Someone's gotta take a stand against motherhood

From the Washington Post, via Shakespeare's Sister:

On Wednesday afternoon, the House had just voted, 412 to 0, to pass H. Res. 1113, "Celebrating the role of mothers in the United States and supporting the goals and ideals of Mother's Day," when Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), rose in protest.

"Mr. Speaker, I move to reconsider the vote," he announced.

Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), who has two young daughters, moved to table Tiahrt's request, setting up a revote. This time, 178 Republicans cast their votes against mothers.

It has long been the custom to compare a popular piece of legislation to motherhood and apple pie. Evidently, that is no longer the standard. Worse, Republicans are now confronted with a John Kerry-esque predicament: They actually voted for motherhood before they voted against it.[my emphasis]

Republicans, unhappy with the Democratic majority, have been using such procedural tactics as this all week to bring the House to a standstill, but the assault on mothers may have gone too far. House Minority Leader John Boehner, asked yesterday to explain why he and 177 of his colleagues switched their votes, answered: "Oh, we just wanted to make sure that everyone was on record in support of Mother's Day."

By voting against it?

....

"The majority has taken, once again, their go-it-alone policy," Boehner lamented yesterday. "It's time for Democrats and Republicans to work together." To induce this working together, Boehner decided to stop the House from working at all.

House Republicans are doing everything they can to prevent Democrats from passing any legislation.

I was curious if the bill included anything pernicious to the GOP (praise for single moms, evolution, or voting for women) but it's about as harmless as you'd imagine. It was submitted by a Nebraska Republican, Jeffrey Fortenberry. He voted against it the second time.

While I'm here, happy Mother's Day to my mom and to Lisa's mom! Unlike some people, I do think you made great sacrifices for the future of the nation, and for us.

And happy birthday to Adam Schlagman, who is too young and creative. I'm giving him just 20 years to solve that problem.

Calgary

I had a great time in Calgary, I've got some non-work time while I wait for the Hoosier state to finish counting votes, so it's time to do some high intensity bloggin'!

It was a good medium sized convention. It draws in some excellent comics talent, like Bruce Timm, Stuart Immonen, writers Mark Waid and Greg Rucka, or the artists on either side of my con table, Whilce Portacio and Marko Djurdjevic.

Marko, in the foreground
Lisa in the midground
big crowd around Whilce in the back!

Eisner award winner, Russ Manning nominee Steve Rolston, in from Vancouver.

I should be bringing you some fine quality scans of my Calgary con sketches. I did bring my cheapo scanner there, but I forgot my USB cable. Ah well. I used my camera. You'll see some odd shadows and such.

Paid sketches of Gambit and Arsenal for two of the clerks from the Redd Skull Comics shop booth. Every time I needed reference for a sketch, they were the go to guys. Thanks, Teague and Andrew!











A Joker sketch, of course. When I asked for a theme, the buyer said "crazy".

















I made this for a guy who collected female faerie sketches. The Brian Froud faeries were pretty well covered in his collection, so I went for a Tolkien/fantasy adventure elf. I suspect this image will show up on some DnD character sheets soon!











Here's the one I'm most proud of. I did a previous sketch for Steven Gettis's literary portrait website, but I never sent him the original art. He's been asking for another for years. After showing up in his home town I finally did it: The Little Prince, a book that really struck me when I was six years old. By chance, this happened to be one of his wife's favorite books!

As usual, I got script and drawn sketches for Mike and Lowell. I'll hold off posting those until Mike can see his sketchbook in person.

I didn't get to wander the hall much. Bill Willingham did. He got in line and got a signed photo from Tricia Helfer, the tall blonde cylon from Battlestar Galactica. He asked her to write "Any time you're in LA feel free to crash on my couch," but she didn't go for it. Cylons. No sense of humor.

Again, never believe anything Bill says about me and penguins.

After the con was over, con organizer Kandrix Foong took a crew of creators and volunteers to dinner and then to Banff.

Dinner with Bruce Timm, Jim Zubkavich, and a lot of Asians!

The guys from Jim's Udon Studios were pretty damn talented. I honestly had never heard of them before, which shows you how badly I need to get out. Wonderful stuff.

I'd also never heard of Banff. I'm a provincial little American. It's really lovely out there. Real Gene quote: "I was just about to say, those mountains look bigger than the Rockies!"

The Portacios

I've met Whilce before, but never had a good long conversation with him till this trip. There's a heckuva lot of stuff I didn't know about him. I didn't know that he'd moved back to the Philipines for a while and taught comics illustration. Among his graduates is Leinil Yu. He Whilce also pioneered Photoshop comics coloring with Alex Sinclair at Wildstorm.

Here are some pictures of Ed the Sock (Steven Kerzner) and Red (Liana Kerzner) showing what makes Canada great! Patriotism and public shagging with puppet fetishism. And here is a Wikipedia photo of Liana dressed as Power Girl! For those who aren't Canadian or don't get the US cable Ripe channel, they're dangerous Canadian TV personalities.

















I adore Canadian television. It can't compete with the US stations for big glossy production values, so they bring the wacky hard core. Like Ed the Sock and Red. Or another great show, Trailer Park Boys.

Just gonna finish up with some random photos from Banff. The votes are counted and I need to ink in the morning!

Fixing things up

Just a little temp post while I republish my site after finding a new web host.

Back from Calgary!

It's late on Wednesday and I've just gotten back from Calgary. They're amazingly cool people up there, and I also got to hang out with some amazing artists and writers.

I'll try to posts photos later. Some quick highlights: a good charity auction, getting sketches for my friends Mike and Lowell from Whilce, Mahfood, Waid, Rucka, Immonen, and Willingham, hanging out with all those creators over steak, listening to a tale of true lust that compelled a man to smuggle baking soda from Peru, and seeing the beautiful friendship between a redhead and a sock.

More details later. It's almost midnight and I must sleep. Remember, never believe Bill when he discusses my obsession with penguins.

Computer Troubles

I have no idea why this is true, but computer problems always seem to come in clusters.

I decided to switch my website host. It turns out that I didn't update my Admin Contact info first, so a bunch of emails needing responses (request for payment, approval of transfer, etc) got sent to a dead email address. Also, we changed the server name early so I couldn't get to my normal email address.

My normal email is back.

I gave up transferring the website until the Contact Info is finished updating with WhoIs.

Lisa's computer was slow so I ordered more RAM memory. The day after I installed it her hard drive went bad. We've got it at a repair shop to see if there are bigger problems with the RAM, the hard drive, or something even more sinister.

I suspect simians. Were there monkeys? Some terrifying space monkeys maybe got loose? (Free Gene Ha doodle to the first person to get the geeky pop culture ref).

Finally, my Comcast internet mysteriously went down for a few hours this morning. It went on long enough that I spent half an hour on the phone.

Each of these problems has been sucking away my normal work time. Then I'm heading to a Canadian convention for a week. Not getting much done this week, gah! I love my computers, but sometimes I get really nostalgic for the pre-Internet 80s.

Debate blogging

Okay, watching the debate. Came in late. Charles Gibson began advocating for the Laffer Curve, though not by name. He stated as fact that we'd get more tax revenue from Capital Gains Taxes if we reduce the tax rates on them.

Currently, people who get their income from investments (or investing other people's money) pay 15% on that income. So a billionaire hedge fund manager pays a lower tax rate than his secretary.

The concept behind the Laffer Curve is pretty simple. If taxes are 0% the government won't collect any revenue. If it's 100% it's not worth doing anything taxed, so the government gets almost no revenue. The best tax rate to get the most revenue is between 0% and 100%. I agree with that much. The question is where the optimum tax rate is. Conservatives always claims it's lower than the current tax rate.

The thing is, the economy always grows over the long term. Of course you'll eventually get govt revenue higher than before the tax cut if you wait a decade. Conservative economists have quit trying to show that a US tax cut produced more revenue than we would've gotten without the cut (though spin doctors and credulous journalists like Charlie Gibson haven't stopped stating it as fact). The failure of the Laffer Curve is why Bush I had to raise taxes to erase the Reagan budget deficits. Bush I's balanced budget eventually led to the Clinton economic boom.

I'm mildly annoyed with Gibson. But I'm disgusted that both Democrats let a shaky GOP talking point get treated as a fact.

[TPM blogged nicely during the whole debate, in a more readable style than I did. There's a reason why I draw instead of write!]

Update (April 19): Here's an explanation from the Congressional Budget Office. In short, when investors learn there's going to be a capital gains tax cut, they hold off selling investments until after the cut, then sell! Sell! Sell! This creates a short term surge in capital gains revenue, but no long term change. In the long run, therefore, the government loses revenue:

The sensitivity of realizations to gains tax rates raises the possibility that a cut in the rate could so increase realizations that revenue from capital gains taxes might rise as a consequence. Rising gains receipts in response to a rate cut are most likely to occur in the short run. Postponing or advancing realizations by a year is relatively easy compared with doing so over much longer periods. In addition, a stock of accumulated gains may be realized shortly after the rate is cut, but once that accumulation is "unlocked," the stock of accrued gains is smaller and realizations cannot continue at as fast a rate as they did initially. Thus, even though the responsiveness of realizations to a tax cut may not be enough to produce additional receipts over a long period, it may do so over a few years. The potentially large difference between the long- and short-term sensitivity of realizations to tax rates can mislead observers into assuming a greater permanent responsiveness than actually exists.

Berwyn's claim to fame leaving

If you've seen the movie Wayne's World then you've seen Berwyn, IL's pride: Spindle. It's better known as the Car Kebab. It's only a few blocks from my house.



Berwyn isn't famous for much. Check out the Wikipedia page. It only has one photo, of the Spindle. The other claims to fame are the World's Largest Laundromat (disputed) and that a co-founder of the band Survivor is from here. (BTW, I'm still listed as a resident of Oak Park, but I'm in nearby Berwyn now).

When it was announced last year that the Spindle was going to be torn down to build a Walgreen's on the spot, volunteers began a fundraiser to save the artwork. At least for me, all the joy went out of the effort when the Spindle's creator, artist Dustin Shuler, demanded a 5% cut of all the t-shirt sales. Probably because of this, the current t-shirt no longer has a picture of the Spindle on it (check it out, the solution is pretty clever!).

Here's a list of all the artwork from the parking lot. Note how the Spindle listing has a Shuler copyright notice, but no one else's work does. Dustin is a litigious bastard.

If you've taken a fancy to the Spindle, would you like to own it? It's now on eBay. Be warned, shipping fees are harsh.