I have met or listened to literally thousands of people who dislike President Obama. You are not unique in that matter; I myself take exception with a fair number of his decisions, although probably not the same ones you do. But unlike many of the people critical of the President, you scare me.

You scare me because you say that after months of exposure, you know nothing about President Obama. Yet later on in your letter you claim knowledge of intimate matters of his personal life. What this suggests to me is that you are being willfully ignorant about who President Obama is and what he stands for, only taking your “information” from very slanted sources.

You scare me because you claim to not know how the President paid for his college education or the homes he lived in. He paid for his education the same way most people do nowadays: with grants and loans. His secondary education records were enough to get him into some of the best schools in the country, and he earned his way through them. You claim to have lived through thirteen Presidents, but don’t seem disturbed to not know how at least two of those Presidents, Harry Truman and Richard Nixon, paid for their education or their lifestyles. Both of them were born dirt poor, even poorer than Obama was growing up, and you don’t seem to raise the same question about their educational finances that you do Obama’s. This suggests an ulterior motive in your questioning.

You scare me because you think that spending some of your formative years in other countries is a bad thing. This reinforces an insular view that everything about America is perfect and everything about other cultures is evil. Yes, America is without a doubt the greatest country on Earth right now and one of the greatest cultures of all time, but not everything we do is perfect. There is a lot to learn from other nations, some of it in what they do better than us and some from their bad examples.

You scare be because by saying that Obama never ran a business or met a payroll, he is unqualified to be President. Business owners are not uniquely qualified to be in government, and in many ways they are hampered by it. You see, government is not a business and can’t be run like one. There is more at stake than a monetary bottom line, which is the case in business. There also are occasions when you can’t afford to balance your budget as you would have to in business, in order to help rebuild a flagging economy. Even Ronald Reagan knew that; his entire economic success (such as it was) was built on shoring up a dying industrial base with huge military spending. Let’s also not forget that of the thirteen Presidents you claim to have lived under, businessmen are very much in the minority. Neither Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, nor Clinton ever had to meet a payroll. Truman was a failed entrepreneur, yet was unquestionably one of our most able Presidents. Jimmy Carter made his family’s failing farm thrive when he took it over. George W. Bush oversaw many businesses that ended up failing. I doubt you will argue with my claim that these three businessmen who went on to be President shows that there is no corollary between business acumen and success in government.

You scare me because you believe that military service is necessary to be a successful President. Roosevelt did not serve in the military, but successfully led the nation into World War II as Commander in Chief. Reagan also did not serve in the military. Even if you dislike Clinton, which I imagine you do since your entire letter is full of right-wing talking points, also remember that George W. Bush didn’t serve in combat, and skipped out on his National Guard enlistment. Meanwhile, Jimmy Carter served in the Navy with distinction in World War II. So, again, there is no corollary.

You scare me because you believe that holding others accountable for their misdeeds is a sign of lacking “class.”

You scare me because you consider people who fought to end an unjust war to be people “wanting America to fail.”

You scare me because you claim that Obama is trying to replace our current system with a Western European one, which he isn’t. And worst of all, you have no knowledge about Western European systems and how they work. Western Europe has a better education rate, lower infant mortality, and a higher satisfaction index than we do here in America. Maybe we could learn a thing or two from what they do, but you are too mired in the “America good, everything else evil” mentality that you used to criticize Obama’s life overseas.

You scare me because you believe our current health system works. You also scare me because you don’t recognize that the real failing in the President’s health care plan is that it DOESN’T replace our current system with something that works, or at least give us the option of a publicly-run program.

You scare me because you willfully ignore all of the President’s statements and actions on offshore drilling and clean coal, and because you obviously don’t want to pursue renewable energy technologies, which we will need sooner or later because fossil fuels are finite resources. The quicker we start putting replacement energy sources into place, the better off we will be when we run out of oil and coal.

You scare me because you have no clue about where our standard of life is in relation to the rest of the world, and also because you endorse the deregulation of capitalist businesses that thrive off of the boom-bust cycle which hurts and even kills millions of low-income workers.

You scare me because you consider regulation to be extortion.

You scare me because you criticize the President’s spending proposals, but had no problem with George W. Bush tripling the national debt while driving us into the worst economic decline since the Great Depression.

You scare me because you ignore all of the times the President has sought advice and recommendations from all interested parties, yet was rebuffed by an opposition party whose sole tactic is to block anything and everything.

You scare me because you believe that the media has given Obama a “free pass,” when the coverage of his administration has been some of the toughest in history.

You scare me because you are buying into the whole “silence the opposition” claim, which is patently false. Not only has the President not made any move to silence the conservative-dominated media, but he opposes reintroducing the Fairness Doctrine and the White House has even given Fox News (which feels more compelled to forward right-wing talking points than actual journalism) a front row seat in the briefing room.

You scare me because you obviously have no idea of the difference between governing and controlling. Or regulation and control, for that matter.

Finally, you say that after eight years of an Obama Administration you wouldn’t feel secure writing the letter I am responding to, yet you have no problem voting for administrations that actually have infringed upon our personal rights, our privacy, and our personal security. That says all I need to know about you.

And I am especially scared by the fact that there are millions of others like you, willfully and blissfully ignorant, who will happily join with you in destroying all that is good about America in the name of “saving” it.

Yours,
Pab Sungenis.

Larry King’s statement announcing he’s quitting his nightly show:

And right beneath it:

For those who don’t know, the UK held a general election this past week. No one liked the ruling Labour party, no one completely trusted the opposition Conservative party, and no way was the election system the UK has about to allow an alternative to actually get a number of seats that represented their support among the population.

Wanting to talk about this, but knowing no one would get it, I decided to do something I rarely do. I dipped into the realm of satire and tried to come up with parallels my readers might appreciate. Since I’ve gone meta a lot lately in the strip, it made sense to do it once more.

(Click on the strips to get a larger view.) The seat numbers (at least for the first three) are exactly the same as were tallied by (respectively) the Conservatives, Labour, and the Liberal Democrats (“LibDems”). The number I gave Frog Applause were actually those won by Sinn Fein (who will not swear allegiance to the Queen and thus will never be allowed to sit in Parliament) and the one I gave to In The Sticks represents the first seat won in the UK by the Green Party, mainly because it will piss off that asshole Nathan Cooper to be associated with the Greens.

One pundit I heard basically said that there were no winners in the UK’s election, and that the voters essentially rejected all of the major parties. Even the LibDems, whose poll numbers were soaring after the Leaders’ Debates, wound up losing ground. The Conservatives won the largest percentage of the vote and the largest number of seats, but nowhere near what had been projected and not enough for an effective ruling majority.

Which sets the scene for the second strip in the series:

If you replace “Peanuts” with “The Conservatives,” “Garfield” with “Labour” and “Sparky died” with “Michael Hague stepped down” the statements are still true.

So now the two top vote getters have to fight to form a coalition, giving a lot of power to the guy who came in third. This sets the stage for the next several strips. Enjoy.

Dear Mr. Maloney:

I read with great interest and not a little amusement the letter sent out over your signature (enclosed here for your reference) asking me to swtich our theater’s telephone service to Comcast.

It is true that I, as the person responsible for our telephone service, have been actively looking for an alternative to our current service. It’s also true that your package is considerably less than we are currently paying. (In fact, we have no internet at the theater at all, and pay just under $100.00 a month just for one landline telephone.) Under normal circumstances, coming from just about any other company, your offer might be intriguing enough for me to take to our board of directors.

However, the fact is that I am already an unwilling customer of Comcast at my home. For the past three years I have endured substandard television service (including about half of my digital channels being mysteriously deauthorized at random intervals no less than once a week) and laughably poor internet service which one of your technicians has openly admitted is being throttled. The most recent “service” call was highlighted by one of your “technicians” claiming that there was voltage on one of my lines because his meter was making a noise, even though that same meter was randomly making that same noise even when not connected to any wires.

Your company has also completely fouled up my billing. My most recent bill showed a total of just under $90.00 due, but was threatening disconnection because of a “past due” balance of $180.00. Money is tight at a small, volunteer-run organization like ours and billing mishaps like this can lead to not only headaches, but severe financial distress. I cannot risk that.

I have been trapped with your company, and your company appears to know it. My neighborhood is wired for Fiber Optic, but is not connected to the hub or lit yet. I am a half mile too far south to get DSL in my neighborhood. I have no choice but to deal with your company and it has completely soured me on anything and everything having to do with you.

The final straw came last month with the announcement that your company is co-sponsoring the launch of “RightNet,” yet another right-wing propaganda network. I do not want any of my money to go toward funding projects like this, and will be taking steps to remedy that. Within the next month I intend to install an aerial antenna to retrieve my digital television free over-the-air once again. I will be ending my television service at that time. As soon as the fiber is connected to our neighborhood, I will follow that with the disconnection of my alleged “high speed” internet service as well.

So, I hope you will understand why I cannot accept your offer to move our telephone service to Comcast. We rely on our telephones – indeed, most of our business is done over it – and cannot put our trust in such an unreliable company.

I ask that you please cease these mailings to us immediately. No further contact is desired between us and Comcast.

Sincerely,

Paul L. Sungenis

Vice President of Finance

I’m still waiting on the photo for one donor, and might conceivably have room for one or two more (go here for details) before I finish it and send it off to the printers for the proof tomorrow, but as of right now here is the group shot from Her Majesty’s Lonely Hearts Are Better Than None Club Band. Two are donors, a few are friends or people I admire, and most are characters from the strip. Click on the image for an enlarged copy.

No bonuses for identifying the people in it.

Instead of drawing pixel by pixel, though, I experimented with Corel Photoimpact’s “draw path” tool, which would let me draw freehand, then approximate a path to my mouse strokes. I could then edit those paths, adjusting trajectory and curves, and make them into the nice clean lines I wanted. This allowed me to come up with a better drawing of Pogo than I even could have managed on my own with ink, paper, and scanner.

Inspired by the results, I kept wondering (along the same lines that led me to create TNAOQV back in 2006) if I could put this technique to better use. Would I be able to create an actual, fully drawn comic strip without ever setting pencil to paper or stylus to tablet?

Thus, I decided to revist Hairball Hollow.

Back in late 2007, as Victoria was starting to gain traction at Uclick, I toyed with doing a hand drawn strip once again. The concept I had was another cat strip (since cartoon cats were among the few things I could scribble moderately well) centered around Prince, the Alpha Male, who moved into a new suburban subdivision and had to deal with the bullshit modern suburban dwellers put up with (like the local Homeowners’ Association). Supporting characters included the slacker cat in panel 3 (who I hadn’t gotten around to naming), Murray Tiedelbaum (the head of the Housepets’ Association and master of its rules and regulations), and the White Hooded Woodpecker (a flight supremecist).

As you can see above, I once more realized that I couldn’t draw worth shit.

However, could I take the lessons I’d learned from TNAOQV, and the technique I’d just played around with to “draw” in that strip, and use them to my advantage? In Photoimpact I could do fine linework, rescale images, and even have a perspective tool at my disposal to work around the fact that I have no depth perception in real life, and could never master perspective.

With nine different models at my disposal (including my previous drawings and photos of several of the cats in my life) I commenced to draw. Using the geometric shape path tools in Photoimpact, plus some freehand path editing for the odd shapes, I came up with a basic “walking cat” framework:

Every shape and almost every line in that framework existed as a separate object which I could conceivably manipulate and adapt for different poses.

I then set about cleanup and detailing, and here present a completely digital, no pencil pen or Wacom used, new version of the first panel of that sample strip.

What do you think of the final product? Workable? Of course, doing that panel that way took me the better part of two and a half hours and would not be the most efficient way to do an actual strip, but my speed would improve and (as I said above) I could reuse a lot of the framework from time to time to speed things along.

Worth pursuing? I’m open to your thoughts.