Categories
Blog Syndicate

Trump in China

Trump was in China this week. A large part of Trump’s presidential campaign was China bashing, but now Trump’s China bashing is warm and fuzzy, and a bit inconsistent.

I suppose it is obvious that I just wanted to draw a goofy Chinese dragon. I’ve done dragons a few times before. One of my favorites was the cartoon below, about the umbrella revolution in Hong Kong. I was looking at this dragon as I drew and colored today’s dragon, which is why they look like cousins.

I did a speaking tour in China where the audiences were very interested in how I depict China in cartoons. I told them I drew china as a dragon, or as the Great Wall, or as a panda bear, or as that guy standing in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square (which usually made the crowd gasp, because they don’t mention the Tiananmen Square massacres). At one venue I went through my list and a couple of guys in the crowd got very excited, waving their arms, saying, “Oh! Oh! What kind of dragon?!” That still strikes me funny, although I’m not sure why. I don’t know the answer to that question.

Here’s the dragon I drew when Trump was elected.

And here’s one I drew when Obama finally got Bin Laden, who was hiding out in Pakistan, protected by his Pakistani cronies, who should have also been seen as bad guys for hiding Bin Laden, but we just kept giving a bunch of money to Pakistan anyway.

I love dragons!

Categories
Blog Syndicate

Tax Dependent States

The new Republican tax plan takes away the deduction for state income taxes, which will hit the high-tax blue states hardest. The red states that voted for Trump are the federal welfare cases.

This cartoon features very blue California and very red Tennessee, two great examples of blue-donor and red-dependent states. I drew this one as a local cartoon for the weekly Nashville Scene when I was living in Nashville and I updated it a bit to apply to the issue today. Things don’t change much.

If this was an issue of fairness, the income tax should be reduced in hight-tax donor states and increased in low-tax dependent states. Of-course this is not an issue of fairness. The red states voted for Trump and now it is time for them to get some payback, at the expense of the Hillary states.

Categories
Blog Syndicate

Caduceus Campfire!

President Trump pulled the funding rug out from under ObamaCare, which may not have been failing before, but is much more likely to fail now. Trump supporters claim that this is to light a fire under Congress to fix the problem – more likely, it will just light a fire under the healthcare system, leaving it scorched – like a marshmallow over the campfire.

I love the caduceus symbol for medicine, with the two snakes and the little wings at the top of a pole – it is a wonderful cartoon cliché that allows me to do healthcare cartoons without words. As healthcare poses existential political issues that divide the Republicans, I’ve had plenty of opportunities to bash the elephants with caduceuses.

Obama took a bite out of the Republicans by pushing ObamaCare through congress without a single Republican vote.

Obama took a moment to gloat.

Republicans can’t agree on healthcare, and likely won’t get anything done, leading Trump to blow the system up. Perhaps congress will be more willing to clean up a big healthcare mess of Trump’s making; they can always blame it on Obama.

More likely, I think healthcare will be the issue that sinks the Republican party.

 

Categories
Blog Syndicate

DACA – Catch!

Is President Trump being clever to throw DACA at congress? It is hard to know, but it certainly makes the Republicans look heartless if they don’t catch those “childhood arrivals.”

I drew this one a couple of days ago. Sorry to be slow. It was fun to see it in today’s USA Today …

It is funny to see the Jeff Parker cartoon at the bottom of USA Today’s Friday round-up. Jeff retired from editorial cartooning to focus on drawing the comic strip “Dustin” with Steve Kelley. (I’m still crying about Jeff’s retirement.) We didn’t have many cartoons about hurricane Irma bearing down on Florida, and Jeff drew lots of hurricane cartoons back in the day, so I dusted off a couple of evergreen Jeff Parker hurricane oldies and reposted them for newspapers on CagleCartoons.com –just what newspapers wanted today.

Jeff remains the king of hurricane cartoons. You can still see Jeff’s archive of oldies, including this cartoon, at: cagle.com/author/jeff-parker/

Categories
Blog Syndicate

Trump Kryptonite

There is a lot of Kryptonite around – and Kryptonite is deadly to Superman who runs into the stuff all the time – but Kryptonite never actually kills Superman, who just suffers a bit once in a while from the Kryptonite, then he moves on.

Categories
Blog Syndicate

Trump Troops for Afghanistan

The news seems to repeat itself. Today President Trump announced yet another increase in troops for Afghanistan – after campaigning on getting us out of Afghanistan. Here’s the cartoon.

Look familiar? It wasn’t much different with President Obama …

Somehow I think I’ll be drawing this cartoon with each new president for another 17 years – if I live that long.

Categories
Blog Syndicate

Many Sides, Many Sides

When Trump first came on the scene the cartoonists started drawing Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan right away. That annoyed me. So much for that – with Trumps comments today that implied culpability and moral equivalency between Klansmen and Nazis and the people who protest against them.

Categories
Blog Syndicate

Trump and L’il Kim Again

Last week I drew this cartoon with Trump and L’il Kim mushroom cloud hair. Sometimes I travel around and give a Powerpoint presentation about editorial cartooning and I show a dozen or two cartoons of L’il Kim’s dad, Il, with mushroom cloud hair. I’ve seen a few L’il Kim mushroom cloud hair cartoons, but his Dad, Il, is the king of cartoon mushroom cloud hair.

Categories
Blog Syndicate

Trump vs. Sessions

President Trump has been bashing Attorney General Jeff Sessions every day on Twitter. It looks like he wants Sessions to quit so that he doesn’t have to suffer the ugly politics of firing him.

My biggest issue was whether to draw any blood with the back-stabbing. I went for no blood. Editors don’t like blood. Now I wish I drew blood.

This is actually the first time I’ve drawn Sessions – and he is fun to draw.

Updated 7/28/17

It turned out that I did draw Sessions before – here:

And here it is in my local Los Angeles Daily News this morning. This is nice to see because it is rare that the Daily News, and it’s Southern California sister papers run an editorial cartoon, except on Sundays. Here’s a wrinkly scan (I spilled ice tea on it – can’t do that with the internet!)  And paired with Charles Krauthammer – yuck.

 

Categories
Blog Syndicate

Eyes up HERE

Hey. Eye’s up here. Stop looking at my butt. Just because of the anal probe into Trump’s Russia conflicts, as well as his personal finances (we learned today) is no reason to stare at Trump’s butt!

Notice that I gave the bear a bit of a five-o’clock shadow?