A Horse Is a Horse

Steve Benson, 3/25/11:

Somewhere, in the fields beyond the ones we know, the gigantic disembodied head of Elizabeth Taylor is riding free.

Ride like the wind, Liz Taylor's Head!

Shootout

Chuck Asay, 3/24/11:

Cutting funding for women's health, environmental protection, law enforcement, basic science, and early-childhood education -- though not entitlements or the military -- is the "moral high ground."

Because the moral is "I got mine, Jack."

The Meeting of the Jeweled Ones

Signe Wilkinson, 3/24/11:

Don't worry about doing good deeds in life; if Michael Jackson is in heaven, they'll let anyone in.

And wouldn't Liz be looking forward to seeing one of her eight husband or innumerable paramours more than her friend, the high-voiced man-child with horrible fashion sense?

A Long-Distance Dedication

Mike Peters, 3/23/11:

This is a special edition of Editorial Explanations: a shout-out from one reader (who may want to remain nameless, so I'll leave it that way) to Mike Peters, cartoonist for the Dayton Daily News and creator of the above cartoon.

I'll paraphrase what my nameless correspondent wrote:

As two minutes of Googling would have shown you, Tim Pawlenty's mother died, of cancer, when he was fifteen.

She's looking remarkably well for a woman dead since 1976, I must say.

Always Remember

John Sherffius, 3/23/11:

Without unions, there would have been a Triangle Shirtwaist Fire every year.

Torches and Pitchforks

Joel Pett, 3/23/11:

Science has utterly failed mankind; nothing it has ever done has helped extend human longevity, or increase our happiness or standard of living, or done anything else useful.

The only possible solution is to immediately all turn to magical thinking and wish that the world would get better.

The Latest Fashions

Bill Day, 3/23/11:

Gadaffi's hat is a barrel of oil that spews blood.

100 points to Day for symbolism, certainly, but no more than 5 or 6 for coherence.

A Cynic's Knowledge of Prices

Steve Kelley, 3/23/11:

Prices for everything -- including whatever Baldy McGlasses there is paid as a salary -- should never increase, but stay precisely the same as they were when we were young and impressionable.

A Zillion, Huh?

Signe Wilkinson, 3/23/11:

Guns will make us strong, but butter will only make us fat.

And who will man our all-volunteer army if we don't get the next crop of high-school droputs?

Our Nightmarish Future, Once Again

Ed Hall, 3/22/11:

Nuclear power actually works by harnessing powerful spirits from the netherworld, which will be loosed to feast on the souls of the few doomed survivors when the Statue of Liberty is toppled by the inevitable ape takeover of the world.

Or something like that. Just run around in circles, throw your hands up in the year, and scream "DOOOOOOOM!!!!" as loud as you can, and Hall will be satisfied.

Sure It's Not a Broken Umbrella?

Chuck Asay, 3/22/11:

I'm not 100% sure, but I have a sneaking suspicion that this cartoon is about the disaster in Japan. So foreigners are like animals, I guess? Or maybe "bird strikes" from alternative energy used to be much more common, proving that all energy sources are equally deadly?

In any case, it's clear that Asay is saying to the media of the world: whatever it is you're covering right now (Libya, Japan, other pro-democracy protest in the Middle East) is about as important as a dead bird is to a kid.

At Least We Don't See the Single Tear

Bill Day, 3/22/11:

Isn't it awfully late in the hurricane/tsunami/nuclear meltdown news cycle for yet another "a sad thing happened" cartoon?

(Did some new sad thing happen in some Buddhist country I'm forgetting?)

Spot Check

R.J. Matson, 3/21/11:

Fire dogs are effective in direct proportion to how many spots they have -- it's a well-known fact.

He's Despicable

Jerry Holbert, 3/22/11:

Hey! All of the Daffy Duck puns weren't taken, after all!

Anybody want to bet Holbert follows up with a Wabbit Fire reference, using Ahmadinejad as Bugs?

Bitches Ain't Nothin'

Rob Smith, Jr., 3/22/11:

Women are obnoxious henpecking harridans! Especially when they're black, and double especially when their husbands are powerful! Ha. Ha. Ha.

Hair Strike

Mike Luckovich, 3/22/11:

Once you win the Novel Peace Prize, you're peace-bonded from ever taking part in any act of violence ever again. That's why so many Nobelists get mugged.

A Fiendish Plot

Ted Rall, 3/21/11:

Republicans, surprisingly, didn't invent the "let's do this job so badly that everyone gives up on it" idea -- Greenpeace was there a generation ago.

Tomorrow we'll learn how a cadre of Democratic operatives carried out an operation to "starve the beast" of corporate America by infiltrating major finance firms throughout the early aughts and fomenting a sure-to-burst housing bubble.

Nothing But Net

Mike Keefe, 3/20/11:

The most important burning issue for Keefe of the Denver Post -- the newspaper on top of a mountain, in the middle of a desert -- is overfishing. I think someone's dreaming of his next vacation!

Sunrise

Joel Pett, 3/19/11:

It's almost as if there was some other source of energy -- neither coal, nor oil, nor nuclear -- that human beings could use. Something that comes for free out of the sky. Something that could miraculously cover all of our energy needs forever and forever -- or, at least, for the next several billion pre-red-giant years.

Walkin' the Dog

Daryl Cagle, 3/18/11:

The entire world -- with the country of Libya prominently displayed on it -- is running off for a latte while a Promethean Obama tries to clean up after an almost equally Brobdignagian Gadaffi-dog.

Seriously, Obama's head is nearly the size of the entire earth, and some of Gadaffi-dog's droppings are the equivalent of the continent of Africa. Wherever this is taking place, you want to stay away from there on a dark night.

Powerhouse

John Trever, 3/18/11:

The USA was thisclose to converting entirely to nuclear power before the Fukushima Daiichi mishap. No, really! It wasn't just a minor piece of our energy portfolio, mostly ignored or demonized -- there were thousands of plants on the drawing boards.

All-American Ingenuity at Its Finest

Dick Locher, 3/18/11:

There is no alternative -- fossil fuels, hewn out of the ground by the sweat of manly men is the only possible energy source for a He-man country like America.

And don't you forget it, bub!

Someone's Melting Down....

Jim Morin, 3/18/11:

Nuclear power is an incredibly dangerous way to generate power, killing dozens of workers even in the most modern and safety-conscious mines -- oh, wait, that's coal...

No, nuclear power causes immeasurable ecological damage when one of its units regularly leaks over millions of miles of water -- oh, wait, that's oil...

Um, nukes are bad, OK?

Bigfoot Strikes Again

Clay Bennett, 3/18/11:

It is surprising when a political movement dedicated to smaller government and balanced budgets attempts to cut spending -- perhaps because none of us are used to politicians actually continuing to believe their own campaign rhetoric once in office.

Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

Chuck Asay, 3/17/11:

Older workers should be driven from their jobs by force, since they're stuck in their ways and strongly resist new ideas and ways of thinking.

By the way, did you know that Chuck Asay, conservative political cartoonist, is 68 years old and has been cartooning for over fifty years? This fact, of course, is utterly unrelated to the previous point.

And don't conservatives like grumpy, authoritarian teachers who don't "take guff from anyone"?