Categories
Blog Newsletter Syndicate

I vote for NO WITNESSES!

On Friday the Senate is expected to vote on whether to call witnesses for the impeachment trial. As of now, it is possible that four Republicans can be found to vote for witnesses, in particular, John Bolton –but it is likely there will not be four Republicans who vote for witnesses. Here’s my cartoon …

I was reminded that people like to see my rough sketches, so here you go.

You can see I fiddled with making the elephant’s butt bigger and moving his head forward, and whether or not to put the tie in front of his shoe. This is an odd angle to draw, but it is the best angle for effective mooning –I’ve done it before. Here’s one that I drew over 20 years ago, during the Florida recount in the Bush vs. Gore election.

My biggest regret from my career as an editorial cartoonist is that I supported the run-up to the war in Iraq, and I believed The New York Times‘ bogus stories about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. (I won’t make the mistake of trusting The New York Times again.) Here’s one of my run-up to war in Iraq cartoons, about Saddam obstructing the weapons inspectors in Iraq –we later learned that what Saddam was hiding was his fragile ego, since he had no such weapons.

I think it is a general rule for editorial cartoonists that whenever there is a good excuse to draw a butt, a dog or a Statue of Liberty, you gotta grab it and run.

Categories
Blog Syndicate

Split Congress and Sinking Oil Prices

Here’s one I drew a week ago that I forgot to post here! The Democrats have the House and the Republicans have the Senate – I look forward to seeing divided government at work again!

I’m impressed by how quickly oil prices are plummeting, and pulling down that stock market. The cartoon below was an oldie that I drew the last time this happened. There isn’t much news that is truly new news. The same old news seems to happen over and over, so sometimes I dust off an appropriate oldie.

This one needed to be in a vertical format, something that makes editorial cartoons sink. Editors like to leave a standard sized wide box as the editorial cartoon hole to fill each day, so deviating from the standard 1.5 wide by 1 tall box means a cartoon doesn’t get much ink.

But, sometimes I need to break out of the box. I hate being stuck in a box!

Categories
Blog Syndicate

Red Meat for Trump’s Base

The mid-term election is coming on Tuesday and president Trump’s strategy is to gin up fear and loathing of immigrants to motivate his base to come out and vote.

Editors don’t like blood in cartoons –but maybe delicious immigration red meat blood is different –it seems to work for Trump.

Categories
Blog Syndicate

Media Shark Dinnertime

The media feeding frenzy grows as more Trump confidants “flip”!

Maybe I’ll draw a follow up cartoon with blood in the water – no blood from Fox News, though; they may just deflate a little as scandals grow.

 

Remember the cartoon below? This shark cartoon was easy to draw because I had already gathered all of the logos!

 

Categories
Blog Syndicate

Thoughts and Prayers

The most recent school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas was interesting for the contrast with the Parkland, Florida shooting where student survivors rose up to lead protests, making eloquent arguments for gun control. In deep red Texas the response is standard, Republican “thoughts and prayers.” I’m sick of “thoughts and prayers” so this is my cartoon:

There are lots of cartoonists who feel the same way. Here are some of my “thoughts and prayers” favorites …

By Steve Sack:

By Ed Wexler:

By Nate Beeler:

By Kevin Siers:

 

 

Categories
Blog Syndicate

Guns and Puppies

There will be a big march on Washington for gun control, led by students who are energized by the threats they face with the continuing plague of school shootings. Politicians appears to be deaf to the outrage.

If gunmen shot puppies instead of people the politicians might jump to take action. An incident where a flight attendant forced a passenger to put his puppy in an overhead bin, where the puppy asphyxiated and died, has energized politicians with outrage and calls to action. Clearly, puppies are the priority in Congress.

Here’s how my cartoon looked in USA Today, yesterday.

Categories
Blog Syndicate

Blame Him

We have a government shut-down and all we’re hearing is arguments about who is to blame.

There is plenty of blame to go around!

Here’s my cartoon in USA Today, today (1/22/18). I do a different version for grayscale.

Categories
Blog Syndicate

Doggie Sexual Harassment!

Celebrities and politicians are getting slammed with sexual harassment allegations from years ago. It must be the same in the doggie world. 

I hate to draw cartoons about crime. Cartoons about bad guys are usually lousy cartoons because they only bash the bad guys, and it doesn’t add much to the public debate to say “that bad guy is bad” in a cartoon. The sexual harassment debate is different because it looks like tribal loyalty “trumps” moral conviction. One accuser against Senator Al Franken, who accepts his apology, is a cause célèbre for Republicans who call the many Trump accusers “fake news.” The same was true of president Bill Clinton; Democrats dismissed Clinton’s many accusers as liars. It seems there are no tribes in Hollywood as accused celebrities are dropping like flies.

Here’s a cartoon I drew about Judge Roy Moore’s supporters last week. The air is thick with hypocrisy these days.

It may seem like sexual harassment hasn’t been in the news until now, when there is little else in the news – but sexual harassment is an evergreen topic with cartoonists. Here’s one I drew about Bill O’Reilly.

And here are two I drew about sexual harassment in the military.

Here’s one on Bill Cosby.

Here’s one on Trump and his infamous Access Hollywood tape.

And I’ll round this out with a couple of Anthony Weiner cartoons.

Here’s my Anthony Weiner infinity cartoon.

 

Categories
Blog Syndicate

Tax Dependent States

The new Republican tax plan takes away the deduction for state income taxes, which will hit the high-tax blue states hardest. The red states that voted for Trump are the federal welfare cases.

This cartoon features very blue California and very red Tennessee, two great examples of blue-donor and red-dependent states. I drew this one as a local cartoon for the weekly Nashville Scene when I was living in Nashville and I updated it a bit to apply to the issue today. Things don’t change much.

If this was an issue of fairness, the income tax should be reduced in hight-tax donor states and increased in low-tax dependent states. Of-course this is not an issue of fairness. The red states voted for Trump and now it is time for them to get some payback, at the expense of the Hillary states.

Categories
Blog Syndicate

Republicans: Repeal and Replace!

The Democrats worked on passing Obamacare for a year and we got lots of cartoons with the medical symbol, the caduseus. Republicans don’t have so much time to plan, they are swallowing healthcare whole without chewing – and it is caduceus time all over again! Here’s my Republican healthcare debate cartoon …

I drew this as a live-stream on Twitch. See me in the video below as I start with a blank sheet of paper and no layout in mind.

The next video show me coloring this one, along with tomorrow’s cartoon about Trump and Twitter …

Categories
Blog Syndicate

Republicans Craft a Replacement for Obamacare

Here’s my cartoon about Republican deliberations as they craft an Obamacare replacement bill, in secret.

This is a cartoon that I drew many years ago, when the Republicans were fighting about some subject that I don’t remember now (I added the Obamacare title yesterday and reposted the cartoon). It seem the Republicans are united when we have a president who is a Democrat, but a Republican president seems to get them fighting with each other again.

American donkey and elephant characters, as representations of our political parties, is a mainstay of American editorial cartoonists, making our cartoons difficult for foreign readers to understand. Since Trump is often at odds with other Republicans, cartoonists have been drawing fewer elephants recently. There was a time when we could count on Republicans to oppose deficit spending and a static list of issues that don’t register high on the Trump agenda, so the elephant character is hard to define now, and even harder to associate with Trump. But when Republicans fight with each other, I don’t have to worry much about definitions.

Categories
Blog Syndicate

Our new ERROR Cartoon!

Now that we have new editorial standards and are killing the raunchiest cartoons, we’re leaving some holes. We rely on our cartoonists to upload their own cartoons, which sometimes leads to some nasty stuff that we’ve been taking down as the world’s cartoonists rage against Donald Trump with the nastiest metaphors in their cartoon toolboxes. After we kill a cartoon on our syndicate sites we can take some time killing the cartoon on Cagle.com, which is left with an awkward hole where the killed cartoon would have been. We also have some tech problems sometimes that lead to a bad image.

All of that led us to the conclusion that we needed an error cartoon to act as a placeholder for Cagle.com cartoons gone bad. Here it is …

Hopefully you won’t see this cartoon very often.

I drew this one live on Twitch – want to see? Watch the video below!

In the next video, watch me coloring the cartoon, while I chat with fans on Twitch …