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New eBay Cartoon Auction
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Get a gift for the political junkie who has everything: original cartoon art! I’ve just posted a new eBay Cartoon Auction. Simple rules: I draw three cartoons a week. Next week, you choose your favorite. I send you the original artwork!
LOS ANGELES TIMES CARTOON: Hate is Hard Work
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I draw cartoons for The Los Angeles Times about issues related to California and the Southland (metro Los Angeles).
This week: The U.S. Supreme Court is poised to take up the issue of gay marriage in California as soon as Friday morning. The moment has prompted nervous debate within the gay-rights movement about the best path to achieve gay marriage. If the justices opt not to hear the Proposition 8 case, then a federal appeals court ruling that found the 2008 state ballot measure banning same-sex marriage unconstitutional would stand, clearing the way for marriages to begin. If the justices take up the case, a ruling would not come until next year and gay marriage would remain on hold until then, or longer depending on how the court rules.
Wish List
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In case you’re wondering, yes, I have an Amazon Wish List. So if you appreciate what I do, and wonder what you can do to keep me doing it, this might be something to consider.
Not to whine, but as a self-employed cartoonist I don’t get a Christmas bonus. Or benefits of any sort. I haven’t seen benefits since 1995, when I got fired from my last day job. As you probably know, newspapers are shedding cartoonists right and left (well, mainly left) but an economically viable online model has yet to emerge. I’m committed to cartooning and writing, and will continue to do it whether you help or not, but it’s often tempting to throw up my hands and walk away from a vocation where you mostly hear from people when you make them angry.
So if you are so moved to make my holiday a joyous one, I would much appreciate it. Anything from the list would be amazing, of course, but the Dragon Dictation package would come in handy to help me stave off carpal tunnel syndrome while I work on my next book. Shoes are nice. Drawing paper is useful. So are those Rapidograph pen nibs; I break them sometimes and they’re not cheap. My sad old Third Generation iPod is showing its years—ten—and could stand replacing.
(I currently have two proposals for major prose books out to my agent, not including the cartoon book proposal. The Afghanistan book is scheduled for release in Fall 2013, is finished and awaits edits, but is definitely coming out—and looking great!)
LOS ANGELES TIMES CARTOON: Supermajority
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I draw cartoons for The Los Angeles Times about issues related to California and the Southland (metro Los Angeles).
This week: Having won a two-thirds supermajority in the Legislature for the first time in more than a century, California Democrats are now facing intense pressure from the left as they prepare for next year’s legislative session.
SYNDICATED COLUMN: Shoot First, Justify Later
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Our Police State Does What It Wants, Then Writes a Memo
Imagine that you were the president of United States. Now think what you would do if you or one of your advisers proposed an idea—a great idea, one that solved a big problem—that was radical to the point of possibly crossing the legal line into unconstitutionality.
You’d want to lawyer that sucker, right? After all, the last thing you would want to do is break the law. You wouldn’t want to be accused of running off half-cocked in violation of your inaugural oath to preserve and protect the Constitution. You wouldn’t want to risk a scandal, an investigation, or even impeachment.
Now imagine that you were a chief of police. Again, imagine that you or one of your officers came up with a great new approach for tracking down bad guys, but that the idea was so novel that you couldn’t be sure that arrests made using your new tactic would hold up in court. What would you do? I know what I’d do: I’d consult legal counsel. You probably would too. You’d want to know where you stood so that you and your policemen wouldn’t get into trouble, and your prosecutions would hold up in court.
Check first, act second. Logical. But that’s not how presidents or cops do things in today’s might-makes-right, do-what-you-feel-like-and-come-up-with-a-justification-for-it-later era.
Case in point: Since 2009 President Obama has ordered the CIA and the military to launch more than 300 drone strikes against people in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and other countries, killing more than 2500 people–98% of whom were innocent, and the other 2% of which posed no threat whatsoever to Americans. (Obama killed those 2% as a favor to the U.S.-backed dictatorships they were fighting. According to The Times: “For at least two years in Pakistan, partly because of the CIA’s success in decimating Al Qaeda’s top ranks, most strikes have been directed at militants whose main battle is with the Pakistani authorities or who fight with the Taliban against American troops in Afghanistan.”)
All of these bombings and murders were committed minus the thinnest veneer of legal justification. However, now it has come out that during the final months of the 2012 presidential campaign, when polls showed that Mitt Romney had a chance of winning, Obama and his advisers gathered to begin work on a legal framework for the drone program, a set of rules that would determine how targets are picked.
“There was concern that the levers might no longer be in our hands,” an Obama official told The New York Times, speaking on condition of anonymity (always a good idea when gossiping about a boss with an itchy drone joystick).
“The effort, which would have been rushed to completion by January had Mr. Romney won, will now be finished at a more leisurely pace,” the leaker said.
Obama referenced his retroactive drone legalization project on October 18. “One of the things we’ve got to do is put a legal architecture in place, and we need Congressional help in order to do that, to make sure that not only am I reined in but any president’s reined in terms of some of the decisions that we’re making,” he told Jon Stewart.
Two-thousand five hundred dead men, women and children in, and that’s when they start hanging the legal window dressing? Isn’t this the sort of thing Obama should have thought about back in January of 2009? For that matter, shouldn’t George W. Bush, who originated the drone assassinations after 9/11, been required to put forward some sort of constitutional and legal basis before firing missiles at Afghan wedding parties?
You’d think Congress would take an interest in investigating such a radical expansion of presidential power. But no, in what passes for a democracy that’s supposedly protected from extreme behavior by a system of checks and balances and a separation of powers, the legislative branch took no interest whatsoever in a president—make that two presidents—who secretly claimed the right to murder anyone they please, even a U.S. citizen on American soil, without any accountability whatsoever?
This post-9/11 culture of top-down lawlessness has filtered down to local police departments, many of which have begun routinely searching the cellphones of suspects they arrest. During the Occupy Wall Street protests of fall 2011, many activists reported having their smartphones hooked up to police department computers and drained right in front of them, presumably to mine them for contact information and other data.
Phone companies told Congress that they turned over 1.3 million records in 2011 alone to police departments seeking location data, e-mails, text messages, phone records and other data about their customers—i.e., you and me.
It’s easy to see why cops would want to collect as much information as they can from those they deem to be criminals—although, under the system of laws we used to have, suspects are legally innocent until proven guilty—but how can they possibly justify enacting such a radical new policy before first obtaining authorization from the courts?
Most people want to think their political leaders and law enforcement authorities mean well and are using their powers wisely. And that’s what they want us to believe. In January 2012, for example, President Obama described the drone killings as “a targeted, focused effort at people who are on a list of active terrorists.” But, according to The Times, the program has broadened into something far more sinister and cynical that few Americans would support. For example, “the CIA and the military have carried out ‘signature strikes’ against groups of suspected, unknown militants…for instance,
Unchecked power runs wild. Cellphones are one example. When New Yorkers file an NYPD police report that their phone has been stolen, the cops routinely subpoena your records beginning from the day of the theft. Cops are supposed to use the records to find the culprit.
In reality, however, New York’s Finest aren’t exactly pounding the pavement to find your nicked iPhone. What’s they’re really after, reports The Times, is a building its Enterprise Case Management System database, “a trove of telephone logs, all obtained without a court order, that could conceivably be used for any investigative purpose.”
No wonder the Obama Administration’s Department of Justice—which is charged with protecting your rights—says cellphone users have “no reasonable expectation of privacy.”
Why are these guys getting away with murder—literally? Because we’re letting them.
(Ted Rall‘s is the author of “The Book of Obama: How We Went From Hope and Change to the Age of Revolt.” His website is tedrall.com.)
COPYRIGHT 2012 TED RALL
Informal Survey: Should I Crowdfund a Book?
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I’m thinking of putting out a collection of my cartoons, along with essays (some of which have never appeared online), dating back over the last eight years or so. But I need your input.
Of the various types of books I do or want to do, there’s one that has become basically impossible to do through a publisher: a collection of cartoons. Cartoonists have more fans than ever, many of whom would buy a cartoon collection if they knew about it, but the book marketplace no longer supports the genre—so publishers don’t want them.
There are several reasons for this. Bookstores have stuck the humor section in dark, dusty corners by the men’s room where serendipitous purchases are unlikely to occur. Book critics, those who haven’t gotten laid off, don’t review cartoon collections anymore. When cartoon collections do get published by the big houses, they wind up a single copy, spine out, in some invisible part of the store, for three to six months, before getting returned. And the cartoonist winds up with zero royalties.
The only way to go is to self-publish, distributing through your website and in person at conventions and other events. But that requires substantial cash outlay for design, layout, printing and distribution.
So here’s the question y’all: If I were to launch a Kickstarter or Indieagogo campaign, could I raise at least $20,000 (of which roughly half would go to direct expenses)? Please post below (a) whether you’d be interested in a book collection and (b) how much, if anything, you’d be willing to contribute. (There would be premiums for various levels, such as books for lower amounts, original art for higher amounts, etc.)
People often tell me they want a collection of cartoons, but then they don’t sell very well, so I need to take your temperature before I start anything.
RTTV Interview: It’s Twitter, Stupid
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So I was interviewed about Twitter on RT TV. And you should watch.
New Cartoon Auction, New Idea
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I’m trying something new for a new cartoon auction: You bid on the original artwork for your favorite of next week’s cartoons. If you win, I send you JPEGs of the three for next week and you pick the one you want. Kinda chancy, kinda not.
