Cartoon: "Maternity Leaveless"

So after a gazillion-year hiatus, I'm back (a bit) in political cartooning land. I've been collaborating with the husband (aka Masheka Wood) on a new series of cartoons for Women's eNews. Here's the latest, "Maternity Leaveless" (click through thumbnail to see the full-size piece):

Seriously, 30% of women in the U.S. take no maternity leave, and 40% take six weeks or less. It's not hard to guess why—we have the not-so-distinct distinction of being the only "economically advanced" country to offer no paid maternity leave whatsoever. (See Think Progress for a colorful and depressing infographic on this).

You might notice the women in this cartoon is breastfeeding—at least for now. It can be hard enough to get a good start feeding your kid when you have only 6-12 weeks at home to get things going, but with no maternity leave, that would mean an immediate need to ALSO wrestle with a breast pump, try to get pumping breaks, maintain supply, etc... Studies show that the longer breastfeeding moms get for leave, the longer they are able to successfully breastfeed and meet their breastfeeding goals.

I got 12 weeks leave myself, half of them paid. I had no trouble getting pumping breaks or a place to pump at work. By U.S. standards, I'm one of the lucky ones—but by global standards, that's not super impressive.

Cartoon: Once upon a swine...

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I'm 100% for the vaccine and plan to get it ... if it EVER becomes available. So many of the pieces I've seen debating for or against the vaccine seem to be missing the fact that even high-risk groups (such as folks with asthma) haven't been able to get it yet. I've been calling my doctor's office and several New York h1n1 hotlines for weeks and they have no clue when they'll have it available.

Also, Bill Maher and Glenn Beck are idiots. Would have drawn them both into the last panel but there just wasn't room.

Cartoon: The Health Reform Debate

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Drew this a few weeks ago after my parents encountered some unpleasant characters with Obama-Hitler signs at a town hall. If I had drawn more recently he'd be toting a bunch of machine guns.

Toon: Future Stimulus Packages

This is one of those kitchen sink cartoons where I took a bunch of stuff that always pisses me off and wrapped it into a critique of a new thing that pisses me off. That new thing is the mass delusion behind the stimulus package: that giving a few hundred dollars in rebates to every taxpayer at one time—and encouraging them to go out and shop with it—will somehow magically Fix the Economy.

A few hundred dollars doesn't mean squat when you're about to lose your house because you've been conned into a subprime mortgage. A few hundred dollars doesn't mean squat when you don't have a job. Maybe you can buy food and heat for a month or two, but what about the next month? Also, the last thing most Americans need to do with their money is spend it--most need to pay off debt with it.

As for those other things that piss me off, here are some notes about the four other stupid quick fix stimulus packages:

1. The Education Rebate. Remember Bush's horrible SOTU address last year, when he spent half his speech randomly singing the praises of those awful bogus "Baby Einstein" videos? If Bush is so misguided as to ignore the research that says no child under two should spend ANY time in front of any type of television or computer screen, I figured he might be deluded into thinking that one Baby Einstein DVD per student of any age could solve our educational crisis.

   By the way, I thought about somehow trying to explain or indicate why this girl was a high school dropout, but then I thought it was beside the point. Maybe she went to a crappy school and fell through the cracks. Maybe she got pregnant and didn't get the support she needed to stay in school. Maybe she had such horrible underfunded overcrowded schools since she was young that she never developed a love of learning. Who knows?

2. The Hunger Healer. This is real, actually. Back during the initial stages of the Afghan war, the U.S. tried to assuage/offset any small guilt about dropping all those bright yellow cluster bombs on civilians by dropping bright yellow packages of food along with the bombs. Food that looked like bombs, often burst or spoiled on landing, led children into minefields, and made many Afghans very sick. And yes, each packet contained PB&J. Which is fine if you know what that is and how to eat it and you don't have peanut allergies. Here are some quotes from a Boston Globe piece ("Afghan Food Drops Found to Do Little Good") about the backlash to this ill-conceived faux-humanitarian effort:

   The Bush administration's much publicized food ration airdrop in northern Afghanistan - hailed by the Pentagon as a way to feed starving residents while winning their loyalty - achieved neither goal in many targeted areas, military experts, aid workers, and a report by retired US special forces officers now conclude.

   ...The bright yellow plastic-wrapped meals ruptured upon impact because they were dropped from too high an altitude and spoiled, endangering the Afghans who ate them, the report by the retired officers said.

   Moreover, the meals often were collected by local warlords and sold for a profit at Afghan markets and seldom reached hungry families, according to aid workers. In other cases, Afghans were lured by the bright packages into minefields or confused them with cluster bombs of the same color.

3. The Nature Stimulator. CFL bulbs are great. They're all I have in my house, and they sure do save a little bit of energy. But promoting the false idea that every American making one TINY change is somehow going to be enough to stave off global disaster is ridiculous. Sure we should all do our part--but we need much more drastic and widespread change as a society to make a real difference. We need real regulations on corporate polluters and real tough emissions standards and smaller more efficient vehicles and better public transport and a whole lot more than just a CFL bulb in every house. Etc.
4. The Peace Patch. This is just in reference to all those Iraqis who were supposed to love their U.S. liberators. It's kind of hard to love the people who shot your innocent husband for driving slightly too fast past a checkpoint you just set up at random.

As always, I'm just full of cheer. Sigh...

New Toon: Bush's Bedside Manner

Bush's Bedside Manner
Originally uploaded by M1khaela.

Is this guy for real? Does he really think kicking 4-6 million kids off of health insurance (and onto the "hope my kids don't get sick" plan) is a winning move? So, so puzzling...

Your Yucky Body: Disgusting Diet Trends

Your Yucky Body: Disgusting Diet Trends
Originally uploaded by M1khaela.

Partly inspired by the disgusting facts about the weirdly popular diet drug Alli, but partly by a personal experience. A few years ago I had a horrible case of pneumonia that left me bed-ridden and barely able to breathe for three miserable weeks. When I returned to the world of the living, sickly and weak, I got all these compliments for losing weight (“you look so HEALTHY!” "what diet are you on?") when I had never been MORE unhealthy in my life. Skinny does NOT equal healthy.

New Toons: Rats Gone Wild, HPV, Hate Report

This is a somewhat random assortment--the Rats Gone Wild and NYC Condoms cartoons were drawn for Chelsea Now, of course, and the other two are my usual weekly strip. The HPV/cervical cancer vaccine issue is complicated, and I'm not necessarily endorsing a mandatory vaccine, just registering my total disagreement with the whole "my precious little daughter won't EVER have sex so she doesn't need a vaccine" crowd.

And the brutal hate crime murder of 72-year out gay man Andrew Anthos is just incredibly depressing, which accounts for the total lack of sarcasm or humor or my usual artfulness in that cartoon.

P.S. Regarding NY Comic Con: suffice it to say I got to hang with Keith Knight, Alison Bechdel, David Rees, R. Stevens, Ted Rall and others, which made the whole business worthwhile.

New Toon: "Gold-Plated Health Insurance"

Bush is right--the biggest problem with American health care is that it's just too darn comprehensive and fancy and covered in gold and diamonds!

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