Blogging

I added a gallery page but the enlargement of images isn’t working right yet. Will hopefully clear that up tomorrow. There are still some kinks to work out in this new site, it seems.

Here’s my new blog design. I am still tweaking it. But it’s 95% there. I’ll be adding some essays under essays soon and more comics content including a gallery of comics art from past projects of mine. Keep checking back for updates!

UPDATE: Fixed the major problems and added a bunch more pictures to the comics pages. Will keep doing that. Working on a photo gallery now.

As I have said many times before, I am politically independent. The more one watches world events, the more one should recoil from the madness of it all. The people who run our societies are either fools, or powerless to stop the mess created by decades of corruption and incompetence. What drives most politics these days is the desire of elites to manipulate the voters emotions into agreeing with certain agendas. That is all politics really is, the science of manipulating the masses to an end. 2000 years ago, Greek Philosopher Aristotle came up with the science or rhetoric, which is the art of persuasion. He broke it down into three things you need to use to get people on your side. You can use one or all of the three but these things must be used to get people on your side. Logos, pathos and ethos. Our so called leaders are all trained in this stuff and they put it to bad use.

Aristotle was also one of the founders of the science of ontology which is the study of reality. What is real and what is not? These are things that have been argued and discussed ever since. But as philosopher Martin Heidegger suggested, human beings in this modern age are largely losing their identity to popular culture which is telling them how and what to think. This is nothing new, as religions and rulers have been doing that for ages. But in the age of mass media, images and programs are showing us a reality which is largely artificial. And people are buying into it, trying to conform to the standards being set. Yet those who set the standards have to be incredibly screwed up creatures. Just look at what a mess people are today. Families are disintegrating, societies are in turmoil. Politics all over the world is poisonous.

People are increasingly turning away from political parties and are sick of being manipulated by the media. They are seeking their own truths in places like the internet where you can find all sorts of views and not just the limited pablum dished up on the networks. Alas, many people just go to websites where their own prejudices and narrow opinions of reality are reinforced rather than challenge themselves. You have a mind and you should exercise it like any other part of your body. It may be the part that needs exercise the most.

I’m often accused of taking sides in our political cartoons, but as I said, I am an independent. I am not political, I am anti-political. What I do is a reaction to what I perceive as false ideas and arguments being presented to us. I think, however, arguing over the details of political issues is something others have way more interest and time than I do. So I want to focus more on areas where I can have a unique point of view. To that end I am going to try to take some of my discussions here to different places, more philosophical and less seemingly partisan.

To me, the most important thing a person can do is question everything they are told, just like a child. A kid wants to know how the world works. But for some reason they stop at a certain point. I never wanted to stop asking questions. So I will continue to look at the world many take for granted. I will if what we’re being told is truly the facts or is it just someone else’s fiction.

As a writer of fiction for decades, I know fiction when I see it.

I am playing around with some themes to come up with a new look for the site. I am mostly focusing on clean, simple looks because ultimately, that’s more user friendly. So you may see the site design change around a couple of times. You probably noticed I changed the color and logo.

I’ve also added some more chapters to the writing section for my book, which I am determined to get out this year. I settled on a publisher and just need to finish it. It’s about 85% there. I’ll be adding more chapters to the writing section above. There is also a table of contents now.

And I plan on cleaning up some of the other pages as well, which was long over due. I added some material to the Aftermath page.

Every year I make predictions for the following year. But before I do I review the previous year’s predictions at the end. Here are mine from last December 31st.

1. Obama will cause a constitutional crisis due to his executive orders circumventing US Constitutional law (which is illegal). He has already done this here and elsewhere. When the administration allows international law enforcement to supersede US sovereignty, there will be a huge backlash and they will have to back down, or they will become seriously damaged as a result. I suspect it will be over a terrorist related issue.

This specifically didn’t happen too much, but the president has done a lot of unconstitutional things this year. Most recently circumventing congress and the courts on the EPA and FCC power grabs.

2. Democrats will suffer epic losses in November, despite a slew of outrageous voting shenanigans involving the usual suspects. The Senate may go to Republicans and the House will be close to flipping. This will be aided by many Democrats changing parties in 2010.

Yes, except the Republicans won 63 seats in Congress not the Senate. The Dems barely held that. But it was a historic win for the Republicans in any event. Not too many Dems flipped parties except in state houses where it was more common.

3. But a third party conservative movement continues to grow as tea parties get larger through the year. Some congressional seats will go to these candidates.

Yes, the tea party made some gains and if the Republicans fail to stick to their promises, they will have to fight them in 2012.

4. The health care bill will not sustain the internecine politics of the Democrats and public opinion. So Obama care will fail, barely.

It was passed over the will of the people. Hopefully it will be killed next year. It is still very unpopular.

5. Obama will poll consistently in the 40s, and then in the 30s toward the end of the year. A growing anger toward his administration will begin to dominate the news cycle. Rumors that he won’t run in 2012 will circulate.

He is in the 40s and has been in the 30s. The rumors that he won’t run in 2012 have also been circulating.

6. Obama’s second stimulus will not help the economy. Unemployment continues to be bad. Housing sales will be sluggish due to continuing lending problems and defaults.

Yes, all of this happened.

7. Obama’s “cool” demeanor will slip publicly more than a few times. He will be openly mocked by the press that once lionized him Especially when they they sense he can’t recover his popularity and theys tart to blame him for his party’s fall from grace.

This also happened, but they came back to his side in the last few weeks calling him the “comeback kid” despite the fact it was the Lame Duck Congress that did all the work.

8. Many top Democrats will lose their seats including Dodd, Reid, Boxer, Nelson. “Blue dogs” will be especially vulnerable.

Blue dogs were decimated. Dodd retired. Reid and Boxer survived.

9. The stock market will continue to have sucker’s rallies, but it will also have more bear sessions.

Yes, and it’s still not looking safe.

10. A commercial real estate crash will continue to harm the economy.

Yes, it has.

11. Obama will try to claim we came out of the recession only to go into a “double dip” recession again. At this point most of the press will lable it the Obama recession after all his failed polices and empty rhetoric.

The press is trying to tell us we’ve been out of the recession for a year. Reality says otherwise. As for a double dip recession, it feels like that has happened but since the government runs the reports it says otherwise.

12. Massive protests around the world due to unemployment and inflationary problems that will be blame on US spending policies. Obama will get a lot of fire for his spending, which he will try to claim he is cutting back. But it will be too little too late.

Yes, this happened also.

13. Apple’s tablet PC will be a hit when it debuts next year. Tablet PCs will become a vogue form of PC use. Comics will make major inroads there.

Yes they were a solid success and other tablets are making their way into the market now.

14. Climate Change will continue to die a slow painful death in the public’s mind and certain proponents of it will come under increasing disfavor and even lawsuits. Politicians will start back peddling on it. More climate scandals will erupt.

The warm mongers refuse to give up. Too much at stake. But the brutal winter is making a mockery of their claims.

15. There will be more terrorist attacks on the US and the administrations attempts to PC whitewash the Islamic aspect will start to incite a backlash.

Yes, this has happened in a small scale.

16. The Obama birther issue will not die. It will grow. More calls for his background documents like college, etc, to be disclosed will grow louder.

Yes, even Chris Matthews recently called for his birth certificate.

17. Growing calls for impeachment will start to echo across the land.

Yep.

18. Hillary Clinton will quit the Obama administration and start to become a critic, trying to distance herself from it. But she will not be able to recapture her political power.

Not yet.

I will probably do my 2011 predictions tomorrow. But this year’s were mostly on target.

As you may know, I am also a web developer. I was asked by the owner of the news blog Crosshairball to come up with a new site design and it’s now live. You can see it here.

I installed WordPress 3.0 on the main site and things went blooey. I guess people are having problems. Mine are really strange. For some reason it caused my template not work properly, yet it works fine on http://jameshudnall.com/blog which I set up as a mirror. So I will probably end up with a new look. This is the new default template for WordPress 3.0. It’s nice, but I want more features. So I will have to find something new I like.

Despite the problems, I still love WordPress. It’s rarely given me any problems. They usually come from add ons. And it’s really a fantastic CMS (content management system) I use it to control the whole site now.

There are now links to archives for the previous weekly comics strips I am doing over on the right, under the social network buttons so you can easily access the old strips.

I will probably add a graphic next to them soon.

I decided to add the Discus plugin to the comments to give them more powerful features. Let me know if you have any problems with it.

Yes, it’s my birthday, so I think I’ll just take the day off from writing part two of that piece. I will finish it tomorrow.

Had a red velvet cake today because I never had one and I was curious. It was great but too much sugar for me. It had cream cheese frosting.

I can’t believe all the birthday wishes I got on facebook this week! I woke up to 40 messages and they kept coming in all day. I tried to answer all of them. Thanks, everyone.

I just finished lettering tomorrow’s Obama Nation cartoon, which I think is our best one yet. It is also the longest. I had to break it into two images. It’s about the recent Citizens United vs the FEC decision that Obama hates so much. I wrote an article about it but I also wanted to do it in a cartoon so people can see it in more simple terms. It was a very important decision and I am appalled by the way Obama chided the SCOTUS in his SOTU speech. Anyway, you can see it here or Big Hollywood tomorrow.

Two more articles in the can at Big Journalism. One on the recent SCOTUS decision and why Obama hates it. That will go with this weekend’s Obama Nation cartoon. The other is on how California is going bankrupt and what that foretells for America. I just finished that one. Lots of good links. Check them out.

Now I have a bunch to write for Big Hollywood. Whew!

I was up for renewal and having nothing but problems at the old host so I have moved to a new one. I have no idea why the database error kept showing on the old site. Everything was fine as far as I could see. I moved the data over and now have the fun task of hooking up everything again and redoing the site.

Anyway, I decided on this simpler look for the blog after experimenting with a magazine style. The Magazine style takes a lot more work and requires images for everything, which is a pain to have to do. I decided this is easier to deal with and it actually is easier to read in some ways. A blog is made for reading after all. I’m a writer, not a photographer, dammit!

I’ll be building out the rest of the site, The blog will not be the front page when I am done. For now it is the main page.

Would have done it all sooner but I was slammed with work deadlines this week.

The good news is, because this site is more writer friendly and less a labor to post to, I will probably post more now. If the Brietbart sites don’t consume all my free writing time. Big Journalism is in the Top 100 on Technorati now. Hoo hah!

I am kicking back this weekend, But tomorrow I have to get busy on some articles for Big Hollywood and the new Big Journalism. In the meantime, I am sorry to say tomorrow’s Obama Nation toon won’t be another Biden number as we planned. It will be a backup strip we had in the can. Next week we take on Obama’s Climate Change policies right before Copenhagen.

Apparently his administration doesn’t know or care that the whole thing has been exposed as a scam. After all, they ere in on it from the start. People of the world, it’s time to tear down these political leaders. They are out of control.

They are responsible for the world economic p[problems and they are making them worse.

Anyway, have a nice weekend.