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The pundits on Fox News are holding their breath, turning blue, waiting for Obama to say the words, “Islamic Terrorists.” It may be a long wait.

I’ve gotten comments about how there appears to be nothing inside of Obama’s head. I wasn’t really thinking about making him be brainless, rather I was thinking of his skull as something of an echo chamber.

This cartoon was the product of my first try at live streaming the process of my drawing a cartoon. I had some tech difficulties, particularly with the sound. And I see that I will need to develop a new skill set for talking constantly while I draw. I should do a little better next time, solving these problems as I go along. Take a look at the YouTube video of my drawing session below. If the streaming is popular I’ll set up a regular time for it in the future. In the meantime, I’ll announce on Facebook and Twitter when I’ll be going live on YouTube.

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San Bernardino, Guns, Republicans and the NRA

My cartoon today about the terror attack in San Bernardino, inspired by the interesting front page on the New York Daily News.

Standing in a crowed of bloody, murder victims while saying something ironic or hypocritical is a cartoon cliche that every cartoonist has drawn many times. Here’s a similar cartoon that my buddy Pat Bagley drew recently in response to San Bernardino …

This Steve Sack cartoon is probably my favorite San Bernardino cartoon – it is a response to the New York Daily News  prayer front page and the rejection of another gun control vote in congress, with a wonderful rosary.

Here’s another one of my dead field of victims cartoons about Bashar Assar – as fresh today as it was when I drew it some time ago.

Here’s another one where I used the same victims. I traced the same dead crowd, and changed their clothes to Taliban duds.  There was a story at the time criticizing American servicemen for peeing on the corpses of Taliban fighters they had just killed in battle. I got a lot of angry reader response to this cartoon.

This also isn’t the first time I’ve drawn the NRA as a pig. Here is a Cagle classic NRA pig cartoon …

Pigs are a wonderful cartoon standard; they are a symbol of greed. Here’s a standard Cagle piggy oldie …

Pigs and standing among fields of the dead are two of my favorite things! (Maybe that’s another reason why those Islamic extremists don’t like cartoonists.)

 

 

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The GOP and the Refugee Doorway

The Republicans are trying hard to push back against the inflows of refugees and immigrants. Here’s my take. Often when I do cartoons that have muted colors, I get complaints from editors who want brighter colors. Refugees don’t lend themselves well to bright colors.

Often when I do cartoons have have muted colors, I get complaints from editors who want brighter colors. Refugees don’t lend themselves well to bright colors. I’m trying to do more texture in my cartoons now. Here’s a detail.

refugeeDoorDetail

Here’s my rough and dirty sketch. You can see that I fiddled around with the position of the elephant’s trunk before I was happy with it.

Doorsketch

I put a “Thanks to Michael Kounturis” in the lower left. Michael works out of Athens, Greece and he is one of my favorite cartoonists; he recently came back to our CagleCartoons.com newspaper syndicate package after a hiatus. My GOP Doorway cartoon was inspired by Michael’s cartoon below.

I stole a lot from Michael’s cartoon, including the position of the door and the guy pushing back on the door – and the general composition with the doorway poking up, off-center. It is all lovely – so thanks, Michael, and you have my apologies for ripping you off! See more of Michael’s great cartoons here.

 

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Republicans and Refugees

This week the House passed a bill that would stop the US from taking in 10,000 Syrian refugees; President Obama promised to veto the bill if it reached his desk. All of the Republican presidential candidates have been crowing about stopping refugee immigrants in the wake of the terror attacks in Paris, and the cartoonists have been doing some healthy Republican bashing in response, often including the Statue of Liberty with its obvious irony. Here’s mine …

I was impressed by this one, from my buddy Pat Bagley of the Salt Lake Tribune, featuring the dead Syrian toddler found on the beach in Greece, with Lady Liberty’s toes …

This Liberty in the position of the dead boy on the beach, by my cartoonist buddy Milt Priggee impressed me even more. (It would have been better without the sentence in the black rectangle.)

This Liberty is from my socialist cartoonist buddy, Rainer Hachfeld, from Germany.

There’s no Statue of Liberty, but this refugees cartoon by Hajo de Reijger of the Netherlands is so elegant in its form that I had to share it here …

 

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Reince Priebus

I think Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus is funny. His name is funny. His face is funny. Everything about the guy is funny – but he’s tough to draw in a cartoon because most readers don’t know him. It is only wonks like me who watch cable tv news talking heads all day who get to know the guy. But what the hell, I drew him anyway.

reince-priebus-debates-cagle

I was also looking for an excuse to use this brick wall. Brick walls are funny too. And that last Republican debate on CNBC, that was funny.

I’d love to hear the negotiations that are going on about the next GOP presidential debate. Their first list of demands was funny.

Here is the rough sketch (you guys tell me you like to see this stuff). You can see that I was undecided about where to put Reince’s left arm. Maybe he’s better with four arms.

PriebusSketch

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The New House Speaker, Paul Ryan

Today the house Republicans voted to make Paul Ryan the new house speaker, replacing John Boehner who seems to have taken a responsible turn in negotiating a spending bill.

Paul Ryan was Mitt Romney’s running mate, and he has a history as a budget-cutting-wonk. He also had longer, puffier hair the last time around, which was much more fun to draw.

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Carson Tortoise and Trump Hare

Bombastic Donald Trump is falling behind Ben “slow and steady wins the race” Carson, which sounds to me like the Tortoise and the Hare fable.

Both of these guys are gifts to cartoonists. People find it disturbing whenever I mention this, but I like Donald Trump, compared to the other Republican candidates – it sounds crazy, but I think he’s more reasonable and moderate than Carson. It is only Carson’s demeanor that implies moderation.

Notice that I avoided drawing a tail on the turtle (most turtles have nice little tails). Given the position of the running turtle, there was no position I could find for a tail that didn’t look like a turtle penis. Self-censorship – its an ugly thing.

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Monkey on Your Back

I’ve enjoyed the recent back-and-forth sniping between Donald Trump and Jeb Bush about whether President George W. Bush “kept us safe.” Of-course the answer to that is that he kept us safe, here but not overseas, from September 12th, 2001 going forward – a couple of qualifiers that Jeb neglected to mention.

A “monkey on the back” is an editorial cartooning standard – in fact, my buddy Taylor Jones drew a better George W. Bush monkey on the back cartoon recently, that I noticed just now, after I finished my cartoon above. I might not have drawn it had I noticed Taylor’s excellent work first – oh well, there will be plenty of monkeys on the back to come.
taylorMonkey

Here’s President George W. Bush as a monkey on the back of John McCain back in 2008, by David Fitzsimmons.

This is one of my favorite monkey-Bush oldies, by Sandy Huffaker, from the good old days of 2005.

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Republican Leadership Puzzle

The Republicans in the House of Representative are a real puzzle – so I decided to go with that for today’s cartoon. Perhaps this a little obtuse. I think that readers who are familiar with my work would be able to decipher my GOP elephant from just a tiny little puzzle piece, but this cartoon may go over the heads of many readers.

I thought it was possible that some readers (particularly elderly readers who love old-fashioned jigsaw puzzles) might actually cut the little pieces out and assemble the puzzle – and it actually works! SPOILER ALERT — scroll down to see the solution … or, is that really the solution … ?

AssembledGOPpuzzle

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Republican Disarray!

The Republican battles for Speaker of the House make great theatre. Here’s my new one – a battle royale.

Here are a couple of oldies that I reposted because they seem so appropriate right now.

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Donald Trump Tongue Noose

Today on CNN there is a constant barrage of Trump-bashing in response to Trump’s John McCain-bashing. The TV pundits seem sure that Trump’s words have doomed his presidential campaign; I’m not so sure, and as a cartoonist I enjoy having Trump around.

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Donald Trump Tongue Noose

Donald Trump Tongue Noose © Daryl Cagle,CagleCartoons.com,Donald Trump, Celebrity Apprentice, NBC, president, Republican, President, Presidential campaign, tongue, John McCain, POW, prisoner of war, veteran, hero, tongue, noose, hang