Final syndicate cartoon of the week

I'll post the rough with this one for it's simplicity and immediacy. I really can't believe I haven't seen more about this in the news. Seems the Interior Department plans to delay putting the Polar Bear on the endangered species list until a lease of 46,000 square miles of Alaskan waters goes through. This is prime Polar Bear habitat. And who are they leasing it to? Well, Oil & gas companies of course! US News and world report gave it about a 2 inch column in this week's edition. Here's a little more on it from January 7, but basically, after a year of mulling it over, they still haven't made a decision. The timing is very squirrely to say the least.

Here's the rough.

and, here's the finished cartoon.

I like the play off on the whole "taunting the tiger story" from a couple of weeks ago. I've also discovered that I like drawing bears; any kind of bear. And remember how I said a couple of weeks ago that similar objects creep into totally dissimilar cartoons? This week its "bears." I was drawing Wall Street Bears at the beginning of the week, now I'm drawing Polar Bears.

So warm and fuzzy. Just don't taunt them.

Happy Weekend!

-Ed