Today’s comic by Ruben Bolling is Inspector Trump's most perplexing case: The Mystery of the Real Leak and the Fake News:
• Ruben Bolling, pen name for Ken Fisher, has been named the winner of the 2017 Herblock Prize for editorial cartooning:
“Ruben Bolling created his own unique style of political cartoon, one that’s full of sly allusions and clever twists,” wrote judge Matt Wuerker, the Politico cartoonist and 2010 Herblock Prize recipient. ” ‘Tom the Dancing Bug’ pushed the form into new territory with imaginative tropes, deft imagery and provocative allegory.”
“Ruben Bolling’s cartoons are consistently sharp, funny and incredibly original,” wrote judge Mark Fiore, the freelance political animator who won the Herblock last year. “His use of recurring characters, like Hollingsworth Hound and Lucky Ducky, [adds] a wonderfully inventive richness to his masterful satire.” (Also judging this year was Martha Kennedy, Library of Congress curator of popular and applied graphic art.)
More about the prize and Ruben Bolling can be found here.
• Muslims raise $65,000 to repair damage to graves at desecrated Jewish cemetery: That is three times their goal. Some 150 headstones were destroyed at the Chesed Shel Emeth Society, a Jewish cemetery in St. Louis:
Activists Linda Sarsour and Tarek El-Messidi launched a $20,000 fundraising campaign on Tuesday “to help rebuild this sacred space where Jewish-American families have laid their loved ones to rest since the late 1800's.” That goal was not only met within three hours, but the total amount raised so far is triple the initial ask. More than 2,300 supporters donated $66,182, and there are still 26 days left before the campaign is closed. Additional funds will be sent to vandalized Jewish community centers across the country.
• Alan Colmes dead at 66: He was for years paired with Sean Hannity on the Fox News talk show Hannity & Colmes, where he regularly took a beating when putting up his moderately liberal views against those of the right-wing propagandist.
• February’s above average temperatures may feel good now, but are a bad sign. Expectations are that dozens of heat records will be broken this week across the country. The unseasonably warm temperatures are taking place just as Scott Pruitt, the climate science-denying hater of the Environmental Protection Agency, takes over as the organization’s administrator. In his home state of Oklahoma, temperatures hit a record 99° Fahrenheit earlier this month, which was more than 40ºF above the average February high. There have also been record-breaking February temperatures in Texas, Kansas, Colorado, Illinois and Wisconsin.
• States lead the way toward 100 percent renewable electricity. Hawai’i already has a law requiring 100 percent of the state’s electricity to come from renewables by 2045. Now California is considering a bill to require 100 percent renewably sourced electricity by that same year, and the current mandate of 50 percent by 2030 accelerated to 2025. California got 27 percent of its electricity from renewables in 2016, 2 percent ahead of its goal. Massachusetts is considering a bill for 100 percent renewables by 2035, with a goal of 100 percent electricity and energy for heating and transportation by 2050.
• Republican Sen. Susan Collins hint that Donald Trump might be subpoenaed on tax returns.
• Hate groups sign up to join forced-birther lobbying efforts in Texas: The Family Research Council, identified as an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, has joined the push to ban the most common type of second trimester abortion care in Texas. And it’s not the only hate group to climb aboard the forced-birther campaign. Steven Hotze, founder and former president of one of those organizations, the Conservative Republicans of Texas, has compared members of the LGBTQ community to “termites” and Soviet infiltrators sent to “eat away at the very moral fabric” of the country.
• Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin credits Trump for stock market rise. Obama, of course, got no GOP credit for a tripling of the market from its early 2009 trough. But once the market heads down, as some observers say is overdue, expect the blame to fall on the former president.
• On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin tracks the rise of town hall resistance. Local Dem organizations are seeing a surge in interest. Another peek inside the Milo man cave. And a “Congressional Weekend” round-up of news you’ll need to know for the “Regular Person’s Weekend.”
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