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By Cliff Heseltine

I don’t know about most of you, but I gave up on Doonesbury about the time he started making things up to bash any Republican on any issue. That was a long time ago. The strip above is by a cartoonist who is an honest, middle-class American and believes the only hyphen allowed is the one between middle and class. While claiming no specific political affiliation, it’s obvious from his work that he leans Tea Party Libertarian and unlike almost every other cartoonist out there, is passionately pro-Second Amendment (along with the remainder of our founding documents) . . .

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I could go into a long and boring personal biography of Mr. Muir, but that’s available on Wikipedia so I see no need to re-write it. Instead, I’ll give you a brief run-down of the strip he creates which is called, appropriately enough, “Day by Day”.

Started in 2002 DBD is currently only available (due to its decidedly non-PC and also non-MSM friendly content) on the Internet and on many non-PC and pro-gun blogs. Access to this daily strip is free, but you can sign up for e-mail delivery every day to keep up to date. Chris supports this strip with voluntary donations which you can make via PayPal (yeah, I know, but it’s a good cause) and by selling certain strip-related items during an annual fundraiser. His calendar of Sam (the redhead in the strip above) posing semi-nude with various guns was apparently a huge success.

By keeping his work strictly Internet-based Chris is able to bypass the censorship and other limitations placed on political satire (and scantily clad or unclothed beautiful women) in the MSM. His main characters are Samantha, an engineer, intelligent and independent half-Japanese redhead who likes to tuck a small GLOCK into a garter holster, Zed, her husband, a hard-working middle class patriot, former S.O.F., sniper, Iraq and Afghanistan veteran, and gun enthusiast. Their best friends are Damon, a black conservative computer engineer and staunch opponent of Barack Obama, and Jan, Damon’s Argentinian wife, a hard-core old-school liberal and Hillary supporter.

The strip itself varies between vignettes of these two couples in their daily lives and commentary on politicians in current events-related scenarios, as well as how these political events affect the main characters. As you can see from the strip at the beginning of this piece Chris isn’t afraid to take on the same subjects we here hold dear; in this case over-militarized police conducting a no-knock full tactical raid on their home supposedly due to a “wrong address”. And shooting up one of their lawn gnomes for good measure. Even though they are at the wrong address one of the LEOs, Officer Willis, has decided they need to confiscate all the guns they found “in the interest of public safety.”

This is just a taste of the pro-gun content of the strip which occurs frequently (Zed and Sam LOVE their guns, Damon likes to shoot, Jan…not so much. Especially since she took a hot 9mm case down the front of her blouse.) Anyone who is pro-gun, pro-Second Amendment, pro-Constitution and America and is generally politically conservative should love this strip (and I do mean strip – both Sam and Jan occasionally appear au natural). And for RF’s enjoyment there is the recurring visiting character of Naomi, a former Mossad pilot, Zed’s spotter in Iraq. She’s also not opposed to a little nude sunbathing from time to time.

If you’re of a more liberal/progressive mind-set, you probably won’t enjoy much of what’s presented in the strip as it is not flattering to the administration. But I have to say that unlike Gary Trudeau and Doonesbury, Chris Muir presents the liberal side through Jan’s commentary and by way of Sam’s younger sister, a hard-core pro-Obama proggy, exactly as the liberals do and pulls no punches when the RINOs fail us either.

Actually, he seems to have little use for any of the political elites in Washington at this time. His political bite is generally spot on, regardless of party, and he doesn’t put up straw men just to make one side or the other look bad. This may be because he has no trouble showing them as they really are and letting them make themselves look bad. His genius is cutting through the usual political fog and saying loudly, “LOOK! The Emperor is naked!”

Give Day by Day a look. I think you’ll be as amazed and entertained as I was. One warning, however: the DBD website will allow you to go back over ten years and follow the strip as it has matured. You’ll probably want to budget your time. Enjoy.

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57 COMMENTS

  1. Yes, it is a good strip. personally I find the un clad parts a little hard to follow, although should I have a red head that wanted to wrench an old ford in hot pants and a halter I probably would follow that red head to the ends of the earth.

    It is a good comic. I still read Doonesbury, but not like I did when he first came out.

    • Paul, I suspect the unclad portions are pure eye-candy “because I can” from Chris since he isn’t limited by the usual puritan censorship syndicated strips are subject to. The other thing is a serious attempt to portray conservatives as real people with real interest in feminine beauty, not a just hard-right, sexually repressed, religious puritans. In fairness, Sam frequently fantasizes about Zed as a sexually powerful hero from the movies, such as Iron Man or King Leonitus, which shows that even though she is very conservative politically she has a normal and active libido. And a set of twin girls.

      Just his way of taking a pleasantly visual jab at the left-wing propaganda of all conservatives being sexually repressed fuddy-duddies.

  2. Very nice. Probably wouldn’t be a good idea to talk about blowing away a cop with the guns they are carrying, though. I’m thinking that would end badly, even with a relatively honorable police officer.

    • Exactly, in this day and age, it’s never a good idea to shoot at the cops. That will always end badly. In this day, even if you are 100% right, the cops probably won’t see it your way. Neither will most courts.

      • I’m not talking about actually shooting at them, I’m just talking about using that language.

    • This was probably a bit of hyperbole indulged in to make a legal, if not entirely realistic point. Also, the character of Zed, who is making the comment, is a Spec Ops combat veteran and skilled in the use of his weapons. In a crunch he seems the type who would take them on just to make a point and damn the consequences.

      To get a better perspective you would need to review more than just this one strip. If you link to the Day by Day website you can do search of topics such as “Guns” and see all the tips with gun-related content.

        • I remember that dinner at Damon’s house quite well. Zed and Sam ran home after the thugs mounted a highly successful attack on their garden gnome. The gnome was a lot smaller than Sam, and they scored a lot of hits on it. OTOH, it wasn’t resisting.

      • If you follow the lead-up to this strip you know that they are in their own home, the cop has admitted that they did a full-on no-knock assault at the wrong address, and is trying to de-fuse the situation. They are giving him attitude because he deserves it and knows he’s wrong. Also because Zed and Sam rally don’t give a shit what he or the other LEOs think about them. (It does come back to bite them later. Go to the website and check out April 2013.)

  4. You say its ‘only available on the internet’ like that isn’t were 90% of the comics created in the last 15 years are exclusively hosted. That’s like saying a certain product is ‘only found on ebay’ like its junk or hard to find.

    I have found most conservative based humor to be a bit, ahem… dry, but I will give the strip a shot and see what it’s like.

    Democrats may be wrong about guns, but they do seem a little quicker on the humor.

    • Yeah, it kinda seems to be trying too hard. I haven’t read Doonesbury in awhile (maybe I thought it was funnier before I cared about the politics?) but at least it flows better.

    • You are more than welcome, Chris. DBD definitely deserves as wide an audience as it can possibly get.

      And MORE Redline, please.

    • “Chris Muir reads TTAG” banner ad in 3…2…1..

      Chris – thanks for the site and the effort!
      pb

  6. Doonesbury should be having a field day with all that happened the past two years but as usual water is carried for the left

    • If Doonesbury treated Obama the way it treated Bush, Trudeau would never see Jane Pauley’s vagina again.

  7. And to counter the preachy, up-it’s-own-ass lefty cartoon that’s now rarely funny we get a… preachy, up-it’s-own-ass righty cartoon that doesn’t seem funny.

    Well, score one for fairness, I guess. And while political cartoons don’t have to be funny to make a point, if they’re not funny they should at least be pithy. With all those boxes and dialogue it might as well be an internet blog.

    • Hannibal, this was a weekend, and therefore longer, strip. The dailies are the usual three panels, occasionally six. They tend to be “pithy” and sometimes humorous, but I is seldom possible to get a belly laugh out of what Progressives are doing to our government.

      To call it a conservative blog done in a comic strip form would possibly not be far off the mark.

    • I tend to agree, Hannibal. I stumbled onto DBD a few months ago, and have been coming back off and on for a while (mostly because I love the art style), but, like most political “humor”, it’s a little too preaching-to-the-choir for me. I might actually be in Chris Muir’s particular choir, but that doesn’t mean I want a sermon every day.

    • If you haven’t already, try to track down a copy of University². It’s Frank Cho’s college strip, sort of a proto Liberty Meadows.

  11. He isn’t a “Tea Party Libertarian”, if any thing he leans to being a “NeoCon Israel Firster”.

    • In my research for this article I discovered that Chris Muir does not like political labels and so I approximated the “Tea Party Libertarian” based on what I got from his strip over the last en years. I fully believe that Chris is a “Constitutional America Firster” more than anything and appreciates the liberty implied in the Constitution and what the Founders intended America to become as opposed to what we have today. He also admires the spirit of the Israelis and has used the Molon Labe line at east once recently, so he understands the historical context as well.

      On the other hand, I have no idea what a “NeoCon Israel Firster” might be. I suspect you meant it as a pejorative, but perhaps you should review the history of the Day by Day strip before you make such judgments?

    • Labels, again. Perhaps the Libertarian should be with a small “l” – libertarian, indicating a political tendency as opposed to an affiliation. I am registered Republican, but only for expedience as I do not fully agree with the Republican platform on all issues, so I am really just republican, or as is more common these days, conservative. I do not agree with all of the Tea Party platform, either, although pretty much.

      Chris Muir, per his strip and other sources, was/is a strong supporter of Sarah Palin, not so much McCain. He has spoken out in favor of the Tea Party and been openly and frequently critical of RINOs. If Chris Muir started a political party I suspect I would be a joiner.

  15. I just read the case US v John Bad Elk (the defendant and the dead cop were both Indians, and cops). In essence, the cops had no right to arrest someone without a warrant, unless a crime was committed in their presence. From that, a citizen has a right to fight off arrest.

    What is lawful, and what will work out in the real world are two different things…

    Legal specialists – assuming I can keep my cool, how do I remind a police officer that unless he witnessed me actually doing something that is an offense worthy of arrest or has a warrant for my arrest, he can go pound sand.

    • I’m not a lawyer, but…

      John Bad Elk is frequently but incorrectly claimed to support the premise that it is lawful to forcefully resist an unlawful arrest, up to and including the use of deadly force.

      But all the court found in John Bad Elk was something like “the jury should have been allowed to consider that the death of a police officer resulting from an unlawful arrest might have been manslaughter instead of murder”.

      I can tell you in no uncertain terms that in my home state of PA “there does not exist in Pennsylvania a right to resist arrest, under any circumstances”. That’s the Supreme Court of PA’s words, in Commonwealth v. Biagini.

      As to your particular question, Tim McNabb, your premise is false. An officer only needs probable cause to believe you committed the crime in order to arrest you lawfully. He is not required to either have a warrant or have witnessed the offense.

      • To play devil’s advocate on this, we are all reminded that ignorance
        of the law is no excuse. Personally, I include LEOs in this as well.
        In my 20 years as a firefighter and 4 years as a corrections officer
        I ran into far too many LEOs who didn’t actually know what the
        existing laws said. You are correct that a LEO only needs probable
        cause to make an arrest. However, they still have to have an
        infraction of some sort. Most LEOs I’ve known carry rule book in
        their vehicle. I have had to explicitly state to a few LEOs that if they
        cannot take out the rule book and point to an infraction, I will resist.
        I did this not necessarily to cause a problem for the sake of defiance
        but to illustrate that the officer did not have unlimited knowledge or
        power. To be clear, most of the LEOs I know an don’t need an attitude
        adjustment. However, right here at TTAG and other news sites, we
        here far to often of those that believe a badge gives them carte
        blanche.

        To carry the argument further, when was the last time you even
        heard of an officer being prosecuted for making an unlawful arrest.
        Add this knowledge to PA’s court ruling and you get a scenario where
        the ruling may end up being challenged not by lawyers or state
        government but by an individual who had to resist an out-of-bounds cop.

    • And aside from the legal merits of the case, I think the point that was being made is that Officer Miller had not only never heard of it, but didn’t know how to spell the man’s name. Sometimes Chris’ points are very subtle.

      Also, if you read the strips leading up to this one there is some implication that the “wrong address” was a ruse and this was in fact a politically motivated assault orchestrated by persons unknown.

      By the way, this particular strip was from April 7, 2013.

  16. Just checked it out, went to the very beginning (always cool to see the art styles evolve for these comics) and I was hooked at strip two. Hysterical!

    • Welcome to the club! I signed up to give DBD a few bucks every month, since that is how he supports the strip aside from his annual fund-raiser. I’m sure Chris would appreciate that and for each of us to let as many people as we can know about his work. I am rather anxiously waiting to see what he will offer as an incentive next summer for his fund-raising efforts and I am sorry to have missed Sam’s calendar. Maybe I should check e-bay?

  18. In the first sentence in the larger comic, is the substitution of the contraction for “you are” in place of “your” (Ma’am, I think you do not realize we are you are greatest protection…) intentional to show that the cop is stupid?

    THERE IS NO APOSTROPHE IN ANY POSSESSIVE PRONOUN!

    Rich Grise,
    Self-Appointed Chief,
    Internet Apostrophe Police

    • Back in my undergrad days (before Al Gore’s internet had caught on) I would take turns with my roommate donning the heroic cloak of the Mad Apostrophizer. We’d use our handy Sharpies to surreptitiously re- or de-apostrophize posters all over campus — there were plenty that needed it — and sign our handiwork “The Mad Apostrophizer strikes again! You’re welcome.”

      Ah, the halcyon days of youthful nerds…

  19. In the following states (at least) Elk is considered bad or irrelevant precedent.

    Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Utah, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming by court cases

    Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Texas, and Virginia by statute.

    In these states there is no right to resist an arrest period.

    However, I know at least in CA this does not extend to resisting brutality.

    In short, follow what people who cite Bad Elk v. US often claim about the law, you will go to prison.

    • “…I know at least in CA this does not extend to resisting brutality.”

      Elsewhere in the comments I quoted a Supreme Court of PA case saying there’s no right to resist an arrest in PA. What’s particularly interesting in that case is that it references another recent PA case, French, which had held that an individual may defend against the abuse of an arresting officer. The distinction made in the later case is that there’s never a right to resist arrest as such, only a right (to one degree or another) to resist unlawfully extreme force during the course of an arrest.

      (I am not a lawyer, this is just my layman’s reading of the cases.)

  20. I always loved DBD, but I had to stop reading it. I have teenagers who are having to learn to avoid porn, so I couldn’t set a bad example by reading an NC-17 comic (no matter that it’s political, not prurient). A tough loss, since I have enjoyed the story lines and the wit.

    Collon Noir is a pale substitute for Damon, but one has to take what one has available….

    • Sorry you’re (apostrophe correct. guys?) missing the strip, Ken. Have you considered having it sent to your personal, password protected, e-mail account?

      Oh, and good luck on keeping the teens away from porn.

      IMO, it seems like you would be better advised to have them learn about guns and conservative values from DBD, where the protagonists are at least dedicated romantic couples with normal mature sex lives. And they are married, and they are raising families. I think that message should outweigh any concerns over an occasional nude breast or skinny-dipping adventure.

    • Sorry you’re missing the strip, Ken. If you go to daybydaycartoon.com you can register to have the strip sent to your personal, password protected, e-mail account every day. No charge.

      Oh, and good luck with keeping your teens away from Internet porn.

      IMO, they would be better off exposed to the pro-gun and conservative values of DBD than blocked from its message of romantically dedicated couples with normal, mature sex lives. And they are married, and they are raising their children in loving homes. That should outweigh the issue of an occasionally exposed breast or skinny-dipping adventure. YMMV

      • That’s the way with the censors – death and destruction and murder and mayhem are a Sunday picnic, but GAWD FORBID a kid should see any lovemaking!

  21. DANG IT!!! Just when I thought I’d found enough comics to satisfy my daily humor needs and finally get caught up on all of them, you just had to throw a great series my way…
    Oh well, it’ll give me something to do until it gets warm enough outside that a good paper punching session won’t risk frostbite and hypothermia.
    (Seriously though.. how could I have missed this comic?!)

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