McCain picks Palin

In what many are considering a bold move, presumptive Republican party presidential candidate John McCain has selected relatively unknown Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate.

McCain is obviously trying to lure away Hillary Clinto supporters from Barack Obama. Here is my cartoon on the issue.
I personally think that in picking someone with little experience in Washington, or with foreign policy, McCain has hurt his strongest argument against Obama. If experience is so important to being president, how can you pick a running mate (particularly when you are as old as McCain is), whose credentials are so thin.

Of course the pundits on Fox News pointed out that Palin has more executive experience than Obama, (she has been governor for a couple of years). But she also has more executive experience than John McCain.

Palin is definatly an interesting choice, and she has a very compelling back-story, but I think she might hurt McCain's strategy.

Brenda at it again

I read in the Cap Times the other day that Madison Alder, Brenda Konkel, wants to exempt the homeless from our public urination laws in Parks. She says she want to start a dialogue, but I really think that she was just baiting me to draw this cartoon.
I really love it when a local politician does something that just begs for an editorial cartoon.

More Cartoons

Here are some cartoons from the last 2 days. No time to chat, but feel free to share you thoughts on the comment section.

Florida DUI

I just saw a funny story in today's Tampa Tribune. Apparently a woman was just pulled over for her 10 drunk driving offense. According to the story, law enforcement officers in Manatee county, where she was pulled over, were shocked by the number of DUIs. What's funny about this story? In Florida somebody's 10 drunk driving offense is called "shocking." In Wisconsin I think it's called "an average Saturday night."

Color-blind

In an attempt to utilize this blog to its fullest potential, I'm to try to post early and often during this convention season.

I read a great story about the turnout of black delegates at the Democratic convention this year, in the Tampa Tribune this morning. According to the story about a quarter of the total delegates in Denver are black. That's huge considering that, I think, less than an eighth of the total population of this country is black. Several delegates interviewed for the story remembered the Civil Rights struggle of the 1960s and and professes joy and disbelief that they lived to see a black man nominated by a major political party.

But the last quote in the story had me scratching my head. Cedric McMinn of Miami explained that if Obama lost, it would set back African-Americans for decades. According to McMinn, Obama "has the right running mate, the right financial support, the right political situation. The only way he'll lose is a swell of racist attitudes in the country."

This led to sketch out this editorial cartoon idea:



This cartoon is not autobiographical, (I'm not either character in it), but it does pose a personal dilemma for me. If I did agree with McCain (i'm not sure I do) do I have the strength of conviction to truly be color-blind and vote against the man who could become the first African-American President.

Luckily, John McCain has been pushing me away by courting religious nuts, but there's still a ways to go to November.

Cartoons from the Weekend

Here are two more editorial cartoon that ran on Sunday. The first is my Wisconsin Olympics editorial cartoon.

These are always fun. I like creating imaginary events, and I think these work particularly well. The only problem is, I really don't draw as well when I squish the drawing to fit into this four-panel format. I really like having the whole page to work with, but I guess if I ever want to become a bona-fide stripper (comics you perv), I have to figure out a way to make it work.

The other cartoon is from Sunday's Tampa Tribune.



School has started but parents don't know how to get their kids to school. In order to save money the Hillsborough school district revamped their bus service, which in and of itself is just fine. The problem is they did a lousy job of informing parents and the individual schools of the changes, leaving parents frantically trying to figure how to get their kids to school.

I didn't capture the perspective accurately in this cartoon but that isn't particularly important. I do, however, love the expression on the kids face, and I always enjoy drawing cars flying through the air.

I know I'm a bad person

It's been a long time since i updated this blog, and yes, I know I'm a bad person. Here is a cartoon I just completed for the Wisconsin State Journal.



I think this turned out rather nice on the whole. I spent some extra time working on the composition and I think I did a good job of placing the figures attractively on the page. I also like putting my signature wine and cheese Madison liberal in these cartoons. He really represents the ugly elitism that can exist in this town sometimes.

Hopefully I will do a better job of keeping this blog current in the future. Looking through some recent posts I seem to have missed some of my better Brett Favre cartoons so here are a bunch of them.




And while I may be alone in saying this, and might have an army of angry cheeseheads at my door, I say good riddance to Brett Favre. Mind you I think he was a great player, but it was high time the Packers front office started running the organization, and that wasn't going to happen as long as everyone favorite quarterback had his own office at Lambuea field. A team can't wait to around every off-season wondering if the face of the organization has one more year left. It was time to look to the future. I just hope Aaron Rodgers doesn't make me eat these words after this season.