More on McCain Foreign Policy...

For this week's 'toon, I was gonna do something in advance of Obama's VP choice and the Dem convention, but I decided to let the events play out first. My prediction is Obama will pick Bayh... because that's the one that would piss off his base the most and possibly lose the election for him. That seems to be the Obama campaign's standard operating procedure up to this point.

By the way, the joke in the last frame is a reference to obnoxious people who like to quote lines in movies before the characters on the screen actually have a chance to say them. I have a buddy who loves to do this, especially with Dumb and Dumber... hence, "kick his ass, Seabass." Not saying he's like Dubya or anything, but it's still pretty obnoxious...

Articles n' stuff:

• McCain's pearls of wisdom on the Russia/Georgia conflict:
  

  "In the 21st Century, nations don’t invade other nations."

  "[The Georgia-Russia war is] the first serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War.”

  Dan Eggen and Robert Barnes:
  

  McCain and his aides say his tough rhetoric on the Georgia crisis, along with his personal familiarity with the region, underscores the foreign policy expertise he would bring to the White House.

  Really, if you're harboring any thoughts at all about voting for McCain, for the love of God watch this compilation of his finest moments on the campaign trail.
  
  
• Paul Rosenberg on McCain "fanning the flames" with the Russia situation:
  

  Because the neocon adventure in Iraq has turned out so disasterously, most people fail to appreciate that Iraq was supposed to be a cakewalk, and that the neocon's real primary targets are China and Russia. Although not strictly a neocon-his attitudes derive more from the imperialist naval doctrine that animated the birth of America's "Great White Fleet" 100 years ago-McCain has been a neocon darling since 1999-2000 campaign, when he was their favorite far more than George W. Bush.

• Robert Parry:
  

  ...the larger reality should be clear: McCain is a hard-line neoconservative who buys into Bush’s “preemptive war” theories abroad and his concept of an all-powerful “unitary executive” at home.
  From McCain’s pre-Iraq invasion speeches to his campaign’s recent embrace of Bush’s imperial presidency, American voters should realize that if they choose John McCain, they will be locking in at least four more years of war with much of the Islamic world while selling out the Founders’ vision of a democratic Republic where no one is above the law.

• Another McCain "senior moment" on Iraq:
  

  In a dramatic error yesterday, John McCain told Katie Couric that it’s “just a matter of history” that Bush’s “surge” policy “began the Anbar awakening.” That, of course, is backwards.
  Today, thanks to some efforts by the Obama campaign, the media started picking up on McCain’s bizarre confusion on his signature national security issue, most notably with coverage from the AP and CNN.
  As of this earlier afternoon, the best the McCain campaign could come up with was this: “Democrats can debate whether the awakening would have survived without the surge … but that is nothing more than a transparent effort to minimize the role of our commanders and our troops in defeating the enemy.”
  Got that? If you think 2006 came before 2007, you’re somehow showing disrespect for the troops.

Fighting Words: 8/18/08 Cartoon...

"Advancements in Psychopathology, Cont."...

Previous episode:

Fighting Words News: Animated FW Parts...

So, continuing with my expansion from the ultra-lucrative world of print editorial cartoons into the ultra-ultra-lucrative world of animated editorial cartoons for the web (now there's some bitter sarcasm for you!), you may notice that I am now incorporating more Flash into my weekly cartoon. It's basically the same comic, but with some movin' parts and sound FX (if you can't see it, there's a link there to the static version). Hopefully, I'll be able to do a little something every week...

Anyway, this should give me some valuable extra practice with Flash... and maybe give y'all a little added enner-tainmint.

More on the McCain/Bush Economic Philosophy...

Articles n' stuff for this week's 'toon:

• David Corn on McCain's now-former (or not-so-now-former?) "economic guru" Phil Gramm:
  

  Because of the swap-related provisions of Gramm’s [2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act] — which were supported by Fed chairman Alan Greenspan and Treasury secretary Larry Summers — a $62 trillion market (nearly four times the size of the entire US stock market) remained utterly unregulated, meaning no one made sure the banks and hedge funds had the assets to cover the losses they guaranteed.
  ...
  These unregulated swaps have been at “the heart of the subprime meltdown”...

  
  
• Thomas Frank:
  

  Fantastic misgovernment of the kind we have seen is not an accident, nor is it the work of a few bad individuals. It is the consequence of triumph by a particular philosophy of government, by a movement that understands the liberal state as a perversion and considers the market the ideal nexus of human society. This movement is friendly to industry not just by force of campaign contributions but by conviction; it believes in entrepreneurship not merely in commerce but in politics; and the inevitable results of its ascendance are, first, the capture of the state by business and, second, all that follows: incompetence, graft, and all the other wretched flotsam that we've come to expect from Washington.
  ...
  And, yes, there has been greed involved in the effort -- a great deal of greed. Every tax cut, every cleverly engineered regulatory snafu saves industry millions and perhaps even billions of dollars, and so naturally securing those tax cuts and engineering those snafus has become a booming business here in Washington. Conservative rule has made the capital region rich, a showplace of the new plutocratic order. But this greed cannot be dismissed as some personal failing of lobbyist or congressman, some badness-of-apple that can be easily contained. Conservatism, as we know it, is a movement that is about greed, about the "virtue of selfishness" when it acts in the marketplace.

  
  
• Robert Reich:
  

  Inequality on this scale is bad for many reasons, but it is also bad for the economy. The wealthy devote a smaller percentage of their earnings to buying things than the rest of us because, after all, they're rich. They already have most of what they want. Instead of buying, the very wealthy are more likely to invest their earnings wherever around the world they can get the highest return.
  ...
  The only way to keep the economy going over the long run is to increase the real earnings of middle-class and lower-middle-class Americans. The answer is not to protect jobs through trade protection -- that would only drive up the prices of everything purchased from abroad. Most routine jobs are being automated anyway. Nor is the answer to give tax breaks to the very wealthy and to giant corporations in the hope they will trickle down to everyone else. We've tried that, and it hasn't worked. Nothing has trickled down.

• Andrew Leonard on "Obamanomics":
  

  Obama ventured into adamantly protectionist territory in his denunciation of NAFTA and other free-trade agreements. Later, having secured the nomination, he admitted that he might have gone just a bit overboard in the heat of the moment. What might that tell us about how he would govern? Economic justice and fairness are undoubtedly central to Obama's worldview, but his liberalism is not necessarily the liberalism of a Bobby Kennedy, or even a John Edwards. His liberalism is pragmatic, detail focused and full of trade-offs.

Fighting Words: 8/11/08 Cartoon...

"McCain and Bush's: How to Play Golf!"...

Previous episode:

Yeeaaaahhhh...

No Moron post this week, as the subject matter of this week's 'toon is too stupid to expound upon. However, you can expect a few semi-random observations from me this week...

Such as: with the cancer-related death of Tony Snow and the "dire" prognosis facing Robert Novak, does this mean we can expect a change of heart on and serious push for extensive stem-cell research by right-wing media pundits?

Yeah... I'll be holding my breath...

Fighting Words: 8/4/08 Cartoon...

"Election Beat Magazine!"...

More on Rove's contempt for everybody...

Real quick Moron post for this week's 'toon, as I've got about eight different (animated) balls in the air...

• Brave New Films has an entire website devoted to sending old turd blossom to jail.
  
  
• David Iglesias:
  

  It is unacceptable in a country where the rule of law is the cornerstone of our jurisprudence that a former White House official fail to appear to claim privilege before Congress. Rove should have appeared before Congress and claimed privilege. Rather, he thumbed his nose at a co-equal branch of government and showed his utter disregard for their powers. His actions are contemptuous per se and he should be held in contempt by the House. The language of 18 USC § 1503(a) is broad since it speaks of “influencing” an “officer…of the United States” in the “discharge of his duties” including the “due administration of justice.”
  Applying this test to the allegations concerning the Siegelman matter, for instance, the evidence suggests that Rove influenced a U.S. Attorney in the discharge of her duties. This is a very serious matter and needs to be fully investigated since a non-attorney policy adviser has no business influencing the indictment of an elected official.

• In case you missed it, the House Judiciary Committee did indeed vote to hold Rove in contempt of Congress. So, this means the Democrats are totally getting serious now and he's gonna be in a jail cell by the end of the week, right?
  
  Uh huh...
  
  Pelosi says the full House isn't even going to think about it until September, by which time the Dems will be in full-on election mode. Close Obama adviser Cass Sunstein has already "cautioned against prosecuting criminal conduct from the current administration," or even the "slight appearance" of such attempts.
  

Fighting Words: 7/28/08 Cartoon...

"The Barry Novack Show: I Have an Out-of-Control Teen!"...

GOOD one...

Yeah, that's me being sarcastic... apparently it has to be specified these days.

Vanity Fair clearly does not hire political cartoonists to do their political cartoons. Otherwise, they'd know that their hilarious (sarcastic again) parody of a parody has already been done a few times. Once by a two-time Pulitzer winner.

Good research, guys (sarcasm).

More on... that thing that seems to have gone away...

Very short Moron post for this week's 'toon, as the uproar over the New Yorker cover finally seems to be dying down. In a way, I'd like to see people keep talking about it... I think the more we talk about the farcical fear-mongering over Obama's racial background, the easier it will be to defuse when the real Swift-Boating gets going. This is especially true if people are forced to confront our institutional racist tendencies through satire... good satire will always have the effect of making people stop for a moment to consider the absurdity of some of their most deeply-help social preconceptions.

The part of this debate that I think should go away is the part that is kept alive by commentators (mostly on the left, it seems) who have completely missed the point of the satire. Seriously people... go watch Dr. Strangelove or Spinal Tap. Then get a freakin' clue.

For the folks who fret over the idiots who "won't get" the cartoon, I offer these two tidbits:

• My favorite quote on the issue, by Derf:
  

  So many people are misinformed, and you can’t draw to the morons of America. If you don’t know that Obama isn’t a Muslim, we can’t help you.
  
  ...It’s not up to us to hold people’s hands.

  
  
• My favorite cartoon on the issue (y'know... other than my own), by John Branch:
  
  

  (click here to view)

  John Branch San Antonio Express News Jul 20, 2008 EditorialCartoonists.com

  
  

Fighting Words: 7/21/08 Cartoon...

"Democratic Scholar Round Table: The New Yorker Cover"...

Testing

I opened up accounts on Twitter and Digg, so I'm trying a blog post to see if the little icons show up...

I also set up a page on Photobucket, and watch out for me on Flickr, Friendster, and any other silly social networking site I might come across. Frankly, I just don't see the point of most of these things.

However, if you're really into these sites... then me too! They're the coolest things ever!! If you want to "follow" me or "friend" me or "tweet" me or whatever, then do it, yo...

More on the National Surveillance State...

The reasons for the timing of this week's cartoon are obvious (see the sham FISA "compromise"), but it's really a subject that's been bothering me more than usual lately. There are a disturbing amount of "red light" cameras going up in intersections around Seattle lately, especially in suburban areas. Aside from the questionable effectiveness of "red light" cameras, how do we know that this is the only reason for these cameras? How do we know the FBI or NSA don't have access to these cameras? There are wide swaths of the greater Seattle area where there isn't a square foot of public area that doesn't have a government eye on it. Maybe I'm paranoid, but this really bothers me...

Articles n' stuff:

• Jack Balkin:
  

  I have noted previously that we are in the midst of the creation of a National Surveillance State, which is the logical successor to the National Security State. And we have noted that, like the National Security State before it, the construction of this new form of governance will be a joint effort by the two major parties.
  ...We are going to get some form of National Surveillance State. The only question is what kind of state we will get. As of right now, it looks like we will get one that is far less protective of civil liberties than we could have gotten.
  
  

• Predictably, the ACLU website has a lot of good material on this subject, particularly on the high-tech tools available to the watchers and the ways these tools can be used. One piece says plainly, "the fact is, there are no longer any technical barriers to the Big Brother regime portrayed by George Orwell."
  
  More objectionable examples of our brave new world... first from John Cole:
  

  A senior government official with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has expressed great interest in a so-called safety bracelet that would serve as a stun device, similar to that of a police Taser®. According to this promotional video found at the Lamperd Less Lethal website, the bracelet would be worn by all airline passengers.

  This bracelet would: take the place of an airline boarding pass, contain personal information about the traveler, be able to monitor the whereabouts of each passenger and his/her luggage, [and] shock the wearer on command, completely immobilizing him/her for several minutes

  Juan Cole:
  

  Till now, DOJ guidelines have required the FBI to have some evidence of wrongdoing before it opens an investigation. The impending new rules, which would be implemented later this summer, allow bureau agents to establish a terrorist profile or pattern of behavior and attributes and, on the basis of that profile, start investigating an individual or group. Agents would be permitted to ask “open-ended questions” concerning the activities of Muslim Americans and Arab-Americans. A person’s travel and occupation, as well as race or ethnicity, could be grounds for opening a national security investigation.

  Tim Shorrock:
  

  Under a proposal being reviewed by Congress, a National Applications Office (NAO) will be established to coordinate how the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and domestic law enforcement and rescue agencies use imagery and communications intelligence picked up by U.S. spy satellites. If the plan goes forward, the NAO will create the legal mechanism for an unprecedented degree of domestic intelligence gathering that would make the U.S. one of the world's most closely monitored nations.

  
  
• Julian Sanchez:
  

  The original FISA law was passed in 1978 after a thorough congressional investigation headed by Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) revealed that for decades, intelligence analysts — and the presidents they served — had spied on the letters and phone conversations of union chiefs, civil rights leaders, journalists, antiwar activists, lobbyists, members of Congress, Supreme Court justices — even Eleanor Roosevelt and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The Church Committee reports painstakingly documented how the information obtained was often “collected and disseminated in order to serve the purely political interests of an intelligence agency or the administration, and to influence social policy and political action.”
  
  ...if you think an executive branch unchecked by courts won’t turn its “national security” surveillance powers to political ends — well, it would be a first.

Cartoon Controversy!

Lotta talk today about the cartoon on the cover of the New Yorker. Like many cartoonists whom the New Yorker does not know exist and/or would never publish in a million years, I basically did that same cartoon a few weeks ago (linked below). Anyway, I haven't read anyone else's comments on the subject yet so this may have already been said, but here's my opinion on the "controversy"...

Of course, satire must be done carefully, and the New Yorker illustration may suffer from missing context. However, the Obama campaign's failure to show that they get the point of the joke is yet another missed opportunity to demonstrate a level of intellectual sophistication commensurate with that of his base. The fact that he continues to try to appeal to morons who don't get when they're being made fun of just alienates him further from the people he is supposed to be representing.

Fighting Words: 7/14/08 Cartoon...

"Notice From the National Surveillance State"...

More on Obama's shift to the right...

I've been playing a ton of poker lately, so no matter how much thought I put into this week's 'toon, it was always gonna be about poker. It just so happened to fit what Obama's been doing lately...

Articles n' things:

• As usual, Glenn Greenwald is spot-on:
  

  The central problem is that if Democrats embrace the GOP framework of National Security -- that "Strength" means what the GOP says it means -- then that framework gets enforced and perpetuated, and it's a framework within which Democrats can't possibly win, because Republicans will always "out-Strength" Democrats within that framework. It's only by challenging and disputing the underlying premises can Democrats change the way that "strength" and "weakness" are understood.
  ...
  Drawing a clear distinction with the deeply unpopular GOP is how Democrats look strong. The advice that they should "move to the center" and copy Republicans is guaranteed to make them look weak -- because it is weak. It's the definition of weakness.
  The most distinctive and potent -- one could even say exciting -- aspect of Obama's campaign had been his aggressive refusal to accept GOP pieties on National Security, his insistence that the GOP would lose -- and should lose -- debates over who is "stronger" and more "patriotic" and who will keep us more safe
  

  
  
• Makes you wonder if Obama's critics on the left are correct, that his public persona is masking the fact that he's not all that great on the issues after all. In contrast, Ralph Nader is often portrayed in a negative light, but the man is consistent... and he always makes a few good points:
  

  The corporations are pulling Obama every day, every day, twenty-four/seven, in their direction. If all these liberal groups with all their single issues are not pulling in the other direction, where do you think the Democratic Party and the nominee is going to go? Even if they’re elected, they won’t have any mandate.

  
  
• It's not just what Obama has been saying, but who he's saying it to.
  
  On late-term abortion:
  

  In an interview this week with "Relevant," a Christian magazine, Obama said prohibitions on late-term abortions must contain "a strict, well defined exception for the health of the mother." Obama then added: "Now, I don't think that 'mental distress' qualifies as the health of the mother..."
  

  On free trade:
  

  Obama's interview with Fortune magazine -- headlined "Obama: NAFTA Not So Bad After All" -- is the best news the McCain camp has received since Mike Huckabee folded his run for the Republican nomination.

  On faith-based initiatives:
  

  On June 10, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama convened a meeting in a law office in downtown Chicago with a wide array of about thirty evangelical leaders, in an unprecedented effort to win their support.

  How many "liberal" groups or publications has he pandered to lately? Aren't we supposed to be his base or something? And what the hell is up with the timing, here? Don't he and his advisers realize just how fast his base will leave him if he keeps acting like John Kerry?
  
  The most common reason given for overlooking these betrayals is: we can't afford to have another Republican-appointed member of the Supreme Court. But can we really trust Obama to pick a friendly Justice either? One thing's for sure: he better turn it around quick. His base is paying attention, and they'll desert him in a hurry if he stops representing them on the issues.
  
  

Yet again...

Following up on my previous post on the House vote on the FISA "compromise," here's the list of the surveillance-society-loving Senate Democrats to vote against in November, including most of the usual names: Feinstein, Inouye, Rockefeller, Bayh, and... Obama?

Yeah... we should be that pissed at him about this. This could be, in his own words, a "deal breaker." More to come on this soon in my Moron post for this week's 'toon...

There's already an online movement going to punish Democrats for caving on this (via Cursor)...

Fighting Words: 7/7/08 Cartoon...

"World Cup of Poker: 2008 Main Event"...


Previous episode:

Bye Bye Sonics...

Boy am I glad I came to this conclusion a year ago, so I could avoid feeling the sting today. Not so much, though... it still stings.

The interesting thing now is whether the mayor and city counsel are allowed to keep their jobs come election time. I'm betting no... as the Sonics memories come bubbling up, it's going to sink in with even the armchair sports fans just how much the citizens of Seattle got FUCKED.

So bye-bye Greg Nickels... my track record of predictions on this subject has been pretty good.

Hey, the guy had to get home...

Sent to me by friend of mine:

This is only funny 'cuz it sounds like something that people I know would try to do...

More on the Death of Impeachment...

Some cartoons have characters that are just damn fun to draw... this week's is one of those cartoons. By the way, that is indeed supposed to be Chief Justice John Roberts at the ripe old age of 95 (or however old he'll be in 2048), presiding over the impeachment proceedings.

Most of what I was going to talk about in this 'toon (like the FISA "compromise" and Obama's toe-dipping in right-wing waters) is getting pushed to next week's 'toon. Here's a couple articles, though:

• Dennis Kucinich on Democracy Now:
  

  George Bush has enough time to bomb Iran on another pretext. He has enough time to continue policies of torture. He has enough time to continue policies of eavesdropping and wiretapping. He has enough time to continue to ignore critical science with respect to global climate change. He has enough time to help facilitate more violations of election law for the 2008 election.
  We don’t have enough time. We can’t spend any more time temporizing, while the Constitution, the United States laws, international laws, are being shredded.

  
  Jason Leopold:
  

  Kucinich said the articles of impeachment against President Bush are a way for lawmakers to "create an historical record of the misconduct of the Bush administration."



• Gore Vidal's article of impeachment:
  

  And as I listened with awe to Kucinich, I realized that no newspaper in the U.S., no broadcast or cable network, would pay much notice to the fact that a highly respected member of Congress was asking for the president and vice president to be tried for crimes which were carefully listed by Kucinich in his articles requesting impeachment. But then I have known for a long time that the media of the U.S. and too many of its elected officials give not a flying fuck for the welfare of this republic...
  
  

• And, in case you missed it (and judging by the crickets coming from the "liberal media," it's entirely possible that you did):
  

  Ivy Leaguers and other top law students were rejected for plum Justice Department jobs two years ago because of their liberal leanings or objections to Bush administration politics, a government report concluded Tuesday.

  In one case, a Harvard Law student was passed over after criticizing the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. In another, a Georgetown University student who had previously worked for a Democratic senator and congressman didn't make the cut.

  Even senior Justice Department officials flinched at what appeared to be hiring decisions based — improperly and illegally — on politics, according to the internal report.

  
  I suppose this report will go with the NIE on Iran's nuclear weapons program (or lack thereof), into the mainstream media's circular file cabinet... into a file labeled "Proof That the Bush Administration Lied About Important Stuff," in a redwell called "Stuff That We Will Never, Ever Talk About"...
  

Fighting Words: 6/30/08 Cartoon...

"Future Viewer: The Impeachment of President Goober Johnson"...

More on Big Oil, drilling...

In case you didn't catch it, the name "Cheney milkshakes" in this week's 'toon was borrowed from the now-infamous final scene of There Will Be Blood... but I'm sure you caught that. You're quite clever...

Tidbits:

• All indications are that offshore drilling (like drilling in ANWR) would not yield any oil for 10 years, and even then would have no significant impact on gas prices. Meanwhile, here's what it'll do to the environment:
  

  ...the back-to-back wallops of Katrina and Hurricane Rita caused 124 spills that released more than 700,000 gallons of petroleum pollution into the environment. Furthermore, the problem of drilling-related pollution is not limited to the aftermath of natural disasters. Offshore oil production also brings with it the risk of spills from tanker accidents, which are devastating to ocean and shore life as well as seaside tourist economies. Then there's the
  chronic pollution from drilling operations. The Rainforest Action Network estimates that over its lifetime one normally operating oil drilling rig will:
  * dump more than 90,000 metric tons of toxic drilling fluid and metal cuttings into the ocean;
  * drill between 50 and 100 wells, each of which will dump as much as 25,000 pounds of toxic metals including lead, chromium and mercury, and potent carcinogens like toluene, benzene, and xylene into the ocean; and
  * pollute the air as much as 7,000 cars driving 50 miles a day.

• Michael Brush:
  

  ExxonMobil... generated $40.6 billion in net income last year and $36.6 billion in free cash flow. What did it do with those riches? It gave $38.4 billion back to shareholders -- $7.4 billion in dividend payments and $31 billion through share buybacks.
  ...
  This means the windfall profits that ExxonMobil gave back to shareholders last year were enough to buy all the households in both California and Pennsylvania gasoline for the entire year. It was enough to give everyone a 27 cents-a-gallon discount on gas nationwide for the whole year.

  
  
• If you haven't seen it yet, be sure to check out an out-freakin'-standing piece by Paul Salopek called "A Tank of Gas, A World of Trouble," which has been sitting in my "stuff-to-read" folder for a while. It traces a tank of gas from the time it's taken out of the ground in a war-torn foreign land, to the "Heartland" gas station where it's pumped by an oblivious soccer-mom into her 10 mpg Hummer. Among the compelling stories are fascinating snippets like this:
  
  

  In some respects, crude really does resemble blood. It scabs on exposure to air. It is organic and viscous. Some companies warm oil to about 90 degrees to make it slip more easily, with less friction, through pipelines. This temperature approximates that of the human body. Cold oil will coagulate. It coats the inner surfaces of the pipes with waxy buildups, much like arterial plaque.

  
  

Jesus...

OK, I can't let this one pass. There are some seriously God-awful "George Carlin at the pearly gates" editorial cartoons coming down the pike today... even a few by cartoonists that I greatly admire. Some of these 'toons are made even more offensive by the fact that they're either borne out of a complete ignorance of Carlin's views on religion, or they simply (and rather ironically) miss the point of his material.

Seriously... is this what we do -- draw the same damn silly pictures over and over that'll recap any piece of news that might occur? Is it the deadlines? Are editors to blame for not giving their cartoonists more time to, perhaps, listen to a few Carlin albums and do a unique and fitting tribute?

GRRRR! Sorry, this particular one just bothered me more than usual...


UPDATE: Cagle has a post on this, along with a few more "Sorry, Mr. Carlin, you can't say those seven words here either" cartoons that I hadn't seen... (say... you guys know that he did other routines aside from the "seven words" bit, right?)...


P.P.S.: For those who may have been aware of Carlin's religious views and did their cartoons as implicit criticisms of Carlin, I offer a personal note: when Tim Russert died, I did a blog post criticizing him for being such a huge cog in the corporate media machine. Then I realized how tacky it would be to dance on the grave of someone who just died, so I put it in my pocket and bit my fucking tongue. Hint, hint...

George

I won't recall my favorite Carlin bit... there's too many to choose from. Let me just say that one of my personal heroes has gone, someone whose life work has helped me define what I'm trying to do with my own work. Not many other people have been able to convey how pissed off they were about the shit going on in the world and still make it so damn funny...

I haven't listened yet, but I'm told the NPR retrospective on his life is outstanding.

Fighting Words: 6/23/08 Cartoon...

"Fuzzy Fetish"...

FISA Bill Vote...

GovTrack has the final vote on H.R. 6304, so you can find all the authoritarianism-enabling Democrats to vote out of office the next time they're up for re-election...

More on Racist Caricatures...

I just got done telling someone that I wasn't going to jump on the bandwagon of criticizing the work of other cartoonists, which is a major topic of discussion in editorial cartooning circles these days. This means, of course, that I'm going to do the exact opposite right now and criticize someone else's work (although it is a criticism of substance, not form)...

One of my main influences for this week's 'toon was a recent editorial cartoon by Jake Fuller:

(click here to view)

Jake Fuller Artizans Jun 13, 2008 EditorialCartoonists.com

To be fair, Fuller is surely not the only one to have drawn a caricature like this... I counted at least half a dozen other similar depictions in the last week alone. Also, to my knowledge I have never met Fuller, so it's not a personal beef.

However, cartoons like this still seem to me to be a clear abuse of editorial and artistic license. There is no argument being made... it's nothing more than a crass exploitation of social fears and preconceptions. As has often been noted, there is a staggering ignorance in cartoons like this of the historical similarities with WWII-era racist depictions of Japanese people. I think it's safe to say that caricatures of that nature have now been universally discredited. What's next, Obama in blackface? (Well, maybe that's not out of the realm of possibility...)

Perhaps the most objectionable thing about caricatures like this is how misleading they are, especially considering how many of the Guantanamo detainees have apparently been children who don't have the ability to grow scary-looking beards. Contrast Fuller's vision of what a detainee looks like with this image. It takes a small amount of reading to find out who these people really are, to make sure your cartoon has a basis in solid journalism.

I suppose it's too much to hope for cartoons like this to just go away, but neither should the offending artists hope to avoid criticism when they draw them.

Tidbits:

• Vincent Rossmeier predicts that Michelle Obama will become a focus of attention for the GOP attack machine, if she hasn't already. Quoting a conservative writer on the alleged videotape where she denounces "whitey":
  

  "No tape exists ... This is the '08 version of a really weird conservative urban legend that pops up every four years. The names change, but the basics remain the same: 1) It always involves the wife of the Democratic presidential candidate; 2) it always portrays the wife -- not the candidate -- committing some anti-American, unpatriotic act."

  
  
• The third square of the 'toon was a reference to a recent AP article by Nedra Pickler, which gave an essentially unopposed platform for "fringe Republican operatives" to question Obama's patriotism. It also generated a significant protest from readers:
  

  That kind of media shortcoming has become predictable; reporters love to quote partisan Republicans about how deficient Democrats are. And in the past it would have likely produced angry denunciations online within the liberal blogosphere -- a blog swarm, perhaps...
  But nearly 15,000 letters sent in just a matter of days in response to a single news wire article? That's something else entirely and could mark the dawn of a new era in progressive media activism. The phenomenon has received very little mainstream media attention (journalists probably don't want to encourage this sort of thing), but make no mistake: It was a very big deal.
  

  
  

Fighting Words: 6/16/08 Cartoon...

"Remaining Election Calendar"...


There seems to be a little confusion about what I was trying to say with this one. I'm just trying to satirize the ridiculous caricatures of Barack and Michelle Obama that I'm predicting will emerge by October, as fueled by the Republican attack machine and repeated by our moronic media. And, I was trying to portray the disgust that we should all feel by that point if we've watched the news at all...

Probably just a sucky 'toon... sorry...

Animation!

I was showing this around MoCCA over the weekend, but my first animation is up on the site now. It's been a long time coming, mainly cuz I've been trying to get a handle on Flash... now that I'm getting there, I'll definitely be doing more movin' cartoons. I like 'em!


It's an animated version of this cartoon:

Fighting Words: 6/9/08 Cartoon...

"Stuff I'd Rather Do Than Watch That Movie, #5

Airport blogging...

This week's 'toon is obviously gonna be late, since it's Monday morning and I'm about to get on a plane and I've barely started the thing. Probably tomorrow sometime...

Fighting Words: 6/2/08 Cartoon...

"The Scott-Botinator"...


Man, I needed an easy topic for a cartoon this week, and the political cartooning gods hooked me up...

No Moron post this week, as I expect to be pretty busy. I'll try to do a post on the road from NYC.

See the previous appearances of Scott-Bot:

By the way...

... my own personal secret to weight loss? Reading too much current events. I've been eating a lot healthier lately, and I haven't been able to stomach red meat since I researched for this cartoon a few months ago...

OK, I did buy and eat a Dick's Deluxe a couple weeks ago in a drunken fog, but I felt like crap for the next couple days. Definitely because of the burger...

More on Big Pharma...

I'm getting ready to head to New York next week for MoCCA Art Fest, so no time to do a full-on Moron post this week (other than to give you a link to Bill Moyers' interview with NYT reporter Melody Peterson)...

I do have an anecdote, though. After I posted the cartoon, I came across a commercial for a drug that should, without a doubt, have been included in this week's 'toon. Apparently, one of the side-effects of the weight-loss drug alli is anal leakage... they have this caveat posted on their website:

You may feel an urgent need to go to the bathroom. Until you have a sense of any treatment effects, it's probably a smart idea to wear dark pants, and bring a change of clothes with you to work

Is shitting yourself at work really a reasonable sacrifice for losing a little bit of weight? How the hell does something like this get approved?

Fighting Words: 5/26/08 Cartoon...

"Public Service Announcement: Drug Dealers"...

Bonus art...

Here's a caricature of Arianna Huffington that I did for a recent 'toon, which didn't make it into the final version... just so it sees the light of day, cuz I thought it was decent.

Matt Bors did a good one the other day, too...

More on foreign policy for grown-ups...

I think Obama's response so far to Bush's "appeaser" comment has been right on. He's used a few keywords that I've been dying to hear from the so-called "opposition party" the past few years, blasting such comments as "dishonest" and pointing out that the Bushies turn to fallacies like this because "they can't win a debate on the merits." This stands in contrast to rhetoric used by your Pelosis and Reids and Kerrys and Clintons, which feigns indignation but adopts the other side's terms of the debate (e.g. "I love freedom and hate terror almost as much as you, but I have to disagree on a few points..."). Obama has done a little bit of this, but not to such objectionable levels...

Bush's comments show explicitly just how much disdain he holds for intellectual argumentation. He believes that power and deference are birthrights for someone like him, and that they should be simply handed over (or, on a geopolitical stage, taken by force). Perhaps, if we were simply a bunch of monkeys fighting over a banana, he would be right... the monkey who can look the biggest or screech the loudest will win. But fully-evolved human beings know that in a grown-up world today, and particularly in a nuclear world, argument is everything.

Obama has said that comments like this are the reason why he's running... which I also love to hear, because it's also why I do what I do.

Some snippets for this week's 'toon:

• Juan Cole (my new Facebook buddy):
  

  Senator John McCain, who seeks endorsements from haters of Roman Catholics, is alleging that Hamas has "endorsed" Barack Obama. He darkly suggests that this means something. It is a despicable, dirty campaign trick. Who do you think the Ku Klux Klan will be endorsing? And if the Grand Dragons plump for McCain, does that tell us anything about McCain except that he is pasty faced? You can't logically read off anything at all from an unsolicited endorsement.

  
  
• Jonathan Schell, on the new nuclear world:
  

  That's part of the universalization that was written into the bomb's genetic code. Once a terrorist group has such a weapon, deterrence -- a relic of the Cold War -- is no longer operable. So this supposed solution, which seemed to work, after a fashion, for more than four decades, is now essentially out the window and we're in the market for another solution, which must be geared to this matured form of danger in which the weaponry can pop up anywhere.
  
  ...
  
  What follows, of course, is that a growing list of countries -- at present probably around 50 -- are able to have nuclear weapons if they so decide. What, in turn, follows is that, if those countries are not going to have the bomb, it will only be because they have made a political decision not to have it.
  And what follows no less surely is that this global issue cannot be solved by any means but the political. More specifically, it can't be solved by military force.
  
  ...
  
  I would say that the surefire way of ensuring that Iran will go for the bomb is to attack them. If, the day before, they were ready to stop short of having the bomb, the day after, they'll go for it and they'll get it, too. So, just as people say, there are no good options -- but that's only within the framework of the Bush Doctrine.

  
  
• Scott Ritter on Israel's bombing of Syria last September:
  

  ...the Israeli decision to bomb Syria not only allowed the Syrian effort to be defined as weapons-related (an unproven and unlikely allegation), but by extension reinforced the Israeli (and American) contention that the nuclear activity in Iran was weapons-related as well.
  The international debate that has taken place about the Syrian facility shows how successful the Israeli gambit, in fact, was, since there is virtually no discussion about the fact that Israel violated international law in attacking, without provocation, a sovereign state whose status as a member of the United Nations ostensibly affords it protection from such assault. The American embrace of the Israeli action, and the decision to produce intelligence information about the nature of the bombed facility at this late stage in the game, only reinforces the reality that the United States has turned its back on international law in the form of arms control and non-proliferation agreements.

• Excellent post by Chris Floyd:
  

  As with Iraq, the reality doesn't matter. The truth doesn't matter. The horrifying, murderous consequences don't matter. What matters is the militarist, elitist agenda of global domination -- in a word, empire -- that has driven America's "bipartisan foreign policy establishment" for decades. Iraq was not an aberration; it was an embodiment of this agenda. And the attack on Iran will be the same.

  
  
  
  

Fighting Words: 5/19/08 Cartoon...

"McCain & Bush's: How to Play Chess!"...

Bonus Goodie...

So the reason I've been scuffling so much on blog posts lately is because I've been busy working my butt off trying to learn how to make movin' cartoons. Here's a little something I did in a class I took... not much yet, but it's a start (more to come soon):





BTW: no Moron post this week, since the 'toon was a repeat!

Fighting Words: 5/12/08 Cartoon...

"Alien Society: Inconvenient Truths"...


So, yeah, a real late Moron post from last week and a "classic" Fighting Words this week might tell you that I've been a bit under the weather the past couple days. Sorry, yo...

Anyways, HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

More, More, More on the media and the election...

You may notice that I've been talking about these convergent subjects quite a bit lately... and we're gonna be talking about it a helluva lot more for the next few months. I am fully convinced that the upcoming election HAS to be "high noon" between rational Americans and our moronic media. It's time to put an end to a mainstream media that willingly feeds the delusions of people who believe stories about how Obama is, like, an evil android sent by Hamas to conquer and enslave the American people. This kind of "journalism" needs to be KILLED... killed until it is DEAD, and then killed some more. And nothing kills these people more than being ignored... (hmmm... and yet we must talk about them to get people to ignore them... a paradox).

• If you believe any of the hype about Jeremiah Wright, watch Bill Moyers' recent interview with him... as I say in the cartoon, Wright really doesn't say anything that is incorrect. Even in his more "bombastic moments" in the National Press Club Q & A and the NAACP speech, his arguments are reasonable and firmly based on historical truth. Sure he may have come off like kind of an asshole at times, especially during the Q & A... but this just means he'd make a good newsman, right? Asshole journalism is, after all, the standard these days...
  
  
• Being an asshole seems to be the mark of a good, right-wing Christian leader, too. Seems McCain's good pal Rev. Hagee has retracted his retraction of his totally un-newsworthy comment that New Orleans got what it had coming when Katrina hit.
  
  
• Glen Ford on Obama's "race-neutral" strategy:
  

  In order for his race-neutral strategy to appear sane, Obama must constantly paint a picture of an America that does not exist. This cannot be accomplished without mangling the truth, assaulting the truth-tellers, and misrepresenting America's past and present...
  
  He says the "incompetence was color-blind" in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, thereby deracializing all that occurred in New Orleans from the moment the winds died down to this very second. He claims that 1980s Ronald Reagan voters had understandable grievances due to "the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s," in the process cleansing the Reagan victory of any racist content.
  

Fighting Words: 5/5/08 Cartoon...

"Drunk News Network: Decision 2008!"...


Yeah, this cartoon is real late. Not my fault this time, though... it's Steve Jobs' fault. Stupid Mac problems, in other words...

I'm too pissed about it to go into detail. Perhaps I'll do a profanity-laced tirade tomorrow against Apple computers...

More on net neutrality and a bad blogger...

So, after so many months doing "More On" posts after my weekly cartoons, I just realized that I completely forgot to do one this week. I guess that's when you know I'm working extra hard on stuff outside of the weekly 'toon...

I don't have much else to add to this week's 'toon, but here are a couple things:

• A clip from "friend of Fighting Words" David Isen's opening statement during the recent "Freedom 2 Connect" conference:
  

  Our planet is in danger of becoming hostile to life. I'm not talking about the flooding of Miami and New York and Bangladesh. I mean that because of the carbon we humans put in the air, Earth could become Venus, a place where life can't live. So I believe -- and I put this forward as a hypothesis -- I believe that we can use the Internet to conserve more atmospheric carbon than its infrastructure generates. Furthermore, I believe we can use the Internet for global participation that transcends tribalism and nationalism to end war . . . for discussion!

• Prof. Lawrence Lessig on Democracy Now:
  

  ...you can understand how a cable company who’s providing you internet service might think twice before they allow that internet service to become a competitor with HBO or with the other cable things that you have to pay for. So this has been the constant concern. If the owners of the wires get to muck about with the kinds of content that come across the wires, then they might block competition that’s valuable, both because it’s increasing the diversity of content available and also because it’s enabling new kinds of applications to come onto the network.

  
  

dog-blogging...

I usually think it's pretty lame when people post pictures of their pets on their blogs.

Except, y'know, when I do it...

Seriously, how freakin' cute is this:

Fighting Words: 4/28/08 Cartoon...

"The Wild, Wild Internet"...

Website changes...

So I've been doing some sprucing up of the old website lately, including adding buttons for "Buy A Print" and "Make A Donation." I'm aware of some little problems on various types of browsers... I'll have to come back to it and iron those out next week.

However, if you see any major problems like the site doesn't come up at all or your computer explodes when you type in the address, let me know. Pretty sure it's not my fault though if your computer explodes...

Hopefully, these changes will hold me over until I can get around to a complete site redesign someday. But probably not... I'll probably continue to tinker with the damn thing.


UPDATE: I just looked at it on a smaller screen, and it's all outta whack... I got some work to do still. So consider it partially under construction at the moment...

Full Disclosure...

My hatred of rednecks is a little skewed right now, as one of 'em is in the process of stealing my hometown basketball team. I have a lot of fond Sonics memories (I still use my '96 Finals gym bag) that are going down the drain thanks to a lying redneck sack of shit named Clay Bennett (again, of course, I'm referring to the redneck owner of the Sonics, not the editorial cartoonist of the same name... the latter is a great guy). But, of course, it's not just Clay-Clay's doing... thanks also go out to Howard Schultz (the dumbass Starbucks CEO who sold the team and now claims he didn't see all this coming), and, of course, David Stern (the toad who is responsible for destroying the NBA).

More on the ABC Debate, our pathetic national media...

This will be a pretty easy Moron post for this week's 'toon:

• Alls ya gotta do is watch the damn thing (or read the transcript), if you haven't already suffered through it. The cartoon mainly came from my longing for a response to these 5th grade-level questions that wasn't softened so it couldn't possibly "offend" someone. Of course, Obama can't come out and say, "well... I DO hate rednecks!" But it would be funny as hell if he could.
  
  After all, it's not like his original comments were actually WRONG in any way, shape, or form... but the amoral halfwits in our national media (in this case, Charles Gibson and George Snuffaluffagus) smelled "controversy" (and ratings) and, predictably, jumped all over it.
  
  Who really gives a shit if rednecks are offended anyway? It's not like they have some kind of national identity established over the course of history as a result of being wronged by the overriding power structure. And, no, I'm not making a generalization about "poor" or "working class" people here... I'm talking about REDNECKS. White Trash. We've been over this before...
  
  Plus, I suppose that, technically, I too could be considered a redneck. So maybe I'm just a self-loathing member of this particular "ethnic group"...
  
  
• Andrew Sullivan:
  

  The loser was ABC News: one of the worst media performances I can remember - petty, shallow, process-obsessed, trivial where substantive, and utterly divorced from the actual issues that Americans want to talk about.
  ...
  
  No questions on the environment, none on terror, none on interrogation, none on torture, none on education, none on spending, none on healthcare, none on Iran ... but four separate questions in the first hour about a lapel-pin, Bitter-gate, Wright-gate and Ayers. I'm all for keeping candidates on their toes. But this was ridiculous.

• Glenn Greenwald:
  

  AMY GOODMAN: George Stephanopoulos, the former Clinton aide—President Clinton—said he had asked fair, tough questions, the kind of questions that would be asked later. What is your response to that, Glenn Greenwald?
  
  GLENN GREENWALD: This is the justification that reporters use repeatedly whenever they focus on insipid, substance-free stories. They pretend that if it were strictly up to them, they of course would focus on the serious substantive matters that the country faces, because they’re politically sophisticated observers. The problem, they say, is that Americans, the sort of heartland voter whom they patronizingly look down upon is interested in these sort of personality-based Drudge-like issues, and therefore they have no choice but to report them, since these are the issues that are going to predominate in our political process.
  
  ...
  
  And these journalists believe that they’re sort of spokespeople for the people in the heartland and speak for them and patronizingly say that they’re interested in these insipid issues and that’s why they’re covered. The reality is there’s no connection between the establishment journalistic class and the people whom they claim to represent, and the reason they cover those issues is because they, the journalists, want to cover them, not because the people want to hear them.

• Paul Waldman:
  

  The Washington journalists themselves are as elite as they come, but they know who the good guys are -- they're the residents of the small towns, whose "values" can't possibly be matched by those who live in cities; they're the people whose lowbrow tastes make them "authentic"; they're the earthy, regular Americans defined by their modest tastes in food, drink, and entertainment. The journalists may not actually know too many of these people, but they know they're there, and they know they're better than the rest of us.
  

  
  

Fighting Words: 4/21/08 Cartoon...

"ABC's Extended Debate Coverage"...

Sound familiar?

From my current reading, a snippet that probably won't make it into my "more on" post... Robert Parry takes us back to the good old days of 1992, back before the Clintons had completely lost their minds:

The Clintons had a different perspective, too, when the insinuations about a person’s lack of patriotism were about Bill Clinton in fall 1992. As that campaign heated up, President George H.W. Bush unleashed his subordinates to dig up whatever dirt they could to impugn Clinton’s loyalty to his country.

Some of Bush’s political appointees rifled through Clinton’s passport file looking for an apocryphal letter from his student days in which Clinton supposedly sought to renounce his citizenship.

Though no such a letter was ever found, Bush exploited the mystery around Clinton’s passport files to raise questions about Clinton’s 1970 student trips to the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, where he allegedly stayed with Communist friends.

With his patriotism challenged, Clinton saw his once-formidable lead shrink. Panic spread through the Clinton campaign. Ironically, one of the nervous Clinton’s aides who contacted congressional Democrats seeking their help in countering the Republican smears was George Stephanopoulos.

Bush's allies also put out another suspicion, that Clinton might have been a KGB “agent of influence.” Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Washington Times headlined that allegation on Oct. 5, 1992, a story that attracted President Bush’s personal interest.

“Now there are stories that Clinton … may have gone to Moscow as [a] guest of the KGB,” Bush wrote in his diary that day. [For the fullest account of the 1992 Passportgate case, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]

...

Sensing that the loyalty theme was hurting Clinton, President Bush kept stoking the fire. On CNN’s “Larry King Live” on Oct. 7, 1992, Bush suggested anew that there was something sinister about a possible Clinton friend maybe removing the apocryphal renunciation letter from Clinton’s passport file.

...

“I just think it’s wrong. I – that – maybe – they say, ‘well, it was a youthful indiscretion.’ I was 19 or 20 flying off an aircraft carrier and that shaped me to be commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and – I’m sorry but demonstrating – it’s not a question of patriotism, it’s a question of character and judgment.”

Clinton countered by challenging Bush directly.

“You have questioned my patriotism,” the Democrat shot back. Clinton then unloaded his own zinger: “When Joe McCarthy went around this country attacking people’s patriotism, he was wrong. He was wrong, and a senator from Connecticut stood up to him, named Prescott Bush. Your father was right to stand up to Joe McCarthy. You were wrong to attack my patriotism.”

Many observers rated Clinton’s negative comparison of Bush to his father as Bush’s worst moment in the debate. An unsettled Bush didn’t regain the initiative for the remainder of the evening.

More on our Stone-Age dialogue on global warming...

Tidbits for this week's 'toon:

• Saw more of the same old shit on global warming from Captain "Wrong-Way/Right-Way" this morning...
  
  
• E.O. Wilson:
  

  How did such frail creatures come to be a geophysical force and dominate the world? Brains, obviously. Somehow, by a process still not well understood, we mastered fire, invented weaponry, and learned to talk to one another in arbitrarily devised symbolic languages. But in rising to power, beginning with the invention of agriculture a scant 10 millennia ago, we carried along with us the heavy baggage of ancient primate instincts. Today, as a result, we live in Star Wars civilizations ruled by Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology.

• Renee Schoof on John McCain's environmental policy:
  

  When McCain introduced his latest version of a cap and trade plan in January 2007, he warned: "Just as there is danger in doing too little, there is peril in going too far, too fast, in a way that imposes unsustainable costs on the economy."

• Brad Johnson of GristMill:
  

  Like Bush, McCain’s global warming talk is good — both speaking in generalities about needing to be “good stewards” and get “serious” about climate change.
  Like Bush, Candidate McCain is drenched in ties to Big Oil — McCain’s campaign is run by lobbyists for Saudi Arabia and energy companies, and McCain has repeatedly blocked attempts to roll back subsidies for Big Oil.
  Like Bush, McCain uses China and India as an excuse for inaction — When asked about global warming policy, both Sen. McCain and Bush say that India and China have to participate in a global agreement — ignoring the fact that unlike the United States, both countries are signatories to the Kyoto Protocol. Moreover, the rest of the industrialized world is not making excuses — they’ve set to work.

• Robert F. Kennedy Jr., from his new manifesto on global warming:
  

  The evidence is before our eyes. The practice of borrowing a billion dollars each day to buy foreign oil has caused the American dollar to implode. More than a trillion dollars in annual subsidies to coal and oil producers have beggared a nation that four decades ago owned half the globe’s wealth. Carbon dependence has eroded our economic power, destroyed our moral authority, diminished our international influence and prestige, endangered our national security, and damaged our health and landscapes. It is subverting everything we value.

  
  
• Read my previous post on Frontline's Hot Politics.
  

Fighting Words: 4/14/07 Cartoon...

"Neandercons: Ice Age!"...

More on Bush supporting the troops...

Links and stuff for this week's cartoon:

• The main inspirations for the 'toon were the last two episodes of Frontline, which I thought were interesting for the contrasting perspectives they offer on the Iraq War. The episode "Bush War" certainly was a thorough attempt at covering the behind-the-scenes events that led to the war. However, as they recap all of the political gamesmanship that has occurred within the Bush administration, the true weight of their crimes gets lost. At some point in the portrayal, it almost starts to seem like their monstrous actions are excusable as simply being the result of "business-as-usual" in Washington. Those of us who don't live in that moral vacuum know better.
  
  The next episode touches a little more on the true consequences of a pointless war. "Bad Voodoo's War" follows a National Guard platoon as they do "convoy security missions" day after day for months on end in 130 degree heat, all the while being forced to simply cross their fingers and hope they don't get killed by an IED or small arms fire. After their tour is over, they get to go home, battle PTSD, and if they're lucky enough to still have all their limbs, get stop-lossed and go do it all over again. Repeat for the next 100 years.
  
  
• Of course, the other main inspiration for the 'toon was the litany of asinine quotes we've been given by Bush and Cheney lately.
  
  Cheney:
  

  Noting the burden placed on military families, the vice president said the biggest burden is carried by President George W. Bush, who made the decision to commit US troops to war, and reminded the public that U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan volunteered for duty.

  
  Cheney:
  

  "So?"
  
  Vice President Cheney, March 19, when asked about the American public's disapproval of the Iraq War.

  
  Bush:
  

  "I must say, I'm a little envious. If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed. It must be exciting for you...in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks."
  
  President Bush, March 13, speaking by videoconference to American military and civilian personnel in Afghanistan.

  
  
• Spencer Ackerman:
  

  We need to ask "if we left tomorrow, what would happen in Iraq?" and from there, we need to determine which of those anticipated results are unacceptable to us. Then we must aim our efforts on making sure those unacceptable results do not occur. When I look at the problem that way, it becomes almost impossible to find a purpose in what we do. Regardless of what we do, the Shia are going to take control. They have completely infiltrated all the security forces. The only kind of leader who could keep them in check was a tyrant like Saddam. And when the Shia take control, as soon as we leave, they are going to be as brutal as they like against the Sunni and there will be little we can do about it. That is what will happen whether we leave tomorrow or in ten years. As far as the foreign fighters, they will leave Iraq when we do. So what are we trying to accomplish here? Train the Iraqi forces? History shows that training forces in the Middle East can backfire. Any training we offer these people will find its way to our terrorist enemies.

Fighting Words: 4/7/08 Cartoon...

"Karmic Justice"...

More on the media & the '08 election...

There's obviously a ton of stuff I could link to for this week's 'toon, but I only have time to do one quick one that caught my eye:

• Check out Cass Sunstein's "The Obama I Know"... he and Obama were colleagues at the University of Chicago Law School:
  

  On this occasion, he had an important topic to discuss: the controversy over President George W. Bush's warrantless surveillance of international telephone calls between Americans and suspected terrorists. I had written a short essay suggesting that the surveillance might be lawful. Before taking a public position, Obama wanted to talk the problem through.
  
  In the space of about 20 minutes, he and I investigated the legal details. He asked me to explore all sorts of issues: the President's power as commander-in-chief, the Constitution's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Authorization for Use of Military Force and more.
  
  Obama wanted to consider the best possible defence of what Bush had done. To every argument I made, he listened and offered a counter-argument. After the issue had been exhausted, Obama said that he thought the programme was illegal, but now had a better understanding of both sides. He thanked me for my time.
  
  This was a pretty amazing conversation, not only because of Obama's mastery of the legal details, but also because many prominent Democratic leaders had already blasted the Bush initiative as blatantly illegal. He did not want to take a public position until he had listened to, and explored, what might be said on the other side.
  

email funny business

If you tried to email me today and it bounced back, please try again. My inbox was apparently maxed out earlier...

New link

Fighting Words is appearing on ZNet now...

Happy Opening Day of baseball season!

Best day of the year...

Fighting Words: 3/31/08 Cartoon...

"Democracy Gladiators"...

China & Tibet cont.

NPR is reporting that Buddhist monks in Tibet have effectively become prisoners in their own monasteries, and are being forced to denounce the Dalai Lama as a "terrorist." Meanwhile, one monk has died from starvation due to a Chinese blockade of food and water to major monasteries in Lhasa.

I think it's safe to say that most Buddhist monks are, almost by definition, people who have devoted their entire lives to peace and understanding.

Nancy Pelosi, supposedly an enlightened voice on the subject, says we should continue to reward this kind of behavior by the Chinese government:

She said in a statement that while the Chinese government has failed to live up to its commitments to improve human rights conditions in China and Tibet, "I believe a boycott of the Beijing Olympics would unfairly harm our athletes who have worked so hard to prepare for the competition."

I'm as rabid a sports fan as you will find... baseball, football, golf, the NBA before David Stern destroyed the league... and, yes, even the Olympics. But can't we all acknowledge that there are some things that are more important than sports, and that this is one of them? I think quite a few Olympic atheletes would recognize this...

More on China & Tibet...

I felt comfortable criticizing Rice and Bush in this week's 'toon, even though Condi made statements this week that were supposedly in support of the Dalai Lama. Her urgings of "restraint" were lukewarm at best, and Dubya says only that he still plans to attend the Olympics. This is about as close as an international incident comes to an absolute wrong for me... the beating and killing of Tibetans (particularly Buddhist monks) cannot be tolerated by the international community. Anything short of a forceful condemnation from our government and a threat to boycott the Olympics is not enough for me.

Tidbits:

• Some links to check out:
  
  The Buddhist Channel, with lots of news and information.
  
  The Opposite End of China, a blog with a lot of leaked photos of the crackdown.
  
  TCHRD, the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy.
  
  The Unseen Dharamsala, a blog with stories of Tibetan refugees.
  
  Stand With Tibet, a petition to "support the Dalai Lama."
  
  
  
• Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Somini Sengupta:
  

  Mr. Bush has long said the United States and China have “a complex relationship,” and that complexity was on full display this week. While his administration has called for an end to the violence, and his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, phoned her Chinese counterpart to urge restraint, Mr. Bush himself has remained silent.
  
  

• NYT Editorial:
  

  In its annual human rights report on 190 countries, the State Department conceded that Beijing’s overall performance remained poor. But in what looked like a political payoff to a government whose help America desperately needs on difficult problems, the department dropped China from its list of 10 worst violators.

  
  
• Jeffrey Wasserstrom:
  

  Marx's suggestion that tragedy and farce are closely linked is not completely without relevance in a situation that pits Tibetan desires for independence (or at least cultural autonomy) against Beijing's determination to maintain control (and prevent what it dubs an illegitimate separatist movement).
  Tragedy gave way to farce in August 2007, when without any apparent irony, the Chinese authorities issued an injunction against unauthorized reincarnation. Concerned by various statements the Dalai Llama had made about how his succession might work, the officially atheist Beijing government laid down the law. To become a "living Buddha without governmental approval," the edict read, "is illegal and invalid.

  
  
• Edward Cody:
  

  Many Chinese, including those who had learned of the extent of the violence from foreign reports, seemed to take the censorship as a matter of course. Inured after years of such controls, most Chinese long ago lost any sense of indignation at being deprived of straight news by party censors.

  
  Sorta reminds you of the people who watch cable news over here, does it not?
  

Fighting Words: 3/24/08 Cartoon...

"Human Rights COPS"...

Sorry for the lateness, dear reader... this one turned out to be a lot more artistically complicated than I thought it would be. To make it up to you, here's a bonus link (part of my research for the toon): make your day great and go check out Comedy Central's Reno 911 video clip page. I've watched this show sporadically before, but I'm hooked now. Funny-ass stuff.

More on "Wordy" Editorial Cartoons, Bush's Legacy

Recently, it was suggested in the comments section of a popular cartooning blog that modern editorial cartoonists (as differentiated from retro, Jeff MacNelly-style editorial cartoonists) only use a lot of words because they're trying to be "hip." This is interesting to me... all this time, I've been spending all these hours holed up in libraries reading and writing for each cartoon, and it turns out I was just trying to look cool. If this is indeed true, I expect that this week's cartoon will make me the baddest mutherfucka on the planet. I'm talkin' like the Lenny Kravitz of editorial cartooning...

Article tidbits:

• McClatchy shocker:
  

  An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden's al Qaida terrorist network.

• Paul Richter:
  

  President Bush's plans to end his term with a strong U.S. military presence in Iraq, and to leave tough decisions about ending the unpopular war to his successor.
  ...
  
  The plans also would allow Bush to live up to his pledge to the defining mission of his presidency, and perhaps to improve his chances for a decent legacy. He can say he left office pursuing a strategy that was having at least some success in suppressing violence, a claim that some historians may view sympathetically.

• Mark Danner:
  

  At the center of our national life stands the master narrative of this bifurcated politics: the Iraq war, fought to eliminate the threat of weapons of mass destruction that turned out not to exist, brought to a quick and glorious conclusion on a sunlit aircraft carrier deck whose victory celebration almost instantly became a national embarrassment. That was four and a half years ago; the war's ending and indeed its beginning, so clearly defined for that single trembling instant, have long since vanished into contested history.

• Jack Balkin:
  

  [Bush's larger strategy is] to entrench the U.S. presence in Iraq for the foreseeable future, and do what he can to ensure that John McCain becomes President, or failing that, Hillary Clinton as a second best solution. He figures that McCain, and, to a lesser extent Clinton, are most likely to continue aspects of his policies and keep troops in Iraq for some time. The longer that the next president continues his policies-- including warrantless surveillance, his interrogation practices, and his war in Iraq, the longer these features will become normalized and/or the next President's problem.

• Robert Costanza makes an interesting point about the prevailing indicator of our economic health:
  

  An oil spill, for example, increases GDP because someone has to clean it up, but it obviously detracts from well-being. More crime, more sickness, more war, more pollution, more fires, storms and pestilence are all potentially positives for the GDP because they can spur an increase in economic activity.
  
  GDP also ignores activity that may enhance well-being but is outside the market. The unpaid work of parents caring for their children at home doesn't show up in GDP, but if they decide to work outside the home and pay for child care, GDP suddenly increases. And even though $1 in income means a lot more to the poor than to the rich, GDP takes no account of income distribution.
  
  In short, GDP was never intended to be a measure of citizens' welfare -- and it functions poorly as such. Yet it is used as a surrogate appraisal of national well-being in far too many circumstances.
  
  

  
  

Fighting Words: 3/17/08 Cartoon...

"The Pages of History"...

The Future of Music?

Or maybe the future of creative content of all kinds on the internet?

In case you missed it, Trent Reznor is distributing the latest Nine Inch Nails CD exclusively (at least initially) on the internet... and apparently, it's been a huge success. The first nine tracks are free, and the rest of the 36-track album is $5. Doesn't get much more reasonable than that...

I just listened to the first 9 tracks, and they're decent (although I hope and expect he'll venture beyond instrumentals in the rest of the tracks). I will be spending the $5, and I almost NEVER buy content like this on the internet...

(Yeah, I know-- it's ironic since I offer online creative content myself)


UPDATE: No vocals?! Apparently, the whole damn thing is instrumentals, so maybe I won't buy it. I'll take that money and go buy the online Radiohead album...

Sunshine Week...

"Sunshine Week" is March 16-22:

Sunshine Week is a national initiative to open a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information. Participants include print, broadcast and online news media, civic groups, libraries, non-profits, schools and others interested in the public's right to know.

I have a few cartoons up in the editorial cartoon section. Check em out.