Here’s my weekly blog about my latest cartoons!  The last two are about the drop in the stock market and rise in interest rates after remarks by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.  Here’s another take on the Wall Street bull.

And here is Bernanke, trimming rates, only to see a little sprout of the economy bloom.

Bernanke, and Greenspan before him, have been trimming rates for a long time.  This cartoon adds sprouts to a three year oldie (right).  This one amuses me because it is the kind of thing our editorial cartooning professional organization will be discussing next week – whether to ban editorial cartoons that consist of alterations to previously drawn cartoons.  The cartoon police may come down on me for ethical infractions like this one.  Cartoonists are a humorless bunch, when it comes to “cartoon ethics.”

The previous cartoon was about the NSA eavesdropping scandal.  Presidential ears tend to grow over the years in editorial cartoons, and Obama’s big cartoon ears have become absurdly huge among my colleagues.  I once met Obama’s buddy, Susan Rice when she was UN Ambassador, and all she wanted to talk about was why I draw Obama’s ears so big.  I didn’t have a good answer, except for “peer pressure.”  I may keep drawing Obama’s ears small.  Maybe the cartoon police will cite me for a small ears infraction too.

The next cartoon is about “Value Added” testing of teachers.  This cartoon is just a list of the bad things value added testing encourages teachers to do.  There have been lots of testing scandals around the country featuring these abuses, among others.  I got an interesting response to this cartoon from defenders of teachers, who saw the cartoon as “teacher bashing” rather than testing bashing.