Happy cartoon New Year! I was busily drawing my New Years Day cartoon, with Obama going out and coming in for the year, and with little biting GOP elephants, when the news started blaring about North Korea calling Obama a “monkey.” I am a slave to the news, so I had to do a second version with L’il Kim. Here’s the GOP …

And here is the L’il Kim version …

L’il Kim may be a plague to the world, but he is a gift to cartoonists.

The “Father Time and Baby New Year” thing is standard cartooning fodder. Here’s my New Year cartoon from last year …

Back in December, 2012, all the talk was about the “Fiscal Cliff” budget fight in Congress; it looked like doomsday. I drew this one …

At the end of 2010 the house had fallen under Republican control, and it looked like the GOP was eager to jump into more war – instead, Congress didn’t do much of anything, and Obama got us into more war. Oh well …

At the end of 2008: Obama won the presidency, George W. Bush was out of a job, and my drawings of Obama needed some more time to mature.

As 2005 turned into 2006 George W. Bush’s Republicans had lost the mid-term elections, but Bush was doubling down on the Iraq War anyway. There was lots more war to come.

Back in 2001 all the news was the 9/11 attacks as our troops poured into Afghanistan. The more things change, the more they stay the same.