More on religious pluralism, media figures...

Cartoons like this week's sometimes end up as writing disasters for me (although this one turned out OK). I start out with good intentions, with the goal of making an argument on a substantive subject like religious pluralism in our society, but inevitably I get into the realm of media figures who make it their objective to eliminate pluralism. It's all downhill from there, as I find myself slogging through various quotes and yammerings by the Glenn Becks and Bill O'Reillys and James Dobsons of the world, in an effort to make the language coincide with the particular caricature. Eventually, my original point gets lost. I think it's just the nature of certain formats that lead to this result sometimes...

On the other hand, I believe I have made a discovery: the "mental pressure point" to induce vomiting. The other day, I learned a pressure point on the lower forearm that prevents vomiting, sneezing, coughing, etc... now I've discovered its opposite! So, if you want to barf, either chug 10 shots of Jagermeister, or read these:

• Extensive coverage of the War on Christmas, including Simon Maloy blowing the cover off our collective, double-secret, secular-progressive agenda, and Media Matters on Bill O'Reilly's exposing of "the worst kind of fascism you could possibly have."


• Alexander Zaitchik on the "distressing" discovery by the leaders of the religious right that less than 10% of born-again Christians actually have a good understanding of what the Bible says. Yeah... shocking. Included are a number of classic quotes by James Dobson, aka "The Truth":
  

  "Only by understanding the immutable truth claims of Christ," says Dobson in The Truth Project's promotional video, can Christians successfully defend against the "postmodern worldview" in which "God does not exist," "the family is defined as any circle of love," and "homosexuality is the moral equivalent of heterosexuality."
  
  "If we capture and embrace more of God's worldview and trust it with unwavering faith," says Dobson, "then we begin to ... form the appropriate responses to questions on abortion, same-sex marriage, cloning, stem-cell research and even media choices." But the real prize is bigger than any one issue. By fully embracing Truth, religious conservatives can "recapture Western Civilization," which they "invented but have lost."

  Of course, in reality, Dobson could care less whether people read the Bible or not, as long as they buy into him being one of the ultimate authorities of what the Bible really says. It's a means of control... nothing else.


• An action alert from FAIR on Glenn Beck's comment to newly elected U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress: "Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies." We also learn that Beck really likes the scene in The Siege where Muslims are herded into stadiums and put behind razor-wire... maybe a little too much, if you get my drift.


• George Johnson, on the suggestion by some that "science needs to take on an evangelical role, vying with religion as teller of the greatest story ever told"... in effect creating a religion of science.
  
  I'm not sure that surrendering the moral high-ground is necessarily the right way to go here, guys.


• A CBS News report on the inside story of David Kuo, Bush's former head of Faith-Based Initiatives.


• Paul Krugman on John McCain's kowtow-ing to Jerry Falwell.
  
  The more I read about McCain, the more nervous he makes me...

Oh, yeah... and the article saying that scientists have determined Neanderthals were indeed cannibals.

Fighting Words: 12/11/06 Cartoon

"NEANDERCONS, #3"...

It's been a while... check out the older episodes here and here, which are a wee bit different.

Good Actor

This is a few days old, but I found it amusing.

Of course, the immediate reaction for a lot of us is: "Gee, I do that all the time, but I didn't know there was money available for it"...

More on war profiteering...

My main source for this week's 'toon was the latest documentary from Robert Greenwald and Brave New Films, Iraq For Sale: The War Profiteers, which I was able to view thanks to my friends at Not A Number (who, by the way Seattle folks, carry my latest t-shirts and buttons!).

The arguments are well-made throughout this excellent film, but there were also several images that I hadn't seen before that I found interesting. One was the image of thousands of private contractors' supply trucks doing daily routes in and out of various areas in Iraq, like a scene out of Road Warrior. It gave a good sense of the wastefulness of the profiteers' daily activities there, as many of the trucks continued to do their routes on the taxpayers' dime even though they were nearly or completely empty.

A second image that I found striking was that of scores of soldiers at a camp somewhere in the sweltering heat of Iraq, who were forced to stand in huge lines every day at chow time because the contractor was so slow with their food service. Meanwhile, many of these companies' employees and executives were living in conditions that were, shall we say, a bit more luxurious.

One last item that found its way into the cartoon was the segment on the use of "burn pits," which I found particularly stomach-turning. I don't want to give the whole movie away, though... go see it!

Here also are some articles to check out:

• Two Alternet articles, one on the 10 Most Brazen War Profiteers, and another on #1 on that list, C.A.C.I. International, who has recently been on a legal warpath in an effort to intimidate their critics in the media and blogosphere.


• James Glanz on the closing of the government office that was meant to oversee these private contractors in Iraq, and Paul Krugman on Bechtel folding up the tent and going home, which he says means that "the U.S.-led reconstruction effort in Iraq is basically over."


• An interview with Jeffrey St. Clair, who, in the process of talking about the "sub-atomic" intertwining of politicians and corporations, interestingly calls John McCain "the most fraudulent politician in Washington."

Fighting Words: 12/4/06 Cartoon

"Profiteer: Corporate Contractor!"...

See some previous video game spoofs here, here, and here. I love this format, but I've never actually owned a video game console of any kind. I have wasted many an hour playing other peoples' machines, though...

P.S.A.

A message for all you kids out there: if you're going to smoke crack, make sure you don't wander naked into a swamp in Florida. Apparently, the giant alligators down there just sit and pick off wandering naked crackheads like they're popcorn. Remember, a safe naked crackhead... is a happy naked crackhead.

The more you know...


(thanks to Jess)

Shocker

Wondering how the Supreme Court's hearing on global warming is going? Take a wild guess...

Milkey faced skeptical questioning from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., the court's newest members, but the most sustained -- and entertaining -- interrogation came from Scalia.

At one point, he acknowledged the role of carbon dioxide as a pollutant in the air but wondered about it being a pollutant in the "stratosphere."

"Respectfully, Your Honor, it is not the stratosphere. It's the troposphere," Milkey said.

"Troposphere, whatever. I told you before I'm not a scientist," Scalia said to laughter. "That's why I don't want to have to deal with global warming, to tell you the truth."

...

Justice Stephen G. Breyer said a change of heart by the EPA could set off a string of similarly small decisions by other agencies, "each of which has an impact, and lo and behold, Cape Cod is saved." He seemed most sympathetic to the states' case, along with Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Justice Clarence Thomas, who as usual asked no questions, is presumed to be in line with Scalia, Roberts and Alito. That leaves Justice Anthony M. Kennedy as a pivotal vote in whether the states have proven they have standing for the case to go forward.

The title "Your Honor" sort of loses all meaning when it's used in reference to Scalia, doesn't it?

More on Class War, the Yuppanzee...

Some information relating to this week's 'toon, on everybody's favorite materialistic monkeys:

• Lots from Paul Krugman, including a lecture aired on Democracy NOW, and columns on class war politics, on "tax farming", on the education/income myth, and on the history of economic inequality in America. His most commonly made argument is that we are currently witnessing levels of economic inequality and elitism that have not been seen since the Gilded Age of the '20s and '30s. As an example, he points to the Gilded Age mansions of Greenwich, Connecticut, which had been given up after that period to become museums and government buildings because people could no longer afford them as private homes, but are now being knocked down to build even bigger modern-day mansions for the uber-wealthy.


• Two articles from Mother Jones on "the subsuming of the political process to the corporate agenda" (quoting Thom Hartmann from his book on "corporate personhood," Unequal Protections).


• A really fascinating article on "slum ecology" by Mike Davis, which I have been trying to work into a cartoon, but still haven't really been able to do it. The piece talks about large cities in third-world countries (such as Buenos Aires, Johannesburg, Caracas, and Rio de Janeiro), where conditions are such that millions of impoverished residents are forced to relinquish all acceptable standards of safety and health in favor of a place to live:

  They are pioneers of swamps, floodplains, volcano slopes, unstable hillsides, desert fringes, railroad sidings, rubbish mountains, and chemical dumps —unattractive and dangerous sites that have become poverty's niche in the ecology of the city.

  Reading this article, the one thing that kept coming to mind was "New Orleans"... in other words, this is the answer to people who asked after Katrina, "how could this happen in the United States?" The answer is that things were not so good in New Orleans before the storm, and, just maybe, on the whole, this country is not so "great" after all...
  

See also some late articles on similar topics by Louis Uchitelle, William Greider, and Matthew Rothschild, which may end up as inspirations for the next episode of "Yuppanzees"...

Fighting Words: 11/27/06 Cartoon

"The Great American Yuppanzee #2"... see more of the Yuppanzee here!

See also the previous anthropological study of the people of the heartland here, here, and here.

Oh yeah, I have a blog...

I think the tryptophan has done fogged-up my brain... I totally forgot I had a blog to update. Here are a few articles that have caught my eye, that probably won't end up in cartoons:

• I ain't no "feminist" (not that I disagree with them, it's just not a focus of inquiry for me), but this is pretty messed up. What century is this again?
  
  See also some analysis of the Supreme Court's upcoming decision on the Partial Birth Abortion Act.


• Turns out Seattle isn't so environmentally enlightened after all...
  
  And everybody who spent time in Thanksgiving traffic this week lets out a collective "DUUUUUUHHHHHH".........


• Introducing the new home of the Utah Jazz, EnergySolutions Arena, aka "The Dump"...

More on signing statements, executive privilege, and the MCA...

Lotsa great sources for this week's toon, first on signing statements:

• John Dean, Dave Lindorff, and Tim Harper on the more than 750 laws that have been waved away by a president who apparently believes (or, I should say, has been coached to believe, since there is no way he could comprehend such complex legal issues on his own) that the Constitution grants him all the powers of the presidency enumerated in Article II, plus all the ones in Articles I and III that supposedly talk about "Legislative Power" and "Judicial Power."


• Charlie Savage, who broke the story wide open (or would have, if the rest of the mainstream media had bothered to pay any attention) with some excellent reporting in the Boston Globe.


• Edward Lazarus on the general havoc wreaked by the administration on the Constitution, part of a "triple-whammy" where they systematically stamp out civil liberties and executive accountability while dramatically increasing government secrecy.

On executive privilege, or possibly related topics:

• Think Progress with a clip of Cheney on the Stephanopoulos show, saying that neither he nor his little buddy would be appearing before Congress if subpoenaed.


• Michael Dorf and John Dean on the administration's past experiences with executive privilege, mostly dealing with Cheney's Energy Task Force meetings.

And on the Military Commissions Act:

• Two in a series of excellent essays by Joanne Mariner on the Bush administration's attempts to chip away at Common Article III of the Geneva Conventions, or at least their obligation to comply with it via the War Crimes Act.


• Good commentary on the subject from Molly Ivins and Glenn Greenwald, and Nick Turse on the "American Prison Planet," with always disturbing little nuggets like this:
  

  Earlier this year, news broke that Halliburton subsidiary, KBR -- the firm infamous for building prison facilities at Guantanamo Bay and for scandals stemming from work in the Iraq war zone -- received a $385 million contract from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to build detention centers, according to the New York Times, "for an unexpected influx of immigrants" or "new programs that require additional detention space."
  ...
  One Vietnam-era radical, former Pentagon analyst Daniel Ellsberg, grasped the implications immediately. "Almost certainly this is preparation for a roundup after the next 9/11 for Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters," he said. "They've already done this on a smaller scale, with the 'special registration' detentions of immigrant men from Muslim countries, and with Guantanamo."

Fighting Words: 11/20/06 Cartoon

"Billy, the Boy Who Knew Too Much #3"... see more of Billy here, here, here, and here.

UPDATE: extremely minor spelling correction made that probably no one would ever have noticed. If you can figure out where the correction is, you win... um... my heartfelt congratulations.

Curse of the Shrunken Brain

Voodoo practitioner tries to jinx Bush:

BOGOR, Indonesia - A renowned black magic practitioner performed a voodoo ritual Thursday to jinx President George W. Bush and his entourage while he was on a brief visit to Indonesia.

Ki Gendeng Pamungkas slit the throat of a goat, a small snake and stabbed a black crow in the chest, stirred their blood with spice and broccoli before drank the "potion" and smeared some on his face.

"I don't hate Americans, but I don't like Bush," said Pamungkas, who believed the ritual would succeed as, "the devil is with me today."

We can laugh, but you ever wonder why he gets those nasty infected boils on his face? Or could it perhaps explain some of his verbal gaffes, like it's some kind of tongue-swelling curse?

(thanks to Myia)

More on Election '06...

Not too many sources for this week's 'toon... just a few quotes from some of your favorite right-wing political commentators. Here they are, if you can stomach it: Glenn Beck, Jonah Goldberg (an older quote from a running feud he had going with Glen Greenwald), Michelle Malkin ("Unhinged moonbats! Unhinged moonbats unhinged moonbats unhinged moonbats... unhinged moonbats? Unhinged moonbats!!"), Rush Limbaugh (Is he back on the hillbilly heroin? You decide...), and Karl Rove (fka "The Architect").

See also a couple of good articles on the crumbling of "Movement Conservatism" by Richard W. Behan and Paul Krugman.

Fighting Words: 11/13/06 Cartoon

"TV Trivia!"...

Back to Work...

OK, Dems, time to show us if you're actually any better than the other guys. In particular, I want to see those federal dollars pouring into New Orleans (you can pay for it by rolling back all those tax cuts for billionaires).

Another article today on the raging mental health crisis in New Orleans, due mostly to the fact that only 2 out of 11 hospitals there are fully functioning.

MEM-REEEEEES....

Of the way, we werrrrrrrrrrrrre....

Goodbye, you crazy-ass goat fart.








Scattered pic-tuuuurrrrrrrrrressss....

More on Global Warming, Katrina, and the all new Chevy Oblivious...

A number of good sources this week, for another fairly straight-forward cartoon:

• Check out an earlier 'toon and BushGreenwatch on the links between hurricanes and global warming.


• See an article by "The Republican War on Science" author Chris Mooney, noting a speech by sci-fi novelist and environmental science "skeptic" Michael Crichton, who argues that environmentalists are trying to "politicize science" (and... what exactly is he doing?). See also Clayton Sandell on two senators' calls for ExxonMobil to stop their "ideas lobbying," i.e. funding of politicized "science."


• Julia Whitty on "The Thirteenth Tipping Point," which cites a sociological study that lists the top 5 reasons why some Americans reject environmental science, namely: belief that global warming is natural, belief that it's media/environmentalist hype, distrust of science, plain old flat denial, and conspiracy theories. The study found that the people were most often white, male, highly religious Republicans who get most of their news from the radio (surprise!). On the other hand, check out Bill Moyers' latest piece, "Is God Green," on the growing environmentalist movement within evangelical Christian circles.


• John Heilprin, who reports that two federal agencies are investigating whether the Bush administration blocked government scientists from speaking freely about global warming and censored their research. It wouldn't be the first time, of course. Specifically, the article notes that the science journal Nature reported last month that the NOAA suppressed a report linking hurricane strength and frequency to global warming.


• More on Crazy Jim Inhofe from Media Matters and Think Progress, and Bill Berkowitz on the environmental crimes of one of Inhofe's major donors, Koch Industries.


• Check out videos and reviews of the ridiculous Chevy Silverado ad by Jalopnik and Slate, and an article by David Carr.

Happy "choosing" day! Too bad most of the choices suck. Stephanie McMillan has a good one on that subject... see also Matt Bors on "staying the course."

Fighting Words: 11/6/06 Cartoon

"New Chevy Commercial"...

Nope, not done with Chevy yet.

This is our country...

How about a rare YouTube video post, a follow-up on my rant from a few days ago on the Chevy Silverado ad (via Cursor):