But I wrote a big long report about the incompetent killing machine, the LA County Animal Shelters, and you might like to take a look. It’s in my animal/park blog, Griffith Park Interrupted. This was my first blog I started, and I have been able to see results from it, fortunately.

There are lots of pictures, too, taken by some of the worst photographers in the state, some of the shelter employees. Here’s one to whet your appetite.

Cold Water. Yes, that's what this is labeled. I'm going to guess there is a fish in here somewhere... Half the horses listed don't have a pic at all.

Excerpt from the post:

The photographs are so bad that I started making copies of them, and put them in my collection of Worst Shelter Pictures Ever. Some look like experimental art, and others like the animal is being tortured. I’ve asked several shelters if they need new cameras. No, they have several.  Each animal is photographed on intake (or should be) by the intake officer who picked them up, so the blame (or praise?) is on them. Shouldn’t the worst photographers be disciplined or trained or put on another job?

But let’s be honest here – EVERYONE has a camera with them at all times, in their cell phone if nothing else. No one needs itraining on how take photographs anymore. And no one would take pictures this bad of their friends or family. It’s unfathomable.  So what is their excuse for photos this terrible? This is the point at which we should seriously examine their motives: are these bad pictures a way to keep animals from being adopted…job security for the shelter workers, in other words?

More cartoons:

1. Ted Rall scolds Time Magazine for their Top 10 cartoons.
2. Who’s your rac-ist?

I thought everyone could use some help on this. I’ve been doing cartoons on California and the upcoming elections for almost 6 months now for CalWatchdog, this extraordinary journalism site for a think tank in Northern California, but haven’t posted many of them here yet. It’s time.

demon sheep campaign by Carly Fiorina vs Tom Campbell

Okay, now this was  a pretty impressive campaign move. This Youtube on Tom Campbell as a demon sheep – or is it all other Republicans in general are sheep? – by Republican Carly Fiorina is classic Hollywood, and it went viral in days! Gather calls it “the most bizarre political ad ever.” And oddly enough, the makers of this video, just set up their own website 2 days ago, calling this a trilogy!

I think Fiorina’s…exaggerating. Plus, it’s not my voting dealie, so no comment on that election. More cartoons below.

meg whitman vs steve poizner in a technical Mexican standoff

I found the California Governor campaign much more shocking!! CalWatch journalist Steve Greenhut (formerly of the Orange County Register, and author of the best-selling Plunder: How Public Employee Unions are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives) said he thought these exchanges between the 2 candidates for Republican governor were rather silly and much ado about nothing, but I was truly horrified. (the words in the cartoon caption are what they really emailed each other.) I had no idea such arrangements happened in the backroom of fierce political campaigns!

Sure, when millions upon millions are spent – and both these candidates are made of  Croesus’s gold – I can see why they would try to keep costs down and expectations reasonable. But they actually try to bribe each other, and make backdoor promises? Do they really follow through on these promises?

What happened is that Steve Poizner made these emails from Meg Whitman public, and did report it to the FBI, or threatened to.

From the LA Times:

Steve Poizner’s allegation that Meg Whitman used attempted bribery and extortion in an effort to push him out of the gubernatorial race was merely an attention-grabbing stunt by a desperate dark horse, many contend. Hopefully, they’re right.Because if Poizner was sincerely angry and really does believe — as he wrote state and federal prosecutors — that the Whitman camp deserves criminal investigation, this is scary.

It raises the possibility that Poizner has no stomach for making political deals, the kind of mutual back-scratching needed for any democracy to function.

No, it’s not scary, it’s exposing the truth. I don’t think most people know or think these kinds of deals are “needed for any democracy to function.”

But the campaign has gotten even more violent, with car crashes, and worst of all, the name LIBERAL thrown like mud on each other! OMG, there’s nothing the right hates worse than being called that! And I agree! From the Times:

So it has come to this: Two Republicans who said they would bring cool business acumen to the governorship are, in the last weeks of their primary race, locked in a screaming match over immigration and welfare and the hot insult “liberal.”

This was not what either Steve Poizner or Meg Whitman said their campaigns were to be about….

For Whitman, the former head of EBay making her first bid for office, the turnabout from high-flying frontrunner to muddy brawler has been particularly brutal…

By last week, however, her once massive lead had diminished substantially and Whitman was firmly on familiar turf for a Republican primary — issues that play on cultural or racial notes.

The LA Times is on familiar turf, too, isn’t it? Saying if it’s Republican, it’s got to be rac-ist. UGH.

Who will win the sea lion prize? Whitman, Poizner, Brown political cartoon

Anyway, my last cartoon on them is ecological, of course. I seem to be the ONLY cartoonist on Slate who ever does cartoons on the environment or conservation. (except for the birds in oil, yuck, which are also cliche.) It’s true about the sea lions starving. I don’t know if it’s true that Meg Whitman doesn’t believe in green, or Steve Poizner said she’s not as pretty as he’s used to getting, or if Jerry Brown keeps a sea lion and other wildlife in his swimming pool. But he might.

You can find most of my California cartoons at CalWatchdog, the day they go up, and they have comments there, too.

Cartoon captions for blind Google: California: the most dramatic state in the union. I’m very rich. I’ll put you in the wood chipper! Don’t run for Governor – you can be a senator.- Meg Whitman. I’m mega-rich. Don’t threaten me! You bribed me! I’m telling. Hello, FBI? – Steve Poizner.

Does this picture make you think of Tom Campbell, Visine, or California’s need for a better Sheep Exorcist? Cartoon paid for by Carly Fiorina, For Senator.

Scientists say sea lions are starving because of El Nino. However, Meg Whitman doesn’t believe in El Nino, and Steve Poizner said she looks like a sea lion. Jerry Brown is keeping one in his swimming pool.

More cartoons:

1. Carly Fiorina would look good in shiny black leather.
2. The beach, the surf, and California’s political campaign. Aah.

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?

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.

Thanksgiving is only 3 days away! So this is your warning: be sure to eat enough at dinner so you aren’t tempted to bite the other family or guests.

It’s cruel and inhumane.

This blog at Sephora says that monkeys (and people on a limited calorie diet look noticeably younger.

But from a beauty perspective, it does what we want every anti-aging product to do–makes you look younger. Check out the picture of Mike (scroll down in the article), a 36 year old who has been following a caloric restriction diet for 6 years. He’s practically emaciated (6 feet tall and 135 lbs) but he looks like he’s 16! This approach, called caloric restriction, involves eating about 30 percent fewer calories than normal while still getting adequate amounts of vitamins, minerals and other nutrients. According to the Times article, aside from direct genetic manipulation, calorie restriction is the only strategy known to extend life consistently in a variety of animal species.

The original article from 2006 is at the Times:

Recently, the effort has begun to bear fruit, producing a steady stream of studies indicating that the rate of aging is plastic, not fixed, and that it can be manipulated.

Earlier this year, researchers studying dietary effects on humans went so far as to claim that calorie restriction may be more effective than exercise at preventing age-related diseases.

I had read this a couple of years ago. But this was interesting:

Earlier this year, four prominent gerontologists, among them Dr. Miller, published a paper calling for the government to spend $3 billion annually in pursuit of a modest goal: delaying the onset of age-related diseases by seven years.

Guess that never happened.

This couple has been eating less for 16 years, and are staying young.

However, ONLY the LA Times reported that the animals they tested were suffering. (Hey, get a real paper, people.)

“They bit people and were more agitated,” he said. In contrast, the mice who ate a normal diet “would just sit around and let you pick them up.”

I assume that monkeys would be much worse, but of course how would anyone know, since they cage them and probably never ever touch them. If you have any pets, you know how anxious they get at feeding time. Will you still give them food THIS time? Will they survive another day? In starvation mode of 30% less food…well, that is just cruel.

Cartoon Caption: Scientists cruelly gave mice, fish, and now monkeys limited-calorie diets – 30% less food. They are healthier, but bite more. (Unfortunately, no smiley-faces survived.)

This cartoon might be confusing, but I prefer to think of it as a little game. ;) It kind of grew organically – first the information, then the monkey holding on to the title board, and for some reason I threw in smiley-faces, one of which has starved, and turned into The Scream! I don’t know why! It just made me laugh!

More cartoons:

1. Who doesn’t hate AIG?
2. Mickey Mouse as human sacrifice for California budget?

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!

More cartoons:

1. Making raw meat into Obama’s War Team.
2. The Cartoonist Who Cried Wolves! Wolves!

"So...the Navy will continue to use sonar, but we can pick any beach in the world. To die on." ©D.Barstow

I first read about this last fall. From the Christian Science Monitor:

In a 6-3 ruling on Wednesday, the high court criticized a federal judge in California for imposing restrictions that the majority justices said jeopardized national security in an effort to protect the environment.

MFA sonars send intense pulses of noise through the water that can disrupt or injure marine mammals nearby. Scientists say it can trigger fatal mass strandings under certain circumstances.

Joel Reynolds, a senior NRDC attorney, said the high court left in place undisputed portions of the federal judge’s order concerning Navy training. As a result, the Navy must continue to abide by a 12-mile coastal buffer zone and must continue to avoid the Catalina Basin, an area with a high concentration of marine mammals.

Check out this killer whale video to actually see whales in Puget Sound reacting to Navy sonar.  Umm, how much proof are they waiting for?

Well, that’s the point, isn’t it. The Navy has the proof, they’re just making a judgment call (no puns, thanks.) that they have to keep making the same sonar sounds over and over, like 3 year olds playing with their toys.   I’ve noticed some scientists are like this, too, unfortunately; they base science on a hypothesis, with a provable result, and then spend years doing the SAME tests over and over. That sounds like a video game to me.

Anyway, I see very few editorial cartoons about natural history or science or even technology, and I don’t know why. Do they know something I don’t? Maybe. So I do some, because the world outside of the White House is important, too, but I space them out!  Cbc news agrees with me, and reports on 3 dolphins trapped in ice that locals rescued.

However, human activity that causes a lot of underwater noise might also play a role when the animals are near the edge of the ice, Murison said.

“They may panic and end up in an area where the ice can close in on them,” she said.

The article says more than 40 whales are beached in Nova Scotia each year.  Australia has had more than 400 whales beached this year, although they did save some. From timesonline:

Mark Simmonds, of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society and an expert on cetacean strandings, said that two species coming ashore together was enough to arouse suspicions of a human factor, including the use of sonar by the military.

When I did this cartoon a week ago, 55 whales had just been stranded in South Africa. They didn’t try to save these whales, like most civilized countries; they just shot them. Even though this is a rather simple cartoon in theory, I still had to do research on what whales look like! Real whales don’t look anything like cartoon whales, as it turns out, but I also didn’t want them to look like dolphins. I hope I made my point anyway.

*An update in the opinion page of the Monitor by a real whale guy: he asserts that sonar has been proved to directly kill whales. Sad.

More cartoons:

1. Farewell to Lost cartoon.
2. Have you ever tried to wipe oil off your soul?

"Thanks to Obama, we're not ENDANGERED in Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, UT, OR, WA, etc. We're target practice." ©D.Barstow 2009

The subject this week for Illustration Friday is “intricate,” and I found these wolves to be just so very detailed and particular.

As it happens, this was also today’s cartoon I did for Slate, so kill 2 with one stone, and all that good stuff.

Right after Obama took office he cancelled Bush’s plans to rewrite the Endangered Species Act, affecting wolves, among other animals. I took note of that, knew I wanted to do a cartoon on it, but then put it aside because I wasn’t sure if the EPA was already done, or just thinking out loud. Once you have to write about the news – and believe me, as an editorial cartoonist I’ve become a better journalist – you notice how much of the news is really stuff that might happen, or will happen. Then they report it all again when it does happen, as if it’s fresh meat!

So as I was saying, it actually did become law last Friday. Only Obama RESCINDED his protection promises for wolves, and turned them over to the lawless states, not the Federal government any more! So Bush’s original plan succeeded.  

The LA Times reported this in a very neutral, uninteresting, boring tone. In a blog there, not in the paper. Oh, and they left some things out. The NY Times gets it:

Jenny Harbine, a lawyer with Earthjustice in Bozeman, Mont., which has sued to keep the federal protections, said, “We’re disappointed.” She added, “Idaho has shown an eagerness to kill as many wolves as possible, and they are drawing up plans for killing wolves as we speak.”

In 2007, Gov. C. L. Otter of Idaho said he favored reducing the number of wolves there to 100 from more than 800. He also said he would be the first to buy a wolf hunting license.

In most of Wyoming, the wolf is designated as a predator and could be shot on sight if it were to be delisted. Controversy erupted last year when people chased wolves down on snowmobiles and killed them from planes.

Don’t you wish you lived in Idaho or Wyoming, too? And wouldn’t the LA Times have done well to keep ALL the facts in the article?

I believe, as do most biologists, that delisting on state lines is about as unscientific as you can get, which virtually guarantees the greens will win again in court and keep the Big Dog on the endangered species list

That’s how NewWest.net describes it, in hunting-friendly terms. The idea, I guess, is that a wolf is a big dog that it’s fun to kill. (and they can’t claim the old “IT’S FOOD” excuse with wolves!)

The Defenders of Wildlife Yellowstone Wolves blog says:

In particular, the rule ignores contemporary scientific research on what constitutes a recovered wolf population and allows wolf populations to be reduced to the point where they could not achieve the natural genetic connectivity thought by scientists to be essential to the species’ long-term survival in the region.

Secretary Salazar reissued the Bush plan without any response to conservation groups.

And who appointed him Secretary? One guess. And it’s not Bush.

The Cartoon This took a long time to draw! I had to study how wolves look different from dogs or coyotes, and how they stand, their fur, nose, etc. And put a bunch in, a pack, crowded. And figure out what accessories they could wear. I have to admit, as I drew the little one with a potted plant on his head, I got tears in my eyes, he was so cute. Usually I crack myself up, but this went in the opposite direction… Can you tell I love the way these wolfies turned out?

(Gocomics also has comments and discussion.)

More cartoons:

1. Obama found a horse head in his bed.
2. Navy sonar is like unsolicited sales calls to whales.

Image from HuffPo, which I ASSUME got permission from Andrews McMeel. AM is very strict about any kind of image use, as they should be.

A California initiative on the November ballot — Proposition 2, the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act — will phase out the cramming of veal calves, breeding pigs and egg-laying hens into small cages and crates.

The Huffington Post has an interesting interview with  Patrick McDonnell, the creator of the comic strip MUTTS. (I don’t believe in reading the PuffPost regularly, when they don’t believe in paying their writers (over 2000 now), when it’s the BIGGEST BLOG in the world. (We won’t go into the fact that Arriana Huffington is a billionaire, too.)) 

MM: What inspired you to run a whole week of strips on the humane treatment of farm animals?

PM: Prop 2 is just too important to not tackle. Even though the reform will be modest, it puts a stake into the ground that the way we treat farm animals matters.

MM: Why is Prop 2 important to you, and what can your readers do to help?

PM: Because 20 million animals will be directly impacted, suffering less, if this measure passes. It will also send a clear message to the factory farm conglomerates that, once people are made aware, they will not tolerate the way most animals raised for food are treated in this country.

Patrick is also on the board of the Humane Society. Yay, Mutts!

The other cartoonist I wanted to give a bow to is Dan Piraro, of Bizarro fame.  I think I only saw one or two cartoons about farm animals recently, but he has been associated with Farm Sanctuary for a long time, and has donated a lot of work to them. Farm Sanctuary is a co-sponsor with HSUS on Prop 2. Yay for them!

Dan talks a lot about being a vegan in his blog. He also talks about his half-nekkid wife who does stunts in NYC for Peta.

More cartoons:

1. Something about gays, a Time Magazine un-cartoon of the week.
2. Take this election cartoon to the voting booth with you today.

"It's a poll. And I'll call you a weenie if you're undecided."

Well, the big day is here. I doubt anyone will be looking at cartoons today, but life goes on, as do blogs and bloggers, so here I am.

And no, I’m not undecided! I’m very decided!

I’m really worried about Yes on Proposition 2. It’s about pigs and veal, but mostly about chickens, since California is apparently an egg state. I did not know that. They want farmers to give hens more room, instead of having NO room in cages to use their wings, stand, sit, anything. Seems like it’s not too much to ask. The animals are alive on this green earth. Not for long (egg hens are allowed to live for only about 6 months), which is even more reason for them to have a few moments of happiness and peace.

Eggs would cost a penny more under Prop 2. But the farmers are wailing that it will put them out of business… and we’ll have to get eggs from Mexico…or China! Hee! I hope eggs travel well!

The drawing
I like the angle. I wish I had some of his popcorn. The phone is kind of old, but a princess phone is always good to have when there’s an earthquake, and you need a landphone.

But is she really a nice person, calling someone a name? Yeah, totally. Nicer than I would be!

More cartoons:

1. Cartoonists that love animals and aren’t ashamed.
2. Easter cartoon on the birthers.