I could spend hours at this site.

It’s that wonderful time of the year when I start to compile my highly subjective and entirely incomplete Year in Review cartoons. Given that I have the memory of a small woodland animal, your suggestions are encouraged! Email to tomtomorrow at gmail dot com.

Looks like we’re off and running.

Hope you’ve all been training and stocking up (so to speak). Christmas is a formidable opponent.

But for you fifth columnists who pretend to celebrate the holiday, while secretly of course working to undermine it, a small suggestion/request/pathetic plea: long-time readers will remember that I published a children’s book, The Very Silly Mayor, in 2009. It was my first foray into the field, published by a very small publisher, Ig Publishing, and was largely overlooked by reviewers and, well, bookstores. But the publisher’s still around, I’m still around, and it would be fantastic if this were one of those slow-building success stories made possible by the Power of the Internet, which I’ve read about but not really experienced firsthand. At minimum, I’d like to make sure the publisher actually makes a few bucks on this one — they did such a fantastic job on the printing and production quality of this book. I’ve had some bad luck with publishers over the past five years — if by “bad luck” one means “utterly horrific and dispiriting experiences” — but Ig did right by me.

The book is aimed at kids three to six, maybe as old as seven. So if you have kids, or know someone who does, please consider giving them the Mayor as you infiltrate the holidays this year, Christmas Warriors.

Mississippi (of all places) rejected the zygote personhood amendment, while Ohio rejected Kasich’s anti-union Issue 2.

Common sense so rarely wins the day, you kind of have to rub your eyes and do a double take when you see it happen.

… more at the Great Orange Satan.

Right wingers are accusing wealthy liberals who support Occupy of hypocrisy. As Steve Benen patiently attempts to explain, the word does not mean what they seem to think it means. But like so many right wing tropes, it’s an old, old tactic — the cartoon below dates back to 1997, but if I needed a week off I could clean up the art a bit and you’d think I wrote it last week.

A world much like our own, with one significant difference.

Officer Friendly!

Update: Just recieved word that TMW will remain a fixture in the newly redesigned New Haven Advocate! Many thanks to everyone who wrote in — sometimes these things can make a difference! And of course thanks to the powers-that-be at the Advocate. I understand that I have no inherent right to run in their paper (or anyone’s), and am profoundly grateful that I will continue to have a space there.

* * *

In response to queries, TMW hasn’t been cut from the Advocate papers, exactly. This is the note I got from the editor of the chain:

TMW hasn’t been cut altogether from the papers. We’ve been facing major space constraints and have had to trim a lot of different content week to week – some weeks TMW has been trimmed that way. Some weeks we’ve found room for it at the back of the book – last minute. We’re still planning on having TMW among the pool of cartoons/comics we’ve got in the papers. With the redesign we’re looking for where best to put them, etc. And hoping we’ll have room for everything we’re planning for.

So that’s sort of good news, I guess, but I do hope to remain a more important part of these papers than an occasional contributor. I’ve lived in this area for a total of ten years, give or take (lived here in the mid nineties, moved to NYC, then ended up moving back), and the New Haven Advocate has been a huge part of my life, through which I have made numerous close friends, and more importantly, met my wife. The chain was bought a few years back by the troubled Tribune Company and there have been a lot of cutbacks since then, but honestly, cartoons are both popular and cheap. If you live in the area and would like to see the strip run every week rather than on an occasional space-permitting basis, please be sure to let them know. Politely, of course!

(Note: I’m deliberately not posting contact info so the papers don’t get spammed. If you’re one of their readers, you’ll be able to find it.)

This cartoon from last April — mere months ago — was intended as a response to the right wing talking point that raising taxes on the rich won’t help address debt/deficit problems because “there aren’t enough rich people.” It seemed to me at the time that no one was making the obvious counter argument — a small percentage of people control a large percentage of the wealth. In fact the most recent numbers I could find then that seemed trustworthy were from 2007.

Now, of course, people are talking about little else, and we can thank the Occupy movement for that.

As a side note: for several years, anyone who was frustrated with Obama’s refusal or inability to use the bully pulpit was told by his supporters that the bully pulpit is a myth, the President simply doesn’t have the magical ability to shift the national conversation. In reality, the overwhelming number of people in this country who have been screwed by the plutocracy were primed for a paradigm shift, and while I think Obama blew a huge opportunity in 2008 by choosing the path of moderation over confrontation, we should all be profoundly grateful that the Occupy movement has picked up the slack.

An animated piece from 1998 or so, still sadly relevant.

This was based on a print cartoon which doesn’t seem to be online at the moment (having some archive problems — I’ll try to dig it up and get it posted).

… adding: note post below, for those interested in supporting the arts, specifically the art of snarky cartooning.