I learned of Paul Newman’s death this morning. My favorite Newman films are ‘The Hustler’, ‘A New Kind of Love’, ‘Harper’ and, the Florida based, ‘Absence of Malice’. As I worked on other projects, I starting playing Newman films in the player. Above is a quick sketch I drew of him from ‘The Young Philadelphians’.

I was up and out after about three hours sleep as I finished the Tuesday’s Glenn Beck cartoon. We had a veterans rally with someone who had been with McCain as a P.O.W. Former Governor Buddy Roemer also was part of the travelling bus tour. It went great with lots of flag waving.

Because of our location, we made another early morning starter, a coffee shop named ‘Primary Oven’, rather upset. Attendees took their parking spots at the prime hour folks going to work stop an purchase coffee. I ran over and nabbed some of their business cards to have at our table. After the event I bought one of their wonderful double cinnamon rolls, which was huge, and a glass of milk and settled on their second floor and worked on McCain button ideas. I sketched the above of a corner of the second floor, which includes art.

A brilliant gag by my buddy, Ken Culotta. I wanted more color in this, but the situation is so dour and New York is such a dark, grey, colorless mess unable to move it’s thought pattern from the 1950s, how else can the nightmare be portrayed.

The actions President Bush, Brenanke, Paulson and company are taking are the worse I would expect by Obama. I have been trying to point out that it’s Obama that’s a continuation of the Bush Administration, noy McCain. These insane anti-American free market moves are concrete proof of that.

I can’t deny Big Brother Business’ strangled hold on the White House. I’ve kept hoping the President would stop socializing our country, but he’s endorsing the worse that can be done. This stuff has had me very unhappy and probably has contributed to generally not feeling well the past week. I expect better of a President, especially one that claims to be a Republican.

We wrapped up our Punta Gorda trip by running around Punta Gorda taking notes and taking pictures for a few hours. Most of the photos will end up on the Genuine Florida Blog. Others will be in Sandra’s books.

Later we attended the closing night awards dinner of FOWA. Sandra won two! She tends to come home with awards from wherever she goes. Below are sketches from the dinner.

Above our sketches from a wading trip Sandra and I took with a group from FOWA off the Charolotte County coast. Later we went on a swamp bus tour of the Babcock Ranch. Below are sketches from that trip ,while we were on the bus.

I was asked to attend the Republican Women Ocala/Marion Federated meeting today. I did and was given a big thank you and an award for the help I gave at their ‘Candidate Roundup’.

Above are the curtains to one of the large doorways in the Elks Club building where the meeting was.

LAter I made my way down to Punta Gorda and met up with Sandra and our friend, Sandy Huff, for dinner.

I was out doing the door to door thing for John McCain today with a bunch of others across Marion County. Above is a sketch I did from the car of two of our crew speaking to a Marion County citizen.

The old men’s club just got a feisty new member at the club.

After a number of years since my years with the Orange County Republican Executive Committee, I was voted into the Marion County version. A big thank you to all of those who voted me in. Now for the hard part – Working to get big wins in November!

Above is Lewis Dinkins, who is the current Republican State Committeeman.

While we’re distracted by Global Warming, Presidential campaigns and trying to follow every move Paris Hilton makes – The rest of the world moves on.