Fighting Words: 4/13/09 Cartoon(s)...

"Hysterical Whack-Job Monthly"...

...and, just below it, a bonus 'toon...



"Newspaper Tycoon"...

Say That Again?

I just had to post this quote...

As you may know, one of the right-wing media's favorite things to scream about these days is the conspiracy theory that Obama intends to eliminate the United States of America and place us all under the rule of a "one-world government." So any attempt at international diplomacy is now being pointed to as an indication that Obama wants to subvert us all to the French, or whoever. This is from a recent appearance by John Bolton on the Glenn Beck show:

BOLTON: ...you have to look underneath of it. And it's on a range of issues, not just the money supply, but gun control, the death penalty --

BECK: Global warming.

BOLTON: -- abortion, all -- global warming -- all of which are issues we can and should debate in our -- in our constitutional democratic framework. We don't need to decide them internationally. But that's what the agenda is of many people very close to the Obama administration.

BECK: OK. Thank you very much. I appreciate it, Ambassador.

Let's say that again... global warming is not something that should be discussed internationally. This man used to be United States Ambassador to the United Nations.

The Obama years are turning out to be fun for satirists after all...

hi...

OK, I'm putting more effort into Twitter now... follow me here. Although I still don't quite see the point...

Look for a bonus cartoon from me along with the new one Monday, to make up for my unexcused absence last week...

MORE: actually, it was VERY excused... I was workin' my friggin' ass off. Look for more updates to my design page coming soon!

Program Note

There will be a new cartoon this week... but not 'til Thursday or Friday.

I'm currently hard at work finishing up a website design job...

Fighting Words: 3/30/09 Cartoon...

"Making A Budget For Tough Economic Times"...


It's a cartoon about being in an accountant's office... you were expecting something visually spectacular?

Fighting Words: 3/23/09 Cartoon...

"Inside the Movies: Commonly-Used Plot Devices!"..

Fighting Words News: Graphic / Web Design Page...

I finally have a separate page up on my website for my graphic & web design work... go look! It includes a website I did recently for a local cafe:



I've got two more website jobs currently in the works, and a couple more lined up after that. While my skills may not be quite as polished as a big-time professional web designer working for a firm, I'm getting better. Also, I think there's something to be said for having an artist's touch on a web design project. If you're interested in hiring me, shoot me an email at nomind (at) fightingwordscomics (dot) com.

Time waster

Flash Face.

Would you serve this man another Guinness?

Newspaper Blues

Sad day. The Seattle P-I was a fixture of my childhood, as my dad was a photographer there for nearly 20 years. When I was a kid, a few times I was allowed to sit and watch David Horsey and Steve Greenberg work at their desks, which were adjacent to the photographers' area. I went to Ingraham High School, just as Horsey did, and drew cartoons for the school newspaper. My dad's salary at the P-I would eventually put me through college at the University of Washington.

More than sad though, I am pissed off. There's something that's been bothering me for a long time, which was brought up again by this article in the NYT the other day and its accompanying graphic. I've written longer analyses on the plight of newspapers before, but if you'll permit me, I'd like to indulge in a little angry, superficial, Republican-style ranting about my surface impressions on a complex issue, the finer details of which I have little understanding. I am not an economist. I won't pretend that I have an alternative business model that will definitely work for newspapers, and that they are fools for ignoring this obvious course of action.

However, my read of the landscape tells me that this entire predicament for newspapers basically boils down to the existence of one website... CraigsList. The biggest killer for newspapers throughout this crisis seems to have been the drying up of their classified advertising dollars because of CraigsList. And thus, here's my rant: how in the hell can one little piddling website bring an entire vital industry like this to its knees?! How could newspapers not have a plan for this in their business models? The NYT article has the beginnings of an additional explanation -- that the huge newspaper chains took on too much debt "in a spree of buying other newspapers from 2005 to 2007, just before the bottom dropped out of the business" -- but that still doesn't explain to me the across-the-board tanking that you see in the Times' graphic. Not all failing newspapers are owned by greedy conglomerates.

How could newspapers have allowed this to happen to them?

This is not rhetorical... someone smarter than me please help me out with this...

Fighting Words: 3/16/09 Cartoon...

"Yuppanzees #2"...

Sorry about the "Classic" Fighting Words this week, folks... as I've been complaining about frequently, I'm having to spend quite a bit of time on website design projects to pay the bills. As a result, the cartooning hours suffer, since the cartoons don't pay for jack right now. So, you might expect a few more "Classics" from me this year than in years past...

OR

...as always, you can drop a line to your local alternative newsweekly and respectfully suggest that, instead of cutting out all their best content in these tough times, they should spend a little money on even more hard-hitting alternative political comic strips such as, oh I don't know, this one I like called Fighting Words!

Anybody who wanted to do that would be totally freaking awesome in my book...

Fighting Words: 3/9/09 Cartoon...

"The Wall Street Media's Faces of the New Great Depression"...

I'm doing a website job right now for a photographer, so I've got photojournalism on the brain...

Great cartoon business idea

Doing image research for this week's 'toon, I came across this. This guy takes monsters and other characters in kids' drawings, and develops them into full paintings.

Fighting Words: 3/2/09 Cartoon...

"Bobby's World"...

Fighting Words: 2/23/09 Cartoon...

"Big Money-Making Opportunity!!"...

Fighting Words: 2/16/09 Cartoon...

"Stuff I'd Rather Do Than Watch That Movie, #6"...

Fighting Words: 2/9/09 Cartoon...

"Drunk News Network: The Economy"...

Are you kidding me?

Michael Phelps suspended for 3 months by USA swimming.

This kid has been training his whole life to become an Olympic athlete, and won eight freaking gold medals. For chrissakes, LET THE KID HAVE A VACATION!!!

How many people do you know who do nothing BUT smoke weed?

Good 'toon

(click here to view)

V.C. Rogers Independent Weekly Feb 4, 2009 EditorialCartoonists.com

Does my blog still work?

Just checking...

9 days 'til pitchers and catchers report.

(Might be my favorite day of the year... not because the Mariners are gonna be any good, but because it means we're almost done with another God-awful Seattle winter!)

Fighting Words: 2/2/09 Cartoon...

"The Republican Recovery Plan!"...

My first post-election shot at Obama...

Fighting Words: 1/26/09 Cartoon...

"Shady Harbor Retirement Community"...


I'll just date this cartoon for yesterday... don't tell anyone...

Fighting Words: 1/19/09 Cartoon... and the "end" of Bush?

"Trav'lin' with Post-Presidency George W. Bush"...


Classic Fighting Words this week, as I have been utterly swamped with freelance design work. How, you ask, could I possibly not have a Bush retrospective cartoon on this, the week we're finally rid of him? See last week's 'toon on life in our new Great Depression... gotta pay the bills...

But, in all honesty, one big reason is that I do not plan to stop doing cartoons about him any time soon. I tried for weeks to come up with some kind of "goodbye" comic or special animation. The reality, though, is that most of our biggest problems right now were either directly caused by decisions that he made (Iraq, the degradation of civil liberties and the rule of law) or were problems that were made worse by his decisions (the economy, the environment). So many of the issues that we will be dealing with for the foreseeable future were basically his fault, I don't see any reason why he should automatically disappear from political cartoons just because he's not in office anymore. I would hope that I won't be like some conservative cartoonists who are still talking about Vince Foster and Whitewater 8 years after Clinton has left office, but neither should Bush/Cheney be allowed to ride off into the sunset.

But mostly it's the paying the bills thing... which Fighting Words doesn't really do. Want to keep seeing regular cartoons, from me or any of your other favorite political cartoonists? Write to your local newspaper and tell them!! There are a ton of portal sites like this one with links to all local papers, or you can look up your local Alt-newsweekly site here. If you only read comics like this online because you can't find good comics in the newspaper, write to them anyway and tell them that... maybe they'll finally get the idea that getting rid of all their best visual content may have something to do with them losing so much money.

Fighting Words: 1/12/09 Cartoon...

"As the Depression Turns"...


I'm a horrible, horrible blogger right now... hopefully I'll get in with something this week...

Fighting Words: 1/5/09 Cartoon...

"Billy, the Boy Who Knew Too Much #5"...



It's hard to put into words just how disgusted I am by these stories...

Fighting Words: 12/29/08 Cartoon...

"The American Dick-tionary"...

Animation FYI

So you may have noticed that the little animated additions to my weekly cartoons have disappeared. They've been a casualty of an increase in my side freelance work... (Money is good. I like money.)

Not sure how much excitement there was for those little animations anyway, since they were sort of crude. However, some of the other stuff I'm working on involves that damn Flash computer program, so my skills with this should be getting more gooder...

In other words, when I get back to doing regular animations, maybe I'll be able do something worth looking at!

Yes... I still hate the Yankees...

I was a little worried after last season, when the Yankees failed to make the playoffs for the first time since 1993, that I would have to stop hating them... that they might become, like, the underdogs now or something.

Nuh-uh. Nope.

With today's signing of Mark Teixeira, their off-season spending spree is now up to $423.5 million. ESPN news just ran a graphic showing some other things that could be bought with that kind of money, including something like 25% of the entire General Motors Company. But an even more galling figure is $1.3 billion -- the price tag for their brand new stadium opening up in April:

The new stadium on the north side of 161st Street is 63 percent larger than the old, with four merchandise stores instead of one, and 13 restaurants, lounges and food courts for the public, including a martini bar and a steak house that figure to become a destination for Wall Street's elite. There are 51 available luxury suites priced from $600,000 to $850,000 each, up from 19 at the old ballpark.

I say every other team in baseball should slash their ticket prices in half for games against the Yankees next year, so everybody who's struggling through our new Great Depression can go "explain" to them exactly how we feel about this.

Fighting Words: 12/22/08 Cartoon...

"Wild Planet, #6"...

Yeah, I'm pretty sick of the snow now.

A typical Seattle winter day of about 40 and rain actually sounds pretty nice right now...

Dog In Snow

Can't really get out to get much work done right now, here in the Great Northwest Snowstorm of '08!!, so I took the opportunity to play with my dog in the snow a bit...

Fighting Words: 12/15/08 Cartoon...

"A Christmas Carol"...

Fighting Words / Art News

Been a while since I did one of these posts, so let's catch up shall we?

• I did a workshop this morning at an elementary school in Kingston, WA, where I talked to some teachers about how to show kids how to do comics.  You know what they say: those who can't do, teach.  Those who can't teach... um... try to show other people how to teach.
  
  I have a decent little presentation put together, so if any other schools in the Puget Sound area want to bring me in to give a talk, send me an email at nomind (at) fightingwordscomics.com. And if you want to pay me to do it... well, I know how all you teachers here in Washington state are rolling in dough these days!
  
  Someone also sent me a great link recently for a group called "The Comic Book Project," which seeks "to help children forge an alternative pathway to literacy by writing, designing, and publishing original comic books." Check it out...
  


• I've updated the "Commercial Art" post to include a finished logo and sign design that I did for a local restaurant that's opening up soon, and I also put up a link to some Flash slideshows that I'm doing for clients of my dad, a wedding photographer.  The slideshows are probably the classiest thing I've done as a designer (they include great music by a local musician)... if you're a freelance photographer looking to add a new product or promotional tool, send me an email at nomind (at) fightingwordscomics.com.


• I've also started taking website design and construction jobs (links coming soon), and I'm even doing a tattoo design for a friend of mine. Someday, I'll do a page on my site with all of the non-Fighting Words projects that I've been working on...
  

Fighting Words: 12/8/08 Cartoon...

"The Reign of Big Beta"...

I had to do a little cultural research on this one... the Betamax/VHS format war was a bit before my time. For most of my life, "VCR" just meant "VHS."

Of course, if you got the point I was really driving at here, you know the cartoon itself has very little to do with videotapes...

Mark Fiore already did a great 'toon a few weeks ago on the lack of innovation in the auto industry, but I thought I'd go ahead and follow through with this take on the issue that I had been planning.


UPDATE: Hey, how about that... Ford actually did come out with a car they called the "Futura"...

Note to self

I was up very late the other night examining a masterpiece... an unparalleled example of human creativity at it's highest levels.

Here is a note that I scribbled to myself, verbatim:

Take relatively simple idea and present it with the utmost imagination, holding the audience's attention at every moment. The genius here is in the minutia, the subtle ideas of movement, timing, atmosphere, sound, music, and the perfect mix of obvious and unexpected, usually with a deeper literary or allegorical meaning that is only slightly alluded to.

Was I watching an experimental dance of some kind? A ballet? A beautiful foreign film?

Hell no:



Chuck Jones = super-genius.

Fighting Words: 12/1/08 Cartoon...

"Change Has Come"...

Meh... take a week off and it's like I haven't done one for a year...

By the way, it's sort of a sequel to this one:

Flash poster

Here's an interesting use of Flash in a "poster" for the upcoming Terminator: Salvation.  I like short, relatively simple but interesting uses of Flash like this (that aren't confined to pop-up ads)... 

I really hope this movie doesn't suck, by the way...

Sorry about your job... here's a blog!

I am a believer in the idea that the internet will be the future of newspapers, but something about this doesn't sound quite right:

The TypePad Journalist Bailout Program offers recently terminated bloggers and journalists a free pro account (worth $150 annually) on the company’s popular blogging platform. In addition to the free yearly membership, the 20 to 30 journalists who are accepted will receive professional tech support, placement on the company’s blog aggregation site, Blogs.com, and automatic enrollment in the company’s advertising revenue-sharing program.

I'm sure TypePad is just trying to do something nice for recently laid-off journalists, and someday this might be a really cool offer.  But at this point in time, it would just seem to add fuel to the Huffington Post way of thinking about the internet... like, "hey, exposure is just as good as money!"

I suppose the conclusion to draw is that it's just a shame newspapers have allowed their industry to get to this point, and haven't made more progress in making their product work on the internet (maybe, by extension, helping to make the internet a more reputable and profitable medium in general).  Of course, it's harder to do this when you've laid off all your talent.

Fighting Words: 11/24/08 Cartoon...

"The Skeptics"...


Classic Fighting Words this week -- doing a little recharging this weekend...

Fighting Words: 11/17/08 Cartoon...

"Chez Newspaper"...

Three more editorial cartoonists lost their staff jobs at daily papers last week. Among the many reactions to the layoffs, Jimmy Margulies did a pretty ingenious mock news article which reported that Harper's Weekly had eliminated the position of Thomas Nast.

I did a bit of analysis on the challenges facing the newspaper industry (and by extension my chosen profession) in this post last year.  However, I think this article by Philip Meyer is a must-read. Here's a few highlights:

The endgame for newspapers is in sight. How their owners and managers choose to apply their dwindling resources will make all the difference in the nature of the ultimate product, its service to democracy and, of course, its survival.

...

It is now clear that [the internet] is as disruptive to today's newspapers as Gutenberg's invention of movable type was to the town criers, the journalists of the 15th century.

...

Robert Picard, a media economist who looks at newspapers from an international perspective, believes that [newspapers] try to do too much. He expressed this view in June at the Carnegie-Knight Task Force conference on the Future of Journalism at Harvard University. Newspapers "keep offering an all-you-can-eat buffet of content, and keep diminishing the quality of that content because their budgets are continually thinner," he said. "This is an absurd choice because the audience least interested in news has already abandoned the newspaper."

If they should peel back to some core function, newspapers would still have to worry about the Internet and its unbeatable capacity for narrowcasting. The newspapers that survive will probably do so with some kind of hybrid content: analysis, interpretation and investigative reporting in a print product that appears less than daily, combined with constant updating and reader interaction on the Web.

...

[I]t is possible to envision a scenario in which newspapers trim down to a specialized product and survive by serving a narrow market well. They are already trimming down. But what are they trimming down to? Have they thought about what's left after all the shrinkage?
One of the rules of thumb for coping with substitute technology is to narrow your focus to the area that is the least vulnerable to substitution

...

I still believe that a newspaper's most important product, the product least vulnerable to substitution, is community influence. It gains this influence by being the trusted source for locally produced news, analysis and investigative reporting about public affairs. This influence makes it more attractive to advertisers.

It's pretty clear to me what major industry in this country is most in need of a "bailout"... the question is: would they know how to use it right?

Fyi - no animation quite yet on this 'toon again, but if you missed it, I did do a little something for last week's. I'm kinda liking this schedule of getting the static 'toon done and posted on Mondays, and then coming back to the animation later in the week (when I can take my time and put some thought into it).

Viaduct Revisited...

The Seattle P-I has some really cool graphics illustrating the differences between the various plans for the Alaskan Way Viaduct, which I blogged about in this post last year. State officials have said that they will make a final decision by the end of the year.

Now, if you live in Seattle, you probably know all about this already. If you don't live in Seattle, take a look at the pictures (especially the "Waterfront view") and tell me which option you would choose for your own city. The differences in the images are glaring. This area has the potential to be one of the coolest (and most valuable) parts of the city. It makes absolutely no sense to spend so much money on another giant concrete slug running through there... especially if it's just to save a couple minutes on a trip to the airport for people who just have to drive their cars everywhere. The alternative option of an elevated freeway dressed up with grass and other development just looks odd to me, and extremely expensive. The tunnel options all seem extremely dangerous given the crumbling seawall.

Take that money, invest more in Metro buses and streetcars and light rail, make the streets surrounding that area easier to travel on, and let the citizens enjoy that area finally. Boom, I just solved Seattle's biggest problem.

Good God that's cute...

I hate "cute" stuff. It's all "nice" and... um... "cute." I like stuff that kicks ass, like death metal and raw sewage!!

Of course, when it comes to dogs (especially my dog), I am probably the biggest softie on the planet. And damned if this isn't about the cutest thing I've ever seen...

Fighting Words: 11/10/08 Cartoon...

"Letter From 2012 in Obama's America"...


This was one of those cartoons where doing the artwork was like going back to drawing in class in middle school... like, "kick ass, I'm gonna draw a TERMINATOR now!"

If you haven't seen the letter that was the inspiration for the 'toon, do yourself a favor and check it out... pure hilarity! Just a harmless piece of fearmongering propaganda that was apparently being circulated by James Dobson's Focus on the Family before the election. It's an invented letter from the perspective of an imaginary person from 2012, telling the story of the horrific world we'll live in after 4 years under the thumb of the tyrant Barack Obama. It is a world where U.S. cities are getting attacked by terrorists left and right, Israel has been nuked by Iran and forced to cede most of its territory (apparently, Israel didn't feel like retaliating that day), and the Boy Scouts of America no longer exists because the new liberal Supreme Court was trying to force young boys to sleep in the same tents as homosexual scoutmasters. The "tipping point" for all this horror, and the reason the Court was now stacked with liberal oppressors, was Justice Scalia's surprise resignation in 2009 due to "health reasons." Uh-huh. I'll bet just about anything I own that Scalia will keep a death grip on his seat until the moment he breathes his last breath.

By the way, no animation on this one quite yet, as the coloring took for-ever...

My Palin Admission

Now that that's over...

I have an admission to make regarding the popular perceptions about Sarah Palin. I don't expect to do any more cartoons about her, so I'll blog about it now. Here's my admission:

I DO think that it's possible that there was an element of sexism in how people evaluated her, in one respect only...

Yes, she is an incredible moron, who is in no way qualified to hold higher office. Yes, she's an extremist nut-ball who has no business making decisions for the rest of us on important stuff. And yes, she deserved to get hammered for these things in the media.

But these things were also true of Bush. This should have been abundantly clear before the 2004 election, and yet people gave him the benefit of the doubt and put him in office for a second term.

Sexism? Who knows...

All I know is I won't be giving up the chip on my shoulder over the '04 election any time soon...

From the Neglected News Dept.

... in the "how in the hell am I just now reading this?" division...

On Tuesday, Mexico's Secretary of the Interior (their #2 official, the equivalent of Vice President) was killed when his Learjet crashed into "a posh Mexico City neighborhood" amidst rush hour traffic. Nine people on the plane and five people on the ground were killed. According to the Yahoo story, speculation is widespread that "the drug cartels were to blame."

Am I missing something here? Aside from being a rather important news story, it's at least interesting, wouldn't you say? Yeah we've had other stuff going on this week, but...

Thankfully, almost every news site on the web has among their lead stories that one of Hugh Hefner's ex-girfriends is getting married.

Obamas considering rescue dog

Of course, this has absolutely nothing to do with why anyone would support Obama (the politician) on anything...

But it would be yet another really, really cool side-story in this whole great saga.

Pure Science Fiction

Almost lost among all the big news: celebrity global warming-denier (and pal of everyone's favorite senator) Michael Crichton died at 66.

Escaping from reality will never be the same again...

Fighting Words: 11/3/08 Cartoon...

"The Bradley Effect"...

No animation on this one yet, as I wanted to get it done and posted. I also want to see if I can use the Twilight Zone theme song royalty free...

Mainly though I want to get some other stuff done tonight so I can rest my eyeballs on the TV screen all day tomorrow. It all comes down to Pennsylvania, folks. The race in that state is crucial not only because of the polling numbers and the number of electoral votes at stake, but also because I think the results in PA will shed light on just how much influence naked racism will have on the results of the election as a whole. It cracks me up that John Murtha is getting so much flak for telling the truth about many of the people in his state.

Obama can still win if he loses PA (assuming he loses FL and/or OH, even though he has slight leads there), but it'll be close then...

Ted Stevens caricature

Wow...

And I thought my caricature was nasty!

News item

109 year-old woman, daughter of a slave, casts her vote for Obama.

via Buzzflash

Great stat...

...heard in passing on Air America just now:

Apparently, a poll was done of people who had already voted in the State of Florida, and 6% of those people were... you guessed it... still undecided about who they were going to vote for.

Fighting Words: 10/27/08 Cartoon...

"Karate Kid, Part V"...

Worst of the Worst

Esquire has a list of the 10 worst members of Congress.  Hard to argue with most of their choices, but...

OK, you know when someone does a list of the 10 greatest rock songs of all time or 10 greatest pro sports teams of all time, and some music/sports geek (like me) has to post a screaming rant protesting the exclusion of one or more choices?  I hate to be that guy, but...

C'MON!! How you gonna do a list like this and not include a guy who has to be one of the top 10 assholes in the entire history of congressional assholery? SERIOUSLY PEOPLE... put some effort into it...

Watada

Good news:

If the Army tries to court-martial 1st Lt. Ehren Watada a second time, it cannot prosecute him for refusing to deploy to Iraq, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

Seeking a conviction on that charge -- the most serious that Watada faced -- would constitute double jeopardy, U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle in Tacoma decided.

The Watada case was the inspiration for this cartoon last year...

Fighting Words: 10/20/08 Cartoon...

"Alien Society, #7"...

A Little Anim...

To make up for the lack of animation on this week's 'toon, here a little somethin' somethin' to look at... my first walk-cycle! I did this a while ago, part of my perpetually in-development second full animated short:





Doesn't look like much, but that's actually a lot of work on Flash.

As unbelievably complicated as Flash is for a numbskull like me, it actually starts to get fun once you get the hang of it...

Fighting Words: 10/13/08 Cartoon...

"Period Piece"...


Tryin' something a little different with this one... no animation yet, but I'm sure I'll come back to it at some point this week and pick at it.

Debate Deux

I found it interesting that David Gergen, in CNN's post-debate cluck-fest, said he thinks Obama's "blackness" (his word) will automatically cost him 5 points on election day... as if that many people who go into the booth fully intending to vote for Obama will all change their mind at the last second when they remember he's a black guy.  I usually like Gergen's levelheaded analyses, but you gotta wonder here what century he thinks he's living in... or more to the point, if he's actually correct, what century that 5% of voting Americans think they're living in.

Matt has a 'toon on the subject...

Flash Probs

I'm getting more reports that the Flash versions of my 'toons aren't working quite right for some. I've noticed myself that it's hit-or-miss on Safari, especially when linking in from certain sites. However, it seems to work just fine in Firefox.

Two solutions for now: view the animation in Firefox, or click on the link to the non-Flash version above each cartoon.

Thanks for bearing with me...

Fighting Words: 10/6/08 Cartoon...

"Corporations: CRISIS!!"...


Some previous episodes with the Corporation Guys:

Ghosts I - IV

Updating this post, I did indeed end up buying a "copy" of NIN's online album offering, Ghosts. I gotta say, even though it's all instrumental, it's damn good.

Great zone-out-while-working album...

Random Thoughts

• You might notice that my "Moron" posts have disappeared... they haven't gone away forever, but they won't necessarily be every week anymore. I'm not gonna do 'em unless I have something interesting that I really want to talk about. I will be doing more posts on other topics, though...
  


• I've made my Archives front-page a little more user-friendly...
  


• Seeing Griffey back in the MLB playoffs brings back some fuzzy memories. I have a vague recollection of my hometown having a successful baseball team once. I can't be sure, though...
  


• I think if I don't talk about my favorite TV shows more often, they're going to suspend my blogging license...
  
  So anyway, if Fox cancels Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles, I'm gonna be supremely pissed. I watched the pilot last year out of curiosity, fully expecting it to suck, and I've been totally hooked ever since. Lena Headey brings a really cool vibe to the title role...
  

Veepin'

I'll call that a successful prediction... Palin didn't sound quite as stupid as she had the potential to (aside from her bizarrely exaggerated folksiness), and yet not a word escaped her lips that might indicate that she has the capacity to formulate independent thoughts on most important issues.  She was clearly coached to steer the topics toward answers that she had already rehearsed ahead of time.

Most prescient pre-debate editorial cartoon:

(click here to view)

Clay Bennett Chattanooga Times Free Press Oct 1, 2008 EditorialCartoonists.com

Palin debate ramp up

As is often the case, I'm reminded of a quote from the West Wing:

C.J.
Toby, I'm absolutely terrified we're going to lose the expectations game. I can't believe how many times I get asked what would be a win in the debates. At this point I feel like if -- and only if -- Ritchie accidentally lights his podium on fire does the President have a fighting chance.

TOBY
I disagree.

C.J.
Disagree all you want, but I'm right.

TOBY
These two men are going to be side by side on the stage, answering questions. That's the ball game.

C.J.
If the whole thing is, he can't tie his shoelaces and it turns out he can, then that is the ball game.

TOBY
And I believe he'll have to do more than tie his shoelaces.

C.J.
Not much more.

I think everyone needs to cool it a little on the predictions that Palin will have a total meltdown in her debate. If it turns out she sounds just slightly less dumb than Tina Fey's caricature, then we'll be treated to a mudslide of claims that she "won" the debate... when she still hasn't actually said anything of substance.

Fighting Words: 9/29/08 Cartoon...

"Fuzzy Campaign"...

Even more debate thoughts...

I'm going to be hammering on McCain some more in the next 'toon, so I'll document here what's bothering me about Obama's performance last night.

What we have here is a tale of two Obamas. First, we have the Obama who is an electrifying presence and a dynamic public speaker, who energizes his base and motivates people to vote for him because he is Barack Obama. This is the guy we saw during the DNC.

Then we have the Obama who stumbles through his arguments and gets weighed down by figures, who kow-tows to the far right in an effort to ingratiate himself some mythical Democratic notion of the "reg'lar Amer'can," and who makes proud independents ultimately not trust him and feel ambivalent about their choice since they don't really see any difference between the two candidates. This, of course, is the Obama we saw last night, for the most part (congratulating John McCain for his stance on torture? What?! The same guy who voted against the ban on waterboarding?).

This second guy is the type who merely motivates people to vote for him just because... well, he's not quite as bad as the other guy. Ask John Kerry how this guy does in elections that should, by all accounts, be easily winnable.

Personally, I'd like to see the first Obama in the next debate.

Debate "whaaaaaa?"

Did McCain just try to compare Obama to Bush on Iraq at the end there?

That's an impressive little bit of hypocritical bullshit jujitsu to make that argument...



MORE THOUGHTS: Don't get me wrong, here... I wasn't entirely blown away by Obama's performance tonight.

But I did think he landed the zinger of the night when he finally came back at McCain's deranged mocking of the concept of international diplomacy with, "Look, nobody is saying we're gonna sit down and have TEA with these people, you disingenuous piece of shit!!!!"

Obviously, I added a bit there...

Free Palin 'Toon!

After seeing the Katie Couric interview with Sarah Palin, it's becoming clear that this is a person who is totally out of her league. She has no idea what to say beyond campaign slogans and generic talking points, and she even panics a little when pressed to do some critical thinking on rather simple issues:

COURIC: You've said, quote, "John McCain will reform the way Wall Street does business." Other than supporting stricter regulations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac two years ago, can you give us any more example of his leading the charge for more oversight?

PALIN: I think that the example that you just cited, with his warnings two years ago about Fannie and Freddie--that, that's paramount. That's more than a heck of a lot of other senators and representatives did for us.

COURIC: But he's been in Congress for 26 years. He's been chairman of the powerful Commerce Committee. And he has almost always sided with less regulation, not more.

PALIN: He's also known as the maverick though. Taking shots from his own party, and certainly taking shots from the other party. Trying to get people to understand what he's been talking about--the need to reform government.

COURIC: I'm just going to ask you one more time, not to belabor the point. Specific examples in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation?

PALIN: I'll try to find you some and I'll bring them to you.

Makes me think that this week's cartoon should have looked more like this:



In fact, let's do this: if you click on that image above, you'll get a high-resolution JPEG that should print up pretty nicely. I'll do this Trent Reznor-style and say "this one's on me"... feel free to print that up, and fill in the bubbles with anything (words? doodles? photos? loogies?) that you think best represents what the heck Sarah Palin is really trying to say. Put 'em up in your office to annoy your Republican co-workers who are trying desperately to convince themselves that she is actually qualified! Here's a few more to play with, including some in black & white and some with fewer bubbles:



If you make use of these, do me a favor and shoot me an e-mail at nomind (at) fightingwordscomics.com describing what you came up with (or even scan it and send me a copy)... I'd love to see them!

I'll leave these on my server through the election. I took the byline off, but left my copyright on... all I ask is that you not sell it (as in this Creative Commons license).

Enjoy!

Yes

(click here to view)

Ed Stein Rocky Mountain News Sep 24, 2008 EditorialCartoonists.com

Fighting Words: 9/22/08 Cartoon...

"A Self-Explanatory Cartoon"...


Alternate title: "Four Years of Bleeding Ears?"
Alternate title #2: "The Voice of Pa[l]in"...


OK, this one sucks... but my creative tank was on "E" this week.

A lot of people have been telling me that they think Sarah Palin's voice is so annoying that it will soon start causing them to experience seizures. Mostly women... in case anyone wants to accuse me of being sexist...

More on the Palin image...

Stuff for this week's 'toon:

• This cracks me up:
  

  Robert Kagan, a foreign policy adviser to McCain, derided criticisms of Palin as elitist.
  “I don’t take this elite foreign policy view that only this anointed class knows everything about the world," he said. "I’m not generally impressed that they are better judges of American foreign policy experience than those who have Palin’s experience.”
  One top conservative foreign policy wonk who declined to be named said he believed some of the questions surrounding Palin’s experience are sexist.

  So many things to say here... but most of them would be better saved for another cartoon. Stay tuned...
  
  
• Juan Cole:
  

  She knows nothing about how Iran is run, or about Pakistan, or about al-Qaeda, and even is ignorant of the Bush doctrine of preemptive warfare. It was a shockingly bad performance.__She had the hubris to suggest that her lack of knowledge and experience is a virtue. Why Americans, practical people, would fall for this line is beyond me. Would you want your car to be worked on by an inexperienced and ignorant mechanic? Would you want a plumber messing around with your pipes who did not know his way around wrenches?

• Don Hazen:
  

  And who is left out of the idyllic, nonexistent vision of "America" so adored by conservatives? Huge numbers of Americans: city dwellers, people of color (who represent 26 percent of eligible voters -- but that's not important to Republicans. As the Washington Post reported, the Republican convention was the whitest in 40 years), homosexuals, millions of creative people whose lifestyles are not in the Palin world view, and of course single people, particularly single women.

  
  ...and he makes this hilarious point earlier:
  

  The biggest blow to the idyllic scene was the small fact that her teenage daughter was pregnant and was going to get herself married to the guy right away, even if he doesn't want kids and prefers to be "fuckin' chillin," according to his MySpace page.

  
  
• David Talbot:
  

  "Her campaign locked her in a closet during the governor's race in 2006 -- and they're doing the same thing now," said one longtime Democratic consultant here, who like many others asked to remain anonymous because "it's a small state and Sarah takes names and numbers."
  "They're setting a trap for the country," he continued. "Keep her away from the press, while they set up these phony 'tests' for her. The first test was her speech before the Republican convention. They spread all this nervous chatter about her -- is she ready for prime time, can she pull it off?

  
  
  

Fighting Words: 9/15/08 Cartoon...

"The Joy of Painting With John McCain"...



You may also notice that I've changed the title design, both on the cartoon and on the website pages. I was getting a little tired of the old one, and also I've been seeing that Copperplate font EVERYWHERE these days... businesses, advertisements, websites, television, stadiums (it's the font plastered all over the Seahawks' stadium)...

Pre-toon

This week's 'toon is done and up on the AAEC site (link below). I haven't yet posted it on my site as I'm finishing up the animation and a couple other little things...

(click here to view)

Abell Smith Eat the State! Sep 16, 2008 EditorialCartoonists.com

I had my Sunday knocked out watching the Seahawks lose in embarrassing fashion at Qwest Field. Beautiful day weather-wise, though (probably one of our last of the summer), that could not be spent inside...

More on Palin, RNC...

A couple of things for this week's 'toon:

• A typically outstanding piece by George Lakoff:
  

  [T]he Palin nomination changes the game. The initial response has been to try to keep the focus on external realities, the "issues," and differences on the issues. But the Palin nomination is not basically about external realities and what Democrats call "issues," but about the symbolic mechanisms of the political mind -- the worldviews, frames, metaphors, cultural narratives, and stereotypes. The Republicans can't win on realities.
  ...
  Just arguing the realities, the issues, the hard truths should be enough in times this bad, but the political mind and its response to symbolism cannot be ignored. The initial Democratic response to Palin -- the response based on realities alone -- indicates that many Democrats have not learned the lessons of the Reagan and Bush years.

• Paul Krugman:
  

  [F]undamentalist Christians are sincerely dismayed by Roe v. Wade and evolution in the curriculum. What struck me as I watched the convention speeches, however, is how much of the anger on the right is based not on the claim that Democrats have done bad things, but on the perception — generally based on no evidence whatsoever — that Democrats look down their noses at regular people.
  Thus Mr. Giuliani asserted that Wasilla, Alaska, isn’t “flashy enough” for Mr. Obama, who never said any such thing. And Ms. Palin asserted that Democrats “look down” on small-town mayors — again, without any evidence.
  What the G.O.P. is selling, in other words, is the pure politics of resentment; you’re supposed to vote Republican to stick it to an elite that thinks it’s better than you.

Fighting Words: 9/8/08 Cartoon...

"Memories of the 2008 Republican Pep Rally"...

Huh?!

Obviously, I've got very little in common with Chuck Asay ideologically, but I've always respected his cartooning style, and it's hard to begrudge another cartoonist his or her own editorial slant...



However, I would like to ask him just what the heck he's trying to say with this cartoon:

(click here to view)

Chuck Asay Creators Syndicate Inc. Sep 5, 2008 EditorialCartoonists.com

Call for complaints...

I've been getting a few reports that the Flash versions of my recent comics aren't working right for some people. If you're having problems (or even if they work perfectly for you), please send me an email at nomind (at) fightingwordscomics.com and give me an earful...

Really... it's the only way I'll learn...

More on Conventions...

No Moron post for this week's 'toon on the media and the DNC... cuz... well... I don't feel like it.

However, here are some videos from the RNC that totally blew me away... it's highly probable that you've seen some of these already:

• I first saw the video of Amy Goodman getting arrested for being a journalist when Jen linked to it. Here's another one from after her release. Glenn Greenwald also has a ton of video links.
  
  Yeah, thank God the cops were able to subdue that frightening menace to public safety, Amy Goodman (who can't weigh more than 100 pounds). She was about to go Godzilla on that street! Amy Goodman SMASH!!!
  
  The fact of the matter is that this is about as egregious a violation of the First Amendment as you will ever see caught on video. One would hope the St. Paul police department will be facing some serious legal consequences.


• This is close to the most hilarious thing I've ever seen. Fox News is now officially something out of a Paul Verhoeven movie. They apparently just don't care that they have completely turned into a giant parody of themselves.
  


• Here's a video of Rage at the RNC, doing Bulls On Parade and Killing in the Name Of (without instruments).

Damn!

As with Katrina, I was pretty much glued to the television over the weekend watching hurricane coverage. I just realized that DirectTV has been airing coverage by WDSU, which is the local NBC affiliate in N.O. So all this time, I could've been watching people who actually care about giving out substantive information on what is happening to their region, instead of relentlessly forcing the "story" angle down our throats...

Mainly, though, I could've spared myself the pain of watching cringe-worthy anchoring by CNN's Rick Sanchez and MSNBC's Dan Abrams.

Fighting Words: 9/1/08

"The Li'l TV Journalist Kit!"...

Hurricane coverage...

First really shitty moment of the coverage:

CNN just cut off the president of Plaquemines Parish, who is on the scene fighting a levee breach south of New Orleans (with peoples' homes at risk), to go to Laura Bush speaking at the Republican Convention...


Are you kidding me?


...and HOLY SHIT. They just did it again for Cindy McCain!

Evacuation Shocker...

Who would've guessed that the private contractor who played such a huge part in screwing up the Katrina evacuation, a busing company called Landstar Systems, would now fail to fulfill its contract to supply buses for a Gustav evacuation!

And, what an incredible surprise that Landstar is politically connected to the Bush administration! Who could've predicted that such people wouldn't really give a shit about the citizens of New Orleans!

I'm shocked! SHOCKED, I tell you!

Holy Crap!

News... overload...

Too... many... cartoon... ideas....



Of course, the only one of these stories that really matters in the immediate future is Gustav. Whether or not it hits New Orleans directly, NOLA is predicting it will be a Cat 4 before it hits land. Perhaps we could finally all agree that global warming might have something to do with it, considering our shores are getting hit by monster 100-year storms about every 3 years now?

Just a thought...

Slowpoke at the DNC...

If you're reading this blog right now... dude, get off the internet and turn on the convention! Actually, better yet, turn on the TV (don't forget to mute the talking heads), stay on the internet, and go to CWA-er Jen Sorensen's live-blog from the festivities. She's got some great observations...

More on Revisiting Katrina and... uh-oh...

By itself, of course, John McCain's "houses" gaffe is pretty meaningless. It's just another "gotcha" moment that the media loves. I saw a figure somewhere that Theresa Heinz-Kerry is actually worth five times what Cindy McCain is worth... and, as you may recall, we heard a little bit about that one too. What makes this one important is that it reminds (or should remind) everyone about that crazy little thing known as right-wing economic philosophy, of which John McCain is a dutiful follower. You know, that little school of thought that says "greed is good" and dreams of an American plutocracy where 99% of us simply exist to enhance the wealth of the super-rich. And three years later, Katrina is still the issue that exposes Republican economic policy for what it is... a scam.

However, all that really matters at the moment is that there's another hurricane headed into the Gulf with an ominous projected path. Cross your fingers and toes that everybody has learned their lesson... I just saw the embattled Ray Nagin on CNN, who is about to leave the Dem convention to head back to N.O. He didn't blow me away with his optimism...

Articles and stuff for this week's 'toon:

• On Katrina: Oxfam has released a report that "reveals how little progress has been made."
  
  From a NOLA resident:
  

  We normally work a 40-hour workweek, and we go home, and we take a couple of days off, and we go about our business. And that's not the way Katrina has left us all. It was seven days a week, 24 hours a day down here. And people don't understand or appreciate the fact that we're not back. We won't be back for 10 years.

  
  FactCheck.org:
  

  McCain was asked by a New Orleans reporter why he voted twice against an independent commission to investigate the government’s failings before and after Hurricane Katrina, and he incorrectly stated that he had "voted for every investigation." McCain actually voted twice, in 2005 and 2006, to defeat a Democratic amendment that would have set up an independent commission along the lines of the 9/11 Commission. At the time of the second vote, members of both parties were complaining that the White House was refusing requests by Senate investigators for information.

  
  Progressive Media USA:
  

  Friday, September 16, 2005: "Deficit Hawk" McCain was skeptical of federally-funded reconstruction efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, yet he insisted his tax cuts for the wealthy are more important than reducing the deficit.
  ...According to The New Leader, "An objection of a different sort was raised by Arizona Republican Senator John McCain, who is pondering a run for the Presidency in 2008. He maintains conservatives want to "do whatever is necessary to address this national disaster." Then he adds: "We also have to be concerned about future generations of Americans. We're going to end up with the highest deficit, probably, in the history of this country." [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 9/17/05]
  ...During an appearance on ABC's This Week, George Stephanopoulos asked McCain, "If Congress does not give you the spending cuts you say you can get, will you hold off on signing the tax cuts?" McCain said, "No, of course not, because we want to increase people's taxes during a recession?"

  
  What... a... piece... of... shit.
  
  
• On the McCain economic plan: a great column from Paul Krugman.
  
  Also Think Progress:
  

  ...McCain is running a campaign of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich. He recently defined rich as earning $5 million or more and doesn’t know how many houses he owns, and at the same time, McCain is proposing a tax policy that primarily benefits the rich. In fact, under his proposal, McCain himself would receive a $300,000 tax cut, while middle class Americans would receive only a few hundred.

• On the more humorous topic of McCain's houses, Matthew Yglesias has a list of some of the many amenities offered at one of McCain's more luxurious Phoenix condos. See also two great YouTube clips here and here.
  

Fighting Words: 8/25/08 Cartoon...

"The Fabulous Lifestyle of John McCain!"...