Remember That There Are No Gay Hispanics

Lisa Benson, 5/9/12:

One of the dangers of editorial cartooning is that events can run faster than the cartoonist anticipates.

Here's an unfortunate example (unfortunate for Benson, at least), since it appeared the very day that Obama declared that his position had finally evolved all the way over to agreeing that gay people should be allowed to get married like everyone else.

Also caught by surprise today: Steve Kelley:

And Mike Luckovich:

Well, It's Definitely Not a WAR on Women

Chip Bok, 5/8/12:

No, really, Bok's begging -- he can't keep vamping about nothing like this forever, and it took a sex scandal for the Republicans to dent the last Democratic president.

This also is a fine example of the cartoon that takes two things that are unrelated -- the renewed interest in a minor character in Obama's decade-old memoir, and a piece of Democratic campaign propaganda -- and tries to pretend that they have anything to do with each other.

Your Majesty Is Like a Dose of the Clap

Daryl Cagle, 5/7/12:

Europe -- the entire continent, including the parts that aren't in the EU or the Euro -- is a pile of shit. Just because.

I Know You Are, But What Am I?

Richard Bartholomew, 5/8/12:

It takes a very special level of obliviousness to claim one candidate is moving backwards when his opponents are calling for:

• Repealing the major legislative achievement of the last term, to replace that with nothing in particular
• Rolling back regulatory laws to at least the 1970s (or 1928, for the financial markets)
• Returning to the sexual mores of the 1950s
• among many other backwards-looking policies

Luckily, Bartholomew has that, in spades.

It Was in the Pool!

Nate Beeler, 5/8/12:

Obama has a coherent, specific economic policy, even though no one on his team has ever articulated  what it might be. (Other than "I'll lower some taxes on poor people, and go around giving speeches calling for a recovery".) And that economic policy -- granting for the moment that some high-powered scientific instruments could actually detect it -- has hugely shrunk the US Workforce, as opposed to Europe, where Paul Ryan-style austerity measures have toppled several governments and plunged the continent into a renewed recession.

Here Come the Grooms

Clay Bennett, 5/8/12:

Yes, Democrats like same-sex marriage, and Republicans hate it.

Tune in tomorrow for another sizzling insight in Bennett's "Duh!" series, where you'll learn that Democrats are more fond than Republicans of social spending, and that Republicans really, really like throwing money at the military. Future installments will similarly take a searing look at the national debt (GOP: Hate it!), abortion (GOP: Hate it!), global warming (GOP: Hate it!), the French (GOP: Hate it!) and many other things the modern Republican party can't stand.

For the Chop

Jimmy Margulies, 5/7/12:

So Murdoch manufactured the entire phone-hacking scandal -- the hacking itself, the media outcry over it, the Parliamentary inquiries, the investigations into his holdings, the demotion of his own son, the possible loss of the phenomenally profitable BSkyB network -- to sell more of his money-losing newspapers? (Such a shrewd businessman!)

And, if that's the case, why does the headsman have his axe backwards? Is that part of Rupert's plan as well?

Your Next President: Stewart Alexander!

Deb Milbrath, 5/7/12:

Yes, it would be amazing if our center-right President were also replaced by the Socialist candidate, but that seems mildly unlikely.

Nothing Is Sure Except Crappy Cartoons

Terry Wise, 5/7/12:

And this is a zinger because, as those of us who understand math know, Obama has actually reduced taxes substantially on his watch to combat the recession.

Um, Terry, didn't you get the memo? You're supposed to be upset about the debt, not taxes. Taxes will be next year. (Unless China does enough saber-rattling to drag that ol' debbil The Red Menace out of mothballs.)

Won't Somebody Think of the Children?

Rick McKee, 5/3/12:

Obama is pushing Baby America into the pit of National Debt, because Baby America has never had a national debt before, and the policies and programs created in the past have nothing to do with that debt.

Michelle Probably MADE Him Use a Healthy Carrot, Too!

Mike Lester, 5/4/12:

Optimism and forward motion are evil and useless; the United States is a failed nation whose best days are behind it, and we'll never be any good any anything ever again.

Hey, remember when right-wingers were violently against defeatist talk?

Any Stick That Hits Obama Is a Good Stick

Michael Ramirez, 5/5/12:

So the guy who cartoons for Investor's Business Daily thinks that human rights should be of paramount importance in foreign relations?

Does his editorial board know that? (And would that still apply if someone with an (R) after his name was President?)

Full Faith and Credit

Bob Gorrell, 5/4/12:

Incumbents have a decided advantage over their challengers, since they already occupy their office and control its power.

In other news, water is wet and the sky is blue.

Student Outreach

Henry Payne, 5/3/12:

Not allowing interest rates on student loans to double is exactly like giving college students free cars, in the sense that it's completely different.

All You Zombies

Eric Allie, 5/1/12:

Of course, this implies that Allie himself -- and a large number of his editorial cartooning cohort, and Fox News, and the Wall Street Journal, and Investor's Business Daily, and the Washington Times, and so on -- are not part of the media.

Any depiction of "the media" in the media is immediately lazy and flabby; it can't help but be otherwise.

King Solomon Had 700 of 'em!

Paul Berge, 5/2/12:

One wife? Oh, Paul, Paul, you're really not up on your Old Testament:

If he take him another wife; her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage, shall he not diminish.
  (Exodus 21:10, in the almighty King James translation)

 There's no theoretical limit to wives; if he can support them in the manner to which they're accustomed, he can have as many as he wants.

Therefore the proposed North Carolina law is deeply unbiblical.

To Boldly Go

Bob Gorrell, 5/2/12:

So spending is shrinking so quickly that it's going to disappear out from under the President's feet any minute now?

And this is a problem?

Cartoonist Pro Tip #4,715: If you want to emphasize that something is much too big, don't draw it small and crumbling.

And The Air Force Has To Hold a Bake Sale, Yadda Yadda Yadda

Robert Unell, 5/2/12:

Yeah, just imagine what your taxes would be like!

(Or, alternatively, imagine what it would be like if there were only as many teachers in the nation as there are professional football players, and they "performed" for similar audiences.)

Dogs Don't Know It's Not Bacon

Mike Lester, 5/1/12:

I like the "false equivalency" dog food a lot, but the rest of this cartoon is making my head hurt -- so Uncle Sam is wasting our precious tax dollars (and running up the usual huge deficit that we only care about when the other guys are in control of the purse-strings) on False Equivalency brand dog food, and that's why the country is in bad fiscal shape?

I think there's a good "so poor we're eating dog food" cartoon struggling to get out of this one, but the giant mounds of dog food are strangling it in its crib.

Where Do You Want to Be Oiled First?

Clay Bennett, 5/1/12:

One of the two major American parties -- the one that generally "won" the most recent major federal election cycle, two years ago -- is a rusted shell in the woods, dependent on a casually murderous Kansas farmgirl to bring it back to life and return it to its quest for a heart.

Sure, the heart thing makes a good metaphor, from a liberal point of view, but rusted? Immobile? Really?!

The King Is a Fink!

Chuck Asay, 5/1/12:

Asay somehow managed to miss every single news story about the Republican race for the last eight months -- particularly those during the times when Trump or Pawlenty or Bachmann or Cain or Gingrich or Santorum or Gingrich or Cain or Santorum or Perry or Christie or Rubio or Jeb Bush or Santorum or Gingrich or Gingrich or Santorum was surging in the polls - since the entire narrative of the process was that Romney was inevitable, but that no one, from the grassroots Tea Party organizers to the media, was happy at all with him.

Admittedly, it's an easy thing for a man with Asay's particular talents to miss.

Hooah!

Terry Wise, 5/1/12:

You mean "rappelled," dearie -- any good newsroom will have a dictionary, so ask your editor where it is.

And those grapes are so very, very sour, aren't they?

Such Great Heights

Lisa Benson, 5/1/12:

Gosh! The supposedly-private corporation that was forced by the government to pre-pay its employees retirement costs 75 years ahead, can't raise prices on its own products (even though they're currently lower than all domestic competition and substantially below the similar services in other nations), and is required to maintain service six days a week to every address in the nation has trouble making its budget!

That is totally unexpected!

What We Won't Stand For

Brian Fairrington, 4/30/12:

It's a little-known fact that only the Stand Your Ground laws allow people to defend themselves, ever -- everywhere else, criminals are actually legally permitted to do their dirty deeds in peace.

No, really! There's no tradition of home defense in Western jurisprudence! Don't bother to check those law books!

If we don't allow nutty wanna-be cops to gun down black teenagers whenever they want to, the whole nation will fall!!!!!!

Kegger With the Prez?

Charlie Daniel, 4/30/12:

Obama's current Presidential fact-finding mission at American universities -- don't call it a political campaign! -- is garnering substantially more enthusiasm among the young folk than Romney's similar efforts.

So much is true, but there's still no joke here, or commentary, or anything of substance.