If you'd ask most anyone, they'd probably say that drawing cartoons seems like a pretty fun way to make a living. A lot of the time, that's true. However, some days the ideas flit around above you just beyond reach and the pen ignores your commands. Today was one of those days. I drew two aggravatingly unsuccessful attempts before reaching some small semblance of satisfaction with the final drawing. Everything was throwing me off -- Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson's caricatures, the video screen, the perspective in the 'toon, etc. The only thing I can do when this happens is grind my teeth, pull up my sleeves and crank it out -- and hope that people understand the darn thing.

I don't mean to be cynical, but after all these years of disappointment, most of us can't help but roll our eyes at talk of a new "peace summit" or the old "road map for peace." Granted, the Israelis and Palestinians need to keep an ongoing dialogue or else both sides will simply keep killing each other. I doubt the Bush Administration has the requisite interest or political capital to invest in such a huge endeavor as this -- especially since Dubyah got us bogged down in Iraq. It's frustrating as a cartoonist because there's already been thousands of cartoons drawn about the Israel-Palestine issue. I have a feeling -- unfortunate, though, it may be -- that cartoonists will still be drawing these long after even I'm gone.

Here's the doodle of this cartoon from my sketchbook:

This was a tough cartoon for me because I didn't want to be disrespectful at a time when emotions are running high. By all accounts, Sean Taylor had turned his life around since becoming a father a year and a half ago, but that still didn't erase memories of his bad-boy, thug-life antics. I considered doing a cartoon that noted that past, but deemed it too harsh so soon after his death. I also didn't want to make him look, as one editor put it, "angelic." In the final version of the cartoon, I don't think I was harsh at all, but you tell me: Am I making Taylor out to be a saint whom everyone loved?

Well, I'm back at the drawing board after spending my Thanksgiving vacation with family down in Florida. After traveling most of Wednesday and gorging myself on turkey and all the fixings Thursday, I wanted to spend Black Friday as far away from a mall as I could. In southern Florida, that means the Everglades! So, while millions of Americans negotiated piled-high shopping carts and tested their patience in packed checkout lines, I was speeding across the swamp on an air boat and muscling down gator nuggets. I'll get around to holiday gift shopping sooner or later.

I don't really have much to say in this entry besides Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! And this holiday, please remember, folks: Tryptophan and power tools don't mix.

This pun has been burning a hole in my sketchbook for months, and now the 'roid-riddled slugger's indictment has provided me the window of opportunity to use it. Shame on you, Barry. Shame on you for forcing my hand! Think of the people who could innocently stumble across this pun! Oh, the horror!

My apologies to Rube Goldberg on this one ... I don't know how he cranked out all those crazy contraption cartoons, because it's tricky figuring out where to place all the levers and pulleys! This cartoon made me wish I had earned a double-major in engineering and business, not journalism.

The Examiner reports the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue scandal has cost taxpayers $20 million, and The Washington Posts calculates the swindle at upwards of $30 million. Whatever the dollar amount ends up being, D.C.'s resident financial guru Natwar Gandhi is in for a rough ride -- especially since he's a guy who trumpets fiscal accountability.

I had another idea on this topic that would have worked just as well, but I'm saving it for later. Without going into detail, it's a good concept that needs a few tweaks before it's "ready for primetime."

Some of the things that go on nowadays in corporate America are absolutely disgraceful. I'm certainly not anti-business, but the culture of greed in those mahogany-paneled boardrooms seems too pervasive. The ousting of the CEOs at Citigroup and Merrill Lynch are two recent examples. According to the New York Times:

[Ousted Citigroup CEO Charles] Prince will leave with vested stock holdings valued at $94 million on top of the roughly $53.1 million in pay he took home in the last four years, according to James F. Reda & Associates, a compensation consulting firm, and Equilar, a data provider. Included is a pension worth $1.74 million and another one million stock options, which have no current market value because of the stock’s sharp decline. They have a potential estimated value of about $4 million based on current estimated values — and possibly more if the stock rises.

From Dow Jones Newswire via CNN:

Citigroup will also provide Prince with an office, an administrative assistant and a car and driver for at least five years, or until he finds new employment. It will also pay certain taxes associated with those benefits, according to the SEC filing.

From Bloomberg:

Merrill Lynch & Co.'s Stan O'Neal, ousted from his job as chairman and chief executive officer of the world's largest brokerage, left with $161.5 million of securities and retirement funds, according to a federal filing.

And later ...

By permitting O'Neal, 56, to retire, the company lets him keep past stock bonuses that may have been based on the same type of wagers that fueled this year's losses, one compensation consultant said.
“He is walking away with a reward for risk-taking activity that, at least on the subprime side, turned out to be a disaster,'' said Brian Foley, managing director of Brian Foley & Co. in White Plains, New York. “That to me is a problem.”

Allan Sloan of The Washington Post also writes a good article on the topic.

I empathize with the devoted fans that have followed the Redskins from the end of Gibbs I through Gibbs II. You can go through a lot of televisions with a team like this! At first, the Skins show a little promise and win a few games. You secretly start wishing, "Please, let this be the year!" and wearing team gear around town. All the while, the prognosticators plant little seeds of doubt ... but you keep hoping against hope. Then, bam! Bad loss after bad loss shatters your Super Bowl dreams. You feel hurt, angry, confused. That’s when the bat comes out ... Well, at least that's the way it happens in my cartoon.