This Mother’s Day cartoon is in honor of Cathy Seipp, a writer for National Review and many other publications, who taught me it’s okay to be a conservative.

doctor tells pregnant mom that she's having a non-partisan boy

Cathy was also a fine mother, which defined her almost equally with her political leanings. Doesn’t every new mother want to know how their child will turn out? Especially his or her politics? The sex alone just doesn’t cut it in the fortune-telling business of pregnancy now.

Cathy’s daughter is a proud Republican. You did a great job raising your girl, Cathy.

Cartoon caption: Doctor talks to pregnant woman in his office: It’s a boy, Mrs. Seipp, but we won’t know for a while whether he’s liberal or conservative.

Another Mother’s Day cartoon, about the movies.

And yet another, non-political Mother’s Day Cartoon, over in Psychology Today. Kind of a downer.

More cartoons:

1. Going as Octomom for Halloween?
2. Halloween party for liberals who worry.

Obama sends a Valentine and box of chocolates to the Right

Hmm, this is totally strange. I did this cartoon a while ago, but just a few hours ago this went up, from The Hill:

On Twitter Thursday, the GOP announced a new project, GOPValentine.com, which offers a selection of 18 Valentine’s Day cards that spoof the Democrats on policy.

So I guess I have something to contribute to it, huh?

They’ve already sent out 30,000 Valentine Republican cards!

Cartoon caption: Man holds big box of chocolates and a Valentine’s Day card. Embroidered sampler on wall says Bless this GOP home. “It’s from President Obama. Be My Health Bill Valentine.”

Related articles

• RNC teases Dems for Valentine’s Day (thehill.com)

More cartoons:

1. Turn in your red meat! Guns are okay, too.
2. Memorial Day cartoon.

Still, I have thought we should legalize marijuana forever. WTH, why is tobacco so good for you, yet pot isn’t? They both smell hideous, and they’re both addictive, but let people have what they want and  let’s get rid of the drug dealers, petty arrests, etc.

white house witch cartoon

Prop 19 is California’s attempt to do this. However, as happens way too often, the big fat government had to stick their nose in our business and like Supernanny, give us a Stern Warning. From the Wapost:

Attorney General Eric Holder is warning that the federal government will not look the other way, as it has with medical marijuana, if voters next month make California the first state to legalize pot.

The comments in a letter to ex-federal drug enforcement chiefs were the attorney general’s most direct statement yet against Proposition 19 and set up another showdown with California over marijuana if the measure passes.

With Prop 19 leading in the polls, the letter also raised questions about the extent to which federal drug agents would go into communities across the state to catch small-time users and dealers, or whether they even had the resources to do it.

The Post says approval is high. But the LA Times says they found likely voters opposing the measure 51% to 39%.

But supporters of the initiative have not raised enough money to run the television advertisements needed to reach voters across the state.

Gah, get it together, guys. This ineffective campaigning doesn’t say anything positive about the smokers, does it.

Caption for Google: THE WHITE HOUSE WITCH. Hanging skeleton holds Prop 19 sign. Witch at door of White House holding bowl of ciggies with 2 trick or treaters: No marijuana here, kids. Just good old-fashioned tobacco!

I had fun picking out the green for her hands. I had her all in black, witch is appropriate, but not that visually interesting. Then I saw a photo on Facebook of a friend’s (rented) costume, so I added the symbols in her hat, and the fringe on her sleeves. And then I remembered that I had a really great sterling silver bat necklace, which I will be wearing later tonight (my father bought it for me in some desert town in Arizona when I fell in love with it!), so I gave her that to wear, too. Also, I wear lipstick that color from time to  time.

My favorite election cartoon of 2010 (no link, Uclick deleted 2 years of cartoons):

electoral interlude

More cartoons:

1. Where can I find some juicy Medical Marijuana?
2. Great Halloween cartoon of haunted house!

2nd amendment cartoon on the 4th of July

They’re not legal in Philadelphia, either, but they have them in the Amish counties! Yup, Dwight Schrute territory. Right next to the special quilt fabrics and needles.

The writing on the corner is a soupcon of Outsider Art. What crazy people and others do – lots of word and writing to get the idea across.

That little boy looks so happy.

More on gun control to come, of course.

Cartoon caption: Amendment 2a: The right to bear sparklers. Happy 4th to our troops.

More cartoons:

1. Tofu for Thanksgiving cartoon, not necessarily vegan.
2. My first Sarah Palin cartoon, gun included.

soldier's grave and ipad cartoon

This cartoon cracked me up, but I am dark, so dark.

I don’t know who gets my cartoons, really. I’m just grateful that most editors do. But my editor at Slate didn’t put this really interesting drawing, with toned colors and mood and a really funny joke, on the front page! Astounding! Also, annoying.

Yes, I know Memorial Day is to honor downed military. But not everyone gets the gravity, especially young people.  The fact that the delayed health care plan may have killed this guy… and that getting his new iPad was equally as important (and it’s purple, which seems to be allowed at Apple)… This is Saturday Night Live humor, at least in my eyes.

Caption for blind Google: Gramps, thanks for protecting our country…I’m sorry Obama didn’t get the health bill done in t ime for you…and I finally got that iPad I wanted… JACK SHEPHERD, SOLDIER, LOST, HUSBAND and Here lies Politico.

Have a peaceful, honorable, and, yes, funny Memorial Day.

Also, I’m kind of behind in doing my LA Times editorial roundup, but look for one tomorrow.

More cartoons:

1. Ink spill cartoons for the LA Times for May, 2010.
2. 9/11 Cartoon in 2009.

But does this Easter rabbit hate THE Tea party, or Alice in Wonderland’s tea party? I guess it depends if you like politics or the movie.

I wrote about the Alice movie Premiere in the LA Times earlier, but still haven’t seen the movie, and that’s the way I like it.

More cartoons:

1. Easter cartoon on the birthers.
2. Do you have to fill out any forms to join the Tea Party?

This made me laugh last night when I wrote it. It still makes me laugh! Maybe I’m just a morbid cartoonist who likes accidents and death, or maybe I am amused by the hoax that that one guy has been pulling on us. Kind of suspicious from the beginning, yet I couldn’t put my finger on why…

From the LA Times:

Toyota Motor Corp. said Monday that its preliminary investigation into a runaway Prius incident a week ago resulted in findings “inconsistent” with the driver’s account.

The automaker said at a San Diego news conference that two days of testing failed to reproduce driver James Sikes’ reportedly stuck accelerator, leading to a nearly 30-minute ride on Interstate 8 before he could get the car stopped.

Okay, it was a Prius, not a true Toyota this time. Big diff – sue me, I’m a girl.

Over the weekend, Gomez said his client was sticking to his story and that a “ghost-in-the-machine” type of software failure, if to blame for the incident, would be difficult to reproduce in testing.
Toyota executives steered clear of saying that Sikes was not being truth- ful.

That’s a weird hyphen in truthful. Sikes’ story is here.

I love the part where the CHP said it was washing its hands of the whole story hoax! (for some reason, the AP rewrites stories constantly, so a great quote I remember from one story is gone from the next version of the exact same news story. But here is the cached quote.)

Toyota said it believes a CHP officer’s account that he smelled burning brakes while guiding Sikes on the freeway.

“That is the puzzling aspect of this,” Michels said.

Brian Pennings, a spokesman for the California Highway Patrol, said his agency’s view that there is no evidence of a hoax is unchanged. The CHP does not plan to investigate the incident because there were no injuries or property damage.

Just the facts, ma’am. However, the CHP is blushing on the inside.

Back to me being mean. There is a theory on the internet that all a creative person needs to survive is 1000 true fans. The idea is that those 1,000 true fans will buy $100 each of your album, posters, tshirts, etc, in such abundance that you will be set for life. This ignores books – many writers write just one – paintings, and many other kinds of art, but this is the internet we’re talking about, it’s fanboys, and music is their game. I just love pyramid ideas like this. [/sarcastic]

Well, in Gocomics, they have a list of how many subscribers you have next to your name or feature, if you hover on the name. It’s free to subscribe – it just means you get it in your mailbox, or on your home page. They used to put them in order of popularity, which was more convenient or also more embarrassing, if you’re new or unliked, but now they just have the top 10. Since it’s always the same top 10, they remain the top 10, since they sit there and more people click on them, since they ARE the top 10… ad infinitum! (Sorry, no links now. Uclick threw away 2 years of my cartoons on Slate, Gocomics and Yahoo News when they kicked me out of Gocomics.)

I have 3,539 subscribers as of this hour. That would put me in the Gold Record Label group if I did music, but as a cartoonist, not so much. The syndicated guys automatically get thousands more – not sure how that works – and the top man in editorial is Ted Rall, with 19,600 subscribers.  The regular comics guys have many more, with top strips like Non Sequiter and Garfield with 59,000 subscribers.

Every time I do a cartoon about Democrats my subscribers go down. They hate that! Today wasn’t partisan at all, just Toyota runaways, but my subscribers still went down by 7. That’s a lot in one day. So do they hate spring, or Toyota, or getting up in the morning? Or aren’t I supposed to talk about deadly car accidents in opinion cartoons? Hard to tell, with that surly lot.

Cartoon caption: It’s spring! The birds, the bees, the runaway Toyotas flying down the freeways!

More cartoons:

1. Deny, deny, deny, saith Toyota.
2. Does Toyota hate immigrants?

It seems logical that Santa would visit the unemployment office AFTER Christmas, of course, but those pesky editors just aren’t in the mood to buy Santa Claus anything after Christmas Day – I guess they think the cartoon should be half price! This year, with over 10% unemployed (as Obama confirmed  in the oh so casual before Christmas White House Special that Oprah did, that has already aired twice – yeah, it’s over 10%.) seems like unemployment is any time of the year. There’s a good chance many Santas didn’t get to work this year at all, so I hope this makes sense both before and after Christmas.

Yikes, unemployment went up to 12.5% in California, the Los Angeles Times said!

California still has the fourth-highest unemployment rate in the nation, yes, and its unemployment rate is a whopping 4.5 percentage points higher than it was in October 2008. But the job gains are a significant part of a trend that’s seen the pace of job loss slow as the economy pulled itself back together again.

What the hell do they mean?

California actually added 25,700 jobs in October, making this the first month since April of 2008 that the state has gained jobs.

Truly, sometimes I think they just rearrange facts at the Times to have something new to say.

Anyway, I added 3 elves to this particular Santa, so we know he’s the real one, and I’m sure he worked this year. Didn’t I get some Christmas cards, and don’t I have a new monitor coming real soon?! Could not resist having one of the elves holding a new Christmas toy – perhaps an iPhone, or – wait a second- wouldn’t it make more sense if it were a BLACKBERRY?  Ho ho ho.

Cartoon caption: “But it says here you have 350 years experience in overnight delivery…” at the Unemployment Office.

I must say, I had a lot of fun fooling around with a rough bumbling Photoshop brush for the background, and even for Santa’s suit. The colors are exactly what I was hoping for.

More cartoons:

1. Santa is unemployed and may need Prozac.
2. Graduation chuckles for the undereducated crowd.

Anyway, back to Christmas! I’ve been studying what the layout is of the White House, trying to see the furniture properly, which apparently changes with each new King and Queen. The Christmas tree shown on Oprah’s special took days to decorate, with dozens of volunteers. It was beautiful. I guess it stuck in my mind,  and that’s how this Christmas tree popped out.

Did President Obama really do a lot at the Copenhagen Climate talks? Besidess show up, I mean?

CNN talks about the importance of rainforests and REDD:

The U.N.’s REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries) program is a collaboration between the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and Environmental (UNEP) and Development (UNDP) programs.

The idea is straightforward; If the function of rainforests — capturing carbon, water catchment, weather regulators and biodiversity — is recognized their value will rise.

The WashPost said, with unusual optimism:

That almost happened. The fact that it didn’t may pose a slight glitch, but is unlikely to halt the proliferation of such projects around the world.

Well, I have no idea if those projects will work, so I put my 2 cents in, with my very own Christmas tree ghost. Yes, I know there many not be many conifers or pines in rainforests (although I believe there may be a rainforest in Oregon, in which case there may be some there.), but that doesn’t matter, because this tree cares about all trees. He’s a good tree.

Cartoon Caption: “I’m the ghost of Christmas trees past. Why didn’t you win the rainforests measure, Mr. Softhead?”

Can I tell you how much “Mr. Softhead” makes me laugh? I don’t think I ever heard the word, but I keep a thesaurus right by my thinking cap. :!

More cartoons:

1. Santa was laid off. AGAIN.
2. Santa is unemployed and may need Prozac.

Tofu Thanksgiving! With joke in corner, not by Oliphant

Cartoon caption: TOFU FOR THANKSGIVING! Vegan, or…Bankrupt? [Toles or Oliphant would draw a small mammal here]

I wish you could see the family better here…we only get 500 px width on Slate. But it was fun drawing all the food, tiny-like! And I think I made tofu more fun than it has a right to be.

But the part that makes me laugh hysterically – yes I do entertain myself sometimes, which means I have a good job, right? – is the part in the corner about the well-known Pulitzer-prize winning editorial cartoonists Tom Toles and Pat Oliphant, who have  this constant melody of little animals or people or birds saying the punchline in the corner. I’ve seen Mad Magazine and Nickelodeon (now folded) do the same thing…

But what I’m curious about is which of these two op-ed cartoonists did it first; and who’s the copycat? :)

More cartoons:

1. Look how cute the NY Times op-ed is!
2. Editorial cartoons for LA Times, April 2010.