Joe Biden


Coming Distractions

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I caught COVID last Friday. I’m vaxed, boosted, and I don’t go unmasked indoors. My best contact tracing puts me getting it at the bodega from an unmasked patron or employee.

I woke up Saturday morning with a painful sore throat, and immediately took a home test that turned positive as soon as the drop hit the strip. It quickly mellowed to a very minor cough over the weekend and early in the week.

I feel fine now and I’m about to take a test to see if I’m clear to leave home office quarantine. I’m not keen on getting reinfected or long-COVID, so watching everyone carry on like the pandemic’s over is insanity-inducing. Especially as boosters wane and variants keep multiplying.

Waiting 45 days to see a new movie is no problem for me.

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Quick Fixes for the Supreme Court

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The repealing of Roe v. Wade was inevitable when Anthony Kennedy mysteriously retired. I’d love for the reason for that, or the identity of Kavanaugh’s debt-absolving benefactors to be leaked, too. Leaving Merrick Garland’s nomination to die on the vine and RBG dying for real were just gravy for the forced-birth freaks.

If this further overreach by Republicans goes without massive protests, the next coup’s going to make Bush v. Gore look like a sound legal opinion.

I didn’t draw or write anything illegal in the redacted panels, by the way. They are “Pray the Court Away,” and “A Vote Makes the Court Go Away!” if any FBI agent is asking.

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Newly Diagnosed Ailments

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Funding for COVID mitigation didn’t make it into the recently-passed spending bill. Pretty great timing, as we’re about to reach 1 million official COVID deaths in the United States, and the BA.2 omicron variant seems to be fueling another surge just as every level government is throwing mask-burning parties instead of making any preparations.

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Holidays at the White House

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Legislation may be out of Biden’s control, although he’s chosen to not make any offers or demands to Manchin and Sinema to get them on board. But it is absolutely within his power to waive vaccine patents and slow down yet another variant.

He can also cancel student debt and stop abusing immigrants with the flick of an executive order. And Santa can see that he hasn’t.

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The Haunting of the White House

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I didn’t mean to start spooky season yet. But horrific photos and reports of U.S. Border Patrol on horseback assaulting and detaining refugees seeking asylum sent a chill down my spine.

The refugees, particularly those from Haiti in this case, are dealing with a series of disasters that we have caused, both directly and indirectly. In any case, all refugees should be let in and given asylum. We have the space and resources, and it’s time for leadership instead caving to fascist scaremongers like Tucker Fucking Carlson. It’s good practice too. There are about to be a billion more climate refugees in the years ahead, and a good chance you and I will be among them.

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Afghanistan’s Wake

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Biden finally did what the three previous guys wouldn’t. I’m not saying it was a graceful exit …

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… we have a responsibility to everyone whose lives we ended, brutalized with 20 years of a pointless war started out of the mass-insanity that blanketed this country after 9/11. (An insanity that drove me to counter it by starting this dumb career.) But the war had to be ended. It was obvious to millions of us before it even started.

And I know I’m guilty of the same thing I’m mocking Trump and cable news for doing. I think the last time I did a cartoon on our longest quagmire was several years ago.

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Justice Breyer, the Scrivener

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I’m not usually an optimist, but the balance of the Supreme Court is just a Clarence coronary and a Kavanaugh DUI fatality away from being restored. Those odds are diminished if Breyer pulls an Anthony Kennedy and sticks around to let a Republican president pay off his kids’ debts for the opportunity to appoint his successor.

Maybe it’s ageist, but the last time hoping an ancient justice clung to life didn’t work out so well. Breyer can do whatever it is Sandra Day O’Connor’s been up to. (Just Googled, she’s still alive at 91.)

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Both Sides Blindness

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The only time I faced multiple rounds editorial notes while drawing “The Strip” for the NYTimes was during the siege of Gaza in 2014. If this comic had to go through the same process, I’m pretty sure only the final panel could’ve gotten through unchanged.

(panel 1 – Title that’s spelled out on an eye chart.)
Both Sides Blindness
(panel 2 – A sommelier examining a map of Israel’s expanding territory.)
sommelier, “It’s only apartheid if it’s from South Africa. This is a sparkling authoritarian ethnostate.”
(panel 3 – President Joe Bien at a lectern.)
Biden, “Israel has a right to defend itself. By saying nothing else, I’m merely IMPLYING Palestinians have NO RIGHTS.”
(panel 4 – A reporter writing and having an “A-HA!” moment.)
reporter, “The IDF’s actions sound indefensible … until I describe them with a passive voice!”
(panel 5 – A proudly ignorant person.)
person, “An open-air prison and a nuclear state with an arsenal funded by the United States are equal to me … a willful idiot.”
(panel 6 – An evangelical doomsday prepper clutching a Bible and a gas can in a bunker.)
prepper, “Who cares?! BOTH SIDES exist only to fulfill my Armageddon fantasies!”

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