Fighting Words: 11/10/08 Cartoon...

"Letter From 2012 in Obama's America"...


This was one of those cartoons where doing the artwork was like going back to drawing in class in middle school... like, "kick ass, I'm gonna draw a TERMINATOR now!"

If you haven't seen the letter that was the inspiration for the 'toon, do yourself a favor and check it out... pure hilarity! Just a harmless piece of fearmongering propaganda that was apparently being circulated by James Dobson's Focus on the Family before the election. It's an invented letter from the perspective of an imaginary person from 2012, telling the story of the horrific world we'll live in after 4 years under the thumb of the tyrant Barack Obama. It is a world where U.S. cities are getting attacked by terrorists left and right, Israel has been nuked by Iran and forced to cede most of its territory (apparently, Israel didn't feel like retaliating that day), and the Boy Scouts of America no longer exists because the new liberal Supreme Court was trying to force young boys to sleep in the same tents as homosexual scoutmasters. The "tipping point" for all this horror, and the reason the Court was now stacked with liberal oppressors, was Justice Scalia's surprise resignation in 2009 due to "health reasons." Uh-huh. I'll bet just about anything I own that Scalia will keep a death grip on his seat until the moment he breathes his last breath.

By the way, no animation on this one quite yet, as the coloring took for-ever...

Fighting Words: 10/27/08 Cartoon...

"Karate Kid, Part V"...

Worst of the Worst

Esquire has a list of the 10 worst members of Congress.  Hard to argue with most of their choices, but...

OK, you know when someone does a list of the 10 greatest rock songs of all time or 10 greatest pro sports teams of all time, and some music/sports geek (like me) has to post a screaming rant protesting the exclusion of one or more choices?  I hate to be that guy, but...

C'MON!! How you gonna do a list like this and not include a guy who has to be one of the top 10 assholes in the entire history of congressional assholery? SERIOUSLY PEOPLE... put some effort into it...

Fighting Words: 10/13/08 Cartoon...

"Period Piece"...


Tryin' something a little different with this one... no animation yet, but I'm sure I'll come back to it at some point this week and pick at it.

More on the Palin image...

Stuff for this week's 'toon:

• This cracks me up:
  

  Robert Kagan, a foreign policy adviser to McCain, derided criticisms of Palin as elitist.
  “I don’t take this elite foreign policy view that only this anointed class knows everything about the world," he said. "I’m not generally impressed that they are better judges of American foreign policy experience than those who have Palin’s experience.”
  One top conservative foreign policy wonk who declined to be named said he believed some of the questions surrounding Palin’s experience are sexist.

  So many things to say here... but most of them would be better saved for another cartoon. Stay tuned...
  
  
• Juan Cole:
  

  She knows nothing about how Iran is run, or about Pakistan, or about al-Qaeda, and even is ignorant of the Bush doctrine of preemptive warfare. It was a shockingly bad performance.__She had the hubris to suggest that her lack of knowledge and experience is a virtue. Why Americans, practical people, would fall for this line is beyond me. Would you want your car to be worked on by an inexperienced and ignorant mechanic? Would you want a plumber messing around with your pipes who did not know his way around wrenches?

• Don Hazen:
  

  And who is left out of the idyllic, nonexistent vision of "America" so adored by conservatives? Huge numbers of Americans: city dwellers, people of color (who represent 26 percent of eligible voters -- but that's not important to Republicans. As the Washington Post reported, the Republican convention was the whitest in 40 years), homosexuals, millions of creative people whose lifestyles are not in the Palin world view, and of course single people, particularly single women.

  
  ...and he makes this hilarious point earlier:
  

  The biggest blow to the idyllic scene was the small fact that her teenage daughter was pregnant and was going to get herself married to the guy right away, even if he doesn't want kids and prefers to be "fuckin' chillin," according to his MySpace page.

  
  
• David Talbot:
  

  "Her campaign locked her in a closet during the governor's race in 2006 -- and they're doing the same thing now," said one longtime Democratic consultant here, who like many others asked to remain anonymous because "it's a small state and Sarah takes names and numbers."
  "They're setting a trap for the country," he continued. "Keep her away from the press, while they set up these phony 'tests' for her. The first test was her speech before the Republican convention. They spread all this nervous chatter about her -- is she ready for prime time, can she pull it off?

  
  
  

Fighting Words: 9/15/08 Cartoon...

"The Joy of Painting With John McCain"...



You may also notice that I've changed the title design, both on the cartoon and on the website pages. I was getting a little tired of the old one, and also I've been seeing that Copperplate font EVERYWHERE these days... businesses, advertisements, websites, television, stadiums (it's the font plastered all over the Seahawks' stadium)...

More on Palin, RNC...

A couple of things for this week's 'toon:

• A typically outstanding piece by George Lakoff:
  

  [T]he Palin nomination changes the game. The initial response has been to try to keep the focus on external realities, the "issues," and differences on the issues. But the Palin nomination is not basically about external realities and what Democrats call "issues," but about the symbolic mechanisms of the political mind -- the worldviews, frames, metaphors, cultural narratives, and stereotypes. The Republicans can't win on realities.
  ...
  Just arguing the realities, the issues, the hard truths should be enough in times this bad, but the political mind and its response to symbolism cannot be ignored. The initial Democratic response to Palin -- the response based on realities alone -- indicates that many Democrats have not learned the lessons of the Reagan and Bush years.

• Paul Krugman:
  

  [F]undamentalist Christians are sincerely dismayed by Roe v. Wade and evolution in the curriculum. What struck me as I watched the convention speeches, however, is how much of the anger on the right is based not on the claim that Democrats have done bad things, but on the perception — generally based on no evidence whatsoever — that Democrats look down their noses at regular people.
  Thus Mr. Giuliani asserted that Wasilla, Alaska, isn’t “flashy enough” for Mr. Obama, who never said any such thing. And Ms. Palin asserted that Democrats “look down” on small-town mayors — again, without any evidence.
  What the G.O.P. is selling, in other words, is the pure politics of resentment; you’re supposed to vote Republican to stick it to an elite that thinks it’s better than you.

Fighting Words: 9/8/08 Cartoon...

"Memories of the 2008 Republican Pep Rally"...

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:

More on Buckley, conservatism, and New Orleans...

Quick post this week, as I'm fighting off what is probably bronchitis:

• Ian Williams on the death of William F. Buckley:
  

  During his overlong life Buckley gilded the fungus by casting a gossamer-thin veil of erudition on the brawling mélange of crude bigotry, racism, self-satisfied ignorance and isolationism that characterised American conservatism until the neocons turned up. It takes more than yachting and harpsichord-playing, more even than sense of humour and a belated admission that Iraq was a big mistake, to weigh the balance in his favour.
  

• Sue Sturgis:
  

  Are the following truly the words of a "Great American" -- of an "extraordinarily good man" with a "warming aura"? They appeared in an unsigned National Review editorial, probably penned and undoubtedly published by Buckley, that ran on Aug. 24, 1957, titled "Why the South Must Prevail":
  
  "The central question that emerges . . . is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not prevail numerically? The sobering answer is Yes–the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists.
  

• Naomi Klein:
  

  Readers of The Shock Doctrine know that one of the most shameless examples of disaster capitalism has been the attempt to exploit the disastrous flooding of New Orleans to close down that city's public housing projects, some of the only affordable units in the city. Most of the buildings sustained minimal flood damage, but they happen to occupy valuable land that make for perfect condo developments and hotels.
  
  ...
  
  This is just one particular piece of this whole program. Public hospitals are also being shut down and set to be demolished and destroyed in New Orleans. And they've systematically dismantled the public education system and beginning demolition on many of the schools in New Orleans--that's on the agenda right now--and trying to totally turn that system over to a charter and a voucher system, to privatize and just really go forward with a major experiment, which was initially laid out by the Heritage Foundation and other neoconservative think tanks shortly after the storm. So this is just really the fulfillment of this program.
  
  ...
  
  Post-Katrina New Orleans may be providing the first Western-world image of a new kind of wasted urban landscape: the mould belt, destroyed by the deadly combination of weathered public infrastructure and extreme weather.

  
  

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

"Fuzzy F. Buckley"...

A few previous episodes of "FB & HB":

More on the candidates...

Article tidbits for this week's 'toon:

• I don't think you will see me seriously trash Obama any time soon (at least not with the contempt that I reserve for, say, Joe Lieberman). Upon reflection, while he was not my first choice, I definitely prefer him over Hillary and will enthusiastically support him if the alternative is a McCain/Huckabee ticket.
  
  I've been hesitant to jump on the "he's so inspiring," "he's just like Kennedy" bandwagon for exactly the reasons stated in the cartoon, but Robert Parry makes an excellent substantive point in favor of supporting him because of his oratorical gifts:
  

  ...another factor that plays to Obama’s advantage as the prospective nominee – when compared to Hillary Clinton – is that the Right’s powerful media apparatus and the Republican attack strategies appear less successful against Democrats with strong oratorical skills and the ability to inspire enthusiasm and passion.
  
  Over the past two decades when the Democrats have put up candidates who are competent but who lack pizzazz – think Michael Dukakis, Al Gore and John Kerry – the Republicans have been most effective in leveraging their media advantages to damage the Democrats and deny them the White House.
  
  In contrast, Bill Clinton bested the Republican machine by exploiting his impressive speaking skills and by generating excitement and hope. Even though the Right never gave up trying to destroy President Clinton, his ability to communicate with the American people was always his saving grace.

  
  Edward Lazerus also points out:
  

  Sen. Barack Obama is a disciple of Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe and a constitutional scholar in his own right. Obama's intellectual roots, as well as his early career, are deeply grounded in the idea that progress can be achieved through law, including through the judicial process.

  
  How glorious will it be, after the last 8 years, just to be able to say that the person occupying the oval office is a scholar of anything other than Ms. Pac-Man.
  
  
• I will, however, continue to poke Obama with a stick on issues where his positions bother me. Jen Sorensen points out some of the flaws in his positions on health care. Matt Stoller also talks about the problem of the Dems' squishiness on issues like the FISA bill:
  

  I don't want to diminish the utility of Obama and Clinton coming out against this bill. But at certain moments in history, principled clarity is what's required in a political leader. America is in a bad situation, and it's problematic that our leaders have and continue to betray us at all levels. I suppose clarity isn't required all the time, but it is surprising that neither Clinton nor Obama could offer clarity on such an obvious matter.
  Big business shouldn't be allowed to break the law. It's not a tough call, and it doesn't require caveats.

  
  (More on the FISA bill later.)
  
  Charlie Savage on the use of signing statements:
  

  ...while all the Democrats condemned Bush's use of signing statements, Clinton, Edwards, and Obama each said that they would use them too - just less aggressively. Obama said the problem with Bush's signing statements is not the device itself, but rather that Bush has invoked legal theories that most constitutional scholars consider "dubious" when reserving his alleged right to bypass certain laws.

  
  
• Paul Krugman on the Republicans:
  

  What seems harder to understand is what’s happening on the other side — the degree to which almost all the Republicans have chosen to align themselves closely with the unpopular policies of an unpopular president. And I’m not just talking about their continuing enthusiasm for the Iraq war. The G.O.P. candidates are equally supportive of Bush economic policies.
  
  ...[for example]...
  
  Mr. McCain now says that he supports making the Bush tax cuts permanent. Not only that: he’s become a convert to crude supply-side economics, claiming that cutting taxes actually increases revenues.

  
  
  

Fighting Words: 2/11/08 Cartoon

"The Democracy Show"...

More on conservatism, 2008 election...

Speedy list of articles for this week's 'toon:

• Gary Kamiya examines why Bush-era conservatives are so willing and eager to abandon their core principles in support of "Manichaean moralizing and militarist triumphalism." It has always been more than a little puzzling to encounter people who say they're "conservative" because they support small government and the principles of libertarianism, and then to hear them argue in support of George W. Bush, who is now officially the biggest spender to occupy the White House since LBJ.
  
  See also Harold Meyerson, who takes a look at the moral hypocrisy of the "Christianized" Republican party. We can thank the party's subordination to religious extremists for the freakshow that is the roster of Republican candidates for president... in particular, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee.


• On the campaign trail (as always), Matt Taibbi says, "I think that’s part of this whole con of American politics. We’ve been convinced that it’s more important to vote against the guy on the other side than to vote for someone who supports your interests." See here for another interview in which Taibbi talks about (among other things) the advanced hawkishness of Rudy Giuliani, and here for a column where he offers this classic evaluation of Romney:
  

  Romney is an utter tool; he represents nothing so much as the very banality of our system of campaigning, a poll-chasing stuffed suit with a Max Headroom hairdo who will say (or won't say, for that matter) whatever the fuck it takes to get elected.

Fighting Words: 12/24/07 Cartoon...

"Alien Society, #6"...

Previous episodes:

More on Religion on the '08 Election...

This one was a repeat from a couple years ago, because I totally screwed myself like a moron on my cartoon schedule this week. My planned cartoon, which was about halfway done (I'll keep chewing on it... you'll be seeing it in the future), was on the pathetic toadying to the religious right being done by the Republican presidential candidates, especially by Rudy. It seems to me that this bunch of Republicans is even phonier than usual, partly because everybody except Rudy is resigned to losing. They're just half-assing at this point. Rudy, though, is spectacularly disengenuous... the man is just an incredible loser. He's going to be special... I really hope he's the candidate.

Meanwhile, the religious right (especially James Dobson) is pitching a fit because they don't think any of the Republican candidates have sufficient hatred for women and gays, among others. Dobson is threatening to throw his support to an unelectable third party candidate, which will probably split the Republican vote and kill his group's political influence for the forseeable future.

I'm lovin' it...

More on Authoritarianism in America...

Quick list of articles and random notes for this week's 'toon, as I'm racing a dying battery thanks to yet another power outage. Seems the Pacific Northwest is now getting these "10 year storms" at least once a year now... and it's not even friggin' winter yet.

• On authoritarianism, check out an excellent article on movement conservatism by Paul Krugman, and a 3-part series on conservative authoritarianism by John Dean (not his best-written work ever, but he makes some interesting points).
  
  Also, DNI Mike McConnell has been in the news a bit lately... here he asserts the White House position that any "debate" on the administration's shadowy surveillance programs "will kill Americans."


• Speaking of surveillance, I was all set to link to this article about the Democrats holding firm on NOT giving retroactive immunity to telecom companies that dutifully handed over private information on their customers to the government. That was yesterday, this is today:
  

  At the start of the day, Democrats were confident that the measure would gain approval in the House despite a veto threat from President Bush. But after an afternoon of partisan sniping, Democratic leaders put off that vote because of a competing measure from Republicans that on its face asked lawmakers to declare where they stood on stopping Osama bin Laden from attacking the United States again.
  
  ...Democrats denounced the Republicans’ poison pill on Mr. bin Laden as a cynical political ploy and “a cheap shot.” But Democratic leaders realized that they were at risk of losing the votes of a contingent of more moderate Democrats who did not want to be left vulnerable for voting against a resolution to stop Al Qaeda, officials said.

  
  Holy shit. Add this to the failure to override Bush's veto of the SCHIP bill, and the Democrats are having themselves one hell of a week! (Note to idiot Democrats: I'm being sarcastic, you worthless jerk-offs.)
  
  In case you've missed it, the domestic surveillance issue came to the forefront again earlier this week, thanks to new reports that revealed more details about telecoms' involvement in the programs, including yet another report that these programs were initiated at least 6 months before 9-11.


• On our inegalitarian society, Juan Cole says the Bush/Cheney model can more accurately be described as "Bonapartism," which he says means "the state rules in an authoritarian way and disregards the people, representing itself as the true representative of the business classes. In fact, it serves only a small spectrum of corporate cronies of the ruling elite, disadvantaging almost everyone else."


• On torture and the "moral high ground," a NYT editorial asks a very simple question: Is this really who we are?


• On detainees, the attorney who represented Jose Padilla wonders what would've happened if no one had bothered to fight on his behalf. This leads her to wonder:
  

  After all, if the government does indeed have the authority to hold citizens indefinitely, without formal charges or legal counsel, what good are our Constitutional rights to due process?

  
  Garrett Epps has the story of Brandon Mayfield, the Oregon lawyer who was thrown into a Portland lockup for two weeks and smeared in the press by the FBI, all seemingly based on the simple fact that he is a Muslim convert. Thankfully for the rest of us, he hasn't been wallowing in self-pity since then... he's been fighting the Patriot Act. And he's having some success.
  
  An interesting side-note from Glenn Greenwald on Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey, who apparently has shown a little bit of resistance to the administration on the issue of indefinite detention. Others maintain that Mukasey is not such a great guy.


• On the emergence of new details on the megalomania of Cheney and Addington, brilliant writer Charlie Savage has a new book out on their 30-year quest to turn the presidency into a new American dictatorship.
  
  The new episode of Frontline, which I haven't watched yet, also has some new details on the power-madness of Cheney.

Fighting Words: 10/15/07 Cartoon...

"Safety Instructions"...

More on GOP, Iraq withdrawal...

Of course, this week's 'toon takes place in a fantasy world where Republicans (and many Democrats, for that matter) actually intend to make some kind of effort to END the Iraq War. Many analysts believe (justifiably) that they have no intention of ever leaving Iraq; check out a previous blog post on that. So anyway, back in the real world, the goal of this cartoon was just to try and debunk some of the prevailing myths and flawed arguments about withdrawal from Iraq:

• First, the myth about the effectiveness of the "surge" (aka "escalation"). Howard Zinn asks an excellent question:
  

  If our troops are preventing civil war, helping people, controlling violence, then why withdraw at all? If they are in fact doing the opposite—provoking civil war, hurting people, perpetuating violence—they should withdraw as quickly as ships and planes can carry them home.

  The answer is, of course, that logical argument has no meaning for the advocates of this war, who will chug along forever in a world of nonsense. See Bill Kristol, who says that 75% of the population is crazy and that the "surge" (like Bush's presidency) has been a complete success!
  


• On the Democrats and politics, here's a question: for as incredibly unpopular as Bush and his war are, why the hell is it that Democrats and the media still allow Bush and his Republican loyalists to frame the terms of the debate on this issue? Why in hell are they afforded any credibility at all?! Tom Engelhardt has a good column on this, and Larry Everest has a take-no-prisoners column on the Dems' imperialist roots.
  
  So yeah, Joe Lieberman is an asshole. But the truth is that the Democrats are just as beholden to political motivations as the Republicans are. As Robert Parry and Gary Kamiya point out, the proof of this is the simple fact that they are not doing the right thing and cutting of funds for the war and aggressively pursuing impeachment.
  


• I don't think it's a huge secret that many in the hard-core neocon gang are stark raving mad, murderous lunatics, but I wanted to stick the thing in about Norman Podhoretz just because I find him so very offensive. Glenn Greenwald has a good profile of him titled "Face of a Psychopath" (check out his eyes -- my caricature was not an accident). See also a blog post by Steve Clemons on Johann Hari's infiltration of the cruise from hell, where great minds like Kristol, Podhoretz, John Bolton, and other dark forces from the netherworld gather aboard a luxury cruise liner to hash out plans like random executions of anti-war liberals to send a message.
  
  On the myth of "promoting democracy" check out Chris Floyd and Noam Chomsky.
  

• On the myths of "emboldening the enemy" and the terrorists "following us home," check out Ivan Eland, who compares the average American's chances of being the victim of a terror attack to the probability that they will be hit by a comet from outer space.