Certain words and phrases have a way of becoming a fad, or meme. It’s started by someone high in the cultural food chain who has access to a microphone. The most recent is the word “look” when beginning a sentence. President Obama started it back in 2008 when he was running for his first term in office. “Look, Gitmo has to close. There’s no two ways about it,” he might say to an interviewer. It’s shorthand for,” Look, let’s cut the crap.” By saying “look,” the speaker is asking the listener to focus his or her thoughts, or to “get real,” which is another meme started by the hippies back in the day. Other memes in the past have been the phrases, “If you will,” and “as it were.” They were popu

Vatican City––Pope Francis announced today that he is excommunicating Donald Trump. “I know he’s not a Catholic,” said the pontiff, “but what the hell. I felt like doing it.” In response, Donald Trump told the pope that if ISIS attacks the Vatican, he won’t lift a finger to help. Trump also said a religious leader should not be commenting on a person’s religious beliefs, calling it “disgraceful.” At the core of this dust up is the war between two religions, the Roman Catholic Church and Trumpism. “This goddam pope is a pain in the ass,” said Trumpist spokesman and conservative leader Rev. Rob Patterson. “He’s fucking undoing everything we Republicans have done in the past eight years, not to

The digital universe is all about pushing buttons. On, off, on, off,on, on, on, off, the binary code. If only one person in the world knows the secret code and won’t give it up, that person has too much power. There must always be someone bigger to keep power in check. The government has to be bigger than Apple, or any company when it comes to national security. And who, you might ask, is bigger than the government? We the peeps. If Apple prevails in this case, it will be the go-to device, if it isn’t already, for all the terrorists living under the rocks in America. This from the New York Times: “The key question here is how far can the government go in forcing a third party to aid in surve

That old question was answered many years ago during the heyday of the feminist movement. The answer: everything. From the beginning of the Women’s Suffrage movement in the 19th Century to the attempted passage of the Equal Rights Amendment back in the 1970s, the true answer has been equality, and it looks as if we’ve arrived in politics if not in salaries. I floated the idea for this cartoon a couple weeks ago as a rough sketch and got a decent response. The more I’ve read about Hillary’s campaign, the more I felt I needed to draw it. Young women today don’t care if a woman is running for president. They’ve said overwhelmingly that they won’t vote for Hillary just because she’s a woman. The

I’ll be giving an illustrated speech with cartoons at the annual Waterbury Regional Chamber meeting march 31. Contact the chamber for details or register by clicking on this link.

I can’t think of a time when two New York City natives were the front runners in any presidential race. We have to go back to Franklin Roosevelt to even find a New York native in office, but he didn’t come from the city. He was from Hyde Park. No, we have to go all the way back to FDR’s cousin Teddy to find a New York City native in the Oval Office. That didn’t turn out well for the robber barons of his time. The motto on the Brooklyn seal on Bernie’s back says “Eendraght Maeckt Maght,” which translates from early modern Dutch as “In unity, there is strength.” I thought it was Gaelic or Klingon. The two are very much alike, but of course the Big Apple and surrounding areas were settled by th

“We” are the people who are fed up with gun violence in America. Look, I’ve read many online opinions about the Bundys and the self-styled “militias” and one opinion stands out. I agree that anyone who takes up armed rebellion against the United States should be arrested and tried for treason in a court of law. These so-called militias are not unique to the West. They can be found all over. They do not represent a large number of Americans. In fact, the townspeople near the Malhheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregan want the Bundy crowd to vamoose. Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence said that a people have the right to overthrow their government every now and then. Withou