This is not one of my better cartoons. However, I was hoping I was getting across the efforts of putting this insane health care plan together. What Pelosi , Reid and Obama are trying pull off requires the political skills equal to a contortionist.

This was also drawn quickly. After I scanned the inked version in, I redrew all three faces using Photoshop. I forgot to record me drawing this cartoon.

No health care = Massive losses in November for Democrats and Obama suddenly becomes less welcome at Democrat fund-raising opportunities. Obama can’t have that happen. Appearances are his entire stock and trade. So Pelosi will have to keep her track record in tack and get this through and save Obama from having to figure out what to do if ha can’t hit the campaign circuit.

I was having a bad day when I went at this and basically botched it. While drawing on UStream, viewer Jared Sloger flagged me on the original cartoon, thank goodness. I trashed the first and re-approached the subject very quickly and knocked out the pencil and ink of above. Thanks, Jared!

Below is the stream for the cartoon above:

Below is the first attempt. Please excuse all of my frustration.

A silly gag for what could become a very serious issue. Let folks fish. Let’s make it easier for folks to fish. We should all be trying to fend for ourselves more. What better way than in how we get what we eat. Fishing is an age old way of humans to eat. To start to regulate that would be tragic.

I forgot to record the drawing of this, but I believe the penciling and inking too about 20 minutes or less.

Something like an experience I’ve had recently. This is all about protecting the insurance companies and giving doctors and the pharmaceutical companies cover to not have to lower prices. Lowering prices by the latter two would eliminate the need for insurance or lawyers that feed off of medical problems.

I was trying to illustrate my predicament in a broad way and get the idea across that the insurance companies are the muscle for the docs. Then here comes a Federal version of the same muscle making even more trouble.

Anybody else noticing the obsession of Democrats of Sarah Palin and Dick Cheney? You’d think they’d want to be defending the fellow they got to fill the White House seat.

This cartoon was also written by Dick Daniels.

Another great gag by Ken Culotta. Luckily I’ve been in an airport recently and could better draw the interior of an airport!

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I’ve been involved on all sides of the train issue for some 20 years. In that time I’ve seen a drive towards getting one thing, and one thing only, built – Consultants bank accounts. Here in Florida we seem too apt to repeat the disaster of 100 years of Everglades cleanup. Millions and millions of dollars to people who claim to be working on solutions and the most that is produced is 100s of pages of “solutions” and very little work for the money.

This time it’s BILLIONS of tax payer dollars for something that the polls consistently show the people want but the people won’t ride. My argument, from the very first time I heard of this when I worked in government, was let the private sector pay for this. I learned early on that they won’t from their very employees, who stated they can’t build it because they know this can’t make money.

So the lowly taxpayers get stuck with a worthless project that will bleed them dry and probably will never see a train built.

What’s interesting about the “Orlando” to “Tampa” route Obama is touting is that so little work has been done for that proposed route. Most of the effort and money has been put into a trail that goes from western Volusia County to western Orange County. More reason to need to blow away more taxpayers dough!

I could go on. This is a financial disaster that will never meet its expectations. 1 million riders is a conservative estimate of ridership. Dade County’s MetroRail would love to see that number in 5 years. And they’re in a more congested area.

The cartoon is an amalgam of ideas from Ken Culotta, Sally Baptiste and Mark Duren.

Click here to watch this cartoon being drawn. This cartoon came about because of an interview with Cristina Romer on ABC News This Week. WD from Sarasota pointed out the interview was coming up by way of Twitter. Thanks to WD for giving me the heads up. I would’ve ordinarily have missed the interview because where I am ‘The McLaughlin Group’ is what I watch when that part of ‘This Week’ is on. Ken took the concept and wrote the gag.

When is a jobs summit not like a jobs summit? When Obama is organizing it.

This was penciled at the coffee shop as a newspaper photographer snapped pics. So I kept this simple. Part of this cartoon appeared in the newspaper.