Washington Celebrates Tax Cuts for the Wealthy
While the unemployment rate jumps

Now, let's get one thing straight: this bill is not going to create jobs. And even if it did, it wouldn't create nearly as many jobs as have been lost during the first few years of the Bush administration. From Salon.com ("What the Bush tax cut could have bought"):

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, for instance, said the new measure, which includes $330 billion in tax breaks over the next 10 years, would create "more than a million jobs." Many economists dispute Fleischer's analysis, but even if it turned out to be true, given the overall job loss during Bush's administration -- 2.7 million jobs in the private sector alone -- it would still leave us in the red, job-wise.

(New jobless claims are coming in at over 400,000 a week. And speaking of unemployment, a close friend just lost his copyediting job due to budget cuts. I don't suppose I have any New York City readers who work in publishing or journalism who know of any openings? Please?)

That Salon article also has a handy rundown of things those billions COULD have been spent on (instead of tax breaks on corporate dividends), such as: health care for the uninsured, education, ending homelessness, and so on.

But what are we getting instead? Cuts in taxes on dividends (which only apply to stock-holders). I have to say I was a bit confused by this quote from Bush (in the article about the cuts in today's Globe): "'Reducing the tax rate on dividends will also increase the wealth effect around America and will help our markets,' Bush said." What is this mysterious "wealth effect"? Is that like saying that if a poor person stands next to a really rich person, on AVERAGE they're both wealthy?

Oh, and the child tax credit for low-income families? Forget about it.

See also Bob Herbert in the NYTimes on the "Windfall for the Wealthy" bill, unemployment, and more ("Caught in the Squeeze").

Cartoons I totally agree with department: Scott Bateman on why Bush is evil, not stupid. And Scott Bateman and Dan Wasserman on tax cuts and fundraising.

Cartoons I vehemently disagree with department: Apparently, anyone who doesn't believe more tax cuts will rescue the economy has mad cow disease. (I might venture the opposite, except I think it's an overused metaphor).

New Cartoon: Strange, but True...

The topic of this cartoon probably comes as no surprise considering my post yesterday. If I recall correctly, when Clinton lied about having sex with Monica Lewinsky it was front-page news for months and months. But it seems to me that Bush's lies are more dangerous to the country and world as a whole, but he just gets away with it... sigh.

Lies, lies, and much worse lies

This is from last week, but I was away being sick. Anyway, the Boondocks makes a really good point: why is there such a huge fuss over the lies told by a reporter, but no one seems to be making a big deal over the lies told by our goddamned President? (Like those big lies about weapons of mass destruction and tax cuts helping the economy? or the lie about how Bush HAD to wear a flight suit and fly a jet in order to make his speech on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln? or the thousands of other obfuscations, fibs, stretched truths and outright lies that he's made throughout his presidency?) Personally, it seems to me that we should hold the President to the same standards as we hold reporters...

Anyway, I'm back and there WILL be a cartoon this week.

Required reading: the news in type

My job is to design graphs, charts and other information graphics, so you can probably imagine how much I enjoy this website, updated almost every day with a new "news" graphic...

Good news: a visit with Howard Cruse
Bad news: no cartoon this week

Sorry about the cartoons, but I'll be back next week, folks, I'm still dealing with illness.

In more positive news, I had a wonderful visit this weekend despite my illness with a big hero of mine, legendary gay/underground cartoonist Howard Cruse (and his charming dog Lulu). I've said this before, but if you haven't read his masterpiece of a graphic novel Stuck Rubber Baby (which to be very simplistic chronicles the struggles of a young man involved in the Civil Rights movement in 1960s Alabama to come to terms with his sexuality), run, do not walk, to your nearest comics shop/bookseller (if you're not convinced, read these reviews) or better yet, get a signed copy from the artist himself. For lighter fare you can check out Wendel All Together and for immediate gratification, read the sad story of Jerry Mack, or find out Why We are Losing the War on Art.

A few takes on the Jayson Blair mess

Bob Herbert has a good column in today's Times ("Truth, Lies and Subtext"):

I've seen schmoozers, snoozers and high-powered losers in every venue I've been in. Most of these rogues, scoundrels and miscreants were white because most of the staffers in America's mainstream newsrooms are white. What I haven't seen in all these years was the suggestion that any of these individuals fouled up — or were put into positions where they could foul up — because they were white.

and

Mr. Blair was a first-class head case who was given a golden opportunity and responded by spreading seeds of betrayal every place he went. He betrayed his readers. He betrayed his profession. He betrayed the editors who hired and promoted him. But there was no racial component to that betrayal, any more than there was a racial component to the many betrayals of Mike Barnicle, a columnist who was forced to resign from The Boston Globe in 1998 after years of complaints about his work.

Although Mr. Barnicle is white, his journalistic sins have generally — and properly — been seen as the sins of an individual.

But the folks who delight in attacking anything black, or anything designed to help blacks, have pounced on the Blair story as evidence that there is something inherently wrong with The Times's effort to diversify its newsroom, and beyond that, with the very idea of a commitment to diversity or affirmative action anywhere.

As Mr. Herbert sums it up: "the problem with American newsrooms is too little diversity, not too much" and "discrimination in the newsroom — in hiring, in the quality of assignments and in promotions — is a much more pervasive problem than Jayson Blair's aberrant behavior."

Dan Kennedy at the Boston Phoenix has an interesting take as well--he disagrees that it had nothing at all to do with race, but emphasizes that the leniency given to white guys like Mike Barnicle and Stephen Glass had just as much to do with race and is more common. He is also much more critical of the leadership at the times, as you can guess from the piece's title: "Raines’s folly: The Jayson Blair scandal reveals some unflattering truths about the Times' hard-driving editor."

One good metaphor, and a lot of bad ones

The various tax cuts plans, elegantly summarized by Clay Bennett.

And on the other side, in a visual statement I couldn't disagree with more, Brian Fairrington pits some symbolic little white Everyguy apparently known as "Joe Taxpayer" against some evil big swine with a sword, the "Tax and Spend Liberal." David Catrow compares Bush's little Top Gun stunt to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. And while we're in the hall of over-the-top conservative visual metaphors, Gary Varvel depicts Bush's wacko right-of-rightwing judicial nominees as poor trailer home residents battered about by a tornado called "Senate Democratic Filibuster."

Some Good News, Bad News, News News

The good news: I have a job! A real job with health care and benefits and stuff. My internship ended at the Wall Street Journal Sunday, but they offered me a real job as a graphics artist. You have no idea how exciting this is.

The bad news: I'm still really sick, so no cartoon this week.

The news news: Today's Wall Street Journal has an interesting page one story on legacy admissions and the Supreme Court (this of course relates to the affirmative action case they're dealing with), "For Five Supreme Court Justices, Affirmative Action Isn't Academic:Judges or Their Kids Are College 'Legacies'"

Blogging will be slow for a while...

... I haven't been feeling well AT ALL these last few weeks, and I think I should probably be resting rather than blogging... sigh.

Church and State Getting Way Too Friendly
Discrimination A-OK, says Bush & Co.

From today's Globe ("US quietly eases rules for faith-based groups"):

The Bush administration has quietly altered regulations for the nation's leading job training program to allow faith-based organizations to use ''sacred literature,'' such as Bibles, in their federally funded programs. Civil liberties activists say the new rules blur the line between religion and government.

... In a separate action, the House is expected today to approve a change allowing private groups that run job training programs to discriminate on the basis of religion when they hire people to run them. That change, part of legislation to renew the overall program, would lift a ban that has existed in federal law for two decades... .

''The notion that you need to allow religious groups to discriminate to receive federal funds is a lie,'' said Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Newton. ''If you dip your fingers in the federal till, you can't complain if a little democracy rubs off on you.''

Hear, hear. And:

In guidelines published on April 4, the Labor Department said the job training grants ''may not be used for instruction in religion or sacred literature, worship, prayer, proselytizing, or other inherently religious practices.''

''The services provided under these grants must be secular and nonideological,'' the guidelines said then.

But in amended guidelines published in the Federal Register on April 18, the words ''sacred literature'' were removed, along with the sentence saying that the services provided must be secular and nonideological.

A Labor Department spokeswoman said there was no one available to explain why the language was changed.

What a coincidence.

Did Army chaplain Josh Llano trade baths for baptisms? (looks like: probably not)

This story is a month old, but still quite disturbing--if it's actually true. I first got wind of the below Miami Herald story in the InTheseTimes Appall-o-Meter ("Army chaplain offers baptisms, baths"):

CAMP BUSHMASTER, Iraq - In this dry desert world near Najaf, where the Army V Corps combat support system sprawls across miles of scabrous dust, there's an oasis of sorts: a 500-gallon pool of pristine, cool water.

It belongs to Army chaplain Josh Llano of Houston, who sees the water shortage, which has kept thousands of filthy soldiers from bathing for weeks, as an opportunity.

''It's simple. They want water. I have it, as long as they agree to get baptized,'' he said.

Update: according to a more recent article, Llano doesn't recall making these comments, and/or was joking. I've also heard that the reporter didn't actually interview Llano at all, but reported an overheard conversation as an interview, and that the water in question was a baptismal pool, not a general-purpose water supply tank. If I get a chance despite feeling sick right now, I'll try and see if this was resolved.

Cartoons and more on Bush's Top Gun Photo Op

I've posted before about the hypocrisy of a man who avoided service in Vietnam sending other people's kids off to die for oil. Now, after hundreds of American and thousands of Iraqi lives (and billions of dollars needed for healthcare and education, etc) have been lost in a supposed hunt for weapons of mass destruction that may not exist... Bush dons a flight suit and helmet, ready to appear on newspaper front pages under the headline "Top Gun." Election 2004, here we come. (For photos, see Robert's Virtual Soapbox).

This was such a disgusting display that it prompted Story Minute cartoonist Carol Lay to scrap her usual multi-panel format and do this instead. See also: Lalo Alcaraz, Signe Wilkinson, Tony Auth, Jeff Danziger, and Steve Sack. And, of course, Paul Krugman ("Man on Horseback"):

U.S. television coverage ranged from respectful to gushing. Nobody pointed out that Mr. Bush was breaking an important tradition. And nobody seemed bothered that Mr. Bush, who appears to have skipped more than a year of the National Guard service that kept him out of Vietnam, is now emphasizing his flying experience. (Spare me the hate mail. An exhaustive study by The Boston Globe found no evidence that Mr. Bush fulfilled any of his duties during that missing year. And since Mr. Bush has chosen to play up his National Guard career, this can't be shrugged off as old news.)

Anyway, it was quite a show. Luckily for Mr. Bush, the frustrating search for Osama bin Laden somehow morphed into a good old-fashioned war, the kind where you seize the enemy's capital and get to declare victory after a cheering crowd pulls down the tyrant's statue. (It wasn't much of a crowd, and American soldiers actually brought down the statue, but it looked great on TV.)

Let me be frank. Why is the failure to find any evidence of an active Iraqi nuclear weapons program, or vast quantities of chemical and biological weapons (a few drums don't qualify — though we haven't found even that) a big deal? Mainly because it feeds suspicions that the war wasn't waged to eliminate real threats. This suspicion is further fed by the administration's lackadaisical attitude toward those supposed threats once Baghdad fell. For example, Iraq's main nuclear waste dump wasn't secured until a few days ago, by which time it had been thoroughly looted. So was it all about the photo ops?

Well, Mr. Bush got to pose in his flight suit. And given the absence of awkward questions, his handlers surely feel empowered to make even more brazen use of the national security issue in future.

Next year — in early September — the Republican Party will hold its nominating convention in New York. The party will exploit the time and location to the fullest. How many people will dare question the propriety of the proceedings?

   Oh yeah, and don't forget the economy, says Bob Herbert.

Not exactly shocking update: White House basically admits plane flight was just to make Bush feel like a big boy

From the Washington Post ("Explanation for Bush's Carrier Landing Altered "):

President Bush chose to make a jet landing on an aircraft carrier last week even after he was told he could easily reach the ship by helicopter, the White House said yesterday, changing the explanation it gave for Bush's "Top Gun" style event.

Bush's televised landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln, for which the president wore a flight suit and a helmet and took underwater survival training in the White House swimming pool, was the dramatic start to a visit to the carrier that included an air show and a televised speech to the nation. In his address, the president declared victory in Iraq in front of cheering sailors and a banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished."

White House officials had said, both before and after Bush's landing in a Navy S-3B Viking jet, that he took the plane solely to avoid inconveniencing the sailors, who were returning home after a deployment of nearly 10 months.

Oh, please. If the man really cared so much about the troops, he wouldn't have sent them off to die in his preemptive war in the first place. The man wanted a photo opportunity, plain and simple:

Bush wanted "to see an aircraft landing the same way that the pilots saw an aircraft landing," White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said yesterday. "He wanted to see it as realistically as possible. And that's why, once the initial decision was made to fly out on the Viking, even when a helicopter option became doable, the president decided instead he wanted to still take the Viking."

But too little, too late. This article was likely buried in the back pages of relatively few papers (I got the link via This Modern World), while the Top Gun photo op made front page news everywhere.

New Cartoon: Slippery Slope...

Click the image above for my two cents on the sanctimonious senator who supports sodomy laws and likens homosexuality to incest. And let me say again what I said about Trent Lott: this is not just about one bigot who can't keep his mouth shut--it's about a party that systematically embraces bigotry. Bush wouldn't even deign to comment directly on Santorum, but the message he sent through Ari Fleischer says it all: Bush believes Santorum is "an inclusive man." (This comment was also echoed by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Lott's replacement).

In other people's cartoons, Barry at Amptoons takes a more direct look at anti-gay GOP guys and slippery slope arguments.

Rumsfeld on a pale horse...

Right after the Art During Wartime show ended, I got this email from reader Brenda Ann (who hadn't seen the show, as she lives in South Korea):

How about one someday featuring the four horsemen of the Apocolypse, featuring Rumsfeld (war), Ashcroft (pestilence), Cheney (greed) and Bush (death)? Just random thought here... Hope your show did well. Take care, and stay well. :)

Anyway, I had been meaning to mention one of my favorite pieces from the Art During Wartime exhibit, done by an artist credited as "hewho"... click on the below image to see the whole thing:

Note: the above configuration of horsemen is a bit different than Brenda Ann's, with Bush as War, Blair as Pestilence, Powell as Famine (Greed?) and Rumsfeld as Death.