What started in 1989 as an attempt to sell a single cartoon turned into a long string of milestones, each of which I assumed would be the high-water mark of this silly pursuit.

• One cartoon sale.

• Twenty-eight years as a regular contributor to a science magazine.

• An attempt at local editorial cartoons in 1997 which grew to three local papers in my area.

• Then a regular contributor to a national newspaper, then self syndication, magazine covers, feature illustrations, and book illustrations.

• And, for the last six years, a fantastic experience as a nationally syndicated editorial cartoonist thanks to Creators Syndicate.

Every step surprised me as much as anyone else. Along the way there were plenty of rejections, a few misspelled words, and a lot of angry mail, but no regrets.

I’ll keep this newsletter going for now with an occasional look back at the cartoons, the mentors, and even the rejections.

Please keep sharing it. I may even sneak in a timely, opinionated doodle or a travel sketch.

As for the commitment of at least four cartoons a week, to paraphrase Douglas Adams, so long, and thanks for all the fodder.

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For now, I’ll leave you with a few of my cartoons from the last two weeks.

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There are only two possible paths that avoid the inconsistencies,

• restrict competition to biological females, or,

• persuade the public that men possess no meaningful physical advantages in basketball.

Although the differences between the sexes should require little discussion, some continue to deny their existence. On average, biological males develop greater muscle mass and strength, higher bone density, and greater lung capacity.

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Basketball depends heavily on these attributes. Height, vertical leap, strength for rebounding and post play, speed, and power are impacted by biology, even sub-elite males frequently outperform elite females in these traits.

If males are permitted in the WNBA, the most glaring contradiction is that each male player occupying a roster spot would otherwise go to a female. In other words, a female is excluded and exclusion is the opposite of inclusion.

In practice the league already excludes players, specifically those females who are outperformed by other females. Thousands of high school and college-age women would welcome the chance to play in the WNBA, yet they’re excluded. Alongside experience and work ethic, genetic differences matter even among females. Again, greater muscle mass, higher bone density, larger skeletal frames, greater lung capacity, and higher hemoglobin levels all influence outcomes.

Professional sports need not prioritize inclusion. They simply should apply consistent performance standards to identify and select the small number of athletes who reach this elite level.

In the hierarchy of who gets to play at the elite level in the WNBA, women should be first. When the league tanks so badly that there are roster spots women won’t fill, by all means include biological men.

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Could they actually keep a straight face during their oath to “…support and defend the Constitution…against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same…”?

Let’s hope they don’t get the opportunity…for their own safety to avoid spontaneous combustion.

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While the party drifts along, the former president appears content to sip kale smoothies and tsk tsk about the state of politics.  Socialism’s rising tide, coming on the heels of two of the worst presidential candidates in Uncle Joe and Kamala, barely seems to register on his radar. 

The candidate of hope and change should be screaming, “I hoped it wouldn’t change this much!” Instead, it’s as if the toppling of the first transforming-America dominoes under his watch was by design.

His version of leadership is to flash a toothy grin and drop a few eloquent phrases about the arc of history.  He then vanishes before anyone can ask why the party’s platform now sounds like it was workshopped in a middle school cafeteria serving fermented fruit punch. 

The Democratic Party is leaderless while its most famous alumnus displays the serene confidence of a man who has already checked out and is mentally filling the re-education wing of his library.

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This week’s primaries included strong showings and wins by far left candidates who were often aligned with DSA and backed by Bernie Sanders. Platforms included Medicare for all, anti-Israel sentiments, and anti-capitalism.

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Nesting dolls seemed an appropriate metaphor to show what’s at the heart of the shocking turn the Democrats are taking toward the even farther left. Read to the bottom for a time lapsed video of the coloring process.

Michigan, a battleground state, is in a serious hold-my-beer moment bolstered by Zohran Mamdani’s New York win and the newly minted mayor’s subsequent media-stealing spotlight.

Abdul El-Sayed won in Michigan to represent Democrats for U.S. Senate in the upcoming general election. He’s a public health official, with strong progressive and DSA support while carrying the critical progressive hate for AIPAC. In Michigan’s 7th Congressional District, William Lawrence moves to the general election as another DSA-aligned progressive. In the 13th Congressional District, Donavan McKinney, DSA member, endorsed by Bernie Sanders and Rashida Tlaib, beat the coiffed-challenged Shri Thanedar. You may remember Thanedar as the Democrat who prioritized impeaching Trump (47) and other Republicans above all else. Then there’s incumbent progressive Rashida Tlaib who won her primary in Michigan’s 12th District.

Matryoshka dolls, otherwise known as nesting dolls, seemed appropriate for the today’s cartoon. I have such a set from a visit years ago to Russia as part of my day job. First stop on the three-week effort was Moscow.

As we walked through the city we encountered many vendors, and as good capitalists, they realized matryoshka dolls were easy to sell to tourists like me. Especially when one set had a University of South Carolina Gamecocks theme. Go figure.

Yesterday I dug this treasure out of a closest to use as a model for the cartoon.

Each doll was a different Gamecock’s player, complete with name and number, although with a couple of names misspelled. ‘A’ for effort though.

The following is a video of the coloring process. I ended up flipping this to put the punch line (Marx) on the right side for the published version as seen above. Enjoy.

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Here’s the result…

A little background on recent abortion happenings. In late 2021, the Dobbs case challenged Mississippi’s 2018 Gestational Age Act, which banned most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy (early into the second trimester). To many, that seemed reasonable, however, Jackson Women’s Health Organization challenged the law, arguing that the Court should uphold the viability standard concerning survivability of the baby outside the womb and not overturn nearly 50 years of precedent.

The counter argument by the state of Mississippi claimed that the Constitution does not protect the right to abortions, that Roe was wrongly decided, and that the Court should overrule them and apply the legal standard known as “rational-basis review” to abortion regulations. In other words, Roe vs. Wade was bad precedence.

We all know now that in 2022, the Gestational Age Act was upheld and that the Supreme Court justices explicitly overruled Roe vs. Wade, leaving it up to the states to individually decide. Common sense and logic would seem to conclude that the number of abortions would go down. That, however, did not happen.

Before Dobbs was heard, 2020 saw 930,000 abortions in the US. An incredibly huge number of lives lost. Abortion clinics said, “hold my beer.” In 2025, we saw 1.13 million abortions, a 21% increase from 2020.

The states were given the power to protect the unborn, and yet the national tally climbed providing a bitter reminder that legality and morality do not always move in the same direction.

It's the political equivalent of announcing, "The termites aren't eating the house. They’re just chewing on the wood.”

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It was all fun and games until the polling winds shifted.

The stench from Planter’s behavior was now well inside the reach of a ten-foot pole,… and outside the reach of a voter poll.   Endorsements evaporated, excuses became null and void, and Democrats discovered their inner ethicists with the urgency of a campaign finance deadline. “We must stand for women and decency!” they proclaimed, conveniently forgetting the months of shoulder-shrugging.

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It appeared less a principled stand and more a classic case of “the polls hath spoken.”  Apparently, virtue isn’t always achieved as easily as new ink over a tattoo. 

Platner went from populist hero to persona non grata and in the process added a new piece of hypocrisy luggage to the Democrats’ baggage.

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The last time I remember doing one was in 2018, and I actually drew two that year. One was for Scott Hunter, publisher of the Aiken Standard, the South Carolina newspaper where my editorial cartoons appeared. The other was for Cot Campbell, who founded Dogwood Stables in Aiken. Summer Squall was stabled there and won the Preakness in 1990, just two weeks after losing to Unbridled in the Kentucky Derby.

I was shocked Sunday morning when I learned that U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham had died. I’d followed his career since he was a U.S. Representative from South Carolina in the late 1990s.

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Having worked for 35 years in the nuclear industry at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site near Aiken, I especially appreciated his strong support for keeping the site active in everything from nuclear material production to cleanup efforts. His work was good for both the country and our community. It felt right to honor Senator Graham.

This time, though, I didn’t do a typical caricature. Instead, I attempted a simple sketched portrait, something that’s never been my strength and that I’d never seriously tried before. The result looked like a person (hopefully a man), but it also could have passed for a not-very-good police sketch.

To get the likeness, I reverted to the grid method I learned in middle school. I drew a grid over a reference photo and a larger matching grid on my drawing paper, then sketched one small square at a time. It’s an old technique that helps maintain accurate proportions and delivers a surprisingly decent resemblance. The last time I used it was in middle school, when I drew a passable peregrine falcon.

As someone who believes tracing is a shortcut to avoid, I have to admit the grid method feels almost like cheating, it’s that effective. Even so, I probably won’t use it again. It’s far more time-consuming than I remembered from when I was 13.

The grid method let me fake being a serious artist for a few hours, until my aching hand and the clock reminded me I’m much better at knocking out caricatures in a third of the time.

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See below for a time-lapse view of the inking as well as the layout sketch.

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Thanks to the horror author’s bumbling retraction, that no one could possibly believe was sincere, I could turn one cartoon into an opinion two-fer: the original stupid Platner defense and the disingenuous backpedaling.

Here’s the irony that writes itself, Democrats foam at the mouth insisting Trump is the embodiment of every evil the universe can conjure… while nominating a man who supplies daily, ironclad proof that he possesses those exact qualities. Then, for an encore, they’ll demonstrate exactly how a primary-dodging, democracy-hating candidate installation is professionally managed.

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Like the once popular lobotomy, these treatments have been promoted with great optimism despite weak evidence and significant potential for irreversible harm.

Medical interventions for minors, such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or surgeries, however, involve the evaluation of substantial risks that are often irreversible. The use is covered in the Cass Review, 2024, (commissioned by NHS England) and found the evidence base for these interventions to be weak, with insufficient high quality data demonstrating meaningful, sustained benefits for gender dysphoria, mental health, or psychosocial outcomes.

Yet the pragmatic recommendations of the document stand in stark contrast to how these interventions have often been promoted. They’ve been described as ‘lifesaving’ (with rhetoric such as ‘Would you rather have a dead daughter than a live son?’), credited with resolving mental health crises by ‘aligning the body with the true self,’ and portrayed as so urgent that any delay or alternative approach is ‘harmful, stigmatizing, or conversion therapy.’

A further concern is informed consent. Adolescents’ prefrontal cortices (brain region responsible for long-term planning, risk assessment, and impulse control) are not fully developed until the mid-20s. Expecting minors to fully understand the lifelong consequences of sterility, sexual dysfunction, bone density loss, and potential regret is unrealistic.

This same region was deliberately targeted in lobotomies because altering it reliably changed personality and emotional regulation.

Respect the unassailed, mature prefrontal cortex.

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“Wikipedia’s leftist bias is so deep that an anonymous administrator of the free, crowd-curated online encyclopedia recently got one of the site’s founders banned for the crime of . . . pointing out Wikipedia’s leftist bias.”

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Larry Sanger, one of the originators of Wikipedia decades ago and the person credited for coming up with the name, has been banned.

Sanger recently launched WikiProject Intellectual Diversity in an attempt to get Wikipedia back to it’s roots with a commitment to intellectual diversity and neutrality. The online encyclopedia overlords at the core of Wikipedia’s mob rule mentality had other thoughts.

Armed with the power seen in George Orwell’s “1984” and recognizing a threat to their control of information, a largely anonymous group of 62 administrators Sanger refers to as the “Power 62” recently banned him from editing privileges. Their grievance? Sanger pointed out that there are underrepresented viewpoints including those from American conservatives.

Nothing screams power hunger more than banning someone who points out your power appetite.

As an example of their bias, below are two screenshots from the Democratic and Republican Party Wikipedia pages. Note the contrast in “Political Positions” between the two.

Does anyone believe that the Democrats occupy the “center” and as close to the left wing they get is center-left? Apparently socialism is the new center.

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Democrats suddenly regret their big tent approach as the viral fire races through the big top.

While Chuck Schumer polishes his Wall Street donor list and Nancy Pelosi perfects her side-eye, Bernie’s out there endorsing fresh-faced lefties who quote Marx principles like they’re brunch menu specials.

Revenge, it turns out, isn’t a dish best served cold, it’s served with free college, Medicare for All, and a side of “eat the rich” bumper stickers. The old guard only wanted his votes, now they’re waking up to find he’s able to make offers they can’t refuse.

What began as polite suggestions for “a little more government” has escalated into a full-on fever dream where billionaires are villains unless they’re donating to the right PAC, borders are suggestions, and every problem from student loans to the price of avocado toast is solved by printing more money and taxing the air you breathe.

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AOC’s squad now functions like the cool kids’ in the congressional cafeteria, serving up Green New Deals that promise to outlaw cows while guaranteeing everyone a pony and free healthcare (just ignore the wait times and the part where your doctor moonlights as a barista).

Comrade, pass the redistribution,…er, guacamole.

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Soon we’ll be weaving “football” terminology into every conversation, developing new suspicions so the US whips the Aussies like they dominated Paraguay (where are my unmatched socks I was wearing last game…er, match…whatever), and building party platters that look like a football pitch.

It’s time to enjoy a global spectacle that isn’t about politics.

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He’s out there countering the Democrats’ dreary vision of a zero upside, endless quagmire, painting himself as the dealmaker who’ll slap the mullahs around for a few days and convince them that the 72 virgins are only available to those with intact appendages.

It’s the geopolitical equivalent of ensuring a quick porch remodel that somehow morphs into a six-month saga with unexpected termites, a sinking foundation, and surprise invoices.

The crew across the aisle, who ignores the global threat and assumes whether the result is a nuclear Iran or not, believes what’s important about this conflict is the newfound fuel source that powers their TDS fever dreams.

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By the time the final tally trickles in, voters are left wondering if their ballot got stuck in the same bureaucratic limbo as their high-speed rail project, and California’s reputation for election integrity has taken more damage than a Prius skidding off LA’s five-level interchange.

It’s democracy, California style: slow, sustainable, and served with a side of avocado toast.

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Democrats who spent years demanding zero tolerance for toxic masculinity suddenly discovered the healing power of redemption arcs, PTSD oyster-farming, and “he was just drunk in the Marines, bro.”

And dear Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, champion of moral outrage when it involved Republicans, took one look at their Maine hopeful and decided MeToo could flee too. There’s no fatter asterisk that goes with “Believe Women” than one that says “unless there’s a Senate seat at stake, in which case please enjoy this nuanced contextualization while we sprint toward majority control.”

Principles are cute, but Senate seats are forever.

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