DarylCagle.comWe 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.
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.
The story about President Trump’s awkward condolence call to the widow of a fallen soldier has dragged on for more than a week. I wasn’t going to draw about it, but as the story droned on and on, with more awkward false tweets and statements from the White House, it looks like I can’t avoid this one.
See more cartoons on the topic here. Here are a few of my favorites; the first is by RJ Matson.
Isn’t the hair nice on this Ed Wexler cartoon?
I think the image of Trump throwing paper towels to the hurricane victims in Puerto Rico, and Trump’s love of walls struck a chord with Marian Kamensky.
Sean Delonas may be our most conservative cartoonist. Here Sean shows his disgust for Congresswoman Frederica Wilson.
Our consistently conservative cartoonist, Rick McKee, seems to like Chief of Staff John Kelly’s statement, even though it contained false accusations about the Congresswoman.
Nate Beeler can sometimes lean to the right too …
Here’s one from Steve Sack.
I think this Pat Bagley cartoon is my favorite.
President Trump pulled the funding rug out from under ObamaCare, which may not have been failing before, but is much more likely to fail now. Trump supporters claim that this is to light a fire under Congress to fix the problem – more likely, it will just light a fire under the healthcare system, leaving it scorched – like a marshmallow over the campfire.
I love the caduceus symbol for medicine, with the two snakes and the little wings at the top of a pole – it is a wonderful cartoon cliché that allows me to do healthcare cartoons without words. As healthcare poses existential political issues that divide the Republicans, I’ve had plenty of opportunities to bash the elephants with caduceuses.
Obama took a bite out of the Republicans by pushing ObamaCare through congress without a single Republican vote.
Obama took a moment to gloat.
Republicans can’t agree on healthcare, and likely won’t get anything done, leading Trump to blow the system up. Perhaps congress will be more willing to clean up a big healthcare mess of Trump’s making; they can always blame it on Obama.
More likely, I think healthcare will be the issue that sinks the Republican party.
President Trump surprised the pundits and his own Republican party when he sided with the Democrats this week. Trump hasn’t been getting much from the grouchy, ineffectual Republicans, so it shouldn’t be surprising that his eye starts to wander.
That Democrat is quite a cutie.
This cartoon is similar to one I drew many years ago, when President George W. Bush was looking to jump into wars around the globe.
Men don’t change much, huh?
There is a lot of Kryptonite around – and Kryptonite is deadly to Superman who runs into the stuff all the time – but Kryptonite never actually kills Superman, who just suffers a bit once in a while from the Kryptonite, then he moves on.
This cartoon is about the congressional baseball shooting, and is based on a cartoon I drew six years ago about the Gabby Giffords shooting. Things don’t change much.
I was troubled to see a cartoon by our own Taylor Jones, on the front page of FoxNews.com in what seems to be a screenshot of the congressional baseball game shooter’s Facebook page, along with the headline: “HISTORY OF HATE.” I thought it was unfair of Fox News to put Taylor in that spot.
Steve Sack, the Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune commented, “It could have been any cartoonist’s work there. They’re using a deranged moron’s actions to stifle satire. I’ve seen attacks on TV comedians today as well. Hang in there, Taylor.”
Steve is correct about the right focusing their ire on satire. Conservatives thrive on talk radio where liberals haven’t been able to find an audience because the nature of liberal discourse is different – morning zoo radio and late night comedians are where liberals commune. We would rather laugh at Colbert or Saturday Night Live than listen to hours of Rush Limbaugh preaching reassuringly to his choir. Liberals can laugh at themselves, while conservatives laugh at liberals. This is something we see in totalitarian states around the world, as over half of the world’s population lives in a nation that doesn’t allow cartoonists to draw their nation’s leader. Conservatives and despots both have trouble laughing at themselves. This is a worry to me when Trump talks about limiting press freedoms, and when the media picks up the right’s criticism of satire. I suspect we’ll see more examples of conservative media lumping cartoonists together with monsters.
I’m told that CNN has been repeatedly showing Taylor’s cartoon from the gunman’s Facebook page this morning. Taylor sent me these comments …
There were lots of cloud cartoons after former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony last week about President Trump asking Comey to “lift the cloud” of the FBI’s investigation into former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. I drew a cloud cartoon myself!
The Comey testimony was a TV ratings hit and I was impressed by how different the coverage was on CNN and MSNBC versus Fox News – that’s what led to my cloud cartoon, and another one I’m drawing up today.
Here are some more Comey cloud cartoons I enjoyed; By Nate Beeler, Steve Sack and John Cole …
Here’s my new cartoon about gerrymandering, with a kid drawing an accurate map of Maryland’s 3rd Congressional District in crayon on his living room wall. Gerrymandering is the process of drawing district lines, often house by house in crazy maps, to give an advantage to a particular party or candidate.
Gerrymandering will be more in the news soon as former president Obama has said he will be working hard on the issue and our former governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger says he may run for the Senate on the issue of gerrymandering. We’ll see a new round of congressional gerrymandering with the next census in 2020, with lots of battling for position taking place in the run up to the state elections where Republican legislators have been very successful in drawing crazy districts that gave them control of congress (Democrats are just as bad when they are in control.)
See me draw this one in real time, in the video below, and see a map of Maryland’s 3rd Congressional District!
In the next video see me coloring the cartoon in Adobe Photoshop on my Wacom Cintiq.
Today we saw the TrumpCare/RyanCare Repeal and Replace bill go down in flames – or poop. Here’s my cartoon.
This is based on a cartoon I drew in 2009 when President Obama and the Democrats were pushing Obamacare through Congress.
Want to see me draw this one in real time? Check out the video below …
And here’s the video of me coloring the cartoon in Adobe Photoshop on my Wacom Cintiq …
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 …
