Unhappy anniversary

5 years. Hundreds of thousands dead. Trillions wasted. Sigh...

Toon: Future Stimulus Packages

This is one of those kitchen sink cartoons where I took a bunch of stuff that always pisses me off and wrapped it into a critique of a new thing that pisses me off. That new thing is the mass delusion behind the stimulus package: that giving a few hundred dollars in rebates to every taxpayer at one time—and encouraging them to go out and shop with it—will somehow magically Fix the Economy.

A few hundred dollars doesn't mean squat when you're about to lose your house because you've been conned into a subprime mortgage. A few hundred dollars doesn't mean squat when you don't have a job. Maybe you can buy food and heat for a month or two, but what about the next month? Also, the last thing most Americans need to do with their money is spend it--most need to pay off debt with it.

As for those other things that piss me off, here are some notes about the four other stupid quick fix stimulus packages:

1. The Education Rebate. Remember Bush's horrible SOTU address last year, when he spent half his speech randomly singing the praises of those awful bogus "Baby Einstein" videos? If Bush is so misguided as to ignore the research that says no child under two should spend ANY time in front of any type of television or computer screen, I figured he might be deluded into thinking that one Baby Einstein DVD per student of any age could solve our educational crisis.

   By the way, I thought about somehow trying to explain or indicate why this girl was a high school dropout, but then I thought it was beside the point. Maybe she went to a crappy school and fell through the cracks. Maybe she got pregnant and didn't get the support she needed to stay in school. Maybe she had such horrible underfunded overcrowded schools since she was young that she never developed a love of learning. Who knows?

2. The Hunger Healer. This is real, actually. Back during the initial stages of the Afghan war, the U.S. tried to assuage/offset any small guilt about dropping all those bright yellow cluster bombs on civilians by dropping bright yellow packages of food along with the bombs. Food that looked like bombs, often burst or spoiled on landing, led children into minefields, and made many Afghans very sick. And yes, each packet contained PB&J. Which is fine if you know what that is and how to eat it and you don't have peanut allergies. Here are some quotes from a Boston Globe piece ("Afghan Food Drops Found to Do Little Good") about the backlash to this ill-conceived faux-humanitarian effort:

   The Bush administration's much publicized food ration airdrop in northern Afghanistan - hailed by the Pentagon as a way to feed starving residents while winning their loyalty - achieved neither goal in many targeted areas, military experts, aid workers, and a report by retired US special forces officers now conclude.

   ...The bright yellow plastic-wrapped meals ruptured upon impact because they were dropped from too high an altitude and spoiled, endangering the Afghans who ate them, the report by the retired officers said.

   Moreover, the meals often were collected by local warlords and sold for a profit at Afghan markets and seldom reached hungry families, according to aid workers. In other cases, Afghans were lured by the bright packages into minefields or confused them with cluster bombs of the same color.

3. The Nature Stimulator. CFL bulbs are great. They're all I have in my house, and they sure do save a little bit of energy. But promoting the false idea that every American making one TINY change is somehow going to be enough to stave off global disaster is ridiculous. Sure we should all do our part--but we need much more drastic and widespread change as a society to make a real difference. We need real regulations on corporate polluters and real tough emissions standards and smaller more efficient vehicles and better public transport and a whole lot more than just a CFL bulb in every house. Etc.
4. The Peace Patch. This is just in reference to all those Iraqis who were supposed to love their U.S. liberators. It's kind of hard to love the people who shot your innocent husband for driving slightly too fast past a checkpoint you just set up at random.

As always, I'm just full of cheer. Sigh...

Toon: Badly Needed Jamming Devices

Badly Needed Jamming Devices

Cell phone silencers are just the beginning... let's make jammers for harassers, Hummers and warmongers, too!

We're so sorry... that you don't understand why we had to kill your kids! Part 2...

A few weeks ago, I did a cartoon about the U.S. trying to spin civilian casualties in Afghanistan.

Well, once again, the U.S. is upset about civilian casualties in Afghanistan. And once again, they're not upset that the U.S. military killed seven children in a "targeted" airstrike, but that those unreasonable Afghan civilians just don't understand it's not REALLY the U.S.'s fault--there was nothing they could do! From the NY Times this morning ("7 Children Killed in Airstrike in Afghanistan"):

Seven children were killed during an airstrike by the United States-led coalition against a religious compound thought to be a Qaeda sanctuary in remote eastern Afghanistan, the coalition said Monday.

The death of the children on Sunday may well add to the crescendoing anger many Afghans feel about civilian casualties from American and NATO military operations. More than 130 civilians have been killed in airstrikes and shootings in the past six months, according to Afghan authorities.

The article goes on to say that the toll may rise to about 180 once the death toll from another airstrike are confirmed. But as for these murdered children, the U.S. had stock apologies and little sympathy:

The air raid against the religious compound was a targeted strike rather than a pitched battle. “We are truly sorry for the innocent lives lost in this attack,” said Maj. Chris Belcher of the United States Army about Sunday’s raid against several structures, including a school and mosque, in Paktika Province, near the border with Pakistan.

And

The American ambassador, William B. Wood, said the coalition went to extraordinary lengths to avoid civilian casualties. “Unfortunately, when the Taliban are using civilians in this tactical way, instances of civilian casualties, just like instances of casualties from friendly fire, cannot be completely avoided,” he said.

Consider those hearts and minds WON.

Crossposted at Search & Destroy: The Rallblog.

New Toon: War Marketeers!

Inspired by a quote from a recent New York Times piece, "Civilian Casualties Undermine Allies' War on Taliban":

The subject of civilian casualties was the source of intense discussion on Wednesday in Brussels when the NATO secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, met with the North Atlantic Council, the top representatives of the coalition. But the conversation was less about how to reduce casualties, according to participants, than about how to explain them to European governments.

And...

“If your mortars are not getting you out, you call in close air support and that will be less precise,” said one senior American official who follows the action in Afghanistan closely. “We know that the Taliban hide in villages. The job that we have not done as well is making it clear to European publics that it’s the Taliban who are exploiting the civilians.”

In other words: we don't need to try harder to avoid killing, torturing and bombing the crap out civilians, we just need to spin it better!

New Toons: Abstinence Education, Shock Prez + Apocalypse Bob

A new federal study shows that abstinence education has no effect whatsoever on delaying sexual activity. Shocking!

Also, there really is a (comedy) movie called Killer Condom: The Rubber That Rubs You Out, though I haven't seen it myself. OK, so maybe New York charging cars $8 to cut down on pollution and traffic and improve public transport won't stave off environmental apocalypse, but it's a start. (Personally, I'd rather see NO personal cars in the city—maybe then I'd be brave enough to take my bike into Manhattan!). A sequel to 2005's "Sick Confessions of a Serial Bomber!" I did it before I went away on vacation, and it already feels pretty dated. Ah well.

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P.P.S. My first book collection, Attack of the 50-Foot Mikhaela!, goes on sale in just a few short weeks!

Three new toons: Trans workplace discrimination, NYPD spies & predatory credit-card lenders

My goodness, I don't know what I was thinking but I did three this week (four if you count one for Lambda Legal that will be up soon)! Yikes! Here we go:

This cartoon was inspired by the recent re-firing of longtime Largo, Florida City Manager Steve Stanton after Stanton announced he planned to transition to life as a woman and change his name to Susan. (I only say "he" because Stanton is, as I understand it, still using that pronoun for now.) I say "re-firing" because the Largo City Commission held a hearing after its initial discriminatory decision to fire Stanton, and made the same bad decision again despite testimony in his favor.

Stanton's firing is far from unusual, so I decided to make the cartoon about anti-transgender workplace discrimination in general, rather than focus on that case. I'm not sure how many people realize that in most places in this country, employers are legally permitted to fire transgender and gay employees on the basis of their gender identity or sexual orientation. We need a national ENDA (employment non-discrimination act) and now!

I haven't seen the new documentary "Maxed Out" yet, but I did just read a terrifying must-read investigative series in the Boston Globe, "Debtor's Hell: Preying on Red-Ink America", that takes a close look at unscrupulous debt collection practices.

Finally, it came out in the New York Times last week that the NYPD spent tons of time and money placing spies in non-violent peace groups around the country before the 2004 RNC. The cartoon was inspired by this bit:

Marco Ceglie, who performs as Monet Oliver dePlace in Billionaires for Bush, said he had suspected that the group was under surveillance by federal agents — not necessarily police officers — during weekly meetings in a downtown loft and at events around the country in the summer of 2004.

“It was a running joke that some of the new faces were 25- to 32-year-old males asking, ‘First name, last name?’ ” Mr. Ceglie said. “Some people didn’t care; it bothered me and a couple of other leaders, but we didn’t want to make a big stink because we didn’t want to look paranoid. We applied to the F.B.I. under the Freedom of Information Act to see if there’s a file, but the answer came back that ‘we cannot confirm or deny.’ ”

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New Toon: The Addict & the Enabler

I have nothing against Nancy Pelosi, but I totally disagree with her decision to push through that "anti-war" war funding bill. Congress has the power to stop this war right now if it wants to by refusing to fund it. It's nice that the spending bill includes a pullout date, but the pullout date is in September 2008, more than a year away. How many more Americans and Iraqis will be dead by then? How many more billions will we have spent on an unjust and evil war--billions that could have gone to education, health care, social services, fighting poverty, battling AIDS, you name it... ? Why are the supposedly anti-war Democrats giving Bush even that much more time to mess up Iraq, now that they finally admit how wrong this whole mess has been?

All of this seems to be wrapped up in the idea that sending more troops to die is the best way to support the troops. If you believe the war is wrong, that makes no sense. Refusing to fund the war isn't refusing to support the troops--a bill could be written that would fund only a pullout, no?

P.S. I know, I know. I realize I'm just angry and griping and idealistic, and Pelosi is just doing what she has to do, and they're aren't enough votes for an earlier pullout and Bush is most likely going to veto this thing anyway. But I'm still frustrated with the entire Congress--the vast majority of Americans have been against the war for some time now, but instead of a pullout all we've gotten is a surge.

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New Toon: Supporting the Troops, the Bush Way

For some of my older toons on Don't Ask, Don't Tell, see "Patriotism, Pentagon-Style" and "Letters of the Law". It's always struck me as particularly painful that under Don't Ask, Don't Tell, LGB service members can't communicate honestly and openly with their sweethearts for fear of being outed.

For another recent cartoon on Don't Ask, Don't Tell, see August, and for another one on the conditions at Walter Reed, see Matt.

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New Toon: "Dick Cheney's Magic Universe"

Dick Cheney's bizarre insistence that the war is going well makes even less sense than the weird stories I used to tell my extensive collection of My Little Ponies as a child.

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