This week, my favorite doggo (modeled after my own geriatric pooch) reminds us what “Democratic” actually means. I don’t know why it took so long to occur to me, just how profoundly UN-Democratic—ANTI-democratic—it is for a few oligarch “big donors,” the NYT publisher, and a few TV talking heads to decide that THEY get to choose another candidate because Joe is “old,” has a speech impediment, and had a bad debate against a pigeon opponent who strutted around the board, knocked over the pieces, shat all over everything, and then flew away as if he’d won.
Who exactly do they think they are?!
Each of them gets one vote just like you and me. None of them have any right to make themselves super-voters, and overrule the votes of 14,465,519 Americans. It’s as bad as the Republicans—if not worse—because the Republican party is, at least, in thrall to the populist MAGA voters who just can’t quit their twice impeached, zillion-time indicted, 34 time felon, diaper-wearing, toxic-gas-having, abusive boyfriend candidate. At least Republicans respect FEAR their voters.
President Biden is the best damned president we’ve had since FDR (save Obama). He was old when the voters chose him the first time. He was old while accomplishing a huge list of Democratic priorities. He was old during the primary. He is old now. He will be old while going on finishing what he started. He’s old. We get it. The voters chose him, old ass, speech impediment and all.
But maybe you didn’t vote for Joe in the primary (13% didn’t).
Well, sometimes “your guy” loses the election. That’s why we have elections. Both Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson came in 3rd and 4th behind “Uncommitted,” with a smattering of votes for Mickey Mouse and sundry other jokes. Your guy lost. Or didn’t run. All those other folks that you think you want to have voted for instead, they didn’t run. We didn’t vote for them. You didn’t vote for them.
NO ONE DID.
I am sick to death of this anti-democratic claptrap about Biden’s age. We know he’s old. Fourteen MILLION Americans voted for Biden and he won the primary. That’s the end of the story.
Yes, I am grouchy.
This was actually the hardest cartoon I’ve done so far. You wouldn’t think that, given the simplicity of the idea, that it would not be, but something weird is going on with the AI (that pretty much describes generative AI in general). I ran through my whole day’s quota of processing and then switched versions and ran through most of my quote with THAT version. The AI kept generating exactly what I told it not to do and not doing what I told it TO do. Then it would gaslight me and tell me that it had just done what it categorically did not do. I would rewrite the prompt correctly (often with cuss words) and then the AI would generate something wholly unrelated. A few times, it even hallucinated itself into a UK election. Seriously, all the artists out there who worry that AI is stealing your work or going to replace you, NOT ANY TIME FUCKING SOON.
Finally, I gave up on getting it to make a blue ballot box with a white lid with a slot in it and some red, white, and blue bunting, with a second “lid only” next to it, on a white background. So I had it draw the box. It could get one box, sorta right on its own. Sorta. Notice the colors are inverted. There was also a futsy colored background. And there was no white space to speak of around the image. This seems to be a new-for-today “improvement” where the AI cuts off the edges of the drawing and/or places your image like a hair away from the edge.
Then I exported the image, imported it into Preview and removed the background. I added that image into ComicLife (comic compositing software). Then I duplicated the image without the background, downloaded a paint program (bc who can afford Photoshop these days), and removed the box, leaving only the lid. Then I imported the lid image into ComicLife and placed it. Then I repeated the process, but this time isolated the shadow. Then I generated a sketch of the Jack Russell, which TBH, does not look too much like my actual dog, even though I provided her picture as a model. Still, it does look like a Jack Russel, and that will probably do.
Then I wrote and added the all the text and bubbles in ComicLife and began this post.