Yet another sketchbook open thread. Sorry posting from me has been light lately, but on the bright side, Hereville 3 is going well.
Click on the pic to see it biggerized.
I saw the “field of faces background” in another cartoonist’s drawing on Facebook and thought “I am definitely swiping that idea,” but now I can’t find the other cartoonist to credit her. Sorry, whoever you are.
Major Trump donors who complained of immigrant ‘invasion’ used Mexican workers illegally https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/20/uline-mexican-workers-trump
The problem is not the “echo chamber” phenomenon. It is the fact that reactionary information sources disseminate falsehoods about the…
Also I love the chicken fat on this one (and that the text of the chicken fat is big enough…
I don't think of myself as complaining about conservative echo chambers so much as I think political echo chamber like…
But in the current political moment, conservatives are complaining a lot about liberal “echo chambers,” which makes this the right…
A traditional Catholic who’s in favor of gay marriage.
A new one for me:
Let’s hypthetically say that you had a daughter who was entering middle school (a/k/a junior high.) Let’s assume that you are really opposed to girls’ cheerleading for the football team, for all of the predictable reasons.
How does one react when her friends’ parents cheerfully suggest that she join said friends on the cheerleading squad?
How does one react if one’s daughter (this has not happened to me thank god) actually asks if she can join?
Speaking as not-a-parent, but as someone who has had a lot of contact with high-school age kids through my youth group.
I’d outline your objections to cheerleading and why you think it’s a problem, ask her her reasons for being interested in it, leave the final decision up to her, but emphasize that if she decides to go for it, you 1) will still love her, won’t think any less of her, etc, and 2) probably won’t have much to do with the cheer squad because of your own moral (or other) objections.
I mean, being a teenager is like being an adult with training wheels, and part of that is being able to do dumb shit like join the cheer squad. Sigh.
—Myca
Myca,
I don’t share your objections to cheerleading, but in general, I think I pretty much totally agree with your response to the situation. That would probably be my response if my kid chose to do something that I did disapprove of, as long as it wasn’t directly harming anyone.
In an entirely non-political/non-social look at the issue; a friend of mine has a daughter that just left cheerleading after a few years of participation. She was not only cheering for her school but was on a competitive cheer squad. It turns out that cheerleading is the #1 sport for severe injuries to girls and he saw a fair number of severe sprains and broken bones. You might want to do some research on the topic in general and on the program at school and on the local cheer squads – I’ll bet that the girls at the school are on both, and she’ll face further pressure to join the latter just because her friends are.
Here is an examination/fisking of the proposed authorization for the use of military force against Syria. A.k.a., our declaration of war against Syria. Which it claims not to be, but as stated by the author, if you send your army and navy to blow stuff up and kill people in someone else’s land, that’s a declaration of war. If someone did it to us we’d think it was.
The author is a retired Naval officer who served in both combat and staff capacities.
I really enjoyed these collaborations between an artist and her 4-year-old daughter.
The Illinois Supreme Court has handed the citizens of Illinois a civil rights victory. It unanimously held yesterday that the State law prohibiting carrying a gun outside your home is illegal.
Briefly, the cops state that a young man was among a group of other young men who were yelling at passing cars and throwing bottles and then walked into an alley and then into someone’s back yard. The cops confronted them and ordered them to the ground. The defendant took a gun out of his waistband and dropped it. The defendant was arrested for (among other things) violating the following Illinois State law:
Several panels of Illinois appellate courts have held this to be constitutional, even post-Heller. The Illinois Supreme Court overturned them all. You cannot be convicted of a crime in Illinois simply because you are carrying a gun outside property you own or reside in.
Just a few days ago the City had to change it’s gun laws because of recent court decisions. The Chicago gun registry is gone, as is it’s separate permitting system. You are no longer required to keep all but one of your guns locked up in your home at any time. But now, one other provision of those laws that is still on the books is clearly unconstitutional – the one that states that you cannot carry a gun on your own property except within the walls of your residence. Up to now it was illegal in Chicago to carry a legally-owned handgun from your house into your garage (even if it was attached) or onto your front porch. The Illinois State Supreme Court just blew that out of the water.
RonF:
Wow.
Ordered to the ground by police officers and he drew a gun?! If the officers were ordering the whole group to the ground, they had concerns about their ability to control the situation and they were certainly somewhat keyed-up. That young man is very lucky not to have been shot.
Yes, he drew it in order to discard it, but it takes just as much time, or more, to visibly discard it from your hand as it takes to pull the trigger. Police officers have only human reaction time to work with, as much as Hollywood keeps trying to convince everyone otherwise. When a police officer gives an order, and the response is a drawn gun, there is no time to slice it finely enough to figure out why; there’s a pretty decent chance that the officer is about to get shot. Very likely, the young man lucked out in that none of the officers was able to get gun sights on him before the gun was perceptibly dropping out of his hand.
Grace
Grace, note carefully that I said “.. the cops state that …”. The defendant says something different -that he never had a gun.
You’re right about the concept that if he was armed and drew the gun to drop it he’s very lucky not to have been shot. My understanding on this kind of thing is to leave the gun where it is and inform the cops that you are armed.
Yes. I was commenting on the scenario as presented, not offering an opinion on who was right.
Grace