Our good friend and honorary Critter Paul Jamiol has been busy lately: illustrating a children’s book; working on a new collection of his excellent editorial cartoons to come out in early 2020; plus, most days, putting out new, grimly accurate observations on these terrible times. (All images are copyrighted by Paul Jamiol.)
That’s just a sampling. For more, and to see how talented Paul’s wife, Lin, is with her green thumb [and who knew that Paul is an amazing photographer!], visit Jamiol’s World.
Paul has been chronicling political/current events since September 2000. His encouragement and kindness to us Critters when we left ThinkProgress to start TheZoo, as well as our longstanding friendship, will always be appreciated – hell, I still LOVE our personalized header ‘toon. I know that we here at TheZoo became pretty burnt out trying to do our part – it’s so damned hard to keep covering this shitshow, when day after day, even hour after hour, horrors upon horrors unfold. Thank you, Paul, for your dedication to illustrating what could well become America’s downfall. It’s a grim task, and I don’t envy you. Please carry on for as long as you can stand it, and we’ll try to keep up.
Open Thread – Come and get it!
TheZoo 
Been wondering what PJ had been up to.
Nice general response to the dotard.
He’s got that right. trump should have been the epitome of everything the rest of the country hates about New York celebrity ‘elites’ – just goes to show how far racism and misogyny can get you with the rubes. 😦
BTW, while I don’t use Facebook if I can possibly help it, I do get the notifications when ‘friends’ do so. So I get the alert when Paul posts a new ‘toon. I had posted some of them at this other site I go to, but it occurred to me that it would be nice to post a bunch of the recent ones, so folks could catch up with Paul and his work.
Besides, it was way past time for a new post. I had been working on another one that I’ll get back to sometime soon, but I’ll probably also collect several days worth of Paul’s ‘toons for a post, say, every other week. I’ll try to get more content up soon.
I checked in with Paul both before and after I posted it – I’m happy to say that he was pleased with it. 🙂
I heard a quote from Edward R Murrow yesterday, I believe it was on CNN’s Reliable Sources, which was a particularly good show.
“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty”
I would like to read that to all these ‘Bernie Bashers’ that claim Bernie Sanders is not a real Democrat and shouldn’t be allowed to run for President as one, because he criticizes the Democratic Party. I’m getting very tired of the ‘othering’ done to Bernie by people who criticize Republicans for the same thing.
DFA straw poll (one million members):
WTF is Andrew Yang doing polling any higher than 1%! That’s crazy, the man’s a nutcase. Might as well have “The Rent Is Too Darn High” guy.
I try not to pay attention to any polling data this early, it just seems worthless – but if one million members actually responded to this one, then it’s at least a little better reflection than the polls one sees where fewer than a thousand people responded.
Jeez, I was getting emails from Daily Kos and surveys about my favorite pick for the Dem candidate months ago, before the number of candidates had even hit 20 (Biden hadn’t even announced!). I didn’t bother to respond to them. I’m preferring Kamala and Elizabeth, but I’ll vote for whichever Dem wins the nomination.
Of course, my REAL preference is that trump gets impeached long before the 2020 election. I’m keeping the pressure on with Nancy and with my rep, Antonio Delgado (freshman Dem, we flipped our district.) And not just over the Mueller Report – although I’m really looking forward to Wednesday – but also because I believe it should be an impeachable offense for a sitting president to paint a target on the backs of four elected representatives who are women of color. trump’s behavior even since the Mueller Report came out has been reprehensible at best.
I don’t know if they all responded, but DfA is mostly engaged, informed activist Democrats.
The phone polling, according to Pew Research, isn’t accessing more than 6% of calls anymore.
I don’t see Trump getting the final vote in the House, just so McConnell can ram through a no conviction vote, allowing Dickhead Donald to strut around and brag in his rallies that he’s innocent. Nancy Pelosi can’t be that stupid. The hearings need to drag on day after day, with a steady drip of bad news about Trump, so that ONLY his diehard supporters will vote for him.
I would have thought that Mayor Pete Buttigieg would be included in this poll.
Dems Score Huge Win As New Budget Deal Avoids Disastrous Trump Cuts And Raises Debt Ceiling
https://www.politicususa.com/2019/07/22/dems-score-win-budget-deal-trump-cuts.html
Trump Throws 3 Million Kids, Seniors, and Disabled Americans Off Food Stamps
https://www.politicususa.com/2019/07/23/trump-throws-3-million-kids-seniors-and-disabled-americans-off-food-stamps.html
Chuck and Nancy get huge win with two year deal, so Trump doesn’t have to worry the rest of his term.
Chuck and Nancy got rolled, or rather, three million vulnerable Americans did.
I’m tired of hearing how great Nancy Pelosi is, and Schumer never was great in the first place.
Yeah, I’d like to see Schumer challenged. I’ve long past had enough of him.
Another NYC con artist…
How did Pelosi and Schumer get rolled on the SNAP program change. It didn’t have anything to do with the budget proposal and negotiations on the debt ceiling did it? I thought it was tRump changing the rules under executive order. It’s fuckery either way, but lay the blame where it belongs.
Because the rule change was known prior to the budget negotiations.
Plus the deal was for the rest of Trump’s term, so they gave away the opportunity to rein him in later. There’s nothing else they can do to him now. He’s even got the money from DoD to build some of his wall, thanks to SCOTUS, and they added to the DoD budget in the new deal.
This seal actually got substituted for the real thing at a Trump event. (Best resolution I’ve found)
Got the t-shirt…
I’m debating about getting one – if I wear it out around here, I’m not sure what would happen if someone noticed that it was the satirical seal. I haven’t checked out the other merchandise yet.
The Air force One blue is what I liked….the southern rednecks here won’t like it, but who cares…?
QOTD
” Imagine in 2012 you heard in 2016 that Beyonce, Jay Z and PRESIDENT Trump would be working together to free an American rapper from a Swedish prison. Reality is on permanent vacation.”
If I had heard that and actually believed it, I would have had myself committed to an asylum. Hey, it’s never too late – I hope!
First clip I heard when I got home:
I’ve been sending money to Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren. Bernie is not first choice as I am getting tired of him. He comes across cranky. Having said that, I will vote for whoever is the nominee in November of 2020. We must take back the Senate and keep the House.
My post yesterday didn’t show up. I tried to repost and it gave me a message “you have already posted this link”……strange to say the least. I’ve never seen anything like that before.
Also, yesterday when I logged on it showed 23 posts. This morning it was showing 19…
Maybe…….
Random graffiti
Austerity: The billionaires in business telling the millionaires in politics that the rest of us are greedy.
It’s getting to where some idiot goes fucknuts every few days now and shoots a bunch of people. What will it be like after Trump loses the 2020 election? If they have no hope now, how will they be convinced things will be better without their hero? I’m starting to worry.
Dine and dash, big time.
https://www.advocate.com/politics/2019/7/25/mike-pence-fails-pay-24k-tab-gay-owned-club?amp
Mitch McConnell slips and breaks his shoulder.
He finally brought something to the floor.
He didn’t break his blinkin’ neck? Pity.
http://www.kvue.com/article/news/local/el-paso-again-tops-list-of-safest-us-cities/269-e4d89fbe-060a-4dfd-9243-85e1beb9351e?fbclid=IwAR2rdC68yXatKdo-AMPjEKEWlmHCYT5hPx8GFtO_HrikRJvIfT2ArhVQmaE
“Poor kids are just as bright, just as talented, as white kids.” – Joe Biden
I wonder if this is true whether or not they are bussed to a predominately white school?
Gutting of the EPA continues.
https://nypost.com/2019/08/09/epa-reauthorizes-use-of-cyanide-bombs-to-kill-wild-animals/
US House Rep Richard Swett has endorsed Joe Biden. Now the headlines are:
Dick Swett is all over Joe Biden’s Presidential Candidacy
Has he been to the White House to meet with Num Dong Don yet? Could prove interesting, maybe?
For Chuck Todd and all the other ‘both siders’:
Breaking news: David Koch has died.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/billionaire-david-koch-who-spent-heavily-to-back-conservative-causes-dies-11566563837
When a billionaire dies, who inherits their senators?
The highest bidders? Or check the will?
Guy on Face the Nation: ‘If the economy is strong enough to survive the craziness of Trump, it’s strong enough to survive without Trump’
Bernie and Liz at 20%, Biden at 19%, in the new Monmouth national poll.
That sound you hear is the statist, corporatist nashing of teeth.
Howie Klein at Down With Tyranny believes Trump wants the economy to tank just enough so the Fed will cut interest rates, and save Trump millions in interest on his outstanding loans. This would be painfully obvious to all if we saw his tax returns.
Today is my 11th year registered with WordPress.
That means today is the Zoo’s 12th Zooniversary!
Congratulations to the Critters and Zoosters who continue to abide here!
Yaaaay!
I wish we could get some of the past participants active again.
Hi Vinyl Spear. Yeah, I lurk, and visit every once in a while, Even post on occasion. But it’s hard to do satire with this current administration. If satire is taking something to the ad absurdum extreme, then I find almost every time I go there, Trump, or some other right-winger, is already there.
Twelve years. Trolls have evolved into bots, slaying them is a useless endeavor nowadays. Now it’s just block and move on.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Sanders freaks out the Oligarchy. He gets almost no mainstream press coverage, in spite of his following.
Enough for now….need more caffeine….
In a press conference, Donald Trump just said he had never heard of a Category 5 hurricane.
I’m not kidding.
I can only presume that in his world view of things, a Category 5 isn’t biggly enough.
It’s only a five on a scale of 1 to 5 so I guess it needs to be the smartest and best Cat 5 + a tremendous amount of additional hot air which he is generously providing to the unfortunate people in its path.
George Bush failed to grasp this concept with Katrina too.
Not only that, it’s Puerto Rico’s fault it’s a Category 5.
I miss music night.
In light of that I’m going to post a lesser known piece of work done by Van Morrison that should have got more air play than it did.
He has a lot of hit but this one remains buried in vaults of history.
Under appreciated and rarely played.