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Blog Newsletter Syndicate

Chinese Hackers! Ouch!

On Thursday night, last week, we suffered an unusually effective series of attacks from Chinese hackers against our database server that have brought our database and our CagleCartoons.com download site down, along with our PoliticalCartoons.com store site.

Chinese hackers, looking over my shoulder.

On Friday, my valiant editors Brian and Stacey Fairrington, answered over 250 calls and emails from editors to give them the new, emergency, interim Google Drive cartoon download location where we set up a temporary download site for the recent cartoons. Our new columns are available on Cagle.com, see them on the front page at the right. (If you’re a client who needs access to the interim Google Drive site to download the recent cartoons, email [email protected] and we’ll give you the link.)

Our cartoonists should email new cartoons to us at [email protected], which goes to all of us; we will manually add your cartoons to the Google Drive interim download site and we will be sending new cartoons out to the editors who take email delivery through MailChimp until we have a new CagleCartoons.com back up with a new database and server. We’re updating Cagle.com manually for now, so it may be slow to display new cartoons. Payments to the cartoonists who get paid quarterly went out a couple of weeks ago, and the royalty checks for the monthly cartoonists went out this weekend, for January. Don’t worry, the cartoonists have all been paid!

The Chinese hackers, who leave lots of Chinese language files and malware on our database server every time they break in, have been watching as we repair the server and they come back each time repairs are made to tear the server down again. We’ve tried but we can’t keep them out of our outdated system. The hackers win this round. We had to give up on the old server and we’re scrambling to re-write our management system to work with a current SQL server.

Regular readers know how we’ve had continuing problems with hackers attacking Cagle.com, mostly with DDos/denial of service attacks. Thanks to the generosity of Cloudflare, we’re fending off the DDos attacks.  The current problem is that we were using an older database and server for our CagleCartoons.com syndicate site and PoliticalCartoons.com store site, which left us vulnerable. We were too complacent, since the attacks were all against Cagle.com in the past. Our old database system worked so well that I hated the prospect of the cost and hassle of recreating it with newer, more defensible code.  I procrastinated too long.

We don’t keep confidential information online. No credit card information was stolen.

The editors have all been lovely about this and we haven’t gotten any complaints – at least not so far. It has been nice to see the support and goodwill from our subscription clients at a time when they could justifiably be grouchy.

I also appreciate the heroic efforts of our staff, Theo, Brian, Stacey and Rob, who have really stepped up this weekend to make things work through our database crisis.

I hate inconveniencing everyone. Thanks for your patience with this mess! We hope to have new versions of the CagleCartoons.com and PoliticalCartoons.com sites up soon.

Perhaps I’ve been drawing too many cartoons of Xi Jinping as Winnie the Pooh.

 

 

 

 

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Blog Syndicate

Trump Dances with China

I realize this cartoon is a bit ambiguous. Perhaps Trump is wrestling with China. Maybe Trump is “facing off” with China. Maybe there is something sexy going on with China that we can’t quite see. It is hard to tell. I went with “dance.” The USA will soon be adding another $250,000,000,000+ of tariffs to Chinese imports, which will move China to retaliate in other ways.

I draw lots of Trump-critical cartoons, but this one isn’t one of them. I think Trump’s approach to China is long overdue. I even posted this one as a “Trump Friendly” cartoon on our CagleCartoons.com newspaper syndication site – although, that is probably ambiguous too.

I’ve drawn Trump and a Chinese dragon before.

Dragons don’t have to represent China, although the chinese style dragons are more fun to draw. Here’s the dragon cartoon I drew the day after the election, when Trump defeated Hillary.

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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!

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Blog Syndicate

My TRUMP WINS Correction!

Yesterday, election day, I posted a cartoon titled “Hillary Wins” as I was swept along with the conventional wisdom that Hillary’s lead in the polls would hold through the election. Here’s my correction!

Compare this to the original “Hillary Wins” cartoon below. Hillary is a blue dragon now. I gave her dead “X eyes” replacing the bloody sword, so that she wouldn’t have “blood coming out of her whatever.”

I had a lot of good company among my cartoonist colleagues – in fact, we faced a bit of a crisis this morning as no cartoonists had drawn Trump Wins cartoons in advance – but the Trump cartoons have been pouring in today. Interestingly, the cartoons today don’t look much different than the trump name-calling cartoons we’ve been getting for the last year. I suspect this is what the next four cartoon years will look like. Check out Cagle.com for the newest Trump cartoons!

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Blog Syndicate

Hillary Wins!

Editorial cartoonists often draw election day cartoons that predict a winner in advance, so that editors have a cartoon ready when the news breaks on election night. Here’s mine.

linglewins320wdragonAlmost twenty years ago I was just switching careers from being a Muppet and advertising cartoonist to being a political cartoonist and I was drawing local, Hawaii state cartoons for the Midweek newspaper. There was a big election for governor between the incumbent Ben Cayetano and Linda Lingle. The polls showed that Lingle would win and my cartoon deadline was the Monday before election day, so I drew this Lingle wins cartoon and the paper went to press on it’s regular schedule, sampling that single would win.

320wcayetanowinsdragon

 

 

All the predictions were wrong and Cayetano won (Lingle won the governor’s seat in a later election). I got a frantic call from the Midweek editor, Don Chapman, on Wednesday – they had to throw out the papers that were already printed and set to be delivered on Wednesday (perhaps now they are collectors items) and they were holding the presses for me to draw an emergency “Cayetano Wins” cartoon immediately. I drew the emergency cartoon at the left as fast as I could.

Now that I don’t have a newspaper home I don’t think anyone will be gambling on my Hillary Wins cartoon for tomorrows editions. I was going to draw a Trump Wins cartoon with the characters switching places. Maybe I’ll scramble to draw a Trump Wins cartoon late tonight.

No. I’m too lazy.

 

 

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Blog

Chinese Dragon and Me

I drew a self-portrait in today’s cartoon. All the news about Chinese hacking strikes close to home as we’ve had lots of trouble with hacker attacks on our servers, that our ISP has traced to China. I’m guessing that the Chinese junta doesn’t like American editorial cartoons much. I drew a Chinese dragon looking over my shoulder.

I did a State Department sponsored speaking tour in China some years ago, and I told the Chinese audiences that when I draw cartoons about China I represent China with a Panda, or a dragon, or the Great Wall, or that guy standing in front of a tank in Tienanmen Square.  The Chinese audience would always murmur and look at each other when I mentioned the tank in Tienanmen Square, which was quite provocative for them and always stirred up the crowd. At one college I said that line and one excited college kid stood up and asked in English, “Oh! Oh! What KIND of dragon?!” That still makes me laugh.

Here’s my very rough pencil sketch.

DragonSketch600wide Chinese Dragon and Me cartoons

 

Next I do the finished line art, in dark, hard pencil on a 14″x17″ piece of Duralene drafting vellum. This is what most people will see in the newspapers since most of them still print in black and white.

127671 600 Chinese Dragon and Me cartoons

Here is the color version. The color on this one was fun. I grabbed a bunch of Chinese dragons from Google Images for scrap on the dragon, and I pulled details from three or four different dragons that I thought were cute.

127672 600 Chinese Dragon and Me cartoons

I don’t know what kind of dragon it is. Sorry.

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Cartoons

Obama Wins

Obama Wins © Daryl Cagle,CagleCartoons.com,Mitt Romney, Barack Obama,President,campaign 2012,dragon,knight,armor,armour

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Cartoons

Obama and Pakistan

Obama and Pakistan Color © Daryl Cagle,MSNBC.com,knight, dragon, Osama bin Laden, Pakistan, valiant, quest, foreign aid, billions, dollars, sword