Update July 2011

John Boehner Wept Illustration/Portrait July 2011

John Boehner Wept Illustration/Portrait July 2011

With the 2012 elections around the corner I decided to spend some time this week brushing up on my political portraiture skills. So many clowns in Washington, so little time. I thought to myself… hmmm, who should I pick on for this exercise?

Google search for John Boehner

With all the talk of the debt ceiling John Boehner has been in the news quite a bit so I googled him. To my surprise the second suggestion google had for me was “John Boehner crying”. For some reason he cries a lot, perfect!

Sad John Boehner Illustration/Portrait 2011

Sad John Boehner Illustration/Portrait 2011

I dusted off my Bombshell video code base in openframeworks, tweaked the code a little bit to optimize it for a bigger frame buffer and ran it. In only a few minutes I had a couple good ones. It probably took me longer to hand draw the tears with the mouse than it did re-using my old code. Such is the beauty of using a generative toolset.

—January 2010

Obama Agenda Under Fire
Obama Agenda Under Fire January 2010

Agendas Under Fire
I have modified my particle drawing program to do a bunch of new particle types as well as respond to mouse or touch screen input for drawing. This allows me to bring the “hand of the artist” back into my computational works.

This series was done in c++ in openframeworks 0.06 using the code blocks IDE.

The complete set of sketches is on Flickr at my Agendas under fire set.

Most of my regular site visitors know by now I am politically independent with a general disdain for politicians, pretty much all politicans. I do enjoy keeping up with politics for entertainment. Politcs today has so many larger than life characters and it is interesting to watch them battle over how to best spend my tax money.

This series is intended to mark somewhat of a sea change in the direction of US politics this year. If you had asked me whether I though Obama would have any trouble getting the majority of his agenda items through the legislature this time last year I would have said no. I just assumed my tax money would have gone to health care, cap n’ trade and energy initiatives by now.

But US politics is a seemingly never ending comedy of errors and never ceases to amaze me. Clearly Obama’s agenda is now under fire.

Harry Reid Agenda Under Fire
Harry Reid Agenda Under Fire January 2010

Now with Scott Brown entering the senate, Harry Reid no longer has the super majority. It seems as though the Reid has squandered his advantage and will need to pass legislation with at least some compromise now or the “no” party will be able to get away with saying no. Or I suppose he can buy votes with pork.

Nancy Pelosi Agenda Under Fire
Nancy Pelosi Agenda Under Fire January 2010

I love this picture of Pelosi screaming. Pelosi, one of the most powerful women in politics now has to worry about a bunch of congressional representatives that are mortified about about voter backlash in the elections later this year. This will make it much more difficult to get her items though Congress without significant compromise. I do have to give her credit for bringing up the Congressional approval rating to 25% from its lowest of all time around a year ago.

Al Gore Agenda Under Fire
Al Gore Agenda Under Fire January 2010

I really like Al Gore, mostly because he invented the internet allowing me to have this fantastic platform to communicate my ideas=)

The flawed prediction that Himalayan glaciers are likely to disappear by 2035 ( Guradian Report, 21 January), after the leaked emails from UEA have not helped the credibility of climate science nor have they helped our good buddy Al Gore.

Al Gore is also the most visible face of the global warming movement and the global warming agenda is under attack.