Our national motto, "E Pluribus Unum," isn't just a bunch of Latin. It embodies what we stand for as a nation: "Out of many, one."

"One," as in, "me," as in, "me first." Let's face it--it's our rugged individualism that made this country what many of its citizens call "the greatest civilization on Earth."

Rugged individualism, for a lot of people, is interchangeable with the term "social Darwinism," which means that the strongest survive, while the weak perish.

So if you are feckless enough to find yourself between a ravening crowd of shoppers and a store full of Black Friday bargains, be prepared not only to get trampled, but to have your body treated like a speed bump.

When asked to clear out of the store because somebody had died, the shoppers protested, saying they had been waiting all night to be first.

Fairness. Another principle that makes us a great nation.

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Those of us who live in BrowardDadePalm, otherwise known as New York’s Sixth Borough, sometimes forget that Florida is still, in many ways, a backward Southern state.

Take, for example, its quaint, retrograde attitude that the mere existence of homosexuals threatens the very—on second thought, don’t take it. I’ve dealt with this many times in other cartoons.

Instead, take education—the polish on human consciousness that supposedly separates us from the beasts that slither and crawl along the face of the earth. It turns out that our state university system has just about the lowest tuition in the country, roughly half the average. It also has one of the highest student-to-teacher ratios. We read of the best professors leaving the state because they can’t get a decent cost-of-living raise.

You get what you pay for. Some would say that as long as you still have partying and sports, which the Florida system has in abundance, then you’ve pretty much covered the important stuff, anyhow.

When I played rugby in school Up North, we tackled the issue with typical New England efficiency. During halftime, they trotted large amounts of a vile regional brew called Genesee Cream Ale onto the field. Its rancid bouquet was mitigated only by its price, which was roughly five bucks for a case of twenty-four. Yes, even thirty-five years ago, that was pretty cheap.

See how my mind wanders? Must be the Genny Cream.

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There's a valid argument that allowing any of the Big Three automakers to go under would have catastrophic repercussions throughout the economy, since so many hundreds of thousands of jobs depend upon their survival.

As they sink beneath the waves, the titans of free enterprise are turning to us taxpayers for a lifeline. Yes, the same folks who, I'm sure, have done everything they can to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.

If we are really going to do this, at the very least we should demand that the execs who drove the companies into the ground take a hike, without the usual obscene compensation that CEOs snag regardless of profit or loss.

It would make the bitter medicine of rewarding incompetence a little easier for us to swallow, if nothing else.

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There are quite a few Americans this year who don't feel they have a whole lot to be thankful about as they lace into their Spam turkey.

Well, take heart. Uncle Sam is looking out for the fat cats. Remember, the ones who made all the mistakes that got us into this mess? Seems they're too big and too valuable to the economy to be allowed to fail.

Guess what? We're not.

Happy Thanksgiving.

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When they asked Willie Sutton why he robbed banks, he is said to have answered, "Because that's where the money is."

If you have a penchant for children, the best place to burrow in is among the legions of well-meaning educators and coaches whose business it is to be in close contact with children.

Society supposedly has safeguards; background checks, etc. But increasingly, the perps are managing to crawl under the radar screen. Distasteful as it is, it looks like the best way to defend against them is to educate our children so that they know when they are being victimized before the crime occurs.

How did we reach such a state that the innocence of childhood has become an unaffordable luxury?

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I guess the best way for a failed presidency to end is not with a bang, but with the long, slow hiss of deflation.

There has been some talk lately that the transition shouldn't take so long. The period between the election and the inauguration used to be even longer, and had something to do with the time it took to go by horseback from the seaboard colonies to the new areas out in Appalachia, to let the locals know who their President was going to be. The only reason there's talk this time is that the nation's condition is so dire.

One does find oneself wishing that if W. just wants to hang around for all the retirement parties, at least he could do the country a favor and get out of the way so that Obama can start fixing things. Every day wasted compounds our plight.

Well, as BHO (is that what the headline writers will call him?) likes to say, "There's only one President at a time."

Somebody should tell Dick Cheney.

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One of the more rewarding aspects of editorial cartooning is that you are limited only by your imagination. Each day presents a new challenge. That doesn't just go for the subject matter, but for the way you choose to make your point.

This cartoon couldn't be more different from the previous one, where I drew a cartoony little boy wearing absurd-looking eighteenth-century dress.

In the one at the right, it made sense not to show the actual people doing the talking, but rather to highlight the building itself, which is a stand-in for the institution of the executive branch of government.

By necessity, the drawing ended up looking more like an architectural rendering than a typical cartoon, and I was hoping that its very dryness would help to accentuate the distinction between the tropes of the campaign and the new reality of the Obama White House.

I tried to stick to the "Keep It Simple, Stupid" rule. No unnecessary lines, no need for color.

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