The Sorensen Monologues

This Week’s Cartoon: “The Aristocratic Old Grandpa State”

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of hearing smug Republicans toot their success horns while nagging the rest of us to work harder.

It takes a lot of chutzpah to oppose anything that might help American workers get ahead — unions, a robust safety net, minimum wage hikes — and then blame those workers for not earning enough money to pay federal income taxes (never mind all the other taxes they do pay). You can’t have it both ways! You can’t upend people’s lives through corporate takeovers and then call the downsized “irresponsible.” You can’t sow market chaos through deregulation and scoff at the small business owner who can’t survive the downturn. The disconnect is astounding. But such is the power of ideology.

Last Week’s Cartoon: Real-Life Scenes From the DNC

I’ve been on the road for most of September, so I neglected to post this strip from last week. You can read my DNC postmortem on the Austin Chronicle.

I’m in the process of redesigning my site, which will hopefully mean more regular updates in the future. With the current design, I have to edit the HTML manually, which is a real pain while traveling.

This Week’s Cartoon: All the President’s Men

No, this one isn’t about Romney’s video fubars. But I think it makes an important point that is ignored by most media and many voters. Viewing the election as a contest between two people named Obama and Romney is a simplistic approach at best, no matter how delightful Mitt’s personality tics and one-percenter utterances may be. A vote for “Romney” is a vote for sad sack Bush-Cheney neocons seeking a new lease on life, a vote for the Heritage Foundation, a vote for more Scalias, Alitos, and Thomases. Romney’s “character” — if it can be said he has one — has little to do with any of this; people should be talking instead about the cast of characters he’d bring to the White House.

Same goes for Obama: his extended network includes Planned Parenthood, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, more Sotomayors and Kagans, and countless invisible players behind the scenes. I’m not saying every last one of them is perfect, but when you look at the groups as a whole, the difference is stark. Harder to fit on a bumper sticker maybe, but these are the candidates you’re really voting for.

Follow me at the DNC

I’m in Charlotte, where I’ve begun my dual-pronged coverage of the Democratic National Convention for C-VILLE Weekly and the Austin Chronicle. Here are the links for following along:

http://www.austinchronicle.com/authors/jen-sorensen/

http://www.c-ville.com/author/jensorensen/

If you’re in a city other than Austin or Charlottesville, pick one; posts will be more or less the same. I’m hoping to integrate my tweets and photos before too long. Go ahead, leave a comment on either site!