The $200 Million Man

Mitt Romney: the republican frontrunner. But what does the man actually stand for? He's passed liberal, some would even say socialist, health care reform for his home state (something I would congratulate him on, but which his voting base will not). Yet at the same time, in less than 20 hours now, Romney will head to a hotel ballroom to give a speech sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, a front group founded and funded by the Koch brothers. The Koch brothers are gas barons who have bankrolled Tea Party extremism and committed their own $200 million to try to prevent a reelection for Obama.

One thing we know about him, his net worth is somewhere around $200 million on his own, he's in the top .06% of wealth in the nation, he's tall, slim and has a shiny white smile. Also, he's white. These factors should not be overlooked in an election that takes place in a country where what you stand for and how you intend to improve our country along those lines is less important than who your parents were, where you went to school and what you look like. For more, check out Edward Hickman's piece

on kaleo.org.

The last of the candidates for Ka Leo to cover is Obama. Look for the artwork and the article on Monday.

House of Kindling

I still can't believe how backwards our school is. Oh wait, yes I can.

009. The Fire Log

This is why we can't have nice things, UH.

Introducing the 2012 Candidates' Corner

Time for the rat race once again. Ka Leo will be featuring a profile on each of the remaining candidates in the following weeks. Here's a drawing to help kick things off. I'll add the links as well as any other art I get commissioned to do to this post as they appear in Ka Leo. Enjoy!

Profile on Ron Paul is already up, with an awesome drawing by Nicholas Smith, our comics editor, accompanying.

Update (2/23/12):

The profiles on Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum are also up on Ka Leo. Mitt Romney will appear in tomorrow's issue (24th) with a drawing by me. I'll post that tomorrow. Monday should see another illustration by me to close out the series. It'll be a cover illustration of Obama.

008. Now You've Gone Too Far

They can, apparently, take our freedom, but they can never take our Interwebs. That's when they cross the line - not the wire tapping, the breakdown of due process or any of those other things - the Interwebs.
As Sarah Neal wrote in a Ka Leo opinions piece, "The success of these protests floored me. It's just too bad that the protests essentially boil down to this: we were afraid the government was going to take away our favorite toy, and we had to stop it."

Virtual Valentine's Day

This Valentine's Day, if you're all alone, there's a literal solution filled with virtual romance. Our writer Paige Takeya wrote about several of the best virtual dating sims - many of which work the romance aspect of the game (why you're playing it in the first place) into quests to save the world or combat monsters. The most interesting sounding to me, Catherine, features psychological segments in which the main character must climb up a perilous tower in his dreams - dreams that relate to the real world situation he finds himself in (navigating between a love triangle that features him, his longtime girlfriend Catherine and a mysterious one-night-stand named Katherine.  Anywho, even if the games don't sound fun to you, or you have a real date for V-Day already, the artwork is still pretty sweet (a mon avis). Enjoy!

 

Data Wars

I love it when my Editorial Cartoon of the week matches so perfectly with a well written Ka Leo article, the way it does this time. Boaz Rosen did a good job explaining that this is an information and advertising war between old style media moguls and new, online-based media empires like Google. Fox vs Google ... hmm, not sure who I'd honestly root for there. First inclination is Google, but they do track all my clicks and then bombard me with ads they hope are tailored to me. And why? So they can profit off of you and me the same way Rupert Murdoch does.  Bo is more articulate, so if you want to read more about it, here's the link to the Ka Leo article.
There's also a story on Ka Leo that explains the SOPA and PIPA acts pretty well too. It was written by Antonio Lamb, one of our seasoned reporters. Here's the link to that too.