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…

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Continue reading "2012: They Were Warned" »

Holy jeez, gang, has it really been ten years already? Phew, now that really makes me feel old. Luckily for me, fiftysomething is the new thirtysomething…or something.

So, when I was asked to design the poster for the Seattle/WTO Tenth Anniversary event here in DC, there was only one thing to do — another parody of a famous work of art, in this case, a classic of Kitsch Americana, Archibald Willard’s iconic Spirit Of ‘76, the hit of the show at the 1876 Columbian Exposition.

But, aaa-aaaanyway…the big do is on Monday, November 30, at Chief Ike’s Mambo Room in Adams-Morgan, 1725 Columbia Road NW, at 7pm; it’s a fund raiser for the Washington Peace Center and the Funk The War Alumni Association (for all you ex-college kids who are too old for SDS, but still want to get funky). There’ll be the obligatory drinking and party-mix grooves, of course. There’ll also be some vintage Seattle/WTO rebellion video running, because we really loves us some anarchy.

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So, hit the copy shop, mix up the paste, grab your rollers, and hit the streets, kids, and I’ll see yer butts down at Chief Ike’s on N30!

Continue reading "The Spirit of ‘99" »

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Just so we’re on the same page, here: community organizing group ACORN registered large numbers of black voters in Chicago for the last big “election”. As is common in many registration campaigns, there’s a fair number of wise-asses registering dead peoples’ names, or fake names. Also, as is required by law by boards of elections in any US city I’ve been to, any bogus/invalid registrations are reported, to keep the voter rolls cleared of all the dead people, and all those Luke Skywalkers and Donald Ducks.

So, anyway, outfits like the Drudge Report (has anybody informed that bonehead that the ’90s are over?) get hold of this and, in their own predictable, inimitable fashion, proceed to blow this up into some kind of bogus “scandal” and throw it to the rightist k00k crowd like so much fresh, raw meat. Still, you’ve got to love Drudge, if only because he carries on in the finest shrieking tabloid tradition — never let the facts get in the way of a good story — along with providing us all with some good cheap laffs.

Now, just to refresh your memories, one more time, here’s the video of a small group of black youth selling little plastic flags at the September 12 Teabaggers’ rally being threatened and harassed, and accused of being “ACORN People” (as if there were something wrong with that in and of itself)…

Continue reading "Radio Hate" »

At the Capitol Hill Teabaggers’ Rally this past July 4th, I spotted more than a few signs saying “Capitalism Works Best When Left Alone”, and it got me thinking, what vast new entrepreneurial opportunities have been denied owing to government regulations and petty tyrannies such as the Clean Water Act, The Pure Food And Drug Act, or the Glass-Steagall Act…?

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Continue reading "Capitalism Works Best When Left Alone" »