Honest Bumper Stickers 2024: Phase One In Which DougJBalloon Get His Oats

Hey kids, remember those brief fun moments when I carved out Honest Bumper Stickers?

Like this one?

Well, here's 2024, the candidates are set, the conventions are happening (or have happened), and it's time to see if I can remember how Inkscape works!

Okay, now that I've gotten THAT out of my system... HERE'S SOME MORE!

because the saying "Balls to the Walls" is a term to go full speed, and...
and... (sigh) look, I *have* to explain it, not everybody gets it!

And just to be fair, I crafted a couple of trump-friendly bumper stickers for this election cycle!

took me hours to find a decent
commons use image of prison bars

I'd make one for the struggling, tone-deaf, cruel-to-animals RFK Jr campaign: Alas I do have standards.

Honest Bumper Stickers 2020: Could This Election Cycle Get ANY Crazier? ...Yes, It Can...

The Honest Bumper Stickers will take some time to reach a sizable number, but in the meanwhile I've got these created in the quick:

More are sure to follow.

Official: It's Biden / Harris 2020

Word dropped this afternoon, all the speculation is done, all the fighting steps up a notch, and we finally have a WINNER!

It's DAN QUA- wait wrong Veep announcement.

It's KAMALA HARRIS!

As mentioned often before, the selection of the Vice President doesn't do much to improve - or worsen - a Presidential campaign as long as the pick is a sensible, solid one. It's a first test for the President: showing off his/her decision-making of who'll they also pick as Cabinet members, agency bosses, what have you. It underscores the direction and theme of the campaign as well: Picking someone with foreign policy cred is one thing, picking a Veep with economic reform ideas is another.

Biden picking Kamala Harris says four things:

1) He is looking at keeping a big tent going for the Democratic Party. Much of Harris' voting record is a solid Left history. Despite her image and reputation as a state Attorney General, her history as a U.S. Senator ranks her pretty high on the liberal scoring charts (govtrack ranks by "most conservative" so in liberal measurements Harris is at the other end). Biden is recognized as more Center than Left, so getting a solid Liberal Left candidate should appeal to many at that end of the spectrum (she's closer to Bernie Sanders than Elizabeth Warren).

2) He is showing no ill-will to the time in the debates when Kamala went after Biden for his school busing stance and other not-good positions early in his Senatorial career. Once Harris dropped out of the primaries, she eventually backed Biden for the ticket to show party fealty, and Biden as a long-time player had to respect that. There's also Biden's Passive-Positive traits of Congeniality and team-building: He has a world-view of bipartisan outreach, and repairing bridges to party leaders who opposed him fits that world-view. This is Biden's way of signaling to other factions in the Democratic Party (and any moderate factions left among Republicans) that he will have an Open Door of sorts to his Oval Office.

3) He is demonstrating to the Party and to the general voters that he keeps his word: Biden promised he would choose a woman as a Vice President and so he did.

4) He is living in his comfort zone. Not that he and Harris will see eye-to-eye on every issue, it's that Biden is one of those Senators who viewed his time in that setting as membership in an exclusive club. Senators tend to favor Senators as political allies even when they're disagreeing on issues (note how John McCain wanted fellow Senator Joe Lieberman as his Veep in 2008 even though Lieberman was a Democrat(!)). Biden had to be thinking "If Kamala was cool enough for the Senate she's cool enough for my campaign."

Voting, of course, still matters. Turnout remains key for Democrats to overcome the obstruction and suppression the Republicans are already signalling to the world. What today's decision does is move the campaign closer to cohesion and planning for the big run to November. It's a moment to stir up support and fundraising and momentum in the media (by the buzz on Twitter today, it seems to have done all three).

It also means I need to make more 2020 bumper stickers!

Little Green Footballs Bumper Sticker Generator

I only got around to one set of Honest Bumper Stickers for 2020, mostly 'cause my heart wasn't in it this year.

But that didn't stop THIS GUY (Charles Johnson) from creating a 2020 trump/pence Bumper Sticker Generator!

Yes, for only three pennies a day, you too can be a campaign supporter for the WORST PRESIDENT THIS NATION HAS EVER SEEN AND THAT'S WITH THE LIKES OF JACKSON, TYLER, BUCHANAN, JOHNSON AND HARDING.

Look! I even made one already.

IT HAS THE ADVANTAGE OF BEING AN ACTUAL trump QUOTE!!!

So dig in, America!

'Cause we're facing four more years of digging out of our graves if trump wins re-election.

Honest Bumper Stickers 2020 Part I: The Pantsing Menace

So there I was minding my own business, working on my NaNoWriMo project for this month of writing, when out of the blue we get a new wannabe candidate running in the 2020 Democratic Primaries.

So here comes Mike Bloomberg, doing nobody but billionaires any favors hopping into the campaign cycle ostensibly to run on a Centrist, pro-business platform but most likely doing whatever he could to stop the Progressives like Bernie and Warren taxing the ever-loving shit out of Mikey and his billionaire buddies.

So here I am rolling my eyes at Bloomberg's tone-deaf needless sacrifice to take one for the rich white guys, because the last type of person who is going to win over enough Democratic primary voters is going to be someone who promoted anti-civil-rights BS like Stop and Frisk while encouraging Wall Street to rip off homeowners by the truckload. Christ, look at the polling already. Wassisname, the Starbucks guy he didn't even survive the first wave of Twitter outrage. There's already this hedge fund manager Tom Steyer doing his best to get over 2 percent polling (and failing). If Bloomberg thinks he's gonna cut into Warren's - or even Biden's - lead, he's let his campaign advisors rip him off for millions with bad advice.

Here's the dark secret, billionaires who may harbor non-Republican values enough to be Dems: Most of the Democratic voting base hate rich guys who refuse to pay their fair share of taxes. If you wanna do Dem voters any favors, help fund the state-level candidates who need the fcking money to break the stranglehold Republicans have on too many state legislatures.

But no, the worst part of Bloomberg's rollout had to be this:

Yeah, I know. I couldn't stop laughing for three minutes.

Sadly, it turns out the marketing logo is actually a fake, but for a day or two I was haunted by this terribly designed logo: This cluttered mess of trying to make Bloomberg's name 'exciting' by putting in two 2020s and capping it with a lame motivational "OWNING IT TOGETHER." Whoever did design this fake logo knew how bad it could get. Seriously, this looked like something that would have wowed the crowds... back in 1973.

Ah, and this kind of thing stoked my ire back in 2015/16, when all the bad campaign ad work popped up on BOTH sides of the political primaries. All of that questionable logo design - all because Obama's people figured out early the big letter O for Obama could get used artistically for genuinely eye-catching logos - struggling to try and match Obama's marketing success.

It drove me to make Honest Bumper Stickers for 2016, and now here I come for 2020, revved up to mock the ever-loving hell out of candidates I will support for the Democratic ticket (I am not at the moment in any mood to make mocking bumpers for trump: All I will make for him is IMPEACH THE FUCKER, indeed).

So here I come, walking down your street, I get the funniest looks from, everyone I meet... HEY HEY IT'S HONEST BUMPER STICKERS! ...what?

Honest Bumper Stickers 2020: It Begins

With the second Democratic primary debate wrapping up tonight, I've decided to jump all in on the crazy and make more bumper stickers to express how I feel about the 2020 elections.

I'll start off with my current mindset and voting preference.

Yeah, I might have to delve a little more into the ISSUES, but right now telling off all the misogynists who refuse to vote for women is where I'm at, spiritually speaking.

I am also cool with Warren/Harris. Hope that's not a problem.

Honest Bumper Stickers: The Final Countdown

Cue the music:

So here we go, kiddies. THE LAST EVER HONEST BUMPER STICKERS I WILL MAKE FOR ALL OF THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN.

Unless, of course, Trump says something incredibly obnoxious, stupid and wrong.

Line up!

And for the other side:

And because I'm a huge honking fan of anime:

Will things ever be the same again?
It's the final countdown... - Europe

Honest Bumper Stickers Part XII: For Your Cries Only

Now that we've got the Vice Presidents figured out, we can see a few more bumper stickers on the cars piling up on the mean streets of Yeehaw Junction.

in the real world, every other word on this sticker would say TRUMP... 

If this story can be believed...

Too wordy, I know. But accurate.

Yeah, had to get the WWE gag out of my system.

Okay, what's next?

A Quick Post For Laughing Insanely at Trump's Pick for Vice President (w/ Update)

A more serious post will follow.

So today, in the middle of Friday (traditionally a news dump day in the United States), and after weeks of indecision that could no longer be delayed because the CONVENTION IS NEXT MONDAY, and after the evening where Trump said he would delay his announcement in honor of the tragic terror attack in Nice, France during Bastille Day...

Without much fanfare, the Trump campaign announced they were going with Governor Mike Pence of Indiana as Trump's Vice Presidential nominee.

As part of the announcement, the campaign revealed their brand new bumper sticker logo of doom, thusly:

They REALLY didn't think this one through, did they?

Because I swear, first thing I realized when I saw that logo was "why does it look like Trump's T is inserting itself into Pence's P?"

Put it another way:

"This is even better in GIF form!"

(I would love to get a downloadable GIF of it someday...)

And to think, the Republicans are the party putting the "NO PORN" policy on their platform, those naughty boys...

Sigh. That's pretty much the only thing to laugh about. More on the horror story aspect of this later.

(Update): Annnnnnnnnd, the Trump people pulled the logo from their websites within less than a day.

We're gonna miss it now it's gone.

Somebody's gonna get fired for this. Induce satisfying wave of Schadenfreude... ahhhhhhhhhh...

Honest Bumper Stickers 2016: Part 11, In Which It Is Learned There Are Too Many Words To Fit On Normal Bumper Stickers

Yeah, yeah, actually, I'm typing in too much stuff in the banners. I'm over-explaining the jokes, as it were.

I need to stick to the short-worded, timeless classics. Winners like "IT WAS A STARK AND DORMY NIGHT"

...still not working?

Sigh. Anyway, here's more Trump bumper stickers, and now a Libertarian Gary Johnson one!

I thought up this one on the drive home from work, kiddos...

Honest Bumper Stickers 2016: The Tenth Terror

Oh wow, it's been some time since I made a few of these.

It's kind of gotten down to the final two main contenders - Hillary vs. Trump - although I may create one or two for Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Jill Stein.

Anyway, indulge.

Should I make more?

Honest Bumper Stickers 2016: Plan 9 from Utter Waste

While we've lost a few targets to these Honest Bumper Stickers this campaign season - Did I ever do a bumper sticker for Santorum? WAIT, I did, so I'm good - there's still a healthy pack of victims for satire, mockery and disdain that I can aim at this weekend.

Consider this my lead-in to watching the New Hampshire primary in utter horror (link to Driftglass who may cover the debate again because he's that much of a masochist).