The poll results are in
Most political cartoons start with some real event and then the cartoonist uses that real event to make a comment and in this case the real event was a Kansas City Star story about a poll that said the majority of Americans were willing to go back to wearing masks if COVID cases went back up.
I let my imagination go to work and in the above cartoon you see the mask I imagined some of us would be wearing if we have another spike in COVID cases.
In this case the cartoon was based on the return of a St. Patrick’s Day Parade to Kansas City after a two-year absence and I used it to remind readers of the Ukrainian refugees who weren’t having nearly so much fun that day, so yeah…I probably should have signed it “Debbie Downer.”
But in my defense…
(And I’m about to refer to something completely unrelated and actually does nothing to defend me, so I’m really just trying to distract you which is an important skill to have at your disposal if you do something really, really bad and want people to quit focusing on it and if you don’t believe how important that is, just ask yourself the last time you thought about Jeffrey Epstein’s highly convenient “suicide.”
Also…
An associate of Epstein’s – Jean Luc Brunel – who was being held while they investigated the rape of minors and the trafficking of minors for sexual exploitation also committed a highly-convenient “suicide” in his jail cell and French police say they’re hard at work investigating the case which should be solved sometime immediately after O.J. Simpson finds the real killer.)
Anyway…
One of the most difficult things you can draw is a crowd scene, especially if you don’t cheat and just draw a bunch of circles for faces (which is a cartoonist trick) but instead draw each character individually, which is what I’ve done here and it was a lot of work so why don’t we focus on that and give me credit instead of thinking about how I screwed up a perfectly good St. Patrick’s Day?
And speaking of distractions and trafficking in humans…
I read a story about human traffickers taking advantage of those Ukrainian refugees by offering them a “place to stay” and then it turned out the “place to stay” might be a an extra-large dog kennel on the poop deck of some oil billionaire’s yacht and if that won’t make you rethink your position on the death penalty, you’re just not into rethinking.
(The facts behind this cartoon come from Mother Jones Magazine which you should know up front and if you question those facts, feel free to confirm them from other sources.)
And away we go…
Republicans have claimed Joe Biden is responsible for the rise in gasoline prices and he’s destroyed the energy industry, but according to the article, in reality Biden approved more drilling permits in his first year in office than Trump did in any of his first three years in office and the US has produced more oil and gas in Biden’s first year than Trump’s first year and generally speaking environmentalists consider Joe a big disappointment.
According to the article, the oil industry has more than 9,000 unused drilling permits and they don’t use them because prices are sky high and they want to keep them there.
The Republicans have also claimed Trump gave us “energy independence” and as Mother Jones explains, that depends on the definition of the term and the US does produce more energy than we consume, but we have always imported petroleum products, even when Trump was president, so that’s yet another misleading claim by the GOP.
Here’s the article if you want to read it:
And just in case you don’t trust Mother Jones and have a subscription to the New York Times, here’s an article from them that says pretty much the same thing:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/09/us/politics/fact-check-republicans-biden-gas.html
In any case, I used the occasion to point out that during a war the Republicans wanted to protect the people they really care about: the oil industry.
According to the following story from NBC, Russian oil represents just 2 percent of our oil supply which could be replaced if the oil industry decided to make use of some of their unused drilling permits and if you’re thinking that high gas prices are actually the result of price-gouging, I’m right there with you.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/data-how-much-american-oil-comes-russia-n1291369
So even though we don’t import that much Russian oil, the idea is to encourage other countries to stop importing Russian oil as well and if enough countries do that it would depress the price of that oil and hurt Russia economically and I was interested by the number of Americans who are willing to fly the Ukrainian flag and change their Facebook photos to support Ukraine, but get upset about paying $5 for a gallon of gas.
(Although, if you get upset about the high price of gas because you think the industry is using the war as an excuse to raise prices, that’s a different kettle of pissed-off fish.)
And here’s an article pointing out that gas prices go up much faster than they come down and it’s so common the oil industry calls it “rockets and feathers” and according to the article they’ve been pulling this bullshit for the last 40 years.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/16/business/gas-prices-biden/index.html
OK, that’s it for today and if we have to go back to wearing masks, make sure it’s not a hockey mask and no matter how much you want to, do not fire up a chainsaw.
You are right on the problem, Lee. We are getting ripped off by the oil industry as they gouge us at the pumps.
Quite enjoyed your humor for these ugly topics