Sarah Palin’s thoughtless desire to gleefully exploit the political, economic and cultural divides in our country has left me speechless. So I’ll just let my cartoon do the talking today…

Okay, okay…So he’s knocking in the cartoon but it was too perfect a title.

Governor Paterson went to Washington yesterday to basically say: “You bailed out the banks after they irresponsibly ran themselves into the ground, so how ‘bout us State Governments too…?”

At least he’s also being honest with Albany legislators, and warning them that they have to make cuts. Big cuts. I don’t think that word has been used in Albany in a generation. I wish Gov. Paterson lots of luck. Really.

I was originally working on a local cartoon for today that I just wasn’t happy with, so this was a backup – Didn’t start the morning out intending to pick on poor old Mac and his hapless campaign for two days in a row!

But, while we’re at it: His health care plan is timid. While giving a $5k tax credit (something that Gov. Palin cluelessly ridicules Obama over) for health insurance expenses, it really doesn’t address skyrocketing costs. Nor does it take into consideration the fact that those that can’t afford to itemize a tax credit in their tax returns also happen to make up the majority of the uninsured. In order to make the whole thing viable, McCain also proposes taking away the employer tax credit for providing health insurance, which would just theatrically shuffle around those that do currently have employer based health insurance with no net gain, and if your policy costs more than $5k, you will actually incur a loss. It has the appearance of a “look I’m doing something” plan, while carefully not upsetting the insurance industry or GOP party ideologues.

That said, based on what we know about McCain, if he does somehow pull off an electoral upset on Tuesday, and he becomes President, one can hope that he will not be afraid to discard the electioneering, party-line garbage and revamp his health plan to piss the aforementioned off. That’s a big leap of faith, though.

Whhooooo!! The ghost of campaign tactics past. Usually people buy the Democrats-raise-taxes-and-spend-like-socialists pantomime line, which may or may not be true, but it glosses over the fact that modern day Republicans spend even more than Dems do. They are all at it. Look at federal spending over the last decade.
Add to that the fear of unemployment and shrinking retirement nest-egg syndrome and the old ghost costume probably isn’t going to trick anyone this time around.

Remember when Alan was the infallible pontificator? All he had to do was scratch his nose and markets moved reciprocally in giddy excitement. Those were the days. It was sad to see his famously drooping face on the front page of newspapers this week as he confessed to a complete disbelief at the spectacular failure of his well-reasoned economic philosophy.

He acknowledged that under his Fed. leadership, interest rates had been kept too low for too long, the market should have been better regulated, and that free markets don’t necessarily painlessly “correct” themselves. Ooooh well.

The roar of outrage over Sarah Palin’s $150k makeover from the people who roared with outrage over John Edward’s $400 haircut is truly deafening.

Although, like the John Edwards silliness, I think Sarah Palin’s wardrobe is a non-issue. She’s running for Veep for Godsakes. She needs duds.
It’s not her fault that the pool of people she simplistically panders to happen to consider $150k, oh, about three years wages. I don’t see what all the fuss is about. Do you?

This was a simple idea, but a tricky drawing that I sketched in several different perspectives before arriving at the above image.

Drawing challenges aside: Finally some good news for the McCain campaign! Not in the form of Joe six pack, or Joe the plumber but Joe Biden. The Obama Veep nominee managed to steer the conversation to the single issue that McCain polls better than Obama on, which is national defense during a crisis. Regardless of the fact that a crisis is exactly the wrong thing for a temperamental dice-roller to be leading us through, this is exactly the discussion that McCain’s campaign wanted us all to be having two weeks before the election! Perhaps Obama’s veep will offset the polling damage done to McCain by his own veep.

The last-ditch effort to terrify voters about looming socialism can only appeal to voters of marginal systemic awareness. The USA is already one of the most socialist countries in the world. We pay relatively high taxes, and in return we get a massively oversized military industrial complex. We get roads tunnels & bridges, Social Security, Medicare and a legal system. Through tax credits the government picks up the tab for all our “free market” business expenses, home mortgage interest and charitable deductions. We also have the FDIC protecting our bank deposits. And the government is now basically underwriting our entire banking and investment system. The list of “wealth redistributionist” policies already in place is endless. In fact, the only thing the US government doesn’t have a hand in is providing health care for everyone.

Of course, in the current election cycle, opposing all of the above is considered “patriotic.”

The fuel surcharges that were swiftly and heroically attached to our grocery bills have magically stuck. Energy and raw materials prices – pumped up artificially high by commodities traders – have gone down. But your weekly grocery bill is still $100 more spectacular than it was last year. The upside is that high food prices can kill an appetite.

I’m puzzled by the timing of this movie release. If you are one of the tiny percentage of Americans who still hold a candle for the Bush White House, you definitely won’t contribute to the lining of Mr. Oliver Stone’s wallet. And for the rest of the country, isn’t it too early to be asked to pass the popcorn and be entertained by something so currently teeth-clenchingly tragic?

And if that’s not reason enough to hold off on seeing this movie, Richard Dreyfus is cast as Dick Cheney. I still think of him as my childhood hero, Matt Hooper and don’t want to sully that image.

Very curious to see the weekend’s box office receipts for this one.