LARRY ROIBAL

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….go marching in
When the Saints go marching in
Oh lord I want to be in that number
When the Saints go marching in!

Congratulations to Super Bowl 44 MVP, Drew Brees for leading his New Orleans Saint to victory over the Indianapolis Colts, 31-17. The win marks the Saints first Super Bowl victory.

Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday, the last day of carnival before Ash Wednesday, falls on February 16th this year. That gives New Orleans eight days to celebrate.

Watch Louis Armrtong play the “When The Saints Go Marching In”

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All eyes are on the European Union. Mounting debt in some small member countries like Greece and Portugal are threatening the Union and causing European markets to free fall…Stay tuned.

Doodled from top to bottom: President of Greece Karolos Papoulias and President of Portugal Aníbal António Cavaco

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An upset Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero postponed the United States - European Union Summit, scheduled to take place in Madrid because of Obama’s decision not to show.

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President Obama plans to ignore China’s warning and meet with the Dalai Lama. Officials did not say what actions China would take if Obama did so. Sure, it’s the right thing to do, but it might be prudent to get our financial house in order before we bite the hand that feeds US.

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The Deficit for the coming year is eleven percent of GDP and the most optimistic of forecasts project unsustainable debt for at least ten more years.

Translation: A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.

I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken,
indeed.

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Taylor Swift won four Grammy Awards last night, including Album of the Year for her second album Fearless. On the red carpet, the twenty year old was gorgeous and composed beyond her years, but I thought her live performance was less than stellar. Not only did she sound off key, but someone forgot to tell Swift that duet etiquette required she be quiet for a verse so we could hear the other singer - poor Stevie Nicks, reduced to singing backup - hmph.

Note to producers: More singing acrobats please.

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Written by Guest blogger Alyssa Roibal

Holden Caulfield is a character most high school teens were relieved to meet. He was different from previous characters we read about like Elizabeth Bennet, who girls looked up to. Or Atticus Finch, the definition of a good father, and a man every boy hopes to become. Caulfield is a high school student (or expelled prep school student) we could relate to. We wanted to be that kids friend, or at least have a conversation with him, even if our parents might not have wanted us to. The Catcher in the Rye is rebellious, witty and filled cover to cover with teen angst. Most either love or despise it, and the same goes for its narrator and main character Holden Caulfield. He doesn’t tip toe around anything. He speaks his mind freely, starting with the opening line of the novel:

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”

J.D. Salinger, made a point to stay out of the public eye. His novels - by contrast, were in your face and charming. Students who previously wouldn’t be caught dead admitting to liking a book were participating in class discussions and commenting on funny things they had read the night before. Turning a non-reader into a book lover, even if it’s only of one book, may be J.D. Salinger’s greatest legacy. He was 91.

About todays guest blogger: Alyssa Roibal is a student at Rutgers University and writes for the on-line indie music magazine Praise For Wallflower

Doodles by dad

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The stock market thinks the new iPad will make a lot of money for Apple and AT&T with both companies share prices rising yesterday. What’s still questionable is whether it will add to the bottom line of the struggling newspaper industry. I hope so, but I have my doubts.

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45 percent of the population in Haiti are children. Many tens of thousands have lost their parents, homes, and schools.

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Two weeks after the quake, humanitarian groups are prioritizing and tending to the most needy, but thousands of children are sleeping on the streets, foraging for food and suffering nightmares.

UNICEF: Visit unicefusa.org/haitiquake or call (800)4UNICEF
Red Cross: Visit redcross.org or call (800REDCROSS
World Vision: Visit worldvision.org or call (888)511-6598
Americares: Visit americares.org or call (800)486-4357

Doctors Without Borders

Partners in Health

CARE

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Future wars are more likely to be fought over information than land or oil. Last week Secretary of State Clinton used her strongest language to date warning potential adversaries that cyber-attacks will not be ignored.

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The Obama administration has created a new cyber-military force for the Department of Defense. Melissa Hathaway began work on cyber-security under President George W. Bush and was asked to lead a study to develop a US cyber-deterence strategy for the Obama administration.

From todays NYT

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From lost elections and failed health care, to unemployment and discontent on Main Street. These guys are sitting center stage.

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Yesterdays 5 to 4 Supreme Court ruling opens the flood gates of cooperate money to influence elections. Justice Stevens contributed 90 pages to the 180 page dissent, saying the majority had committed a grave error in treating corporate speech the same as that of human beings.

I can’t speak to the law, but it seems that cooperations already have extraordinary influence on our political system. Now they seek to have same on our thinking.

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Yup, it’s his! Stay tuned to see where the cover up money came from.

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John J Mack once told lawmakers during testimony before a US congressional committee “We love what we do. If you gave us no bonus, we would still be here,”

As CEO of Morgan, Mr. Mack ushered in an era of huge risk taking. After almost putting the financial giant out of business and relying on a government bail out, Mack is out, but the bonuses are not. Despite it’s first loss in 74 years, Morgan Stanley earmarked 14.4 billion (with a B) for salaries and bonuses. that’s 62 cents of every dollar of revenue.

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The preemptive spinning and finger pointing are making me dizzy.

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Watch I Have A Dream Speech

• UNICEF: Visit unicefusa.org/haitiquake or call (800)4UNICEF
  Red Cross: Visit redcross.org or call (800REDCROSS
  World Vision: Visit worldvision.org or call (888)511-6598
• Americares: Visit americares.org or call (800)486-4357
• Doctors Without Borders
• Partners in Health
• CARE

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The Hollywood Foreign Press Association awarded the Golden Globe for Best Director to the director of Avatar, James Cameron.

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RIP Teddy Pendergrass

Watch a young Teddy front and center perform some Philly Soul

..and here

Read todays NYT obituary.

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During the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, the young Miep Gies helped to hide eight Jewish people in the offices of Otto Frank, where she worked as a secretary. Upon the discovery and deportation of the hidden, it was Gies who gathered the writings of the youngest, Anne Frank and kept the pages hidden from the Nazis. The teenage Frank died in a concentration camp, but after the war Gies returned the diaries unread to Anne’s father.
Miep Gies along with Jan Gies, Johannes Kleiman, Victor Kugler, Bep Voskuijl, and Johan Voskuijl, risked their lives to hide Anne Frank and her family. Of that heroic group, Gies, at 100 years old was the last surviving member. She died yesterday from a neck injury sustained in a fall at her home.

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Art Clokey passed away Friday. What started over fifty years ago as a student project for the USC grad, led to the making of short films for the Howdy Doody Show, a television series, a video games, a feature film and a giant merchandising franchise, all featuring his creation, Gumby, a green clay figure with an asymmetrical head designed to simulate his fathers cowlick hairdo. Together with his side kick, the red talking steed Pokey, they would go on adventures and battle their nemeses the Block Heads. Many remember Gumby as the cigar smoking, foul mouthed, borscht belt comedian as satirized by Eddie Murphy on SNL. Clokey died at his home in Los Osos on California from complications of bladder infections. He was 88.

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NBC gambled that they could save money, cut it’s costly 10 pm drama lineup, shift all the late night talk up an hour and continue to hold market share. I’m a big fan of Conan, but NBC lost the bet and you can look for things to go back to the way we were.

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The thing that’s so frustrating about party politics is that the desire to have a majority, leads to an “end justifying the means” approach to legislating. Ideology aside, I’m glad to see him go. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

Related story
..and this
…and this
…and this

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Certain Hall of Famer, Randy Johnson ends his stellar career with 303 wins. The 6′10″ lefty was one scary dude on the mound.

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From moonshine martini drinking Hawkeye to curious host of PBS series on human physiology, Alan Alda is interested and interesting. Check out “The Human Spark” a new three part series exploring human intelligence premiering tonight on PBS.

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Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! It’s New Jersey Governor-Elect Chris Christie’s younger brother Todd.

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With over 40% of Dubai’s office space empty, the emirate’s debt to GDP ratio standing at 148%, and Abu Dhabi’s recent bailout of the emirate on the verge of bankruptcy, Dubai opened the world’s most ostentatious building. Over half a mile tall, it stands as a monument to all that went wrong in the last decade. A half mile seems like an abstract height for a building. To put it in perspective, the Eiffel Tower still stands as the tallest structure in Paris at 1,063 feet tall. Until yesterday, the tallest building in the world was Taipei 101, in Taiwan, nearly 2/3rds taller than the Eiffel Tower, it’s 1,671 feet tall. Now, If you stack both structures on top of one another, you begin to understand how tall the Burj Dubai Tower stands at 2,717 feet tall….Uhg.

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Many believe the Federal Reserve contributed to the housing bubble by keeping interest rates too low for too long following the 2001 recession. Yesterday, Ben Bernanke pointed a finger at regulators, not interest rates as the guilty party responsible for reckless lending, the housing bubble and subsequent financial meltdown. The Fed now seeks greater regulatory authority.

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With two college age children, space is a frequent topic. But college students should be thankful to share 200 square feet with only one other. Japan is experiencing it’s worst recession since WWII and the unemployed have taken to selling off all possessions, decreasing the size of their footprint and moving into coffin sized digs.

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To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,–
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

John Keats

from the NYT

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The incomparable David Levine passed away yesterday. The Maestro of pen and ink used his biting wit and tremendous draftsmanship to prod the political elite like no other.

I was conflicted about todays doodle. Before I read the news, I was taking a short holiday hiatus until after the new year. if you think it seems like a sacrilege to pick up a pen in the memory of a man who was a god with a pen and nib, I’m not sure I disagree, but I was compelled to draw… and maybe that is the greatest compliment I could give him.

Rest in Peace

Watch this

From todays NYT

His Fine Art

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Civil rights leader, politician, entrepreneur, lawyer, legal representative of Malcom X passed away this week. He was 89.

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Angelic actress Jennifer Jones passed away yesterday from natural causes. She was one of the biggest film stars of the 40’s and 50’s. Nominated five times for Academy Awards, she won the Oscar for her portrayal of a nun in The Song of Bernadette. Her off screen life was as turbulent as and interesting as any Hollywood screenplay. The young actress met her first husband, Robert Walker while they were both students of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. They had two sons together, but divorced in 1945. She would marry twice more. In 1949 to famed Hollywood producer David O. Selznick, and in 1971 to multi millionaire, California industrialist and art collector Norton Simon. Norton founded the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California. Upon Simon’s death in 1993 Mrs. Jones became involved in running the museum as Chairman of the Board and spent her final years overseeing major renovations of the museum’s interior, designed by architect Frank Gehry, as well as the gardens. She was 90.

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Robert Menendez objects to the Republicans stall strategy. Doodled on the train.

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My humble apologies, I’m in a mad rush to get to a morning photo shoot today, so this is a real quickie from the obits. Oral Roberts and Sol Price passed away yesterday. Both founded things that made lots of money. RIP

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Bizarre that on December 15th 2008, one year ago to the day, the big story was about an Egyptian correspondent who stood at a George W Bush press conference in Iraq and yelled “This is your farewell kiss, you dog” before throwing two shoes at our president. (here are my corresponding doodles from one year ago today)

Today’s news is about Massimo Tartaglia, who threw a souvenir statuette at Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. But unlike Bush, who dodged the incoming shoes, Berlusconi tragically took it square in the face breaking his nose and knocking out two teeth. To add insult to the prime minister’s injuries, the mentally ill assaulter actually has supporters and a fan page on facebook….Bizarre

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Senator Joseph Lieberman in not another face in the crowd. He’s a democratic independent.