Images this week or so, mostly political humor

It's a busy political season. I try to stay positive, but poking fun is just too seductive!

I used MSPaint because I'm too cheap to actually spend money on something fancier. It limits my options but OTOH, the limits of the form can sharpen the pencil as well. It's like writing a limerick or a haiku; the structure of the form can sometimes be helpful.

I'm especially happy with this one - I generated the basic form within a few minutes of hearing the ridiculous quote. I tinkered with a few revisions as I posted it first in one place, then in another. Each time I look at it, I might see the opportunity for a minor improvement so who knows how many versions are out there.(One this one, I think I forgot to sign it the first time around. It probably doesn't really matter since there's probably all sorts of data in the metatext, but I do like putting "rewinn" in tiny text somewhere not too conspicuous.)

I spent the most time on this one finding the windows. If I had it to do over again, I'd do something to sharpen the division between the top of the plane and the sky, and also put a dog carrier up there ;-)

Also, at the risk of boasting, this one (when I shared it on Facebook) got over 5000 likes and 3000  shares in one day - probably a personal best! Here's the screen capture ...

When this meme spread, I thought of a variation. It just made me laugh inside to see Mitt acting all Samuel L. Jackson:

One a more serious note, and of much greater relevance to the choice, is this one which covers a topic not getting enough discussion:

I mean, let's be real. The guy was wise enough to see the truth, and gutsy enough to say it. That's Leadership!

Below is my earlier version of the concept. I'm not sure why I like it so much less; maybe it's because the tombstones need to have equal weight with the president since they're no less important.

Also, for the later version (above) I used the exact words, which I think is important. Whereever possible using exact quotes not only makes the image more reliable, it also gives the source's voice rather than my own. In this case, it also got me to go back to the video which IMO gave a better image ... grainy and imperfect, but more real. It really does show him saying what the image says he's saying. 

(It took a lot of running through the video to get the image; most of the time when people are talking, we look kind of silly. Also, I wanted Obama to be looking at the tombstone but in the limited video, we mostly was looking in the wrong direction. Hey, this stuff is hard; if you don't think so, get in the ring! 

The worship of Ayn Rand, like too many other religions, relies on not really knowing about the critter. It's especially absurd that the spiritual head of the Paul-Ryan-Let-Them-Die philosophy was not the muscular superhero Libertarians think themselves to be, but an amphetamine addict whose writings were so unpopular she needed government aid to survive as she died from her cigarette addiction. When the "47%" video came out, this image almost created itself; I only had to whittle down my original wordy text to the absolute minimum.

Well, that's it for this week or so's crop of political images. I'm doing a lot of other writing too but these may be the most fun!
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Many of my images are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rewinn/ and/or here https://www.facebook.com/rewinn/photos