I don’t even need to fill in the details for the non-locals on this story. Unfathomably cynical stuff coming from the Dems in Albany.
On a cartooning ethics note – At this point in the recession, I think it’s borderline okay to use fire as a metaphor, so long as it’s not in conjunction with firefighters-not-putting-it-out metaphors.

A bunch of powerful white males lecturing a Hispanic female judge on racial sensitivity is rich. And they say Al Franken is the comedian in the Senate.
My early sketches played with caricatures of the Republican members of the judiciary committee, Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Charles Grassley
(R-Iowa), Jon Kyl (R-Arizona), Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) sitting at the dais – but in this case the sketch with the monotone characters above was strangely far more effective.

Uh-oh…I don’t know what’s worse…My use of metaphors in today’s cartoon, or the rumbling from Washington about yet more stimulus money being needed.

Nothing wrong with a little free market incentive to deny people health care in exchange for profit…

Sheesh. Every so often, a situation arises wherein the cartoonist wonders how you draw a cartoon about something already so ludicrously cartoonish? Sarah Palin became famous for, among other things, shooting at stuff that didn’t stand a chance – from helicopters, so here you go…

This cartoon goes out to all my friends who under the normal rules would currently be fully engaged in careers. While the rain has been incessant here in the Northeast, it has been a dry, hot dustbowl for those who have mysteriously found themselves on the wrong end of the recession. When we talk about the economy, what we really are talking about is the well-being and comfort of humans. I don’t expect a return to the mindless, debt-infused consume-fest that has come to signify the first decade of the 21st Century. But wherever “normal” is, I hope we return there soon.

I sketched up various cartoon permutations of Bernie Madoff this week, but ultimately none of them said much more than he’s going to get his in jail. Blah, blah, blah, there’s a thousand cartoons on the web saying the same obvious thing. The bigger story is that lax Federal oversight is unlikely to protect investors from future Ponzi schemes, whether they be the illegal or legal variety.

My friend and talented fellow editorial cartoonist Mike Lester, sent me this story this morning. I SWEAR it was just a coincidence. I don’t read the Orlando Daily whatsit’s local stories online looking for colloquial metaphors! Perhaps I should start. That would have saved me a whole pile of thinking…