For the Friday before Thanksgiving, one of my favorite cartoons this year!!

You know who inspired me to do this cartoon? Two liberal cartoonists, Ted Rall and Rob Tornoe.  Ted writes about the war and other things making him itchy about Obama – he’s just not a fan this year! And Rob has issues with gay rights. BIG ones. I’ll post a couple of his gay cartoons later this week.

Anyway, they are just so annoyed, I felt I had to rub it in with this cartoon. :)

Cartoon caption: THE DISCOURAGED DEMOCRATS CLUB. No rich people. Obama hasn’t done any big shakes for gay rights. We’re still at war! Is Afghanistan next? Come ON, you guys! We have almost 90% employment!

Are you one of them?

I think it’s the no rich people that makes me laugh the hardest. Dems hate rich people!

Today was tough. I couldn’t find anything I wanted to do a cartoon about!

Then I read this. According to Yahoo News:

Some 14,700 rich Americans, worried about a stepped-up U.S. crackdown on offshore tax cheats, have turned themselves in under the government’s amnesty program.

The Swiss Justice Department said it would hand over the names of wealthy American clients of UBS with accounts holding more than 1 million Swiss francs ($986,200) where there is a reasonable suspicion of tax fraud.

Accounts of a lesser size, as low as 100,000 Swiss francs, could be included in certain circumstances when there is a “scheme of lies” identified, according to the document.

“The threshold for disclosing accounts, in my opinion, is low,” said Kevin Thorn, a Washington-based tax lawyer. “Most believed the threshold would have been $1 million-plus but it appears the government is holding to its word and looking at conduct more than amounts and is going after taxpayers across the board.”

Senator Carl Levin, whose congressional panel has investigated tax evasion for several years, said the language leaves too many loopholes for the Swiss.

Is anyone surprised he’s a Democrat? Read more »

Sarah Palin’s new book, Going Rogue, is out! Oprah honored her with a chat. All forgiven.

I see Top of the Ticket in the LA Times just reviewed Going Rogue: An American Life. No, not really! Instead, Andrew Malcolm just quoted from a review in the WaPo written by Ana Marie Cox, the original Wonkette from Gawker.

One thing is clear: No one can say today with any certainty what lies ahead in national politics for the hockey mom and Todd’s biggest snow-machine racer fan.

Now, one minor disclaimer: We haven’t actually read Palin’s new book. Not one single page. We have a copy. We intend to read it. And we imagine it’s fairly entertaining, perhaps revealing, as self-serving inside political stories go. We may even autograph it to ourselves from her.

Also, hopefully, it’s short on exclamation marks!!!

Read more »

The slayings at Fort Hood came very close to Veteran’s Day, so I think some cartoonists broke out their sad pens early. I did a cartoon on something worse than Ft. Hood, which I’ll put up later this week. Meanwhile, tomorrow is Veteran’s Day, so…

Since I just started doing op-ed cartoons in February for Slate, I wasn’t sure how to approach this holiday, and what type of editorial cartoon would be respectful yet also cheerful! What do vets do? I don’t know any, except my father. Surely not all of them are decrepit, as so often they are drawn in cartoons. I hate parades. Do I draw another cemetery? I don’t even know what clothes they wear.

Fortunately, Daryl Cagle, who owns and operates Cagle Cartoons, put up a slew of cartoons about Veterans Day last week, so I could at least see what guys had done in past years. Here’s what I decided: better alive than dead, and they wear green with a lot of medals. (fallen soldiers is more Memorial Day.)

The war dog was my own idea, too. Here’s more on War Dogs. (It’s a very messy and unorganized site, but I guess dogs are like that, too. It’s the woof that counts.)

The cartoon: What all Vets want to hear most: GOOD JOB!

I added the colored frame to the 2nd version, and also a star to the dog’s chest belt, to prove he was in the military, too. I couldn’t find any examples of what real military dogs wear, but hope this gives him creds. (He’s also wearing veteran dog tags, but they’re hard to see.)

Happy Veterans Day to all brave men, women, and dogs!