Podcast #119

A pre-election report from the U.K.; Mark Fiore, creator of animated political cartoons. In the first segment, our correspondent Prof. David Coates of the Wake Forest political science dept. reports from Edinburgh, Scotland on the upcoming election for Prime Minister. Incumbent Gordon Brown of the Labour Party is polling 7-10 points behind Conservative challenger David Cameron. Some of the issues and political divisions are similar to the US. Coates also reports on the Chilcot investigation into Britain's decision to join Bush's folly in Iraq. His new book is Answering Back: Liberal Responses to Conservative Arguments, and Coates will return in a future podcast to comment on American politics and year 1 of Obama. Mark Fiore is the talented cartoonist whose Flash animations are featured on the home page here at peterbcollins.com, along with the sites of many newspapers and his own home on the web. We talk about some of his recent episodes, and play the audio. He describes how he dreams up these powerful little packages of satire, how big he draws Obama's ears, and more; somehow, we end up talking about the Catholic sex scandal, and conclude it's time to turn control over to the nuns.