shithole Countries

Kilauea

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On September 11, 2001, my mother called me freaking out and afraid that terrorists were going to fly airplanes into my apartment. I live 50 miles from the Pentagon, but for mom, that was still too close. She passed away in 2002 but would have lost her mind if she had seen the events of the D.C. Sniper which spread to my town later that year (and just a few miles from the apartment spared by al Qaeda). So, I know if she was still alive, and I was still living on Oahu, which is about 200 miles from the Kilauea Volcano, she’d still be worried red-hot molten lava would be flowing through my bedroom window.

Kilauea was erupting when I lived on Oahu in 1997-98. It’s been erupting since 1983. To put it in perspective, The Police released Every Breath You Take, toured the world, broke up, bickered for nearly three decades, reunited for another world tour, and broke up again during the time of Kilauea’s current eruption. Sting’s solo album The Dream of the Blue Turtles was a larger tragedy than Kilauea.

The islands of Hawaii were created by volcanoes. The Big Island (how locals refer to island of Hawaii) has five volcanoes with three of them classified as active. Kilauea isn’t even the largest. The volcano’s eruption is changing the shape of the island by the minute, though the spots of eruptions and lava flows have fluctuated over the years. Last month, a new eruption started in lower Puna after a 5.0 earthquake. A 6.9 earthquake hit the next day, and 27 houses were destroyed within five days. Thankfully, no lives have been lost.

Hawaii knows how to take these things in stride. They’ve made a tourist attraction out of the erupting volcano.

All this brings an important question. Does the president know Hawaii is a part of the United States? It’s a good question because he was surprised to learn Puerto Rico was a part of our nation, that it’s an island, and islands are things surrounded by water. He once referred to the governor of the territory as the “president of Puerto Rico,” not realizing that he is the “president” of Puerto Rico.

I’m really glad Kilauea isn’t killing people yet, because Hawaii is also an island (several), and they too are surrounded by water (what a coincidence). And, there are a lot of dark people in Hawaii. My concern is that Trump would disregard a disaster there much in the same way he’s casually dismissed the death toll in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria.

Trump believes Maria killed 64 people, which is somehow a great personal achievement for him that the toll was lower than hurricane deaths during other presidential administrations. The New York Times estimates the death toll at 1,065. Other researchers have put the number roughly at 4,600. But, math is hard. Trump is still trying to open that big envelope Kim Jong Un sent him.

Puerto Rico and Hawaii are obviously not shithole countries. But, I’m not sure they’ll continue to elude that designation…as long as Donald Trump remains president over them.

Watch me draw.

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Costa Rica Is Not An S-Hole

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Here’s last week’s cartoon for The Costa Rica Star. There’s a new one for this week and you should go check it out.

I will no longer be drawing two cartoons a month for The Star. I’m going to draw four. HAHA. Did I scare you? They kinda scared me too. We’ll start that in February. So, you’ll be seeing a lot more cartoons on Costa Rica through 2018.

I want to thank everyone who has donated in the past. Your support helps me continue creating cartoons and columns with a little less stress in my life. Between competing syndicates with much larger resources, timid editors, and Trump supporters who attempt to intimidate the editors who do publish anything that criticizes their idol, it’s a challenge to make a career out of this. So your support (if you can) is appreciated. Want to help me continue to create cartoons and keep doing what I’m doing (pissing off conservatives)? Look to the right of this page and make a donation through PayPal. Every $40 donation will receive a signed print (please specify which print you want or I won’t mail one). All donations will receive my eternal gratitude

Stormy Shithole

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The new normal reasserted itself on Friday when news broke that the president of the United States of America had an affair…with a porn star…named “Stormy”…who was paid off to keep quiet….and hardly anyone batted an eye. The only way this scandal would have stopped the presses is if the Stormy affair was with Mike Pence.

Donald Trump in a brouhahaha with a porn star, not surprising. Mike Pence having an impure thought, jaw-dropping. That guy won’t peel his own bananas.

Once upon a time there was a president who received oral sex in the Oval Office and all government business stopped for over a year. It just halted. It was like the invasion of Iraq except the invasion was of an intern’s mouth.

Granted, there are some differences between the Trump sex thing (just typing that got an “ew” out of me) and Bill Clinton’s dalliance.

Clinton’s peccadillo occurred while he was president and Trump’s happened over a decade ago before he even knew there were three branches of government (he knows now, right?). But, Clinton’s Oval Office oral sexcapade was huge news before he testified to a grand jury, before Congress impeached him for it, and before the Senate held a trial. But, Clinton is a Democrat, and he’s Bill Clinton. We knew he was horny when we first elected him in 1992. Before the affair became public most of believed it was only a matter of time before he got caught doing something improper with his wiener. Hell, the Republicans wanted it so bad they spent nearly $40 million of taxpayer money digging for it, and all they got for all that time and money was a blue dress with a stain.

Say what you will about Robert Mueller, but he hasn’t run a DNA test on a semen stain.

Trump’s scandal should still be a big deal. He is the president, and he had an affair with a porn star, and then she was paid to keep quiet about it. He was married to his current wife, which is wife number three. He’s a Republican and his voters are supposedly the people who care so much about family and Christian values. Trump is the guy who promised to bring “Merry Christmas” back (since it never actually went anywhere, it’s a lot easier to bring back than coal mining jobs).

So why was this pushed back by the media? Because we’re still freaking out over “shithole countries.” This president has lied on a daily basis about assorted bullshit. He’s attacked women and minorities. He has boasted about assaulting women and been accused of it by over 20 women. He endorsed a pedophile and defended Nazis. He says stupid stuff and then he double downs on the comments. He’s committed treason. We’ve avoided nuclear war so far despite Trump. After all that shit the porn star news is a little refreshing. The biggest surprise about the porn star is that it was consensual. What if we throw in a second porn star?

For the record, the porn star, Stormy Daniels, has denied the affair and having been paid off. Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen has denied it too. He denied it while using the porn star’s working name and not her real one, which was kinda weird. But, of course they denied it because that’s how hush money works.

While they have denied it, a deposit of $130,000 was given by Mr. Cohen to Miss Winter’s Los Angeles bank account. Where did that money come from? Did it come from Cohen, Trump, or Trump’s charity?

It seems Miss Stormy was trying to pitch her story to news outlets shortly before the election, and then she stopped returning reporters’ phone calls. A former Playboy playmate was also shopping a story to news outlets (which real news outlets do not pay for), when she finally got a buyer. The National Enquirer bought her story for $150,000 (how are we evaluating the worth of these porn stars?), and then they buried it. No, not on the back page. They never ran it. They bought her story, shut her up, and sat on the story so it wouldn’t hurt Trump’s chances of being elected president.

David Pecker is the head of the National Enquirer. He’s a good friend of Trump. Trump has said the Enquirer deserves a Pulitzer Prize and that Pecker should be publishing The New York Times. Perhaps the weirdest part of this story is that the character named “Pecker” is not in porno. But, wouldn’t it be awesome if Stormy married Mr. Pecker and became Stormy Pecker? I love a good fairy tale.

Another interesting side note to all of this is that Stormy once considered running for the U.S. Senate in Louisiana. Weirder things have happened. She ultimately chose not to seek the seat, and a weirder thing happened. The sitting Senator, Republican David Vitter, won despite a scandal with prostitutes. Seriously, Republicans. You’re the Christian and family values party. C’mon!

This new normal thing is affecting me too. I was working on my last cartoon when I saw a headline about it on Facebook. I just kept scrolling. I had my TV on cable news and there wasn’t anything being said about Trump, porn stars, hush money, or peckers, and I wasn’t watching Fox. After a few hours I thought about it and went looking for the story. I wanted to see if maybe it wasn’t a big deal.

The Wall Street Journal broke the story, so I went there. They had a paywall. I already have three newspaper subscriptions and I’m not about to buy a fourth, but one of those other should help me out. I went to The Washington Post and I couldn’t find anything on it. I went to The New York Times and finally found a story, which took some scrolling. “President, porn, pecker man” was not the top story. I guess after all the other Trump fuckery we’re lucky the Stormy porn scandal doesn’t involve a pee tape….or does it?

I’m just saddened that Miss Stormy won’t talk about it. I have so many questions. Did the president’s thingy work? Why would she sleep with Donald Trump? Was cocaine involved (we are talking about a porn star and Los Angeles. There had to be coke). How gross and disgusting was it? How long did it last? Did she laugh at it? Was it everything Rubio said it wasn’t? Is there a tape? Was pee involved? Can you mix Viagra with Tic Tacs?

The Trump era will not be complete until Donald Trump tweets about porn. For that to happen we all have to talk about it. For my own amusement, I need to hear Trump sycophants and Christians defend pornography and Donald Trump putting “porn” and shithole” in the news in the same week. I need to hear Tomi Lahren justify this.

Who would have guessed “porn” and “shithole” in the same week Trump got a finger up his ass would all be unrelated?

I want to thank everyone who has donated in the past. Your support helps me continue creating cartoons and columns with a little less stress in my life. Between competing syndicates with much larger resources, timid editors, and Trump supporters who attempt to intimidate the editors who do publish anything that criticizes their idol, it’s a challenge to make a career out of this. So your support (if you can) is appreciated. Want to help me continue to create cartoons and keep doing what I’m doing (pissing off conservatives)? Look to the right of this page and make a donation through PayPal. Every $40 donation will receive a signed print (please specify which print you want or I won’t mail one). All donations will receive my eternal gratitude