Right Wing Syllogism Du Jour

Shorter NY Times Caucus blog on conservative reactions to the pay-for-play scandal in Illinois: Obama is from Illinois. Blagojevich is from Illinois. Blagojevich is a scumbug. Therefore Obama must be a scumbag.

Repeat ad nauseum until 2012 or until something else rises from the murk. At least it gets Sean Hannity off of Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright. For a little while.

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Wanderlost: Search Party Page 14

Click the image to read the whole cartoon.

Yep. Black and white. So it goes.

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Scahill Tries to be Heard Through Din of "Change"

Change change change change change hope hope hope hope hope change change cha -

I'm sorry - did you say something, Jeremy Scahill?

Anyone who took the time to cut past Barack Obama's campaign rhetoric of "change" and bringing an "end" to the Iraq war realized early on that the now-president-elect had a plan that boiled down to a down-sizing and rebranding of the occupation. While he emphasized his pledge to withdraw U.S. "combat forces" from Iraq in 16 months (which may or may not happen), he has always said that he intends to keep "residual forces" in place for the foreseeable future.

It's an interesting choice of terms. "Residual" is defined as "the quantity left over at the end of a process." This means that the forces Obama plans to leave in Iraq will remain after he has completed his "withdrawal" plan. No matter how Obama chooses to label the forces he keeps in Iraq, the fact is, they will be occupation forces.

Announcing his national security team this week, Obama reasserted his position. "I said that I would remove our combat troops from Iraq in 16 months, with the understanding that it might be necessary — likely to be necessary — to maintain a residual force to provide potential training, logistical support, to protect our civilians in Iraq." While some have protrayed this as Obama going back on his campaign pledge, it is not. What is new is that some people seem to just now be waking up to the fact that Obama never had a comprehensive plan to fully end the occupation.

Bu-bu-bu-but - change! Changey change. Hopey change hopey?

Answering anti-war liberal critics who seem surprised that Obama isn't Dennis Kucinich, Scahill parses Obama's voting record, his public statements, and the comments of his foreign policy campaign advisers. Worth a full read.

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Wanderlost Notice

That's right. December 9th. Next Wednesday. How will this be accomplished? Simple: By taking a break from political cartooning.

Said break will last only a month. I am taking advantage of the holiday season to relax a little and focus on catching up with the "Search Party" story line.

I'm also thinking of some changes for In Contempt. I won't say what those are, as they are a little vague right now. But my thoughts are grounded in my view that political cartooning as we know it is moribund. I want to work on something new, though recognizably political and coherent with what I have done with In Contempt so far. That's all I should say for now. Like I said - "vague."

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Eff The 90's

Have you been watching President-elect Barack Obama's appointments to his administration with a sense of confusion? A feeling of anti-nostalgia? Crying out, "Why all the ClintonAdmin re-treads!?"

Steve Fraser is your man. Writing in The Nation, Fraser echoes a familiar complaint by liberals about recent appointments, registers dismay at the nearly uniform "neo-liberal" ideology, and compares the group think to the greater diversity that stocked Franklin Roosevelt's cabinet during a transition period frought with peril.

Worth reading for historical boning up, I suppose, but I was more interested in Fraser's call for bolder action:

Under the present dispensation, the bailout state makes the government the handmaiden of the financial sector. Under a new one, the tables might be turned. But who will speak for that option within the limited councils of the Obama team?

A real democratic nationalization of the banks--good value for our money rather than good money to add to their value--should be part of the policy agenda up for discussion in the Obama era. As things now stand, the public supplies the loans and the investment capital, but the key decisions about how they are to be deployed remain in private hands. A democratic version of nationalizing the financial system would transfer these critical decisions to new institutions created by the Congress and designed to pursue public, not private, objectives. How to subject the flow of credit and investment capital to public control ought to be on the drawing boards if we are to look beyond the old New Deal to a new one.

Or, for instance, if we are to bail out the auto industry, which we should--millions of jobs, businesses, communities, and what's left of once powerful and proud unions are at stake--then why not talk about its nationalization too? Why not create a representative body of workers, consumers, environmentalists, suppliers and other interested parties to supervise the industry's reorganization and retooling to produce, just as the president-elect says he wants, new green means of transportation--and not just cars?

Why not apply the same model to the rehabilitation of the nation's infrastructure; indeed, why not to the reindustrialization of the country as a whole? If, as so many commentators are now claiming, what lies ahead is the kind of massive, crippling deflation characteristic of such crises, then why not consider creating democratic mechanisms to impose an incomes policy on wages and prices that works against that deflation?

Why not, in effect, assert greater control by the people over the economic forces that affect them? "Cuz that way lies socialism! Aaagh!" Onoz. Heavens to betsy. And, well, probably not. More like neo-social democracy.

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In Contempt (12/2/2008): Change is Coming!

Click the image above to see the full size cartoon.

And yes, Virginia, I am back on a regular schedule. Hal-lay-loo.

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