Americans Are Not Stupid

I never get enough of this stuff.

It's OK for people to be stupid, but they really shouldn't be allowed to vote.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Cartoon for January 1, 2009

Now that the U.S. is used up like an old crumpled piece of tissue paper, they hand it over to a black guy.

THIS WEEK'S SYNDICATED COLUMN: New Year's Revolutions?

There's Plenty of Money Around. Let's Take It.

What's the difference between you and a corpse? You both contain the same organs, the same fluids--all the same stuff. Inside you, stuff moves around. That's the difference between life and death.

What's the difference between economic boom and bust? Again: movement. The United States of America is just as rich today as it was a year or, for that matter, ten years ago. It still possesses the same rich natural resources, the same enviable geography, and the same productive, innovative and energetic workforce. Our country still has enormous intrinsic value. But money, the lifeblood of any economy, has stopped moving around.

Wealth is still here. But the economy has flat-lined.

We know what caused the problem--the double bursting of the dot-com and housing bubbles, coupled with government regulators who took the last three decades off from work and financial analysts who said the old rules no longer applied. (The old rules always apply.) The underlying meta causes of the Crash of '08 were an unholy trinity of stagnating wages, easy credit and brilliantly executed consumer propaganda that convinced people they were lame unless they bought all the latest stuff. But that's a discussion for another time. This week, let's think about how to escape the deflationary spiral that will reduce the world's richest nation to penury unless something is done soon.

The Fed, having reduced interest rates to zero, is out of ammo. Banks are using the $700 billion bailout to buy each other up, enriching only themselves and a few hundred investment bankers. (In all fairness, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson told them to do just that.)

President-Elect Obama's plan blends George W. Bush and FDR's greatest hits: a symbolic Bush-style tax cut of $500 per person ($1,000 per couple) and a $850 billion infrastructure construction bonanza reminiscent of the WPA projects of the 1930s. Obama's tax cut won't stimulate the economy; they never do. Due to the "multiplier effect," Obama's economists predict that his public works projects will create 3.2 million new jobs by the first quarter of 2011. "Peter Morici, economist at the University of Maryland, projects that $100 spent on a bridge or school boosts economic activity by about $200," reports the Associated Press. (That doesn't count the benefit of improving Americans' longer-term productivity. For instance, better roads could reduce commuting times or help get goods to customers more efficiently.)"

A public works program is a good idea. But Obama's plan won't be enough to put a dent in the skyrocketing unemployment rate. 3.2 million jobs would be barely enough to replace six months worth of job losses at current rates. And most analysts think those rates will rise. With the federal budget continuing to sink $9 billion a month into the fiscal sinkhole of Iraq, there isn't much cash to make the plan bigger.

"With negative or low economic growth projected well into the future, the economy needs a long-term fix," says Stanford economist John Taylor, who worked in Bush's Treasury Department. Definitely. But what?

Unless something big happens (like every pundit, I should predicate every prognostication with the acronym USH for "unless something happens"), the depression will deepen quickly. Our economy is two-thirds dependent on consumer spending, but consumers are stone cold broke. Decades of attacks on labor and free trade agreements caused wages to stagnate as inflation raged, so Americans have no savings to draw upon. Credit is no longer available as a back-up.

The American consumer has left the building.

Demand will keep shrinking, forcing companies to lay more people off, which will accelerate the shrinkage of their customer bases. Prices will drop to chase the few dollars left in the economy, triggering deflation. It's already begun: Prices fell 1.7 percent in November (20 percent on an annualized basis). Debtors will try to pay off inflated credit card bills and mortgages with deflated money. They will fail. Misery will spread.

What happens next, I think, is that people will do what large numbers of people always do when they need money and food but can't find a job. They will start to think about the rich, who still have all the wealth they accumulated while money was still circulating. And they will take it from them. It might be the easy way, through liberal-style income redistribution. Or it might be the hard way. Either way, it goes against the laws of nature to expect starving people to allow a few individuals to sit on vast aggregations of wealth.

When I was young, I assumed that revolutions resulted from ideology, because idealists wanted a fairer world. Now, as we stare down the barrel of economic apocalypse, I realize that they're carried out by desperate people who have nothing to lose, in Marx's words, and everything to gain. They take stuff from the rich and write the ideological tracts after the fact.

With the economic distress we're likely to see in the coming year or two or three, revolution will become increasingly likely unless money starts coursing through the nation's economic veins, and soon. Will it be a soft revolution of government-mandated wealth distribution through radical changes in the tax structure and the construction of a European-style safety net, as master reformer FDR presided over when he saved capitalism from itself? Or will the coming revolution be something harder and bloodier, like the socioeconomic collapse that destroyed Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union? To a great extent, what happens next will depend on how Barack Obama proceeds in his first weeks as president.

COPYRIGHT 2009 TED RALL

Cartoon for December 29, 2008

The U.S. can't find $25 billion to save three million jobs related to the auto industry, yet it keeps shelling out $9 billion a month on Iraq. And Obama will keep it up (see this week's column).

Israelly Dumb

Posted by Susan Stark

WE ARE NOT ALONE

We, Palestinians, are not alone
The best of humanity is on our side
Mighty truth… Gracious morality is on our side
Justice, dignity, human values, radiant hope are on our side

Soil, sand, and stones
Trees, poppies, lemon zest, and morning mist
Jerusalem sunshine and Jenin’s moonlight
Haifa’s Carmel and Jaffa’s shoreline
Are all on our side

We stand firm
As the stick of Moses
Splitting good and evil
Refusing to bow down

Our tragedy is a sieve
Filtering the wicked away

We all live a fleeting moment and soon die…
Better to die standing on our feet
Than to live crawling on our knees

Better to live with a wounded body
And a soul whole
Than to live and die
Inflated by arrogance
Bent by corruption
Twisted by greed
weighed down by oppression
Lusting after power
With a disfigured soul

Poem by Nahida

My Letter to Newsweek

To the Editor:

There's a saying among political cartoonists: "I thought my cartoon was good. But then it appeared in Newsweek."

Once again, your annual "The Year in Cartoons" collection of editorial cartoons highlights your magazine's long-running war on political humor. Its title also violates truth-in-advertising laws. Your selection is incredibly narrow, focusing only editorial cartoons without a political point of view drawn by about a half dozen working editorial cartoonists. "The Year of the Blandest Cartoons By Six Guys" would be more like it.

Newsweek's readers deserve to know that there are hundreds of editorial cartoonists in the United States. They have as many drawing styles and political viewpoints as you can imagine. The vast majority of them are hard-hitting, highly opinionated and viciously partisan. They are pit bulls (mostly without lipstick, though there are amazing women cartoonists too), not the teacup poodles exhibited in your misleadingly-titled round-up.

In a universe of inspired and inspiring political cartoons, you managed to find the absolute bottom of the barrel. Are you afraid of actual opinions? Or do you just have bad taste? Either way, you ignored all the good stuff—including by the cartoonists whose work you included, all of whom have far more important, riskier and funnier work in their 2008 portfolio that you chose to pass up. A computer-generated randomizer would have picked smarter cartoons.

Ted Rall
President, American Association of American Editorial Cartoonists

Cartoon for December 27, 2008

Americans keep on keeping on, though the prospects for success aren't looking good.

Cartoon for December 25, 2008

Barack Obama picked Rick Warren, a right-wing Christianist who hates gays, to deliver the invocation at his inauguration. Obama loves haters--but he's not a hater himself. Uh-huh.

THIS WEEK'S SYNDICATED COLUMN: Obama's Weasel Words

On Iraq, Antiwar Candidate Delivers More Carnage

Obama won the Democratic nomination and the presidency by speaking out against the Iraq War. Now that he's packing for Washington, however, the old Chicago lawyer is using Harvard Law weasel words to make sure the war goes on for years.
Germans are organized. The French are snotty. Americans have a national character trait, too: inattention. It's now obvious that Obama exploited our hard-wired inability to read between the lines to lay the groundwork for what many of his supporters will soon view as a terrible betrayal.

Right there, in a July 14th op/ed, is Obama's triumph of plausible deniability: "The differences on Iraq in this campaign are deep," he wrote in The New York Times. "Unlike Senator John McCain, I opposed the war in Iraq before it began, and would end it as president."

Seems clear. End means end. Finito. No more. But there's an interesting phrase in Obama's promises to pull out, repeated throughout the campaign": "combat troops." "We should seize this moment to begin the phased redeployment of combat troops that I have long advocated," he wrote in his op/ed. "We can safely redeploy our combat brigades."

"It’s time to end this war," Obama concluded. Ending the war would mean following the political cartoonist Matt Bors' prescription: The troops would go to the airport. They would board planes. They would fly away.

But Obama doesn't want to end the war.

Obama will classify some units as "combat troops" and send them to Afghanistan, which he wants to expand into an even bigger war. But tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of troops, will remain in Iraq, killing and getting killed.

"Even though the [U.S.] agreement with the Iraq government calls for all American combat troops to be out of the cities by the end of June [2009]," reported the Times on December 22nd, military planners are "now quietly acknowledging that many will stay behind as renamed 'trainers' and 'advisers' in what are effectively combat roles. In other words, they will still be engaged in combat, just called something else."

Obama isn't just recycling Clinton's staff. He's also into his aphorisms: It depends on what the meaning of "combat troop" is.

How many non-combat combat troops will still be shooting and bombing Iraqis after 2011? "My guess is that you're looking at perhaps several tens of thousands of American troops," says Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a Bush appointee who has been asked by Obama to stay on—presumably because he approves of the superb job the Bush Administration has done in Iraq. Obama's military advisors, reports The Los Angeles Times, "have said that residual force could consist of as many as 50,000 troops."

When Americans hear about military advisers helping to train foreign forces, they think of JFK, who sent a skeleton crew of 1,400 advisers to South Vietnam in 1961. (Let's not dwell on how that turned out.)

50,000 troops—this being the Pentagon, you know it'll be more—is a full-scale war. Indeed, when President George H.W. Bush invaded Panama and overthrew its government in 1989, he used 57,000 troops.

Of course, we should have seen this coming. Obama talked and talked and talked about his opposition to the Iraq War. He's good at that. But whenever he had a chance to put his vote where his mouth was, he chumped out. Time after time, he voted for Bush's requests to send billions of taxpayer dollars to Halliburton and other war profiteers. He never voted no.

"I have been very clear even as a candidate that, once we were in, that we were going to have some responsibility to make it work as best we could, and more importantly that our troops had the best resources they needed to get home safely," Obama said during the campaign. "So I don't think there is any contradiction there." But the money isn't provided to get our troops home safely. It's to keep them in Iraq, fighting and killing and being killed. As Obama well knew.

With Detroit automakers and three million jobs teetering on the brink of disaster for lack of a $25 billion bailout, you'd think Obama would want to end a war that wastes that much in 12 weeks. Yet, even in a depression, Barack Obama is no less devoted to the pit of blood and treasure that is Iraq than George W. Bush.

Forget preemptive war. How about preemptive impeachment?

COPYRIGHT 2008 TED RALL

Cartoon for December 22, 2008

The economy would recover if everyone started spending again. But who goes first?

Cartoon for December 20, 2008

The media reports the truth--after the fact.

1993: Companies Were Firing Their Own Customers

1993: CEOs Were Just as Greedy

Party Like It's 1993

I'm continuing to work on the archives. The latest changes: 2005 and 2006 now have titles and appear in reverse chronological order. Also, the 1993 stuff from my Chronicle Features period is now online for the very first time.

It's a period with interesting parallels to our own: a young conservative Democrat had just been elected with high expectations after a Bush had messed up the economy, which continued to suffer for several years before the dot-com boom caught fire.

TIME published its list of "Top 10 Editorial Cartoons of 2008" and it's, well, fucking atrocious. So I'm sending this Letter to the Editor to TIME:

To the Editor:

Your list of the Top 10 Editorial Cartoons of 2008 is an insult to editorial cartoonists, many of whom are losing their jobs to the economic downturn in the newspaper industry. In 2008 hundreds of brilliant political cartoonists produced thousands of hard-hitting, thought-provoking and hilarious cartoons about everything from the flash in the pan that was Sarah Palin to the rise of Barack Obama, and all you could come up with was this phoned-in crap?

Never in American history have so many talented artists worked in so many diverse styles using as many approaches to produce as exciting editorial cartoonists. Yet never have the political cartoons appearing in print in mainstream print media have been so bland, inane, and just plain stupid. (The good stuff appears in alternative weeklies, family-owned dailies and, of course, online.) It's a paradox, and it's hurting our profession.

It's one thing for lousy cartoons to appear in print somewhere. It's downright appalling to anoint them the best work produced by a field in a given year. Heck, even among the artists you selected, they all did much better work than the pieces you picked. How would TIME like it if someone published a list of the Top 10 Newsmagazines of 2008—and it was just a list of blogs by 16-year-olds typing in their parents' basements?

Do us a favor: If you can't find a few clean and sober editors to take the time to sort through the year's editorial cartoons, don't bother.

Very truly yours,

Ted Rall
President
Association of American Editorial Cartoonists

Cartoon for December 18, 2008

Getting a pair of shoes tossed at him may end up being the only punishment Bush gets. Pathetic.

THIS WEEK'S SYNDICATED COLUMN: LBO No Mo

Stop Speculators From Ruining Strong Companies

The Crash of '08 offers the incoming Obama Administration a rare chance to rein in the excesses of our economic system. I can think of few better places to start than banning leveraged buyouts.

Leveraged buyouts (LBOs) are Wall Street's solution to American capitalism's dirtiest secret and biggest problem: no one has any money. Really. Working as an investment banker during the 1980s, I was repeatedly astonished when deals would fall apart because would-be buyers of major corporations didn't have enough cash on hand to buy a house in the Hamptons. Many of the wealthiest people in the world, it turned out, have zero or negative net worth. According to The New York Times, for example, one of Donald Trump's biggest sources of income was his job hosting the TV show "The Apprentice." Those buildings with his name on them? He leased his name to developers who liked his brand.

It's true: the rich are different than you and me. But not because they're rich. If most "wealthy" people ever had to settle up with their creditors, they'd be worth less than the average homeless Iraq War vet. What they do have—or, until recently, had—big lines of credit.

LBOs are a way for cash-poor "rich" people and corporations to buy companies they can't really afford. First the would-be acquirer buys enough stock to get controlling interest in the targeted company. A bank lends him the rest of the purchase price, using the purchased company's own assets as collateral. Overnight, a profitable company with a healthy balance sheet can find itself burdened with staggering debt—its own purchase price.

Now the corporate raider owns the company. But the company owes big payments to the bank. The raider has two options. He can use his management skills to make it more efficient and profitable. Or he can sell off pieces of the company. More often than not, "turn around" experts find that they're not much smarter than the management they replaced and end up selling assets and cutting costs. For other acquirers, turn-arounds aren't the point. They're out to gut the joint from the start.

The results are the same in both scenarios. Each sale of a division and each round of layoffs reduces the already cash-starved acquired company's chances of survival. The formerly profitable company is forced to file bankruptcy. Its employees lose their jobs. Because the law inexplicably lets corporations use retirement plans as collateral for loans, they often lose their pensions too. Suppliers are stiffed. Customers suffer higher costs due to less competition.

It's bad news for most people—but not for everyone. The corporate raider sells off his equity stake in the company before the fiscal excrement encounter the fan, then pays himself and his friends millions in golden parachutes. The bank, which collected high interest payments as the company began its post-LBO decline, seizes and sells off what remains of the company's assets.

Here's another way to look at it: Let's say you want to buy a car you can't afford, like a Rolls Royce. You "buy" the fancy hand-crafted auto using the car itself as collateral. When the payments come due, you sell the engine, tires, carburetor, CD player and other parts to a chop shop. You pocket the cash and default on your loan. This, of course, is illegal—yet in this scenario all that's been lost is a nice car.

LBOs inflict much greater damage. They transform profitable companies into bankrupt ones, throw thousands of people out of work, stifle competition and deprive government of the tax revenues it needs in order to build schools, maintain roads, and drop bombs on Muslims. Yet LBOs are legal.

Generally speaking, LBOs succeed under two conditions: an expanding economy and a management team able to radically increase profits in a short time. These conditions are rarely present at the same time, and almost never for very long.

Signs that the LBO model was untenable began appearing 20 years ago, when two of corporate raider Robert Campeau's victims, the Revco drugstore chain and Federated Department Stores, went bankrupt. Federated, which employed thousands of American workers before Campeau came along, had been saddled with LBO debt equal to 97 percent of its net assets.

LBO transactions have since led to scores of bankruptcies and hundreds of thousands of Americans losing their jobs—all to line the pockets of a tiny cabal of greedy speculators. The LBO goons' latest victims, ironically enough, are the media giants lionized by their own business reporters in breathless puff pieces.

In 2007 Sam Zell, described as "a 65-year-old billionaire and president of Chicago-based Equity Group Investments," bought the Tribune Company for $8.23 billion. Tribune was one of the largest media chains in the United States, owning The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The Baltimore Sun, 20 television stations, and other properties—as well as the Chicago Cubs baseball team. Like most "billionaires," Zell didn't have any money. Like most takeover artists, he didn't know anything about the multibillion-dollar business he wanted to run.

Zell invested a mere $315 million (3.6 percent of the purchase price) and stuck Tribune with $8.4 billion in debt, promising to make early debt payments by selling the Cubs and turning around the company's flagging newspapers.

Everyone saw trouble ahead. "The leveraged buyout is making Tribune one of the riskiest newspaper companies, according to John Puchalla, a media analyst at Moody's Investors Service in New York," reported the Bloomberg business wire service at the time. Now, a year later, Tribune has filed Chapter 11. Layoffs are coming fast and furious. After just 18 months under Zell's careful stewardship, Tribune—formerly a profitable company—reports assets of $7.6 billion and debt of $13 billion.

"Factors beyond our control have created a perfect storm—a precipitous decline in revenue and a tough economy coupled with a credit crisis that makes it extremely difficult to support our debt," Zell said, acknowledging the disaster.

Zell is right about the credit crisis. But it would have a lot easier for Tribune to weather the storm if he'd never come along.

COPYRIGHT 2008 TED RALL

Cartoon for December 15, 2008

Barack Obama's cabinet is widely praised by the mainstream press is diverse. But ideological diversity doesn't seem to be part of it. If this is a cabinet that looks like America, then America is 80% conservative Democrat, 20% Republican.

Cartoon for December 13, 2008

The One is calm. Very, very calmmmmmmmmzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

Cartoon for December 11, 2008

First Obama's transition team bogarted the official .gov domain suffix to invent some wacky "Change.gov" website. Then he invented a fake "Office of the President-Elect." (Yes, federal law provides funds for the president-elect to rent an office. But that's not an official government Office.) What else is he going to stagemanage?

THIS WEEK'S SYNDICATED COLUMN: Smells Like Bob Dylan

Why Obama is Just Another Boomer

Barack Obama, people are saying, is the first Generation X president. Are they right? And if so--does it many any difference?

"The battle for the Democratic nomination in the U.S. presidential election," reported Agence France Presse wire service nearly a year ago in January, "is as much about 'Generation X' wresting power from Baby Boomers as it is a battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton...Most significantly, analysts say, it is the first time someone from the so-called Generation X has run for the White House."

A Gen X president is, or would be, a big deal. Xers' major concerns--student loan debt, underemployment, age discrimination against the young, the environment--have never gotten much attention in the media or in mainstream politics. But is Obama Gen X?

Membership requirements for Gen X have long been fungible. Demographic purists say Generation X began with those born after 1964, when a sharply dropping birth rate marked the end of the postwar Baby Boom. Sociologists, who look to common cultural and economic reference points as generational signifiers, include everyone born from 1961 to 1976. If you grew up with LBJ, Nixon and Hendrix, you're a Boomer. If your touchstones are Carter, Reagan and Molly Ringwald, you're X.

Some analysts put Gen X as late as the 1981 birth year, but I side with Canadian author Douglas Coupland because, well, he wrote the book. When Coupland published "Generation X" in 1990, its subjects were twentysomethings. Do the math. That includes anyone born in the 1960s.

By any account, Obama's birthdate--1961--barely admits him to Gen X. Yet Gen X won him the presidency. Sure, a higher proportion of Gen Y voters than Gen Xers supported Obama (66 to 52 percent). But twice as many Xers showed up at the polls. The One couldn't have done it without the X factor.

Prominent Xers embraced Obama early in the process. "[Obama] attended an anti-apartheid rally in Southern California," said "X Saves the World" author Jeff Gourdinier during the early primaries. "He writes about his doubts about the effectiveness of that form of protest...He is very honest about his skepticism. That is the Gen X sensibility."

"Our time to lead has come," gushed Elizabeth Blackney, a 35-year-old Republican blogger from Oregon. But she and the rest of my underemployed, underrecognized generation may have to wait. Now that Obama has our votes, he has a lot more love for Generation Y than for Generation X.

The Nation, the Bible of liberal Baby Boomers, is atypically smart on this point. "For Obama, who is 46, and his followers, Boomer politics clearly have to go," writes Lakshmi Chaudhry of the 1980s and 1990s "culture wars," which constantly rehashed Vietnam and other hoary so-last-century conflicts. "What is less obvious is whom Obama represents. He often speaks to the Millennials, recently telling cheering college kids in South Carolina, 'It's your generation's turn.' But rarely mentioned is Obama's own generation, i.e., Generation X, the Lost Generation, whose name has been virtually erased from the national conversation."

In my 1998 Generation X manifesto "Revenge of Latchkey Kids," I called it "generational leapfrog." Generational leapfrog is the tendency of the good things in American life--high-paying entry-level jobs, generationally directed social programs, free love--to jump from the Baby Boomers born between '46 and '64 to their children, Millennial/Generation Y types born after '77.

It happened in editorial cartooning, my chosen profession. The vast majority of political cartoonists working at daily newspapers, those who get decent salaries and actual benefits, are Boomers in their 50s and 60s. If and when a new job opens up, it goes to an artist fresh out of college--a Gen Yer. Thirtysomething and fortysomething Gen Xers need not apply.

Demographers William Howe and Neil Strauss predicted this phenomenon in their 1991 book "Generations." They argued that Xers belong to a "reactive" generation doomed to be ignored by everyone that matters--Hollywood, Madison Avenue and Washington. Like prior "reactive" generations (the last one was Hemingway's "Lost Generation"), they will probably not see one of their own become president.

Howe and Strauss note that members of a generation can exhibit cultural signifiers and other traits more closely related to another generation. As a self-identified Gen Xer (1963/age 45), I spent my college years attending concerts by late-period Blondie, the Dead Kennedys, Flipper and the Clash. Punk rock and New Wave defined my coming of age. Like most of my peers, I later got into post-punk and grunge bands like Nirvana. But many of my classmates were more into the Doors and Bob Dylan. Born too late to enjoy the Summer of Love, they nevertheless identified as Boomers.

By this measure, Obama is a Boomer. His favorite music? According to his Facebook page: "Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Johann Sebastian Bach (cello suites), and The Fugees." Yech. His favorite movies? "Casablanca, Godfather I & II, Lawrence of Arabia and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Great films. I love them all. But a Gen Xer would have been more likely to namecheck "Repo Man" and "Slacker."

Generation Xers who hope that one of their own is finally in a position to address their long ignored concerns had better believe this: Obama is paying attention to the young and the old. You in-between types, still paying off your college loans and facing discrimination in the workplace because of your age, will have to keep on keeping on the best as you can.

COPYRIGHT 2008 TED RALL

Cartoon for December 8, 2008: 99 Cent Store

Until recently, 99 cent stores were having trouble finding stuff to sell at such a low price. Fortunately, deflation will come to their rescue.

Finally

Today's news contains two positive bits of news from the Obama transition team: first, he plans to ask Congress for a massive infrastructure construction program; second, General Shinseki will come out of forced retirement to head the VA.

Shinkseki certainly deserves vindication; he was one of the few Pentagon honchos to have the guts to tell Bush the truth about Iraq, that it would require as many as half a million troops to pacify the country. Rumsfeld forced him out for being right. Being right, however, is what matters--and Obama will need more people who were right in his cabinet. (Hillary, who was wrong over and over and over, on the other hand, should not have gotten the State job.) I'm glad to see him rehabilitated.

The infrastructure program is just what the doctor ordered--well, half of it, anyway. We need to put more money in homeowners' pockets so they can keep their homes. Best way to do that: refinance all loans to a rock-bottom 2 or 3 percent fixed rate. Still, it's a nice start.

Obama still has a long way to go before he loses his rep as a sellout. But this was a good day.

Why? Hello Kitty

Some of y'all have been asking why I draw Barack Obama surrounded by Hello Kitty ephemera. Well, here's the cartoon that started it all, back on May 3, 2007:



Hope this helps.

Cartoon for December 6, 2008: Blame the Victims

Corporations and their media apologists are blaming us for falling for their consumerist tricks.

Cartoons from 1992

I'm working on creating archives for this site that will include all of my syndicated editorial cartoons dating back to 1991, when I became syndicated. It's a huge task. There are more than 3,000 cartoons, of which some 1,000 need to be scanned in because they predate my use of Photoshop. Each cartoon must be correctly formatted, of course. And--this is the cool thing--they're all going to be keyword searchable. But that means entering the keywords.

So far I have 1991 and half of 1992 uploaded, plus the years between 2003 and the present.

Anyway, I was going through some old stuff from 1992 and was amazed at all the stuff I found that applies in some way to what's going on today. Among them were the following two:

Obama to US Political Cartoonists: Drop Dead!

In my capacity as president of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, I repeatedly issued invitations to President-Elect Obama to deliver the keynote address at our 2009 annual convention in Seattle. Past speakers have included heads of state and the AAEC has often been invited to meet with previous US presidents.

Barack Obama, apparently, does not think we deserve his presence. In fact, he doesn't think editorial cartoonists even deserve a personal rejection letter. Apparently, he doesn't even know who the fuck we are--America's preeminent and most widely-read satirists.

Check out this form rejection letter I received after my latest inquiry through Obama's Transition Office website, Change.gov:

Dear Ted Rall,

Thank you for inviting President-elect Obama to your event.

The President-elect values each and every invitation, but due to his time constraints, he must decline the majority of invitations he receives. We have reviewed your invitation, and unfortunately, he will be unable to participate in your event.

Nevertheless, we hope that you will remain engaged in our emerging administration as you are the key individuals pushing our movement forward. As Barack said in announcing his candidacy, “[T]his campaign can't only be about me. It must be about us - it must be about what we can do together. This campaign must be the occasion, the vehicle, of your hopes, and your dreams. It will take your time, your energy, and your advice - to push us forward when we're doing right, and to let us know when we're not.”

Thank you again for your interest and your understanding.

Sincerely,
The Obama-Biden Transition Project
Scheduling Team

Please note that replies to this email will not be answered

In this case, I'm going to with "not."

Just to be clear: If he's busy next Fourth of July, that's cool. The point is, the least the Obama "team" could have done was to call me or issue a personal letter or offer a different date.

Let's hope he doesn't treat foreign leaders this rudely.

Cartoon for December 4, 2008: Liberal Projection

Hoping against hope, liberal Democrats hope the most conservative Democratic primary candidate will use his conservative staffers to promote progressive policies.

THIS WEEK'S SYNDICATED COLUMN: The Rest and the Rightest

Obama's Center-Right Cabinet Foreshadows Center-Right Presidency

A bunch of Clinton- and Carter-era hacks. George W. Bush's leftover defense secretary. Of the dozens of Obama's top appointments announced to date, there's only one liberal: David Bonior, who ran John Edwards' primary campaign, as secretary of labor. Maybe.

Remember the Democratic primaries? Among the top three presidential contenders, Edwards was the liberal. Hillary Clinton, she of repeated votes for war against Afghanistan and Iraq (and Iran!), was to Edwards' right. Obama, who also voted for war but didn't commit to Clinton's bigger healthcare plan, was even more conservative than she. "Mr. Obama," David Sanger writes in The New York Times, "is planning to govern from the center-right of his party."

If nothing else, I had guessed, the U. of Chicago egghead would appoint a team of the Best and Brightest. We're getting the Rest and the Rightest.

Asked by a reporter how his center-right coalition of Republicans, pro-war Democrats and other assorted has-beens squares with a campaign marketing hope, change, and Soviet-inspired propaganda posters, Obama pledged to "combine experience with fresh thinking."

"Understand where the vision for change comes from, first and foremost," Obama said. "It comes from me. That's my job, to provide a vision in terms of where we are going and to make sure then that my team is implementing [that vision]." Pretty words.

Obama's argument--that his center-conservative cabinet will carry out radical change if he orders them to do so--is denied by recent history. The U.S. government, as micromanager Jimmy Carter learned, is too big for the president to manage on his own. And, as George W. Bush learned after 2000, the people you hire are more likely to change you than you are to change them.

As governor, Jacob Weisberg wrote in his book "The Bush Tragedy," Bush was fondly remembered by Texas Democrats as a moderate Republican who crossed the aisle to get things done. But campaign manager Karl Rove "used his influence to steer Bush away from being the president he originally wanted to be--the kind of center-right consensus-builder he was as governor of Texas--and into a too-close alliance" with the right wing of the GOP.

Even more fateful was Bush's choice of Dick Cheney to head his vice presidential search committee. Cheney chose himself (!), then hijacked the would-be "compassionate conservative"'s presidency by packing it with "neoconservative ideologues, who combined hawkish American triumphalism with an obsession with Israel," as Juan Cole put it in a memorable 2005 essay for Salon. By February 2001 Cheney had already ensured that the Bush Administration would focus on international affairs to the exclusion of everything else. He also made sure that his aggressive, Manichean worldview would prevail in cabinet discussions. "Cheney had 15 military and political advisors on foreign affairs, at a time when the president's own National Security Council was being downsized," marveled Cole.

The moderate guy who ran against "nation building" in 2000 never stood a chance against his own staff.

It's possible that Obama has stronger force of will than Bush. But, so far in the 219-year history of electoral politics, there is no example of a president successfully enacting radical changes without likeminded lieutenants to carry them out. Will Obama be the first to change his cabinet's spots? Probably not.

"The last Democratic administration we had was the Clinton Administration," Obama said in his attempt to calm his liberal base, which is starting to get hip to the reality that Obama is about to betray them. "So it would be surprising if I selected a treasury secretary who had had no connection with the last Democratic administration, because that would mean that the person had no experience in Washington whatsoever." Or maybe not. What about Paul Krugman, the Princeton economist and Times columnist who won the Nobel Prize this year? He's progressive. As a bonus, he's been right about everything for years.

"We want ideas from everybody," Obama continued. But not from liberals. And not from the socialists John McCain had everyone stirred up about. Speaking of McCain, the right-wing Arizona senator is tickled pink: "I certainly applaud many of the appointments that President-Elect Obama has announced," McCain said last week. "Senator Obama has nominated some people to his economic team that we can work with, that are well-respected."

What Obama and McCain consider respectable might not pass muster with polite company. Obama's economic advisor Lawrence Summers thinks women aren't good at math or science, which bodes poorly for the quality of his own thinking. Marie Curie, call your office.

Former Bush intelligence official John Brennan was, until last week, Obama's pick to head the CIA. ABC News reported: "Brennan had been a top aide to former CIA Director George Tenet during what critics of the Bush administration refer to as that agency's descent into darkness post 9/11, and he had spoken in favor of various controversial counterterrorism strategies, including enhanced interrogation techniques and rendition--sending terror suspects to allies where torture is legal." After Congressional liberals threatened to block his nomination, Obama crossed Bush's torturer off the list.

Lefties who swooned on Election Night had might as well get used to the truth: Obama isn't one of you. Never was. Never will be.

COPYRIGHT 2008 TED RALL

Cartoon for December 1, 2008

So much hope, dashed so soon.

Change Comes From Us

posted by Susan Stark


It will not be a happy holiday for the friends and relatives of Jdimytai Damour, who was trampled to death by shoppers at a Long Island Wal-Mart on Black Friday.

Unfortunately, this is what our culture has come to. People being sacrificed for the latest gadget while others in Haiti and Afghanistan wonder where their next meal will come from.

People bought the slogan of "Change" from Barack Obama, but the word "Change" was also the slogan of a one Bill Clinton back in 1992, and we didn't get much change from him.

Ultimately, change comes from us, and us alone.

In this post, I'm going to list numerous ways we can change our our lives for the better, starting with our immediate surroundings. I did something similar on this blog soon after Earth Day, and it looks like I need to do it again. But this time, I'm going to add more information.

Let's start by changing what and how we buy things:

1) Buy things that are USED, rather than new, as much as possible. For instance, the computer that I'm typing these words on is used. So is my TV, my fan, my lamp, my furniture, and many other objects in my room. Most of my clothing is used. To be fair, however, it is not always possible to buy used in all cases, but it's worth a try.


2) When you have an item (or items) that you longer want or have use for, but can still be used by someone else, don't throw it away. Sell it or give it to someone.


3) There is a website you can go to buy and sell used items. It's called

http://www.craigslist.org/about/sites

At this site, there is also a "Free" column.


4) There's another website that's extremely useful in reducing waste:

http://www.freecycle.org/

At this site, you obtain or get rid of items for free.


5) If you have electronic appliances that are no longer working, you can recycle them:

http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/conserve/materials/ecycling/index.htm

You can also do a google search on recycling e-waste in your local area.


6) If buying something used doesn't appeal to you, try to make sure that your consumption is Fair Trade. That is, that your obtained goods are environmentally friendly, with unionized or cooperative labor. I'm a hypocrite when it comes to this, because Fair Trade items are generally more expensive then items made in exploitive conditions. Which is why I go the used-item-route as much as possible. But for those of you who can afford it, there are these websites:

http://www.coopamerica.org/pubs/greenpages/
http://www.fairtradefederation.org/

7) In regards to Christmas shopping, everything that I mentioned above applies. Buy used gifts and/or Fair Trade gifts, and wrap them in recyclable paper (the comix section of newspapers makes great gift-wrapping). Buy a plastic Christmas tree (or even better, a used plastic Christmas tree) that you can use year after year. Same with Xmas decorations. And for godsake, don't trample anyone to death. You don't need that latest iPod, or whatever gadget Jdimytai Damour had to lose his life over.

8) A brilliant way to cut down on waste and and have fun at the same time is to go to a Really Really Free Market. If there is no such activity in your area, you can start one yourself. This is where you and others bring items that you don't want anymore to a common space, and then take items out of that collection that one might want or need. It's basically a big party dedicated to the concept of mutual gift-giving. Buying, selling, or bartering are forbidden at these events. It's all gift-giving and gift-taking.

9) For the really adventurous, there is Dumpster Diving. Dumpster diving is rescuing what ends up in the garbage. You would be amazed how much other people throw things away. I have personally found many useful items, everything from stereos to bookshelves to bathtowels, in peoples' trash.




Now we come to the section of Change Comes From Us dedicated to Reducing Energy Consumption And Saving Money On Your Energy Bill:

1) Make it a rule in your household that the last person leaving a room must turn off the lights before leaving.

2) Install night-lights in the hallways of your home so you don't have to turn on the overhead lights. Night-lights use less energy.

3) Unplug all electrical appliances when they are not being directly used. Appliances use energy even when they aren't on. The difference will show up on your electric bill, and you'll be reducing your "carbon footprint", that is, your oil, gas, and coal consumption.

4) Find out if there are any public transportation facilities (train or bus) where you live, and use them as much as possible. Even if you live out in the country, there is sometimes a county bus system you can use.

5) Start using a bicycle, scooter, or walking to anyplace nearby. You'll keep in shape and save on gas.

6) If you have a gas-guzzling automobile, go online to see if you can't get your car modified to use less gas per mile.

7) It is now wintertime, when we use a great deal of energy to heat our homes. Instead of jacking that thermostat up to kingdom come, dress in layers of clothing instead. I regularly dress in two layers of clothing during winter, minimum. I use more if it's really cold. However, if you have an infant in your household, be careful when taking this advice.

8) When summertime comes around, use a fan instead of an air conditioner. Fans use a fraction of the energy that air conditioners use. Take cool showers instead of hot ones. And if you're really hot, run your hair under cool water, then wring it out so that it's merely damp. This should keep you cool for a couple of hours.

One last thing: While it seems a lot of effort to reduce energy consumption, you will, I repeat, will save money.


Now we come to the last section of Change Comes From Us. Presented here are miscellaneous things we can do to change things from the bottom up:

1) Do you by any chance have a lawn? If you do, turn it into a vegetable garden instead. It's a better use of soil than simply growing grass.

2) Health care. Universal health care is pretty much a pipe dream here in the United States. No politician will touch it for fear of incurring the wrath of the health-industrial-complex (HMOs, drug companies, etc.). But you can get together with like-minded individuals and start or join what is called a Health Care Collective. That is, seeing what you can do to start a free clinic in your community, or finding health care professionals willing to provide free, reduced, or sliding-scale health care, or starting a community health insurance program. Here are some examples of this:

http://www.ithacahealth.org/
http://www.rockdovecollective.org/
http://www.cghc.org/
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=health+collective&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq

3) Free schooling. You can get together with like-minded individuals in your community and set up a Free School, which Wikipedia defines thusly: A free school, sometimes intentionally spelled free skool, is a decentralized network in which skills, information, and knowledge are shared without hierarchy or the institutional environment of formal schooling. The open structure of a free school is intended to encourage self-reliance, critical consciousness, and personal development.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_school

4) See if you can set up a time-barter system in your community:

http://www.timebanks.org/





I don't want this post to be too long, so I'll stop here. Cut and paste this post and pass it on. It's better than getting trampled to death.

Susan Stark

Cartoon for November 29, 2008

It's only a matter of time before start reverse-faking their resumes.

Cartoon for November 27, 2008

Hillary Clinton, architect of the Iraq War, is Obama's secretary of state. Obama says "America doesn't torture. It was only a matter of time before Obama let us down, but this is unprecedented. And not even one liberal in the cabinet. And Larry Summers! And...

THIS WEEK'S SYNDICATED COLUMN: What's with the Somali Pirates?

Strange Inaction in the Indian Ocean

I'm the loudmouth pundit. I'm supposed to have the answers, or at least pretend to. This week, however, I'm baffled. Confused, even. So I'm turning the tables to ask you, dear reader: Why aren't we bombing the crap out of Somalia's pirates?

I don't get it. You can't build a house in Waziristan or throw a wedding in Afghanistan without drawing a blizzard of Hellfire missiles. We bomb aspirin factories, hospitals and schools. We employ bad-ass Special Forces types and psycho mercenaries who set up freelance torture operations and supervise mass executions. We Americans have our faults, but wimpy pacifism isn't one of them. So what's with these pirates?

In June 2007, a French warship witnessed the Danica White, a Danish merchant vessel carrying a crew of just five men, being hijacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia. The French, reported the Navy Times, "could not cross into Somali territorial waters to offer help." Which is confusing, what with Somalia being a failed state without a viable central government and all. Who was going to stop them—the Somali coast guard?

Somalia's territorial waters? Sacrosanct! Invade Iraq, invade Afghanistan, try to overthrow the president of Venezuela, send CIA agents into the Iranian desert to case their nuke plants, blast cars on highways in Yemen, no problem. But for God's sake, leave Somalia alone! National sovereignty matters!

An American dock landing ship was also on the scene of the Danica White shipjacking. "The USS Carter Hall fired flares and several shots across the bow as well as several disabling shots at the three skiffs in tow," said a navy spokesman. Across the bow? Why didn't they blow them to smithereens? "But the hijacked Danica White made it into Somali waters and the Carter Hall had to back off and watch," reported Navy Times. "We're observing them at this point," said the navy spokesman afterward. "It's ongoing."

There's a lot of observing going on off Somalia. At this writing, at least 14 ships and 250 crewmembers are being held "a few miles off a 230-mile stretch of Somali coastline between Xarardheere and the town of Eyl," reports The New York Times. These include the Sirius Star, a thousand-feet-long Saudi oil tanker, and a Ukrainian cargo ship carrying enough Soviet tanks, anti-aircraft guns and other weaponry to get you a start as a respectable warlord. An international flotilla, including American navy ships, are watching the situation—and doing jack.

We know why George W. Bush never tried to catch Osama bin Laden; he must have been worried he'd be captured alive and talk about his relationship with the CIA. But what do the Somali pirates have on Bush, the president of Ukraine, and the king of Saudi Arabia? What explains their reluctance to rain hot death on these privateers? Do the pirates plant hot Somali babes to seduce heads of state?

While we're asking questions, why don't ships that ply the pirate-infested waters south of the Gulf of Aden take security precautions? "For insurance and safety reasons, most crews on commercial ships do not carry weapons," says the Times. Weird. You'd think the Ukrainians might have at least been able to break into their own cargo to shoot back.

So far the most delicious coverage of this uncharacteristic display of military restraint has been a Times article bearing the headline "U.S. Urges Merchant Ships to Try Steps to Foil Pirates." The U.S. Navy, it said, was encouraging ships that travel near Somalia to employ "measures that did not involve the use of force" to avoid getting taken over. "The techniques," said the paper, "include complicated rudder movements and speed adjustments that make it hard for pirate speedboats to pull alongside, as well as simple steps like pulling up ladders that some ships leave dangling for an entire voyage."

Complicated rudder movements. Ladders that hang off the side of the ship. Duh.

It's like seeing someone walking around with money falling out of their pockets. Maybe they want the pirates to come aboard. I'm no pirate, but even I would be tempted to take over a ship with a skeleton crew, unarmed "for insurance and safety reasons," dangling its ladders. Such teases!

I understand why the Somalis do it. Piracy is big business in Somalia. In fact, it's the only good business. Kenya's foreign minister says Somali pirates have collected $150 million in ransoms so far this year. "All you need is three guys and a little boat, and the next day you’re millionaires," Abdullahi Omar Qawden, an ex-captain in Somalia's navy told the Times. What I don't understand is why we, and so many other countries, put up with it.

In the old days, seizing a ship marked by a national flag was an insult and act of war. In 1803 pirates of the Barbary States, city-states along the north coast of Africa in the Mediterranean that were nominally part of the Ottoman Empire, captured the U.S.S. Philadelphia and held its crew hostage. President Thomas Jefferson asked Congress for and received authorization to dispatch sailors and marines to the port of Tripoli, where the ship was being held. To deny its use to the Tripolitans U.S. forces burned it and captured the city. It was America's first foreign military operation.

We're killing Afghan brides. We're paying off Somali pirates. What has happened to us?

COPYRIGHT 2008 TED RALL

Cartoon for November 24, 2008

Everyone's getting a bailout. Just not people who need them.

Cartoon for November 22, 2008

Now that they've been defeated, the same Republicans who called liberals anti-American traitors are talking about the benefits of bipartisanship.

Cartoon for November 20, 2008

At Obama's insistence, Joe Lieberman gets to keep his chairmanship of the homeland security committee. Is there nothing one can do to have to pay a price for defaming Democrats?

Speaking of questions, I've been looking at the lists of people being considered for top spots in the incoming Obama Administration. Not...one...leftie. (Like Robert Reich.) Not one.

I expected change to be something I couldn't believe in, but I thought they'd cover it up a little better.

THIS WEEK'S SYNDICATED COLUMN: Republicans, Not Conservatives, Are In Trouble

Some readers will be surprised by the tenor and tone of this week's column, which offers friendly advice to conservatives depressed by the election results. No matter. I've always been a contrarian. When I hear conventional wisdom, especially the kind that declares an ideological movement dead after one election, I'm skeptical. Besides, some of my best friends are conservative. (Don't get me started on neoconservatives, though.)

A Philosophy Without a Party

* Conservatives betrayed by GOP
* Traditional conservatism still popular
* Rigid laissez faire dogma rejected by voters

Conservatives think the election results prove that conservatism is in trouble. Actually, conservatism is fine. It's the Republican Party that's in trouble.

To be sure, the GOP got killed in Congress. But the presidential results aren't nearly as alarming. The difference between Bush's "big win" in 2004 (51 percent of the popular vote) and McCain's "stunning defeat" in 2008 (46 percent) was that 2.5 percent of the electorate changed their minds. Besides, it remains to be seen, says Montclair State University political science and law professor Brigid Harrison, whether the "high level of young voters, African-Americans, highly educated white voters and a disproportionate amount of women forming a new kind of coalition" will come together in future elections to support Democratic candidates more typical than Obama.

For the sake of argument, however, let's posit that Obama represents a dramatic political realignment and repudiation of the Republican Party. Certainly, Republicans do face massive demographic challenges, mainly as an influx of Latino immigration and naturalization turns places like Arizona, Colorado and California's Orange County from red to blue. The GOP may well have to get used to losing. But that doesn't mean conservatives do.

In the United States, conservatism is a philosophy without a party. Take Ronald Reagan, considered the patron saint of late 20th century conservatism. Coupled with extravagant military spending, Reagan's tax cuts for wealthy individuals and corporations increased the national debt from $700 billion to $3 trillion, transforming the U.S. into the world's biggest debtor nation. Under Reagan, William Voegeli wrote in The Los Angeles Times in 2007, "government did nothing but expand. In 1981, the federal government spent $678 billion; in 1989 it spent $1.144 trillion. Factoring out inflation, that was an increase of 19% in real spending. Republicans never expected that Reagan would leave office with a 'federal establishment' one-fifth larger than when he arrived."

George W. Bush campaigned as a "compassionate conservative," but conservatism was as absent from his governance as compassion. He has increased the federal deficit from $3.3 to $5.9 trillion. Add in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—estimated at $2.4 trillion as of 2007—and he will have put the country a staggering $5 trillion deeper into the hole. He hired 180,000 federal employees for a new cabinet-level department, Homeland Security, all to make you take off your shoes at the airport.

Conservative? Not these guys.

For the sake of my long-suffering conservative friends as well as the country, it's time to unravel the conflation of conservatism and the Republican Party.

Why do I care? Simple: America needs conservatives—real conservatives. Deficit hawks, America Firsters and get-that-dang-guvmint-outta-my-bizness types are essential watchdogs of fiscal responsibility and personal freedom. Moreover, ideological diversity sparks intellectual innovation.

Traditional conservatism—to state the obvious, is there truly any other kind?—is, despite its flaws, an philosophy attractive to those who value the ideal of rugged individualism. Most recently articulated by Barry Goldwater after he retired from the Senate, conservatism is centered around small government, particularly on the federal level; its size, scope, and powers are kept to a minimum in order to reduce infringement upon personal liberty, keep taxes low, and thus encourage investment and free enterprise. Fiscal responsibility is the order of the day. Budgets must be balanced. Deficits are anathema.

Conservatives believe that free markets create opportunities for hard-working people to succeed. They won't help you get ahead, but they'll keep nosy bureaucrats out of your hair while you're figuring out how to do it on your own. It's a bit Darwinian, but consider the advantages: you're free to do whatever you want in your personal life. As Goldwater said when asked about gays in the military: "You don't need to be straight to fight and die for your country, you just need to shoot straight."

If Bush had been a conservative, he wouldn't have cut taxes without reducing spending. He would have been an isolationist. As Pat Buchanan says, America Firsters don't rush off to invade countries like Afghanistan and Iraq that pose no threat to the United States. Bush certainly wouldn't have authorized NSA's domestic spying program, gotten rid of habeas corpus, or infringed states rights by taking control of the National Guard away from state governors.

Conservatism is far more appealing to the average American than the bastardized form that has driven Republican policy for more than half a century. In 2008 voters rejected neoconservatism, an arrogant brand of "exceptionalism" dedicated to preemptive warfare, defending Israel, and empire building at the expense of all else.

Republicans use pretzel logic to market themselves to conservatives. In 1988, Allan Ryskind, editor of Human Events, told The New York Times that Reagan had deliberately increased the deficit in order to starve future Democratic administrations of money. "It has certainly put a lid on the welfare state," he said. "The Democrats have sort of trapped themselves because they've said this is all terrible and horrible and that closing the deficit should be the first priority. The fact that they've said the deficit is such a problem," he added, "prevents them from proposing new spending programs."

Of course, it would also prevent Republicans—who remained in power until 1993—from cutting taxes, a principal tenet of conservatism.

Bill Clinton disappointed the Democrats' liberal base, rewarding their support by pushing through welfare reform, NAFTA and the WTO. But if liberals feel used by the Democrats, conservatives have been raped by the Republicans.

This isn't to say that traditional conservatives don't need to change, in several areas. One is their intellectual separation of government spending into two categories: non-military and military, the latter of which is untouchable. Spending is spending, whether it's on welfare queens or Halliburton. Another area is laissez faire, one of the few places where conservatism intersects with Republicanism.

When times are good, most Americans favor a small government that stays out of their lives and leaves them be. When a hurricane strikes, however, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps dogma goes out the window. Similarly, government should run in the black during an economic boom. When people start losing their homes, however, they look to their government for help. Conservatives should think of themselves as firefighters. Most of the time, you never see them. Firefighters don't break down your door with an ax unless there's a fire. But you're damned happy to see them when there is.

As much as Americans hate paying taxes, they hate do-nothing government more. (Besides, they've been burned so often on tax-cut promises that they no longer believe them.) One of the lessons of 2008 was that voters aren't happy to let the marketplace work its magic if the world is falling apart.

A political party that stays out of people's business while being nimble enough to jump into the fray during emergencies might just stand a chance. So might a conservative movement that refuses to vote for a party that repeatedly betrays them.

COPYRIGHT 2008 TED RALL

Cartoon for November 17, 2008

For the mainstream media, the center feels so...right.

Cartoon for November 15, 2008

A new president takes over. Will he prepared for the looming threat of attack?

Cartoon for November 13, 2008

What will Obama do with Bush's police state?

It's That Time of Year

The Ted Rall Subscription Service is revving up for 2009. For a mere $25 per year, you get my cartoons and columns delivered straight to your email in-box, plus discounts on my books. Best of all, you get the cartoons and columns before anyone else--often days before they appear on the Web.

This year, I'm sweetening the pot with a Global Depression Special: sign up now, and I'll start you out now, six weeks before 2009 starts, for the same price.

THIS WEEK'S SYNDICATED COLUMN: Will Obama Wuss Out on Gitmo?

Prez-Elect May Ratify Bush's Torture Trials

The accused terrorist appeared before the military tribunal, charged with conspiracy in a plot against national security. Because state secrets were involved and because harsh interrogation techniques were used to extract information, the defendant was deprived of a look at the evidence. Also denied were the defendant's traditional right to a lawyer, to face accusers, even to see the judges--they wore hoods.

No, this wasn't at Gitmo. This "court" met in the military dictatorship of Peru. And the defendant wasn't an Afghan or Arab turned over to U.S. troops by a warlord out for the $10,000 bounty. She was Lori Berenson, a 31-year-old American citizen accused of aiding the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, members of whom she befriended.

The Washington Post and New York Times condemned Berenson's 1996 trial, calling the tribunal and the brutal circumstances of her detention a mockery of justice. In the U.S., most American liberals agreed.

Now President-Elect Barack Obama--a self-identified liberal Democrat who campaigned as a champion of human rights--wants to use the same kind of kangaroo court to try victims of the notorious Guantánamo torture camp.

Obama's advisers confirm that the incoming president wants to close Gitmo. It's long overdue. But they deny that they've made a final decision about what to do with the detainees. (There's no word about the secret prisons, Navy prison ships or CIA black sites where thousands of Muslim men kidnapped by the U.S. have been "disappeared.") However, there's troubling evidence that Obama is reneging on his promise to do the right thing by the long-suffering detainees.

Insiders say that Obama is leaning toward the creation of "national security courts"--secret military tribunals where detainees would be tried without basic due process rights. They wouldn't get the right to review evidence against them, cross-examine prosecution witnesses, or—obviously, at this point--a speedy trial. Moreover, Obama hasn't ruled out subjecting future detainees to "preventive detention"--i.e., holding them without charges, like Bush.

"The legal team advising Mr. Obama on Guantánamo believes that prosecuting the 'high value' terror suspects such as [Khalid Sheikh] Mohammed--a group of about 30--will require the creation of a court designed to handle highly sensitive intelligence material, a cross between a military tribunal and a federal court," reports The Times of London.

"What a national security court is designed for is to hide the use of torture and allow the consideration of evidence that is not reliable," says J. Wells Dixon of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents some of the detainees.

Of the 255 prisoners, about 60 have been cleared for release but remain at the base because their home countries, including China, view them as political enemies and might execute them. Of the remaining 195, the Pentagon admits that there's no evidence whatsoever against 135. Obama's team doesn't know what to do about these 195 misérables.

That leaves 80 men, including the 30 "stars" like KSM, the alleged 9/11 mastermind. "If Obama wanted to move as swiftly as possible to close Guantánamo," reports Time magazine, "the strongest step he could take as president would be to simply shutter the camp by executive order and transfer all of the detainees to prison sites inside the U.S. At that point, in theory, the detainees would face four possible fates: being charged with offenses that could be tried in federal courts; court-marshaled according to the Uniform Code of Military Justice; turned over to the governments of their native countries; or simply released."

Courts-marshal of the detainees, who were dumped in Gitmo's supposed legal limbo specifically in order to deny them POW status and Geneva Conventions rights, would be bizarre. As discussed above, many can't go home. Moreover most, if not all, of the high-profile detainees were tortured--a fact that would almost certainly destroy any chance of obtaining a conviction in a fair trial.

You can't hold a fair trial after holding a suspect for years while depriving them of access to a lawyer, family visits, or the ability to prepare for trial. The Founding Fathers understood this fact, which is why they ratified the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial," reads the Sixth. A secret "national security court" held six years after "arrest" doesn't come anywhere close to satisfying this requirement.

Municipalities' interpretation of the Sixth Amendment varies. In New York City, cops have to bring you before a judge for arraignment within 24 hours of your arrest, or let you go. Other places allow a few days. Six years? Not even in Texas.

There's only one valid legal and moral option for rectifying the human rights nightmare at Guantánamo. On January 20, President Obama should fly to Gitmo, address its inmates and personally apologize to each one for the abuses and indignities they have suffered, and which have brought shame and contempt upon the United States.

The detainees should be set free. They should be paid enough money that they should never want for anything again, then offered the right to fly home or, if they prefer, anywhere in the U.S. Finally, Obama should walk out the camp's main entrance to Palma Point, where he should sign over control of the base to Cuban President Raoul Castro.

COPYRIGHT 2008 TED RALL

First of a Series: Annoying Obama Quote

On Tuesday night, Obama opined:

Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us.

What a maroon. The election results were still being tabulated, and he had already swallowed the right-wing Kool Aid.

Newsflash: The wars against the peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq are not designed to keep us safe. They are designed to keep us afraid. You can't keep people nervous without recruiting new enemies.

Anyone who thinks Obama is a progressive has only to read that idiotic quote.

Cartoon for November 10, 2008

Obama and the Democrats have achieved a sweeping victory. Now it's time for them to dismantle Bush's gulag archipelago of torture. Not after forming a committee to look into it. Not after we've found the best way to do it. Immediately.

Revised: "President Obama's First Day"

The first animation has been tightened up. Check out the new and improved version here. It's also a little more relevant than prescient now:

Cartoon for November 8, 2008

It would only be fair, after all the disgusting insults progressives have received from right-wingers over the last eight years, to gloat. But it's so boring!

Revised Animation Posted

There were a few glitches in "Death Cab for Sarah," which have been fixed here:



Purists will want to check it out. All others may skip to the next post.

THIS WEEK'S SYNDICATED COLUMN: No We Didn't

Obama Win More Hysterical Than Historical

There is less here than meets the eye.

Yes, the election results are notable. But they don't mean as much as people think.

First, the important stuff: The first black president has been elected. And not just elected by a majority of voters, many of whom were black and/or first-time voters, but by nearly half of white voters. Twenty-eight years after the Reagan Revolution, the electorate has repudiated Republican inaction—on Iraq, in New Orleans, most of all on the economy—to an extent not seen since Watergate. Americans delivered a proxy impeachment of George W. Bush, holding McCain less to account for his policies than his association with a (cough) leader they blamed for their troubles.

It isn't quite fair. George W. Bush, lest we forget, had a 90 percent approval rating during the fall of 2001. Now that Bush's support is down to a Carrot Top-like 22 percent, it's only fair to remember that he's the same guy in 2008 that he was in 2001. And, for that matter, when a majority of Americans thought he was doing such a good job that they voted for another four years in 2004

Nothing much has changed. The economy sucks, but that's been true since 2000. It's been one continuous meltdown since the dot-com crash. We lost Afghanistan the day we invaded it; ditto Iraq. Doing nothing to help New Orleans during Katrina—well, that was just Republicans being Republicans. The difference now? There is no difference.

Don't be fooled by the electoral college rout. The popular vote reveals that United States remains a deeply divided country. Bush got 51 percent of the vote in 2004; Kerry drew 48 percent. Obama defeated McCain 51-48. A surge of newly registered voters, including many African-Americans energized by Obama's candidacy, accounts for the three percent difference.

No one's mind has changed. People who voted for Bush in 2004 voted for McCain. If everyone who voted for Obama had shown up at the polls four years ago, John Kerry would be president. Obama's victory is the triumph of retail fundraising, computer metrics, and a team of smart, focused advisors who knew how to exploit them.

It helped to have a weak opponent. McCain ran as the new Bob Dole—cranky, out of touch, and untelegenic. "That one" was a terrible speaker. Every aspect of his campaign, from his fascism-influenced slogan ("Country First"), to a Silver Star logo that riffed on his POW experience to a public tired of war, to picking a vice presidential running mate with whom he'd spent 15 minutes (less than you'd need to get hired at Wendy's), was tone deaf. As so many American elections do, this one came down to fear. People were scared of losing their jobs, their homes, and their 401(k)s. McCain, his mindset stuck in the '60s, thought they were more worried about the Weathermen and the SDS.

All things considered, McCain did well.

If he follows his win by closing Bush's gulag archipelago of black sites, secret prisons and concentration camps at Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and Guantánamo (and don't forget Diego Garcia and the prison ships), if he quickly orders a withdrawal from Iraq and reconsiders his foolish campaign pledge to double down against Afghanistan, Obama will be good for the United States' international image.

If he acts to restore economic confidence with two vast infusions of federal money into people's pockets—first, with a new WPA-type national infrastructure program to create jobs and, second, with a bailout of homeowners and renters in danger of foreclosure and eviction, he will still have something of a country left to run four years from now.

But no one should delude themselves into believing that racism or its kissing cousin conservatism are dead. Barack Obama, after all, is only half-black, and not even half-African-American at that. Jeremiah Wright aside, Obama had a white upbringing. A product of the elite, he went to an Ivy League college (the same as mine, at the same time). If we were looking at President-Elect Sharpton, I'd believe in this change. (Too scary? Exactly.) As things stand, the rich white people who own and run the country have little to fear.

Meanwhile, very nearly half of the American electorate voted Republican. After seven years of not finding (or looking for) Osama. After five years of horror in Iraq. After eight years of shrinking paychecks. After everything that's happened, nearly half of voters wanted more of the same.

If the Republicans had picked a better candidate, they would have won. If Obama had presented a truly distinct alternative to conservatism—socialized healthcare, say, or opposing both stupid wars rather than the least popular stupid one—he would have lost. Conservatism? Dead? Not a chance.

A change is gonna come. But this ain't it.

COPYRIGHT 2008 TED RALL

Cartoon for November 6, 2008

Deep down, John McCain has got to be feeling relieved to have lost. He gets to go back to the Senate and relax. Obama is screwed, having inherited a country in a state of collapse.

NEW ANIMATION: Death Cab for Sarah

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE—Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Editorial cartoonist Ted Rall and animator David Essman have released a hilarious, vicious parody of GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin to celebrate Election Day 2008.

Distributed for free on YouTube and at tedrall.com, "Death Cab for Palin" is an animated political cartoon that lampoons Sarah Palin's presidential ambitions. Noting that vice presidents frequently become presidents, "Death Cab" depicts a rabid Vice President Palin trying to poison and bomb President McCain in the style of the classic "Road Runner" cartoon series.

Rall, a syndicated cartoonist for Universal Press Syndicate, is no stranger to controversy. His "Terror Widows" and "FDNY 2011" cartoons after 9/11 were some of the most controversial cartoons in U.S. history. Will "Death Cab for Sarah" join their ranks? "I don't know," says Rall, "but it was such a fun idea I just couldn't resist going with it."

Permission for reproduction and broadcast are freely given under the condition that the piece not be altered in any form without express permission. To contact Ted Rall, please email ted@rall.com.

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TED RALL's editorial cartoons and columns are syndicated to more than 100 newspapers around the U.S. Twice the winner of the RFK Journalism Award and a Pulitzer Finalist, he is President of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists.

DAVID ESSMAN is an animator currently at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His animated films have been screened across the country, including Animation Block Party, The Chicago Underground Film Festival, and the St. Louis International Film Festival.

Palin 2012
posted by Susan Stark

It's a little too close to the election for me to be writing a post like this one, or at least it's too late to serve as a warning. But the New York Post took it upon themselves to write a piece of speculative fiction on Obama. So I'm taking it upon myself to write a similar piece on McCain. Or more precisely, on Palin:


Date: November 4, 2012

It is dangerous to write this, so I will keep my identity a secret. But it must be written. It must.

I am in a basement right now, and I am using a hand-crank emergency light in order to see. There is no electricity to speak of. There hasn't been any for a while here in New York. Ordinarily I would not use my hand-crank at all unless absolutely necessary, but I need to write. It's my last stab at a legacy. I could be dead tomorrow.

Four years ago this started. Four fucking years ago. It seems like a fucking lifetime. Several lifetimes. That was the day the Palin regime started. The decrepit old fart that everyone thought they were voting for did not last long. And his death, I might add, was under suspicious circumstances. It is treason to write this. An execution-able offense.

After McCain's death. That's when it all started. Abortion clinics where shut down. Their locks changed in the middle of the night. People found out about this pretty quickly, because back then, we still had the Internet to find out things that quickly. Protests began. People took to the streets.

However, emboldened by their new-found messiah in the form of a prom queen, pro-Palin supporters used brutal violence against the protesters. Many were clubbed and beaten to death. None of the attackers was ever charged or held accountable for their actions. Instead, the violence was blamed on the protesters. It became too dangerous to openly protest.

But that was only a first taste of what was to come. On foreign policy, Palin surrounded herself with christian fundamentalists and rabid Israeli lobbyists as advisers. Under their direction, Palin bombed two operational nuclear power plants in Iran, claiming that the Iranians were building nuclear weapons there. Tehran was turned into a radioactive wasteland.

Most of the world rose up in horror of this action, and even what was left of our allies cringed. In protest, tourists no longer came to the United States, and many countries and their citizens boycotted our products and services, causing massive economic damage to the country. Here in New York, there was a massive exodus of people due to widespread unemployment. Sarah Palin called it God's judgment on "liberals".

After the economic meltdown, it wasn't just liberals who were protesting and rioting. Anybody who didn't know where their next meal might come from were joining the club. Sarah Palin retaliated by cutting off food stamps and welfare, calling the protesters "lazy", who "didn't want to work".

In place government checks, Palin handed out government cheese. Food distribution centers existed, but that food came at a price. Loyalty to Palin and her regime was that price. These re-educational centers were run by her hired goons, goons who had earlier beaten up the pro-choice protesters.

What else can I say now? Every day is like any other day. I wonder where my next meal will come from, because I refuse to be re-educated. I wonder when the goddamn electricity will come back on. Nobody has either the money or the will to get it back on. Sometimes food is smuggled in from Canada, through the black market or through charity or through Leftist supporters overseas, so I eat.

There are, however, a few things that keep me going. I listen to my shortwave radio, to clandestine and pirate stations beaming into the country, which gives me a shred of hope. I meet with my friends and allies, and we plan and act.

And one more thing gives me hope. When I venture outside, I see them. Words of defiance sprayed on the wall. Cartoons sprayed on the walls. Some of the cartoons are terribly familiar to me, because I've seen their style before. They are unmistakably Ted Rall's. Ted does not draw on paper anymore, he paints on the wall. They are images of anger and defiance, of fists pumped in the air. One image has become iconic, so much so that even the shortwave talks about it. That image is of Sarah Palin hanging from a noose. The image gives me hope, but it also makes me pray to God every day that nothing ever happens to Ted.

The light is running out of charge. I must stop writing now, but I will write again tomorrow. I'm going now to curl up with my friends for warmth, because there is no heat and it's autumn, soon to be winter. Good night.

NYC Appearance

Just a reminder to New Yorkers: I'll be at the 92nd Street Y on Wednesday night, along with Roseanne Barr, Monica Crowley et al., to discuss the outcome of tomorrow's presidential election. For details click on the entry the "Events" sidebar to the right of the blog.

Coming in an Hour or Two

Stay tuned. David is putting the finishing touches on "Death Cab for Sarah," my second stab at the animated editorial cartoon format. I'll post it here and on YouTube as soon as I have it in my hot little server.

Sneak preview: Against all odds, John McCain wins the presidency. But a certain ambitious former hockey mom from Alaska has designs to take his place. Once she sets her eye on the big job, nothing will stand in her way...not even murder.

Obama

Barack Obama could not be more wrong about the war against the people of Afghanistan. No country has successfully invaded another one since the 19th century and, believe me, Afghanistan--of all places!--isn't going to be the first.

Barack Obama is wrong about Iraq. We don't need a negotiated settlement. Immediate withdrawal is the only prudent, sane, and rational solution to a problem that we shouldn't have created in the first place.

Barack Obama doesn't seem to understand how bad the economy is, or that nothing short of radical solutions--like my idea to bail out homeowners and renters--has a prayer of working. A national infrastructure program--I'd start with high-speed rail--would be nice, too.

Barack Obama has been too silent on the pressing moral issue of our time--torture. Nothing demonstrates how badly our values have been corrupted than the fact that our government has legalized torture, and that the American people never talk about it.

I am going to vote for Barack Obama tomorrow morning.

Normally, I am not one to vote for a candidate with whom I disagree on so many key issues. Because Al Gore was so close to W. on so many issues in 2000, I cast my vote for Ralph Nader. This time, however, is different for me.

Riding the New York subway, I see so many African-American commuters wearing Obama buttons. Around the Obama button table at 7th and 34th, a nervous and excited crowd, mostly black, gathers every day. They can feel it--they might get one of their own people (albeit not a descendant of slaves) into the White House. I'm voting for Obama for them--because, if I don't, I'll never be able to look black people in the eye again.

I read a recent poll that shows Obama polling 51 percent of white men. Frankly, it's no big deal that black people are voting for Obama. THe fact that so many white guys are willing to reach outside their comfort zone or, better yet--have black people inside their comfort zone--sends a message to blacks. We white guys aren't all a bunch of racist shits. Many of us, yes. But not all.

Obama's Muslim background--yes, he did grow up in Indonesia, he did hear the call to prayer every morning, and had a Muslim father--will also send a clear message to the world that America is prepared to renounce the Muslim-bashing (and -torturing, and -murdering) policies of the past eight years. Symbolism matters. The next time I travel abroad, I won't have to explain why "we" elected a neofascist moron as president (or allowed him to steal the presidency).

Someone drew an editorial cartoon of John McCain's face with "Best if used before 2000" stamped across his face. McCain is well past his due date though, truth be told, he just doesn't have the calm, measured, careful temperment of a president. He is rash and emotional and, obviously, doesn't know shit about personnel decisions. As president, he would be a disaster. As president, he would not last long. Sarah Palin would likely succeed him in a short time. That thought alone should be enough for Republican voters to cast their vote for the Libertarian candidate, or simply stay home.

So I am voting for Barack Obama, not because he's the best candidate, or even the best of the original field (that was John Edwards, with or without his horniness). I'm voting for him because Obama means a symbolic change, and that's a change we need.

Don't be surprised, however, if I'm as hard (or harder) on the Democrats than I was on Bush and the Republicans. Republicans, after all, are evil. Democrats know better, and I expect more of them. I was brutally hard on Bill Clinton, although it's largely forgotten now (I'm working on expanded cartoon archives that will eventually go back to 1991, and you'll see how mean I was). You wouldn't believe how many hate emails I get talking about how I was OK with Clinton, but not Bush. As if. But I digress.

There's a lot to dislike about Obama's accommodationist, wimpy self. But I will toast his victory just the same.

As Shah Massood said--he was the Northern Alliance warlord who united the Afghan resistance to the Soviet invasion in the 1980s--first, we kill the Russians. Then we kill each other.

Vote for Obama. Then fight for real change.