Sporadic blog entries are due to acute seasonal distraction disorder. I apologize, but understand that sporadic blog reading is caused by same…
Hope you and yours have a happy new year! I’d like to raise a large, overflowing glass of champagne to the potential for some stupendous blog entries in ‘09!!! And also to you, whose individual mouse clicks here have collectively equalled heavy traffic – Thank you!

In the meantime, here’s a couple of cartoons I cobbled together this week.

Like a complete maroon, I totally forgot to post this cartoon yesterday.

So, some background on my muse for the cartoon:
I’m not exactly sure if the Big 3 would be in such a huge mess if it wasn’t for the banks. Yes they made (with some exceptions) pretty crap cars generally, and the nearly $5 a gallon gas really spanked them. But now gas is practically free again, people are less skittish about running back out to buy a big, rubbishy gas guzzler – but banks won’t lend anyone any of the money you and I gave them. I assume they are using it to pay bonuses instead. Why is it okay to tell car manufacturers what to do with a taxpayer funded loan, when we let the banks do whatever they choose with the money we gave them?

Fortunately, some cartoons write themselves…

There is something emotionally satisfying about the idea of Caroline Kennedy assuming Senator Clinton’s Senate seat. Which is exactly why it’s probably a bad idea.

Apropos nothing, but curious anyway, this idea popped into my head while reading an auto bailout column on Slate by ex-Governor Eliot Spitzer. I say curious, as it was a good column, but while reading it, I kept wondering what his take on Blagojevich was.

But I’m digressing. Spitzer thinks a bailout was a bad idea, and a Washington “Car Czar” – a dark blue-suited bureaucrat appointed to ensure the bailed out car companies start making vital changes in their business plans – an even worse idea. (I heard someone on NPR suggest the much cooler name in my title of “Motor General.”) It got me to thinking the marketplace already has a Car Czar, and she has spoken.

I should also point out that, while being guilty of not flooding the marketplace with cars people want, the car co.s are really only having problems due to the credit freeze. Which is odd, as I thought we gave gobloads of money to banks precisely to prevent this kind of thing. What’s needed is someone to lord over the financial sector. Where is the Bank Czar?

As a rule, the image of the hand in the cookie jar should be left in a cartoonist’s sketchbook. I make it a rule to never use cliches unless they are presented with a twist. (Many of my cartooning compadres often use straight cliches in lieu of creative thinking, which I find kind of depressing.) In this case, the addition of Obama’s chair as the benign accomplice to the crime prevented me from ruling it out. And I should add that the drawing kept making me chuckle, which I have to keep reminding myself is – in my line of work – okay.

The story of Governor Blagojevich is so big, so foolish, and so massively Eliot Spitzer-eclipsing that yesterday it officially became okay for a non-local Illinois cartoonist to unleash the hounds on the man. I am personally not all that happy with this cartoon, as it has all the feel of a “first stab” at a Governor with whom I have no rapport, and haven’t had the time to build a cartoon persona for. Without any time for artistic evolution, I came right out of the gate drawing him as a small, troll-ish presence. I remember when the nations’ non-NY cartoonists enthusiastically started doing Spitzer call-girl cartoons, and they all seemed so impersonal, out of the loop and somehow missed the point. So a preemptive apology to all you Illinois based cartoonists who are about to have your local turf mangled. I fully understand.

Now I have that out of the way, I hope to have some fun with your Governor.

I had this image lurking in my sketchbook from last week. There are days when I could have effortlessly come up with something better, but yesterday was not one of those days. And also, I don’t need much prodding to find an excuse to draw a shark.

On another note, I just read about Illinois Governor Blagojevich being arrested on some breathtaking corruption charges. If the Chicago Tribune had its own editorial cartoonist, she’d be having a field day right now and their readers would be lapping it up. But they haven’t had a cartoonist for over eight years. Oh well.