democracy actually edged out concern over the economy (34%-32%) as the #1 issue.

The denial I see around here is extremely frustrating (not you, you’re one of the few that seems to get it).  For example, taking as a given that the 10 million or so who didn’t vote this time only did so out of laziness and “thinking the Dems had it in the bag.”  Classic case of assuming a fact without evidence.  A logical but unconsidered alternative is that the non-voting electorate simply didn’t see enough diff between the two that it would make a difference in their own lives.  For example, they found it hard to get excited for a party that continues to support a genocidal regime, doesn’t talk loudly about taxing billionaires and doesn’t talk seriously about raising wages and reducing the cost of housing. After all, both parties are the same in those respects (as expected, given who their benefactors are).  If pronoun correctness and abortion are not one’s top priorities, then sitting at home is that much easier.

Maslowe wins again. The thing that keeps getting missed is that it isn’t “the economy”, it is “my economy”. Even folks with 401(k)s only see benefits from a high stock market at some point in the nebulous future. That will never counter “okay, how am I paying for food and housing today”.

People focused too much on “you weren’t better off four years ago, we were in the middle of a pandemic”. What they should have been asking but nobody wanted to look in the eye was the question “were you better off six years ago?” If people were going to answer “yes” to that… you’d damn well better have something to offer them that will convince them that they will be better off six months to a year after you get elected. Not the country. Not some nebulous economic class. Them.

When did anyone connected with Harris say anything about pronoun correctness?

And why the hell shouldn’t abortion be a top priority? Jesus, women are dying and will continue to die because Roe was overturned. That shouldn’t be considered a niche issue.

You don’t think voters can lie? Okay, if they really believe Trump would be better for them, sure, but why do they believe him? That’s where you find the other reasons.

I think a good number of them just don’t want to admit they voted for Trump because they want to stick it to people they hate. That’s not a good look, and they know it.

That and I don't understand anything about economics and I don't believe Trump will do the crazy stuff, he's just saying it to own the libs. FAFO

The crazy demagogue stuff has already begun.

Watch Trump bring those high prices right down soon.  NOT!

It’s been a 40 year project to entrench racism, tax cuts, and promoting loyalty over expertise in the media.

And weaken our public education so many people don't understand how government works, and can't think critically.

And to fully entrench and expand a vast propaganda industry. They’re getting billions to lie, with sizeable sums recycled into the GOP lie mill.

We’ve been here before. Reagan won reelection isn 1984 in a preposterously huge landslide, and he was terrible. He was just better at hiding it. Not from me or any of my friends and family, because we’re not that gullible, but apparently most people are.

I don’t know how to exorcise white supremacy, selfishness, willful ignorance, and bloodlust from our culture, but I hope to see it weaken in my lifetime. I’m not expecting to see paradise on earth, but I just want to see improvement. My first decade was full of assassinations. I hope we can do better than that, is all.

Brain evolution to better control amygdala dominance? I think your exorcism list comes out of fear, no?

It might very well be rooted in fear. This is ten years old so you’ve probably seen it, but I think conservatives generally have a different family dynamic. The truth is what Dad says it is, or else. Don’t ask questions. Conformity is a high priority.

I don’t think we need brain evolution so much as cultural evolution. Our brains are already wired for cooperation. There are cultures in the world today, and throughout history, that are peaceful and relatively egalitarian. I think the authoritarian model comes about through war and other stresses that make obedience and quick decisions more important. That’s just me speculating, though.

Actually, I’m not familiar with that Pew poll. I’ll definitely check it out.

And now it’s time for corruption to over run American institutions

Very sad

The main stream American media utterly failed America.

The main stream American media utterly failed America.

It sure feels like "The main stream American media intentionally  failed America."

Dana Bash made a great bobblehead though.

The most to blame is that feckless toad we have for an AG.  I hope Biden fires his pathetic ass before he leaves office.

Great to place the blame on someone else.  Ever been an AG?  I guess not.

We're experiencing the resurrection and expansion of Jim Crow.  

It’s like the Cylon refrain (in the new Galactica): “It has happened before, and it will happen again.”

I don’t regard the MSM as the enemy. I see it as a business and a culture that is complex and contradictory. New organizations are currently trapped by the spider’s web of “Fair & Balanced” journalism — where “balanced” is measured by “equal time” rather than truth and significance.

Credibility is their most prized asset, and they fear accusations of “bias” above all else. Because of this, they have been too easily manipulated by the the Right-Wing-Noise-Machine.

Bashing the press is not good for democracy. Specific criticism is always welcome — but shouting “Billionaire Owners!”  while the right-wing shouts “Fake News!”  will not encourage voters to become better-informed.

Well, the MSM are the enemy, whether you see them as such or not.  There was just the slightest whiff of Elon’s Tesla-powered and tax-free gravy train possibly coming to an end, and he went all in on helping Trump.

Oh, did you think ‘the MSM’ didn’t include Xitter?  That’s so cute.  Xitter is as mainstream as any of them get, now.

Good cartoon. However, I must give Kamala Harris credit for a wonderful, meaningful campaign and her upbeat rallies. While she did not promise to lower the price of gasoline, milk and eggs, she did pledge to attack price gouging. She also unveiled many proposals to help build the middle class and to address man-made global climate change, an issue the the MSM rarely addresses. So again thanks for the cartoon, but I also appreciate Kamala Harris’ efforts to Make America REALLY Great Again.

“We” blew it?

I didn’t appoint Merrick Garland and neither did you, or any of “us” for that matter, except one specific person. This boils down to the worst possible decision by Joe Biden and the worst possible dereliction of duty by Garland.

"Don't underestimate Joe’s ability to fuck things up.”
Barack Obama

Great cartoon.  I often think that the USA is The Land of Missed Opportunity.  We have chance after chance to live up to the best of our ideals, and, often as not, we blow it.

The gentleman’s name is Merrick Garland. 

This was a largely pro-labor, pro-union administration, not that most people know it.

Got that right.  Too bad the billionaire owners of the media think ‘free’ is synonymous with ‘one hell of a bargain’.

Inject this cartoon and “analysis” directly into my veins please. It is the most spot on thing I’ve seen yet.

This country is finished. 

America is a racist country.  America is a misogynist country.  Too little too late Democrats in caring about unions, working class, and ending the insane wars.  Dems always nibble around the edges of our most important problems.  Too many Americans got fed up with being ignored and decided fascism was as good a bet as any.  Now we’ll get what we deserve.

“ Dems always nibble around the edges of our most important problems.”

Because when any of them try to talk a bigger bite, they start losing elections because not only is America racist and misogynist it is also very, very greedy. 

It is the uninformed. I spoke with a trumpster who voted for him because he is “tough on terrorists”. I asked him what about the other issues. I know he was sincere when he replied “what other issues?” Our local MAGA are still  whining about plastic grocery bags or whatever and waiting for the price of eggs to decrease. 

Something smells to me concerning this election. Besides the obvious. We may never know unless Dems take the House. 

I’m wondering if Jen was referring to the book by Sinclair Lewis book ‘It Can’t Happen Here’, written in 1935.  I’ve read the book twice, once a long time ago, and the last time in 2016 before the election.  Read the book and be amazed at Lewis’s foresight.  

Not funny.

History is”funny”, it keeps rearing its head. Remember Madison Square Garden 1930’s then 2024

One might say I have a character flaw: intentionally naive optimism. I give this next T-Rump administration about three  to six months, maybe sooner, before the incompetence and ineptitude of his appointees bears fruit. In any case, we shall see what we shall see. 

In 2016, I was reluctantly willing to forgive those Trump voters who, I assumed, had been successfully scammed by him and by the GOP. 

I reasoned that they obviously hadn’t done their research, but that that was at least partly the fault of the mainstream news media dropping the ball; and that people who work hard (often at more than one job) and aren’t good at research in the first place, shouldn’t be blamed too harshly.

After all, they were going to see firsthand what a mistake they’d made.

And they obviously did:  witness the 2018 midterms, and the 2020 elections.

And then came 2024. 

Yes, the mainstream news went out of its way to sanewash the Idiot.

But please.

There is absolutely no bloody excuse for this.

NONE.