My Cartoons for the Tri-City Voice

Cartoons have always been a particular obsession with me. Since I was a kid, I would scrawl Charlie Brown and Snoopy on any scrap of paper that I could find. So I've appreciated the opportunity to do cartoons for the Tri-City Voice, a local newspaper that covers the Fremont, Newark, Union City, Hayward, Sunol, and Milpitas areas of the California Bay Area. You could find my cartoons each week on page 24 under the crossword puzzle. These past few weeks, I've focused on the presidential campaign and the recent financial crisis.

William and Sharon Marshak founded the Tri-City Voice to cover the local art, culture, sports, and entertainment of the eastern Bay Area cities and it promotes the diverse multicultural population and the rich history of the area. With a circulation of 25,750, the newspaper has the largest readership in the 5 cities that it covers. William Marshak's editorials offer insight into the political scene with the city councils and downtown economies.

The pick of Sarah Palin has dominated the news for the past few weeks... When she was first elected, there was conjecture that she was elected to get supporters of Hillary Clinton.

I thought that idea didn't hold much water, as Palin and Clinton held opposite opinions on most political issues.

Though I'm not a McCain supporter, I was fascinated like everyone else by Palin's bio as a moose hunter, NRA member, former basketball player, former beauty queen, and mother of 5, plus the fact that she's an attractive woman and a new face.

In the first few weeks, as McCain briefly overtook Obama in the polls, it seemed like he was just hitching a ride on Palin's early popularity.

I'm glad that the focus shifted away from Palin's personality and instead on her views and her readiness to take on the vice presidency.

I was taking a short vacation when the financial crisis hit. As I read about the fall of Lehman and Merril Lynch, I grew more and more worried about the state of our economy.

I'm not well versed on economics, so I started reading up on all the magazines and newspapers to try to figure out why the markets were acting the way they were.

Then came the rejection in the House of Representatives of the 700 billion dollar bailout, the drop in the stock market, the continuing credit crunch, the ripple effect on markets and banks overseas.

These are bad times, but it's been a gold mine for a cartoonist.

Sometimes I've gotten stuck with ideas for a cartoon to submit to the editor, but in these past few weeks, ideas have been very easy to come by.

I try to make an image that is humorous and with a twist, like those old Charles Addams cartoons for the New Yorker.

I hope my cartoons make people laugh and think, and perhaps offer some insight into the events that Americans are living.