Robert Ariail is the political cartoonist for the (Columbia SC) State newspaper, and he's a damn good one, part of the reason that years ago I subscribed to the State even though I lived in Charleston. (This was before I realized that it wasn't just Columbia's paper, every paper -- even the Springfield Shopper, was better than Charleston's Post and Courier.) I once wrote Mr. Ariail a letter telling him how much I appreciated a cartoon of his -- two men sitting on a park bench reading a newspaper headline about how global warming might wipe out humankind, and one man saying how ridiculous it was to think that climate change could wipe out an entire species; and if you look in the ground under the park bench there are the bones of a dinosaur -- and he sent me a signed, framed copy of the cartoon. I still follow his work and I particularly enjoyed today's 'toon which makes a point about our weak and getting weaker economy, but in a gym setting where weight plates equal interest rates.