Comic Strip of the Day Comic strips Editorial cartooning

CSotD: Donkeys, elephants, dogs and horses

Skip to comments

Mike Peterson February 9, 2021 1 minute 7 comments

There are some good cartoons on the impending impeachment trial, and we’ll start with Dan Wasserman (Tribune) because he sets the scene: It’s going to require at least 17 Republicans to vote guilty in order to convict.

Watergate was different in that the actions being investigated were contained within the Executive and there was little Congressional involvement. We’ll never know how an impeachment trial would have come out, but 10 of 17 GOP members of the House Judiciary Committee voted “No” on all three Articles, and only two supported all three.

This time around, as Wasserman suggests, more Republican Senators would have to admit their own complicity, not so much in the call to riot (though a few would), as in creating the atmosphere of alienation in which a patently false accusation of a stolen election could rile up people.

And let’s face facts: Those who never called out Trump’s lies, divisive rhetoric and empty promises will never vote to convict.

Clay Jones (Ind) points out the contradiction in Trump’s legal team’s defense, and, as always, his grim humor hits home: Just as the Republicans have suddenly remembered that we shouldn’t run up a deficit, they’ve also realized the importance of the Constitution.

Which simply requires that you read it like the Bible: Embrace the parts that support your predetermined stance, ignore the parts that condemn it.

Bill Bramhall (NYDN) lays it out: It won’t matter what evidence the Democrats produce, because the Republicans will see what they are determined to see.

So, yes, the fix is in. Trump hasn’t shot anyone on Fifth Avenue, but he ordered a mob to gather and he told them to go to the Capitol and overturn the official count of the electoral votes, but despite having even heard the rioters shout for the death of their own party’s vice-president, the GOP will not waiver in its support of Dear Leader.

I note that Stuart Carlson (AMS) wisely added a caption to explain his cartoon, because any depiction of 9/11 will touch people off, and a suggestion of approval — even a sarcastic one — will make phones ring in editor’s offices.

Perhaps not so many now, thanks to that caption.

Similarly, if the evidence is laid out, we can hope some people will see what the Senators refuse to acknowledge.

It worked a lot better back when the Senate Committee was investigating Watergate, because we had CBS, NBC, ABC and PBS running the entire hearings (the commercial networks taking turns), and then they reported on what had been said and what had been revealed.

People who get their news from Fox, Newsmax and OAN may not get such an unfiltered view of the current proceedings.

There were people who dismissed John Dean and the other witnesses as liars, but refusing to believe was only a cottage industry then. We no longer live in that world.

140 police officers could be killed or injured, and the people who insist that Blue Lives Matter would still refuse to believe that the riots were serious or that Dear Leader instigated them.

For instance, having been told by Michael Ramirez (Creators), by a member of Congress, and by a host of conservative commentators that AOC lied about her experience during the riot, they won’t believe the fact-checkers, either at the NYTimes or Snopes or CNN or Reuters or Politifact or the AP or the Washington Post or anywhere else.

Even if they were inclined to, they’ve been told not to. and not just by Brian Kilmeade on this particular occasion, but by four years of the press having been labeled as “the enemy of the people.”

Still, Biden won and those Senators in Georgia won and this is no time to stop putting the facts out there and hoping more people will pick them up.

Gotta keep on keepin’ on.

Can’t we talk about something more pleasant?

I’m on board with Agnes (Creators) for St. Jimbo’s Day. I never liked Valentine’s Day.

It’s like St. Patrick’s Day, in that on that one day everyone is suddenly supposed to be Irish, and mostly they prove they’ve no idea how.

Well, I’m Irish every day and I was an attentive lover every day, without the help of Hallmark in either case. Come to think of it, I’m only half Irish and I sure hope I was more than half attentive.

And I just remembered that my first date with a terrific, long-term GF was on Valentine’s Day.

We went to a hockey game.

There was candy involved, but I remember she gave me dog biscuits.

She knew where my heart was.

Alas, I lost the GF some years ago, but I’ve still got a pup, and there isn’t yet, as far as I know, a particular day in which I am supposed to buy her a card.

But we do go out walking together twice daily, and, as it happens, we encountered a fox or probably a couple of them yesterday, though, unlike Ralph in today’s Dog Eats Doug (Creators), we didn’t actually see them.

Foxes do like to mark their territory, however, and it is a strong, penetrating, skunk-like musky odor that, if you stick your face into the snow for a closer inspection, will linger for a couple of hours.

And this tip of the hat to Marciuliano and Manley who keep Judge Parker (NAS) interesting, and certainly did so with this exchange, which suddenly turns an irritating, rude roommate into someone you need to listen to.

It’s particularly weird because the main characters in the strip do an awful lot of whining, but we don’t expect other characters to point it out.

Finally, here’s the opening of a new story arc at Big Ben Bolt (KFS Vintage) that looks promising. Ben just finished an extended boxing saga and, while I don’t know where this is going, I’m willing to bet it will reunite Ben with his cowboy pal, Alamo Smith.

So far the 1960 arc reminds me of the opening of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, (1969) which is enough to hook me.