Oh, gaahhhdddd! Not only another election cartoon, but a cartoon with items metaphorically labeled, old-school! Jeez, I can hear my pal Gregor yelling right now… “Goddammit, Mike! Herblock is DEAD!”

Yeah, y’know… once the election ideas get going, it’s pretty much hopeless. The usual Repuglican “stars” are already making noises about running; we’re hearing about Sarah Palin possibly running (sigh), and Newt Gingrich (spit) — and I even heard about Dick Cheney (double spit) on Joe Scarborough’s program this morning (triple spit).

OK, granted, 2012…I may be a bit ahead of myself, here, but still… if you check out The One’s record of achievement (or lack of same) in just his first year in office, plus the rash of FAIL in the special elections this year, you’re looking at a raft of Donkeycratic politicians with a whole fistful of “achievements” pinned to their respective asses, and damn’ near little ability to defend them come next year’s midterms — which, by the way, will be held after the Afghanistan debacle’s had about a year to soak in.

So, would that be next year’s repudiation of last year’s repudiation?

11×12″ medium-res color jpg image, 556k

Continue reading "Decision 2012 (pardon my Herblock)" »

It’s the end of the world as they know it…
but they feel fine!

Those of you who’ve followed my work for any length of time will remember my complaints about the early start of the Presidential “election” cycle (John Edwards announced on Christmas Week, 2006) in the form of the four-part “Jackass Slate for 2008”.

So, here it is, at least a year before the “official” start of the 2012 Presidential campaign season, and here I am already doing a ’12 Election cartoon. I don’t know what else I can say for myself, other than that when the muse visits me, she absolutely refuses to quit pestering me until I’ve committed a creation to paper. It really was a “perfect storm” of events, recently: we had the epic FAIL of the Obama Administration in the areas of healthcare, the economy, and the war in Afghanistan; the Democrats stumbling in the recent elections in Virginia and elsewhere; the GOP hopefuls for ’12 already jockeying for position; Obama’s approval rating finally dropping to a level representative of normal objective reality; the ominous spectre of a sound butt-paddling for the Democrats in the 2010 off-year elections — and a movie just out about the end of the world in 2012, which was pretty much the icing on the conceptual cake.

Now, I’m not into clairvoyance or prophecy or any of that woo-woo, but the events of the past year — most notably the healthcare “reform” debacle — had gotten me to thinking that at least in one respect, the Mayans may have been on to something…

Medium-res .jpg image, color, 1mb

Continue reading "2012: They Were Warned" »

That’s right, gang; looks as if Sarah Palin may have been right about the “death panels”, though perhaps only in the same way a busted clock is still right twice a day — that is, for the entirely wrong reasons.  The recent push to eliminate even “public option” — having only the barest, slightest whiff of national healthcare to it — has confirmed my own suspicion: the “death panel” is real. Here they are now, rendering a recent decision affecting healthcare access not just for your wizened grandma, but for your own personal self.

Medium-res jpg image, 592k

Continue reading "Death Panel" »

The recent Teabaggers’ Shindig over at Senate Park(viewable above) has certainly left me inspired, to say the least. Never did I hear a gang of astroturfers yell more loudly about not being astroturfers even as they were funded by big, fat rightist PACs run by characters like Tom DeLay and Dick Armey, and never did I hear more yelling from a group about how they aren’t about Left or Right, even while they never missed an opportunity to slag the Left — or even on ordinary Liberals, for that matter — as the lot it was my fortune to cover this past Fourth Of July.

Even more hilarious was their total ignorance of the causes and effects of events that happened before January 20, 2009 — forgetting, for instance, that the current corporate bailout fiasco was pushed by George W. Bush. Listening to the howls from the stage and checking out the composition of the crowd, it was as if the single reaction from the Teabagger Massmind boiled down to “OMFG, the President is a N1GG3R!” — like the old-timer in Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles, hollering from the top of the church steeple, “Here comes the new sheriff, and he’s a big…” …and it sure as hell didn’t help any as their event was organized and staged by members of a well-known White Power band, Pokerface.

So, considering all this, I thought to myself, “Self, it’s time you did a poster that announces the imminent arrival of the National Teabaggers’ Convention coming to town on the 12th of September, and maybe inspire some of the local anarchists and antifascists to organize a little welcoming committee.” So, I did.

Medium-res jpg image, 532k
Organic cotton t-shirt at cafepress.com, $17.99

Continue reading "Teabagger" »