Sean Huxter - The Panels

This is the most inexplicable thing, to me, about religion. I have seen people praising god for sparing them from these devastating natural disasters, while at the same time, the family right next door was completely wiped out. And even insurance companies call these natural disasters "acts of god". So... why the hell would anyone worship such a god?

In the wake of the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords and the murder of six people on Saturday, January 8, 2011, the sane, rational people of this country have banded together to demand the cessation of vitriolic, hateful rhetoric by our elected officials and media pundits who have, for over a decade, stirred a pot of paranoia and hatred for monetary and political gain. But now one side has painted itself victim in all of this - claiming that they have been unrighfully linked to the shooting. Of course no one can link this shooting to those actual people.

Years ago when this vitriol was in full swing, after a particularly awful day of speaking by Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, I posted on a forum something along the lines of "What will Beck and Rush say when someone does shoot one of the politicians they've pointed the finger at? And what will Sarah Palin say when someone she's literally targeted on a map gets gunned down?"

Well now we know. What they say is "It's not our fault our hateful speech has created an atmosphere in which political discourse has turned into a war - a literal war - between enemies, and not a debate between countrymen."

Because I'm sure Sarah Palin would love to think that hateful rhetoric has never incited violence. Ever. Throughout human history, let alone the single decade of the 1930s.

Do you think this to be a lone, crazed gunman? Because he's the only example of violence against the government in the past decade? Think again. Read about seventeen other such attacks in the last two years alone!

Wonder - "why don't I know about these?" Because the media, which did cover each event, rarely actually adds significance to them until something like this last shooting happens, and even then would like to absolve itself of its own contribution to the hateful atmosphere we now live in thanks in part to their sensationalistic voracious 24-hour news cycle appetite.

And Rush, Beck, Coulter, Hannity, O'Reilly aren't going to report much on these unless they can find someone from the Left responsible. And if they do, the'll conveniently forget about these attacks a day or so later.

So to those poor pundits crying "I didn't contribute to this", and to poor Sarah "I'm the victim again" Palin, I post this cartoon.

Not long after the shootings on January 8, Sarah Palin took this graphic down from her website. This is the very graphic that victim Gabrielle Giffords publicly spoke out about - that it might incite actual violence.

At the time it seemed clear. If Sarah Palin did not think this in any way contributed to the atmosphere of hatred and violence that led to this shooting, why take it down as a reaction to events?

Seems like a tacit admission of guilt. And I don't mean "guilty of shooting Gabrielle Giffords", because she clearly is not actually guilty of that crime. I mean "Guilty" as in "Oh my god, what have I done? How can I wash my hands clean of this?"

But no. Apparently it just went down so it could be amended. Here's the new version.

And to those who would say "Isn't this little rant hate speech?" I say no. Nor is it hate speech to react to atrocities throughout history. It is not hate speech to suggest, say, in 1930, that young Adolf might be inciting violence with those energetic speeches he's holding all over Germany. This is recognition that we may be going down a very familiar path again, and it's time to damn-well put an end to that path.

If you believe this to be hate speech, you simply don't get it. This is "mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore" speech. A subtle difference.

It is time to own up. It is time for those responsible for using "bullets over ballots"-type rhetoric to admit that it is unhealthy - that it can and will lead to violence. "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me" - is an adage best left where it is found - in Elementary School playgrounds. Because in the real world, words can kill.

And while this country enjoys a certain (not total) right to freedom of speech (100% free? Try sayin "FUCK" on public airwaves and see how much you get fined) you do not have the right to freedom of speech without consequences.

Inspired by a Penny Arcade strip, and other similar sentiments recently.
The dialogue comes from a forum where this conversation, paraphrased,
happened. I delivered the punchline.

Ladies and Gentlemen, what your Democratic government can do with an unprecedented majority mandate

When will people come together to ensure equal rights for all as presented under the Declaration of Independence? This is as embarrassing as voting to extend segregation in the 1950s.

Sorry, this isn't a cartoon. Just a sketch I did with a ball roller pen on a paper towel, so the bleeding should have made this difficult - but instead it helped.
This is about actual size - Click for larger image

Why is this even a phrase? If you've forgotten more about something... how is that useful?

This actually happened... or perhaps it didn't. I have a happy-face pin (sans blood) which I wore to both showings of Watchmen.

Don't get me wrong. I love Watchmen, but I couldn't resist this.
Get larger versions: [ 1261x1587 | 795x1000 | 509x640 ]

Inspired by the recent report that 17 Massachusetts school girls entered a pact to get pregnant
so they could raise their kids together. Reportswere that more pregnancy tests were given that year
than in any school in the US, and that there was a four-times larger-than-average number of teen
pregnancies in 2008. The school had plenty of pregnancy tests, but refuses to distribute birth control to its teens.

Suddenly the President is calling Scott McClellan a liar... after McClellan was paid to be one by Bush for years.

I can't believe a single person is seriously considering voting for McCain instead of Hillary just because Obama beat her socks off in the primaries.

My daughter thought of this one while we were talking about that mirror in the car.

After writing this one, I found I wasn't alone in this thought. There are many versions of this easily findable on the web.

Yup. Another one inspired by a Far Side cartoon. Sometimes Gary Larson goes down one road, and I see other roads he could have gone down but didn't. I then go down that road. In his original, a kid is lying in his bedroom with posters and magazines of brooms all over the walls.

I changed one letter from a Far Side cartoon. I thought "bed bug" was funnier than "bed bugs". For Mom to be this specific it seems funnier to me.

Don't know. This one just hit me while I was lying on the couch watchin "It's A Wonderful Life" with my daughter. I think there must have been a "Keep off the Grass" sign in the movie at some point.

This one came from the fact that Congress is still giving George W. Bush the money he needs for his war, ignoring the accountability the American People voted them in to get. This particular one came after Congress caved yet again.

This one was a re-use of a caption I had done some time back. Different context, a little.

I did this originally a very long time ago. The original is somewhere in my files, probably, but this is a rough sketch I did recently after being reminded of it because of the Hollywood writers' strike. Since the strike began, I saw several similar cartoons published in papers. But mine came first.

It also gave me the idea of creating a series of cartoons sketched on napkins, and call it Cocktail Napkins. Here's another one.

This came after talking to a couple of my friends after watching a movie about a decade ago. It's the first appearance of Neil and Tim from Modern Ways in ages.

Got inspired to do this one by the Lord of the Rings films, as well as my work on Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar

This was done the day after the Red Sox won their first World Series in eight decades. Also a loving tribute to Charles Schulz

Don't know where this one came from. Probably from watching so much crime drama.

One day fans sent the Asheron's Call Live Team a package of goodies. We joked about it being poisoned, but since it came from Send.com, it probably wasn't, since they were a third-party online shop. Unless...

This one I did long before I moved to Boston. I think it was during a college course I was taking on serial killers.