For a very long time the editorial cartoonists avoided going after Obama because most of them do caricatures and they wanted to avoid stereotyping. They avoided many missteps that were made, or attributed them to other people.

Well, those days are definitely over. Mark Fiore has a new animated video that tears BO a new one. Almost the entire collection of cartoons for the week of December 6 at McClatchy spindle, fold and shred him. David Rees has Get Your War On running again in New York magazine.

Web sites like Protest Obama have sprung up, and established sites like Democracy for America are running calls for No Deal on the Obama-Republican tax cut plan.

I ran some numbers on this deal, and turns out that under the deal more than 40% of the households at the bottom will have their taxes increase under this plan. Obama keeps bringing up “the average family”.

Remember: whenever you hear “average” in a discussion of money in politics, the person using it is lying about something. Honest people use “median”, which is the point in the middle, with half the group above and half below. If Bill Gates is in a room with a dozen people from a homeless shelter, the average net worth in that room is in the billions, but the median net worth is near zero. Words make a difference.

Mother and Child Reunion

ZZZ… zzz… ZZZ…

[Editor: This is Ringo in the front and her son, Income, in the back surviving the cold weather. Ringo is the smallest of the cats, and in the classic cat pose with straight from legs, Income is a full head taller than his mom. They are on an olive drab wool blanket that is at least a half-century old.

Friday Ark