RELATED: Clay says, Hasta la vista

For the last 14 years I’ve been the editorial cartoonist for The Free Lance-Star and it’s been a total blast.  I’ve enjoyed the camaraderie of the newsroom, election night pizza, breaking news, racing to the newsroom at midnight on a Sunday to cover the death of Osama bin Laden, receiving angry phone calls from readers, physical threats from a fireman, and that exasperated look on my editor’s face every time I showed him a cartoon he didn’t like.

Unfortunately all of that ends as today is my last day as an employee of The Free Lance-Star.  No, I didn’t do anything bad.  Well, maybe I did but that’s not why I’m leaving.

What’s next for me?  I don’t know.  I do know my career as a staff cartoonist, something I spent seven years fighting for before it finally happened, is over.  I do have other skills and I’m going to try to figure out what those are.  There’s gotta be an opportunity for a professional smart ass somewhere out there.

I’m toying with the idea of a new adventure. This is the time to do that. This might even be a great opportunity.  I can try something new and maybe even at a new location.  Yes, I’m thinking about leaving Virginia despite the fact over the past 14 years I’ve gained more friends here than anywhere else I’ve ever lived.

No matter what else I do, you’re not getting rid of me that easily. In a week or two I will start freelancing two cartoons a week to The Free Lance-Star.  I will still syndicate my cartoons through Creators Syndicate to hundreds of newspapers.  In the coming weeks there will be a new website for my cartoons so if you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, stay tooned.

I do wanna thank The Free Lance-Star for having me.  In 1998 I had just left my job at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin when FLS gave me a shot. It’s been a great ride. I’ll forever be in the FLS family and because of social networks we’ll always stay in touch.

Most of all, I want to thank you. If I never got reactions from you I would have felt like I was spinning my wheels and not doing my job. Thank you for loving my cartoons.  Thank you for hating my cartoons. Thank you for the fan mail and the hate mail.  I know some of you will miss me but I’m really going to miss all of you.

Now today, all I have to do is draw that last cartoon and walk out of this building for the very last time.

Mahalo,

Clay Jones

There’s a lot of talk in D.C. about limiting Washington Nationals’ Stephen Strasburg to 160-180 innings after going through Tommy John surgery last year.  The team wants to limit him so he can have a long career.  The only problem with this plan is that it comes at a time when the Nationals are actually in a pennant race.  Who saw that coming?  I don’t know if I’m for pulling Strasburg or not.  I’d love to see the Nationals go deep into the playoffs and even win the World Series, but I’d hate if it hurt Strasburg’s career down the line.  I’m not a surgeon or a pitching expert so I can’t make an opinion on that without having much knowledge.

I do know politics and I agree with Republicans that what Joe Biden said this week was extremely stupid.  Biden told a mostly black crowd in Virginia that the GOP wants to unchain Wall Street and “put y’all back in chains.”  Yeah, that was stupid.

Biden could have said “they want to put you in chains” or “us in chains” or anything instead of “y’all” or using the word “back.”

Having said that, I don’t think African Americans are offended.  Republicans are upset and telling people to be offended.  Republicans can’t genuinely be offended by the comment.  Let’s face it.  There’s only about 17 black Republicans nationwide and they’re all nuts.  Wanna argue over that?  OK, two examples.  Allen West and Herman Cain.  I think Colin Powell is still a Republican technically but he’s endorsed Obama.  Of course all white Republicans are nuts too because they think West, Cain, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann are perfectly rational human beings.

And the other reasons Republicans can’t be offended is because they weren’t upset when Rick Santorum said “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.”  They weren’t offended when a surrogate for Romney’s campaign said Obama doesn’t understand the Anglo/Saxon relationship.  They’re not offended by screaming about “taking our country back” which is code for “back from that black guy.”  None of them were offended by Rick Perry’s ranch named “n-word head.”  They weren’t offended when Newt Gingrich said poor kids (code word again) should work as janitors at schools.

Republicans might wanna get out of the business of telling minorites what they should be offended by.

The other talk, only from Republicans, is about pulling Joe Biden from the ticket and replacing him with Hillary Clinton.  That’s not gonna happen.  It’s even ridiculous to talk about which explains why Sarah Palin has been talking about it.  Let’s see, Sarah…the guy kicked  your ass in a debate and it’s very likely he’s going to do the same to Paul Ryan.  And seriously, someone’s going to seek an opinion about the Vice Presidential slot on a national ticket?  Yeah, Sarah…you did so well with it yourself.

Some nutcase went to the Family Research Council with a gun (or guns) and attempted to shoot people.  A security guard stopped the guy and took a shot in the arm.  The motives haven’t been confirmed but a lot of websites, specifically right wing websites, have said the guy had issues with FRC because of their stances against homosexuality.  That’s probably true.

The Family Research Council is one of the groups funded by Chick-fil-A.  They oppose same-sex marriage.  They’ve gone so far as to equate homosexuality with pedophilia, made statements that repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” will lead to man-on-man rape in the military and finally…that gay activity should be criminalized and prosecuted.

That doesn’t mean they should be a target of violence.  I only support ridiculing them for being the backward religious zealots that they are.

A former FLS colleague of mine who works for some bizarre rightwing think tank in the midwest stated today on Twitter that liberals hate “hate” except when it targets right wing groups.  Hey, Einstein…that logic means all right wingers support violence against abortion clinics.  It’s always better to use an event like this to frame a narrative for political purposes than maybe, I don’t know, talk about efforts that might reduce such horrible incidents.  If some leftwing nut shoots at a rightwing outlet then it’s systematic of liberalism…but if a rightwing nut shoots at a leftwing outlet then it’s totally unrelated to any political idealogy.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated the FRC as a hate group.  The Southern Poverty Law Center’s monitoring of hate groups is a resource used by the FBI.  Some have stated that FRC being labeled a hate group is what led to today’s violence.  OK.  So let’s not be honest anymore and call something for what it is.  Because the SPLC has gone after groups that encouraged violence or hatred against other groups, they’re often labeled as a biased far left fringe nut group.  The lesson here is that if you ever use facts you’re going to be labeled as the loony left.  Let’s just forget all the years the SPLC has tracked the KKK and Neo Nazis.

Also, how many weeks in a row are we going to have a shooting make national news before we can start talking about gun control…or maybe talk about profiling white people?

At any rate, shooting people is uncool.  Whether the target is left, right, religious or just a theater full of people trying to watch Batman.

I just find it kinda ironic that Mitt called Obama’s record and future plans “Obama-loney” and then recruits a guy who used to drive the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile to be his V.P. candidate.

Here’s the thing about Ryan’s plan:  It doesn’t stop the debt from growing.  It still spends.  It cuts a lot of entitlements and programs for the poor.  It gives huge tax breaks to the rich and actually raises taxes on those making $30,000 or less a year.  These guys who HATE, HATE, HATE welfare have put in $40 billion to go toward oil companies.

My editor killed this cartoon at first.  He said Ryan’s plan was a start.  Well if that’s all it takes to make you like a plan, then isn’t any plan a start?  I explained a few details to the chief and after saying the cartoon wasn’t “fair”, he relented.  Again, cartoons are not supposed to be fair.

I don’t agree with Mitt Romney on much and I don’t agree with Paul Ryan on much.  But I think for Mitt Romney, Ryan is a great choice.

No, nobody’s going to get excited but nobody was getting excited for Romney anyway.  There wasn’t anyone out there to help Mitt win a swing state, except for maybe Ryan.  Rubio wasn’t gonna do it.  Portman isn’t even known in his state of Ohio and Pawlenty is booooooooooring.  Ryan brings energy, youth and actual brains to the operation (not that Mitt is stupid, he’s just gaffe prone and kinda clueless).

Conservatives aren’t excited about Romney.  If there was at least one decent candidate in the primaries then that candidate would have cake walked to the nomination.  Romney was the default.  Conservatives know Ryan is one of them and don’t suspect him as much as they do Romney.  So Ryan will get them out on voting day.

Ryan is smart.  He’s not dumb and inexperienced like Sarah Palin.  I’m sure he was vetted.  He doesn’t have any real experience with foreign policy which makes this ticket free of any foreign policy experience unless you count Mitten’s offshore tax havens as experience.

The issue here is what Ryan wants to do with Medicare and Medicaid.  The fact Ryan wants to give Mitt Romney another huge tax cut (Lord knows the poor guy needs it).  Good luck with Florida, Mitt.

Here’s a little known Ryan fact:  In high school he was voted biggest butt kisser.

I started drawing this Friday night and meant to finish and post it Saturday.  I got distracted and didn’t finish it until today.  It’s a bonus cartoon.

I’ve seen a couple dozen of Mars Curiosity cartoons this week.  I hated all of them.  They either showed Martians, or the robot finding Romney’s taxes, or the robot was getting away from political campaigns.  I think mine’s better.  HAHA!!!

Romney has ran a lot of misleading ads against Obama.  He’s claimed Obama is trying to give people welfare with no questions asked and that he’s denying voting rights.  Both are lies.  Romney said candidates should take ads off the air after they’re proven to be lies.  The fact sources Romney has cited to show misleading ads by Obama, have also fact checked  his ads and said they were lies.  Romney won’t remove them.

Yeah, I don’t like Romney.  I don’t think he stands for anything except being elected.  He can’t run on his record as governor because he’s against everything he did as governor.  He wants to run on his experience as a Bain Capitalist, but he doesn’t think it’s fair to be scrutinized.  He doesn’t have any plans except for cutting his own taxes and gutting government programs.  The dude is an emotionaless robot trying to hide his past.  His welfare ad is preying on racism.

However, I’m disgusted by the ad aired by the super pac, Priorities USA, supporting Obama.  Even though there’s not supposed to be any correlation between pacs and campaigns, Obama should publicly say he wants it removed (he can’t make them remove it, but he can publicly say how he feels).  The ad blames Romney for a man’s death.  Bain bought into a company, eventually closed it and a laidoff employee’s wife eventually died from cancer.  I would think the ad was fair if the entire Bain thing did contribute to the woman’s death, but even then it would be hard to pinpoint.

I’m not going to use the conservative defense of how long Romney was at Bain, he wasn’t at Bain when the company closed down, or how he was listed as sole shareholder.  The thing is, you can’t blame Mitt Romney for someone having cancer.  Yeah, it’s a sad story.  We can talk about insurance and coverage and there might be more of a question about that which would have nothing to do with either Romney or Obama.  But this ad, even for me, is too low.

I always tell conservatives “if Obama was really so bad, then why do they have keep making crap up?”  They make up a lot of crap.  I’ll tell my liberal friends this:  Romney is bad.  You don’t have to make crap up.

I like the “Romneyhood” label.  It’s almost as good as the commercial with Romney singing out of key.

Of course the voting rights thing and the welfare thing are total fabrications.  Romney’s saying Obama is trying to restrict military voting in Ohio.  In reality, Ohio is opening up some weekends for military ONLY and Obama wants them to open them up for everyone.  He’s not trying to restrict military voting.  If anything, he’s trying to be inclusive.

On welfare, several states have asked for waivers on welfare reform.  Several of those are Republican governors like Rick Perry….and Mitt Romney.  Now Romney is trying to change the story by saying Obama wants to just give everyone a handout.  The entire welfare argument, with Newt Gingrich in the lead, is kind of race baiting.  Yes, I said it.  It’s preying on white voters’ fears.