Merry Christmas New Jersey

Here's a little Christmas post for everyone on Santa's good list in New Jersey. I'm going out of town for the holidays, and I won't be back until Tuesday, so Merry Christmas, and be good. It's not too late!

Buffalo's playoff hopes

Over on Bills Daily, they've posted a series of events that need to happen this week in order for Buffalo to control their own destiny on New Years Eve.

"If four things happen the Bills can actually control their own destiny on New Years Eve. First of course, they need to beat the Titans on Sunday. If that happens and the Broncos beat the Bengals while the Jaguars lose to the Patriots it sets up a big Monday night game. Bills fans will be in an unusual situation rooting for the Dolphins to beat the Jets. If that happens with the other three things, the Bills are in control of making the playoffs with a win in Baltimore next week."

No one...circles the wagons...

What the Duck!

Aaron Taylor, the editorial cartoonist for the Daily Herald and fellow member of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, recently submitted his webcomic What the Duck to six syndicates. What the Duck is a strip for and about photographers, and what's interesting is he created a really funny Syndicate Bingo to track the results.

Check out What the Duck here, and go here to take a peek at his editorial cartoons.

UPDATE: I was mistaken in attributing the What the Duck webcomic to Aaron Taylor. Of course, it is Aaron Johnson that produces the daily webcomic. My sincerest apologies go out to both of them, all other Aarons I might have slighted in life.

Thanks to The Daily Cartoonist for the correction.

What else are they going to remove?

So much for meaningful property tax reform by January 1st.

So much for Corzine's "bold action" to reform government spending.

So much for the saved money that the home-owners of New Jersey thought they were going to receive.

Welcome to the Garden State!

No Property Tax Reform for YOU!!!

Here's my finished cartoon for the Press of Atlantic City covering this pension reform / property tax legislation. It seems to me that at the end of they day, it's all going to be a big 'show about nothing.'

Senate President Richard J. Codey, D-West Orange, and Assembly Speaker Joseph J. Roberts Jr., D-Brooklawn, had pledged to enact significant reforms by Jan. 1, and Gov. Jon S. Corzine pledged in July to call a citizens' convention if action wasn't taken by year's end. But Democrats said they hoped to resume their work on property tax reforms Jan. 8. Meanwhile, the pension reform bill that was also being considered had been gutted and picked apart, and most of the meaning full components, like limiting politicians who have multiple jobs to only one pension, had already been removed {see Sunday's cartoon}.

Luckily, I own a house...in DELAWARE.

A couple of new cartoons

Here are a couple of new cartoons for NJBiz, the business newspaper I do cartoons regularly for. Their printing schedule is funky at the end of the year, so I had to come up with a Christmas shopping cartoon to cover those last-minute shoppers.

I'd love to say that I'm finished with all of my shopping, but...

Irwin Hasen sings?!?

To any Kubert students who are interested, over on Mike Lynch's blog, he posted up some pics from the National Cartoonist Society's holiday party. There's a lot of cool stuff to be seen. Everything from a pic of the society from 1919, an appearance by Bill Woodman, and our old pal IRWIN HASEN singing Falling Leaves. There's also a shot of him with some lucky lady. He hasn't lost that magic.

Davis takes over Prickly City

For those of you that are interested, check out GoComics to follow Matt Davies' week-long fill-in at the helm of Prickly City. The liberal artist is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist for the Journal News in White Plains, NY, and he was asked by the strip's creator, Scott Stantis, to take over while he's recovering from shoulder surgery. In addition to creating and drawing Prickly City, Stantis is also the editorial cartoonist at the Birmingham News.



From these first two strips, I can't wait to see where Davies will take the conservative strip.

USS Intrepid moves to New Jersey

I remember when I was a kid, and my family took me up to the USS Intrepid for the first time. I was really into airplanes and military hardware, especially due to the fact that my father was a flight engineer in the Air Force. At the time, my favorite fighter jet was the F-16 Fighting Falcon, due to it's maneuverability and it's adaptability to whatever mission was deemed appropriate. And as I stood on the flight deck, and saw everything from an SR-71 to an FJ-3 Fury.

The picture above is the Intrepid being moved to the Bayonne shipyard for 2 years of repairs and upgrading. The 36,000-ton vessel traveled a speeds upwards of 3 1/2 miles per hours during it's 5 mile voyage to New Jersey, a trip that took 8 hours to complete. I pulled the picture from the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum's website, located here. And if you'd like to read about the move, the Press of Atlantic City had a nice summary of the move, which you can read here.

2 Cartoons in one day!?!?!

Two cartoons in one day?!?! Is it called insanity?

Worse - FREELANCER!

Shocking news!

Deregulation was touted as being a good thing for local Delaware electric companies. Then costs skyrocketed, and people were hit with bills that in some cases were 200% higher than they'd ever paid.

Now, facing a budget shortfall, Dover is wrestling with the same problem of having to past the cost along to customers. Government officials are even discussing the possibility of re-regulating the industry in an attempt to control these skyrocketing costs.

Time to invest in solar panels!

Civil War?

Bush is still sticking to his guns, declaring al-Qaeda behind the uprising in Iraq, and reasoning that it's not a 'Civil War' between Sunni and Shiite, but a wave of 'Sectarian Violence' that is washing over the country.

In the meantime, he'll meet with top Shiite politician Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim this week to figure out what 'Sectarian' means.

Mikhalea Reid auctions her original art for charity

I met Mikhaela Reid at the SPX this year in Bethesda. Her editorial cartoons are very original, and separate themselves from everything else that's being done right now. Plus, she's a real down-to-earth broad, so the least I could do is spread the word for a bit of charity she's involved in.

Mikhaela put up one of her originals on eBay as part of the celebrity fund-raising auction for Center for New Words in Cambridge, MA. The auction ends on Tuesday, December 5th, so get bidding!!!!!

Here's the link to the auction: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=250053662316

Happy Holidays!

Well, after a long weekend at my Aunt and Uncle's house in Connecticut, I'm up-and-running again. As it is the last leg of the Christmas shopping season, I figured a cartoon about the unavailability of the Playstation 3 was appropriate.

The futility of waiting in line for one of these $500-plus toys made me think about our current policy in Iraq, and our relentless struggle to keep the country from falling apart.

The government is doing about as good in Iraq as mothers' are here as they try to wrap their fingers around one of these slippery little devices. Good luck to both!

Time for New Jersey to start sellin' stuff

New Jersey is in a bad position. People want REAL property tax reform, but unfortunately there is no money to afford it. Hence the idea being floated to sell off assets in order to balance the budget.

It will be interesting to see who the turnpike gets sold to, if it's even sold at all. What if New Jersey sells it to a major corporation, like McDonalds? Then our toll dollars will be going towards Big Macs.

Maybe if New Jersey TAXES the money made by whatever entity ends up owning the Turnpike, then we can begin to talk about a balanced budget.

Bears gone wild!

I'm re-posting this one because it appears in Wednesday's Philly Inquirer, and I want to give people a shot at letting me know what they think.

The bear hunting issue in New Jersey is a fairly contentious debate between those who think we should control their population through 'non-lethal' methods, and those who are being threatened in their homes and want to blow them away. And bear birth control medication may not be effective based on a new report from the Department of Environmental Protection compiled by three wildlife and contraception vaccine experts, who declared using fertility control to manage New Jersey's black bear population would be costly and ineffective.

Much like everything else in New Jersey.

Cheney. Dick Cheney.

Wouldn't Dick Cheney make a GREAT James Bond villain. He's creepy, secretive, and enjoys shooting his friends and torturing prisoners-of-war. And he's got some mechanical device attached to his heart that keeps him alive. All he needs is a cybernetic eye, and I think he's got it nailed.

Thanksgiving 2006

So this year, like every other year, I went to my Mom and Dad's house for Thanksgiving. I feasted on their food, I filled myself with their wine, and passed out watching my father's Plasma HD-TV. It was some much-needed R & R time where all I had to do was nothing. Perfect.

Here are some pics and a sketch I did of my father, who couldn't get enough of the Sci-Fi channel's crappy movie marathon. Something Walsh and him have in common.

Thanksgiving Leftovers

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! Hopefully it was better than the Thanksgiving celebrated by New Jersey taxpayers. Instead of proposing unreachable tax cuts, or attempting to push the same old plans on the consolidation of services and property tax relief, maybe Trenton should just hand out individual tablets of Tums, to ease the taxpayers' indigestion.

That would be more direct relief than any of their lofty promises.

McCain jumps in

Well, it's official. John McCain will be running for president in 2008. And this time he won't need George W. to drag him into the mud. In an attempt to cozy up with the right, McCain is making a big push to send MORE troops to Iraq, to help "stabilize" the country. This is the crux of his plan to get troops OUT of Iraq.

And I really did think that Dubbya was the dumb one.