The second in the series, this one depicts our illustrious elected officials making the “two party system” work. Except, what’s this? They’re really having a good ole time together – lighting cigars with $100 bills. With those big Cheshire-cat smiles, no less.
This started out as a simple deal with Donkey and Elephant on vacation with opposing “I’m With Stupid” t-shirts, but once we started digging into the idea it really came to life. The trick was getting the expressions right – the eyes and the faces. Donkey is a kind of “deranged Bill Gates” and Elephant is your standard brutish life-time politician.
This is the first design in a new series we’re calling “Fear and Loathing in America”. It is a collaboration between myself and a really gifted cartoon artist I met on deviantArt who goes by the handle “sketchoo“. I saw his work and saw that awesome Steadman-esque quality. So I approached him about working together and the results will be cross-posted here. I come up with the concepts, titles, and typography – he does the actual cartooning and visualization – and then we composite it all together.
This design illustrates how “justice” in the U.S. is tilted towards those with money. And anyone and anything else is basically jettisoned off the scales from the magnitude of the imbalance. There’s also a bit of a play on words with the title if you look close.
I just saw this item come across the wires: Boehner’s office cuts off C-SPAN cameras as GOP takes verbal beating.
Basically what happened is this: The Democrats were trying to get a vote on an extension on the payroll tax cut extension, which would extend the lower rates for another two months. The Republicans wanted no part of it, and walked out. And, when the Dem’s started to call them on it, Boehner had the C-SPAN feed cut.
This is wrong at so many levels I don’t know where to start.
OK, how about starting here: does Boehner think the voters want higher taxes? Does he think at all? No. Of course not. He’s engaged in his own little dipshit battle for the Good of the Party. So, basically, he’s giving everyone who voted for him the finger. Because no one – rich or poor – wants higher taxes. And a lot of people can’t handle any…
“Announcement: The oppression will continue until morale improves.”
If you recall those heady, sweat-soaked months after 9/11, when America couldn’t decide if it was a rabid pit-bull with a belly full of rage, or an overly abused Harbor Seal in need of round-the-clock maximum-security protection, the mantra was: “If you don’t travel, the terrorists win.”
“If you don’t watch football, the terrorists win.”
“If you don’t go out and spend money at the malls for Christmas, the terrorists win.”
And so, we did all those things.
But a funny thing has happened. Despite our unchecked gluttony and relentless observation of the color-coded Terror Threat Level: the terrorists won. America still stands and we can still kick most other country’s asses with “shock and awe” and twenty-four hour embedded media coverage. But the things that Americans value have been napalmed: freedom, safety, and personal wealth. While the mega-rich are not much worse off than they were in 2001, most everyone else…
So I was trying to get some work done on Wednesday afternoon and, foolishly, had my Twitter app running. What do I see? The SFPD is massing to take on OccupySF over the same battle ground as the night before: Justin Herman Plaza. Wonderful. (Note, everything I’m recounting here I watched unfold live via streaming media. I wasn’t at the event. But I didn’t need to be to be a witness.)
OSF was going to the park for their nightly “GA” (General Assembly) … you know, something guaranteed by that pesky First Amendment … and SFPD appeared to want none of it. So they surrounded the core of the OSF group with their “kettle” – the first step before arrests begin en masse.
But then they grabbed a guy from outside the cordoned area – someone not in the cross-hairs of an arrest – someone sitting down, no less – no threat. The PD put him in one of their…
