Cartoons from Down Under

Pictures from Iran

Nope. I haven't been to Iran. Just to the New York Times webpages.

These pictures and a video allegedly show the nuclear weapons site. I say allegedly only to be nice. I'd bet the family farm on it being capable of making a really big BANG!

I've always been in favor of giving Iran all the nuclear missiles it could ever want. Everyone of them set to explode upon launch. Not that I want to create death and destruction, just more martyrs among the horrible fanatics.

Iran is not full of fanatics, just a few. It only takes a few, armed with the BIG BANG BOMB to kill millions.

Being the village idiot, I'd give the Iranian people as many nuclear power plants as they want, too. Run by Israeli scientists and technicians.

Only the best for my Iranian friends.

Scream, "You Lie!" at the Republican Party.

Monday, the GOP sent an Obama survey out in the 9th District. Local Republicans are now required to stand up and shout, “You LIE!” at Michael Steal.

“In order for our sampling of Republican opinion from your area to be as exact as possible, you must return your survey – Even if you leave some of the questions blank.” Or, just attach your “Contribution Reply” and personal check and stuff the postage free envelope …

“Do you agree with Barack Obama’s budget plan that will lead to a $23.1 trillion deficit over the next ten years?”

The Republican National Committee might want to ask the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) a few questions. Like why doesn’t the budget projection for 2019 agree with our numbers? Ten years from now, 2019, the projects a deficit accumulation of only $7,137 trillion. OPS! The GOP has raised the deficit exactly $20 trillion over ten years. For local Joe Wilsons, that is increasing the budget $2 trillion a year.

Now shout, “You LIE!” and be a real American Hero.

Gainesville Times, Letter to the Editor

Lorraine Watkins gave a some history lessons to Obamahaters in a letter to the Gainesville Times. I agree with her. The insurance companies are the only ones with someone to lose in healthcare reform. Somehow, in the mind of Michael J. Riemann, Bible history supports insurance companies but not us sinners. But, of course, Riemann thinks biblical stories are secular in nature. No wonder he confuses Pharaoh and fascism. Here's Lorraine's well measured, historically accurate response.

The letter by Michael J. Riemann of Sept. 2 is beautifully written, worthy of any first class PR advertising firm. His concern for Wall Street and the insurance industry is touching. The geniuses of free market capitalism, failed profoundly. They pleaded with the people to “take them over.” They are already back and flourishing while many ordinary people still can’t find work.

Medical care is not a luxury to be foregone, nor a commodity with competitive styles and versions. Priest or pauper, care is good enough or it is not. The health insurance industry has been an abject failure. A model demanding big profit is simply too expensive.

Mr. Riemann cites Pharaoh as a metaphor for the cruel and enduring consequences of concentration of resources in the few. Pharaoh was not elected by the people. He was placed and sustained in power by class and religion. Pharaoh was not a democrat and he certainly was not a socialist.

He more nearly resembles business doing what business does: exploiting desperate people’s needs and extracting maximum treasure. It always works until the treasure runs out. The appetite for wealth never seems to run out.

I am also intrigued with Mr. Reimann’s rhetoric of the ’50s. I wonder why we are seeing language reconstructing Third Reich history again. It has for years been familiar only to those alive during the McCarthy era.

Almost immediately following the end of World War II, American supporters of fascism began to rewrite history by conflating the Nazi movement with the Marxist Bolshevik revolution. Mr. Riemann’s letter repeats the misrepresentation.

Hitler was not a Marxist socialist of any stripe. The Nazis early on dropped “workers” from their name while retaining the word “socialist.” They never delivered on the promise its use suggests. It was set up with the collaboration of German and not a few admiring American industrialists.

Among the American enablers were John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, the Mellons and the Carnegies. It was Rockefeller that almost single-handedly exported the racialist philosophy, eugenics, to the medical establishment of Hitler’s Germany. Eugenics, of course, provided half the rhetoric fueling the holocaust. Violently anti-Marxist, the Nazi movement provided the other with propaganda inflaming fears of Red Menace. Sound familiar?

Well-read and educated scholars universally accept the term fascism as most descriptive of the managed economic system of Hitler.

Wealthy and ideological entrenched powerful men fear democracy. They fear a democratic government which empowers the people to share in the resources of the nation. It’s not democracy we should fear, and the Bolsheviks are buried in Red Square.

What's Wrong with Jimmy Carter?

Nothing is wrong with Jimmy Carter. He just speaks truth to power. Power, in a democracy like ours, still remains with the people.

Carter tells the truth when he says humans have racist tendencies. We do.

We prefer to be with 'our kind.' Our kind of Christians. Our kind of family. Our kind of peers.

Whites move within white culture more often than within Korean culture. Short people don't seek out NBA players for friends. Those tendencies include the color of skin, not just geographic borders or traditional heritages.

To defeat the emotional urges left over from primitive life, just stop being a savage living in a concrete jungle where every stranger is an enemy first. And a friend only for mutual defense.