They hate you

One of the things I keep repeating over and over again is how everyone needs to understand that Republicans enjoy hurting other people. More often than not it's simply how much they enjoy doing things that piss off liberals or make ideological opponents angry but at the core of it, they don't care if it's actual physical suffering. It amuses them. Sometime they're honest about it and sometimes they lie and make cutesy little winks--that's honestly why so many teabaggers love Sarah Palin; not because they actually support a fraction of her incoherent babble but because she makes them feel like it's okay to be mean and bitchy and awful to people if you're the one doing it.

Yes there's a terrible oligarchy in this country and rich people want to do what they can to support rich people but this balance works on both sides. There's just as many poor and working class people in the Republican Party as there are in the Democratic Party. But they're all celebrating for some reason that about fifty years of democratic labor rights were stripped in a blatant, callous and vindictive way becuase, hey, they're on the "winning" team. They don't even know what that means but it sounds good.

Half of Americans who vote, vote for people who hate Americans. When we are open about this factoid, things can start to change.

"Immigration Loopholes"

Latest comic - click here!

Read it and weep, ladies and gentlemen. I actually found this on a right-wing website, where the commenters there were even faster than I was in asking "well what is even the point here?" Rep. Riddle is proposing a bill that, essentially, makes it illegal to hire illegal immigrants with the exception of undocumented people you hire to do work for you. This is all going on while simultaneously, hundreds of miles away in the mysterious Congress of Justice, noble Republican legislators are furious that President Obama has decided that a different law that dehumanizes people is also stupid and should be ignored. However, gay people just want to be legally married, not offer you great rates on lawn service, so outrage ahoy.

So, while we're discussing Republicans, the elephant in the room (+3 segue bonus).

As some of you have noticed and a handful have even written in about, the text-based portions of this site have, shall we say, slipped dramatically. I'm hoping that by pointing this out openly, it might motivate me to get back to writing more. I don't really have a lot of elaborate excuses for why I'm not blogging as much. After ten years of it, and especially after the last two years of what's been happening in the country, I know that I'm really, really getting frustrated with politics in general. I've been working to make humor out of the horrible things the increasingly-powerful right in this country has been doing since 1999 and frankly, friends, it's getting really, really tough.

This isn't a pity-party post and certainly not a financial appeal--as I just told the Facebook followers, my net profit for the year as a "professional" cartoonist was just shy of fifty bucks. I consider every fan I have a gift, and at the same time make no illusions about this being some kind of enterprise to feed an imaginary family. When I find myself frustrated and wondering why I'm still doing this, I honestly do settle more often than not on the same final answer: because not doing it would suck even more. You pay for books with money I use to print more books, because you want the books. And that's awesome.

So ultimately, what am I thinking about: well, I'd like to start writing more about other things. I had a great conversation with a friend the other day--a conversation I've had far too many times to have not acted on yet--about how much I enjoy telling friends and family back home of the weird and wonderful things I keep discovering here in Atlanta. I often think in a past life, I was a travel guide, which I realize is aiming high in the fantasy reincarnation game. Yep.

But I digress: my point is, progress is slow here, but stuff. Stuff. Stuff is... worked on... being? Maybe. Words. Okay then. Also I should make a website one of these days that wasn't made in 2006. Let's work on that one too, August.

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