Thursday, July 17, 2008
Can cartoonists go too far? Yes. Should we go too far? Yes
The New Yorker's controversial cover and Steve Bell's recent Obama cartoon (right)
Irony is a difficult beast to control. Your intention as a cartoonist may be perfectly clear to you, but how some psycho in Toadsuck, Nebraska, is going to read your cartoon is anyone's guess, and the psycho's privilege, and you can never second guess a psycho, as was demonstrated in the Coen brothers' film No Country for Old Men. Psychos tend to take things very literally and often carry around captive bolts powered by large canisters of compressed air, especially in the US.
So should we tread warily, lest we are misunderstood? Of course we should. Cartoonists are some of the most painstaking, careful, shy and sensitive people on earth, yet we do play with fire, toying with other people's (and of course our own) most deeply held beliefs and most cherished illusions. Is it possible to go too far? Of course it is? Should we go too far? Of course we should. That's what makes our job so interesting. There's no better feeling than, having taken a risk in a drawing, seeing the thing in print and knowing it works. The converse is also true, which is why I work in a bunker on the south coast.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jul/16/pressandpublishing.barackobama
Judge: Man dressed as penis must apologize
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| By DENNIS YUSKO
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| SARATOGA SPRINGS -- A 19-year-old man must make an apology to the city of Saratoga Springs for dressing as an inflatable 6-foot penis and then parading across SPAC's stage at the high school's graduation last month. |
Calvin Morett of 337 Pyramid Pine Estates must also pay to have the letter published in the Saratogian newspaper as part of a City Court sentence that calls for him to pay $95 in court fees and perform 24 hours of community service. Morett had previously pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct, a violation.
The sentence draws the curtain on Morett's case. His appearance at the June 26 graduation at Saratoga Performing Arts Center caused, a stir and a video of the incident later appeared on YouTube.
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=703993&category=&BCCode=
Sphere: Related ContentReuters/Zogby Index Slips As Economic Worries Grow
Survey shows just 10% give U.S. economic policy a positive rating; Three in four believe the nation is headed on the wrong track
UTICA, New York – Likely voters are increasingly dissatisfied with U.S. economic policy as worries about inflation and a slowing U.S. economy leave Americans in a dismal mood, a new Reuters/Zogby poll shows. The Reuters/Zogby Index, which measures American confidence, has fallen slightly to 88.7, down from 90.4 in June, and continues to remain just above the all-time low of 87.7 it hit in March. The Reuters/Zogby Index includes 10 poll questions that gauge perception of the state of the country and the economy. The telephone survey of 1,039 likely voters nationwide was conducted July 9-13, 2008. It carries a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percentage points. July June May April March Feb. Jan. Dec. Nov. Oct. Sept. Aug. Reuters/Zogby Index 88.7 90.4 87.9 95.5 87.7 99.3 94.2 97.3 94.9 96.0 98.8 100 Nine in 10 likely voters dissatisfied with U.S. economic policy Dissatisfaction with U.S. economic policy continues to increase, with 89% who now view the nation's economic policy as fair or poor, up from 84% who said the same last month – 55% now give U.S. economic policy a "poor" rating. The vast majority of Democrats (96%) and political independents (91%) have a negative view of the nation's economic policy, while 80% of Republicans now share those feelings, an increase from 71% who said the same in June. Likely voters also maintain their pessimistic views about the direction in which the country is headed, with 73% who believe the nation is on the wrong track, compared to 74% who said the same in June. Democrats are most likely to take a negative view of the country's direction, with 84% who now say the U.S. is on the wrong track, a slight decrease from 86% who said the same in June. The vast majority of independents take a similar view, with 82% who said the country is on the wrong track, falling from 86% who said the same last month. More than half of Republicans now believe the nation is headed on the wrong track (55%), up from 51% in June. http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1528
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Eccentric dude puts lyrics to famous film scores (like Batman!)
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David Markland, the Captain/Author of LA Metblogs (formerly Metroblogging LA) says:
This dude, Andrew Goldenberg, has a bunch of music videos he's made putting lyrics to every note of some of the best known film themes of our times. Absolutely brilliant. Take note of Batman and Back to the Future especially!Odd L.A. Spotlight: Andrew Goldenberg [LA Metblogs]
High Corn Prices Cast Shadow Over Ethanol Plants
by Robert Siegel 
AltraBiofuel CEO Ken DeCubellis says the company must watch its costs very carefully. "We are one bad day of ethanol pricing from having to decide to shut the plant down," he says of the company's Indiana facility.
Profit margins for ethanol producers over the past year have been slim, and sometimes the companies have gone into the red. The spike in corn prices in June reflects the flooding that occurred in the Midwest. Courtesy of Purdue University.
AltraBiofuels opened its $170 million ethanol plant in Cloverdale, Ind., in April.
All Things Considered, July 15, 2008 · A rush to cash in on ethanol has slowed as soaring corn prices squeeze profit margins for producers of the alternative fuel. At a recent high of $7 per bushel, the corn used to make ethanol has tripled in price since many plants were built two years ago, and some facilities have been shut down or put on hold.
Ethanol took off in 2006, in response to two federal policies.
One policy was longstanding: Most gasoline had to include an additive that would oxygenate it, make it burn cleaner and reduce air pollution. The other policy was new: The government decided not to shield the oil companies against lawsuits over the additive that they had been using — methyl tertiary-butyl ether, or MTBE, which was found to contaminate groundwater.
So there had to be a different additive. Ethanol, a type of alcohol that is distilled from corn, fit the bill. And the oil companies could get a 51-cent-per-gallon tax credit for using ethanol.
The rush was on, and producers moved quickly to get ethanol plants online.
But recent ethanol news from the Corn Belt has been a lot less upbeat, as many ethanol-plant projects have stalled.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92559699
Sphere: Related ContentRadar tracked unidentified craft near Crawford, group's report says
Federal Aviation Administration radar appears to confirm the presence of unidentified aircraft on Jan. 8 over the Stephenville-Dublin area, with at least one appearing to head toward President Bush's Crawford Ranch, the same night that dozens of people reported seeing UFOs, according to a report released Thursday by a national group that studies reports of unidentified flying objects.
According to the Mutual UFO Network report, the FAA radar indicated that several craft were moving in the same compass direction and time frame as those cited by Erath County residents. The craft were not military and did not have transponders that relay information about themselves to radar operators.
Radar tracked a Crawford-bound craft for more than an hour, according to the MUFON report. Witnesses said they saw two large glowing amber lights similar in size and color to the lights on the back of a school bus.
The object seemed to be stationary or moving at speeds of less than 60 mph most of the time, but at one point it accelerated to 532 mph in 30 seconds, according to the report. It did not seem to reach the property.
"The object was traveling to the southeast on a direct course towards the Crawford Ranch," the report states.
http://www.star-telegram.com/northeast/story/756596.html
Sphere: Related ContentProgressive geek looking for 3,000 people to help him win Kansas election against dinosauric anti-science/pro-surveillance dude
Sean Tevis is a geeky geek from Kansas who's fed up with his state rep, an anti-abortion, anti-evolution, pro-censorship, pro-surveillance, anti-gay incumbent. Tevis -- an unknown -- is polling within three points of his opponent, and is looking to raise some Internet dough to kick this guy's (extremely tight) ass, and to promote his cause, he's made a fantastic, XKCD-style toon called "It's Like A Flamewar with a Forum Troll, but with an Eventual Winner." Specifically, he's looking to raise $8.34 from 3,000 people (no state rep in Kansas history has ever had more than 644 donors). I'm in*. Who's with me? Link Sphere: Related Content
Frantic rescue effort saves doll, not baby
 True to life ... Vynette Cernik with one of her dolls. |
By Glenis Green
FRANTIC police smashed a window to rescue a seemingly unconscious baby from a locked vehicle in Queensland last week only to find it was an extremely lifelike doll.
The embarrassing mistake, made in regional Gympie, is not an isolated incident and passionate creator of the "reborn" baby dolls Vynette Cernik knows just how easily they can be mistaken for the real thing.
Ms Cernik said last week's case of mistaken identity mirrored a similar incident in the US when the window of a new Hummer was broken by police trying to rescue a "baby" that turned out to be a doll belonging to the owner's wife.
Selling for up to $1000, the painstakingly hand-painted dolls were so lifelike with eyelashes, fingernails, milk spots and wispy hair that they were constantly fooling people, Ms Cernik said.
Elizabeth Dole proposes naming AIDS bill after homophobe Jesse Helms
SA 5074. Mrs. DOLE submitted an amendment intended to be proposed by her to the bill S. 2731, to authorize appropriations for fiscal years 2009 through 2013 to provide assistance to foreign countries to combat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and for other purposes; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows: On page 1, line 5, strike ''and Henry J. Hyde'' and insert '', Henry J. Hyde, and Jesse Helms''.
Thousands died because of Helms's bigotry. There are so many reasons why Liddy needs to be defeated, and this only adds to the pile.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Flashback: McCain joked about how much women love to be raped.
The blog Rum, Romanism and Rebellion pulls out a 1986 Tucson Citizen article recounting a joke about rape told by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). Speaking to the National League of Cities and Towns in Washington, DC, McCain allegedly said:
Did you hear the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly and left to die? When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, "Where is that marvelous ape?"
McCain was swiftly criticized by women's groups. A spokeswoman for NOW in Arizona said the organization's members were "incensed by his cruel and sexist remark." McCain said he did not "recall" telling the joke. More recently, the McCain campaign scheduled a fundraiser with a Texas oilman who compared rape to the weather while running for governor. "As long as it's inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it," said Clayton Williams in 1990. After public outcry, the event was "postponed."
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/15/mccain-finds-rape-hilarious/
Sphere: Related ContentBring Me the Head of Osama bin Laden
by: Steve Weissman
Osama bin Laden.
(Artwork by Mitchell Marco)
If Osama bin Laden consciously set out to lure the United States into an ever-widening, never-ending and militarily unwinnable war, President George W. Bush is providing exactly the war the bearded one wanted. Start with Iraq, where for all his talk of military success, Mr. Bush has just failed to get Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to accept a long-term Status of Forces Agreement. The Iraqis, it turns out, stubbornly insist on a timetable for withdrawing US troops and a commitment to block the Israelis from using Iraqi airspace to bomb Iran. Such are the political fruits of imperial adventure in a world that has long rejected colonial rule. Nor should it come as a surprise to hear our badly overstretched military brass echoing Barack Obama in Monday's New York Times. It seems that everyone in the know now wants to withdraw combat forces from the Iraqi quagmire to send them to fight the resurgent Taliban and opium-rich warlords in an Afghan morass.
Move on to Iran, where the New Yorker's Sy Hersh has caught Washington sponsoring what can only be called terrorist attacks within the country, while Mr. Bush now tells the Israelis to go ahead with their preparations for possible aerial strikes against Tehran's nuclear enrichment and other facilities.
On to Afghanistan, where the CIA's hand-picked Hamid Karzai has predictably failed to become a viable national leader, mostly because his fellow Pashtun tribesmen see him for what he is - the Afghan face of a foreign military occupation. US and allied casualties now surpass the monthly totals in Iraq, while our supposed friends in Pakistan's military intelligence are widely suspected of sponsoring last week's terrorist bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul.
And so to Pakistan, where the Pentagon is systematically destabilizing the newly elected and highly fragile civilian government, as the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and its task force sit menacingly off the Pakistani coast.
Allahu Akhbar! What more could bin Laden want?
http://www.truthout.org/article/bring-me-head-osama-bin-laden
Obama's Multi-Million Dollar Question: What About The Hillraiser Holdouts?
Before Hillary Clinton suspended her presidential campaign, the chattering classes were doing what they do best: speculating, specifically about her 18 million voters. Once the New York Democrat bowed out, would her fiercest female supporters "get in line" and support Barack Obama? This question, and others like it, were breathlessly repeated -- as though the simple act of repetition could will a conflict, and a great story, into being.
Barely one month after Clinton's exit from the race, however, the power of the women's vote to stir up trouble for Democrats has become a decidedly less certain affair. While Salon's Rebecca Traister has become an invaluable source for anyone who wants to understand the mixed feelings that still persist among some Clinton supporters, Barack Obama has opened up a double-digit lead over John McCain among women (a trend that started the very week after Clinton brought her campaign to a close). That advantage is sticking, at least according to a new Quinnipiac poll released Tuesday, which showed Obama with a 14-point lead over McCain among female voters.
But even if the process of healing is well underway in the Democratic Party at large, there is less clarity about the status of the "unity project" when it comes to the smaller circle of high-dollar Democratic donors -- many of whom originally backed Clinton. Now, as John McCain begins posting his best-ever financial numbers while the Obama campaign appears to be conceding that small, internet donations can't power them all the way to November 4, the absence of some key "Hillraisers" from the current Obama fundraising effort has become conspicuous. Even a few such holdouts, should they stay on the sidelines for the duration of the election, could add up to a loss of millions of dollars for the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee (which is a bit cash-poor, itself).
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/15/obamas-multi-million-doll_n_112792.html
Sphere: Related Contentquotes of the day
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that numbers of people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. . . Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty"
- Howard Zinn -
"Under the influence of politicians, masses of people tend to ascribe the responsibility for wars to those who wield power at any given time. In World War I it was the munitions industrialists; in World War II it was the psychopathic generals who were said to be guilty. This is passing the buck.
"The responsibility for wars falls solely upon the shoulders of these same masses of people, for they have all the necessary means to avert war in their own hands. In part by their apathy, in part by their passivity, and in part actively, these same masses of people make possible the catastrophes under which they themselves suffer more than anyone else. To stress this guilt on the part of the masses of people, to hold them solely responsible, means to take them seriously. On the other hand, to commiserate masses of people as victims, means to treat them as small, helpless children. The former is the attitude held by genuine freedom fighters; the latter that attitude held by power-thirsty politicians."
- Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism -
".....if by a liberal they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, their civil liberties.. if that is what they mean by a "liberal" then I am proud to be a liberal."
- John F. Kennedy
"A society whose citizens refuse to see and investigate the facts, who refuse to believe that their government and their media will routinely lie to them and fabricate a reality contrary to verifiable facts, is a society that chooses and deserves the Police State Dictatorship it's going to get."
- Ian Williams Goddard -
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IRAQ: Unrest Surfaces in Fallujah Again
By Ali al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail
FALLUJAH, Jul 16 (IPS) - Security has collapsed again in Fallujah, despite U.S. military claims.
Local militias supported by U.S. forces claim to have "cleansed" the city, 70 km to the west of Baghdad, of all insurgency. But the sudden resignation of the city's chief of police, Colonel Fayssal al-Zoba'i, has appeared as one recent sign of growing unrest.
Authorities may have controlled the media better than the violence.
"Assassinations never stopped in Fallujah, but the media seems unwilling to cover the actual situation here," a human rights activist in Fallujah, speaking on terms of anonymity given the tense situation, told IPS. "The two bomb blasts that killed six policemen earlier this month and another two that killed three on the weekend seem to have terminated the silence."
People in Fallujah say they still suffer despite the relative improvement in the security situation. 'Relative' is the key word here, because the improvement is measured against two massive U.S. military operations in 2004 that killed thousands in the city, and displaced hundreds of thousands.
"Fallujah was slaughtered by the Americans when her people decided to fight, and then were suffocated when they decided to reduce the fighting against the occupiers," former intelligence officer Major Ahmed al-Alwani told IPS. "There was strong resistance against American occupation forces since May 2003, but it was the Americans who pointed their guns at the innocent civilians and their houses.
"When the American military plans failed, they decided to hire local tribal militias to do the job for them," Alwani said, referring to the 'Awakening Group' militia created by the U.S. military. "Those also failed, despite the executions and the crimes they committed against people."
Many people throughout Iraq complain of the brutality and unlawful behaviour of these Awakening Groups. Members of these groups are paid 300 dollars per month by the U.S. military.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43205
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