On this day of fools, I’ll hearken back to another day of fooling, alas not a lighthearted one.

February 5, 2003 was a day I’ll never forget. It was the day Colin Powell visited the UN and showed an empty vial and an empty case for war with Iraq.

I couldn’t believe how pathetically unconvincing the case was. And, perhaps more shocking, how it was resoundingly pronounced “compelling” by virtually the entire mainstream media, galvanizing public support for a war of shock, awe, and whim.

Because this emperor’s new spectacle represented such a monumental break with reality and decency, I started a blog to commemorate February 5th as America’s “Day of Shame.”

This year, as war drums pound for an attack on Iran, and with the obvious lessons of Iraq so strikingly unlearned, I marked the day with the following cartoon, “Day of Shame 2012,” along with the annual blog post.

Next year will be the 10th anniversary of that ever-so-fateful day. Perhaps you’ll join me in the remembrance then.

About me

American Extremists archive

I was on my way to Forbidden Planet — one of the few delights that continues to always be a delight — the other day, and I got off the subway at the Union Square stop in Manhattan. And the OWSers were there.

I noticed one thing of particular interest. One young person was holding a small cardboard sign with a hand-lettered message about how the police are one layoff away from becoming part of the 99%.

First, OWS, take a look through the photo archives. The Civil Rights Movement, the Gay Rights Movement, any number of Klan rallies. There’s one unifying thing. The signs are almost always professionally printed. You live in the 21st century, in an age where the capacity to make a professional-looking sign is no further than your own personal printer. The blacks, the gays, the white supremacists of the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s, they all had to pay through the nose for professional-quality signs. You can crank them out for pennies. Does not one of you comprehend the notion of presentation?

Second, the person with the sign about how the cops are part of the 99% is wrong. The last layoffs in the NYPD were in the 1970s, weren’t they? A cop who was in his early 20s in 1975 would now be, well, first, he’d be out of the department having served his 20 years. But if he stayed, he’d now be, 37 years later, in his late 50s. With seniority and all the rest, his likelihood of being laid off is precisely, hold on, I want to look it up. Here it is: 0.00000. None of the NYPD officers accept that they will be laid off mainly because the likelihood is, for all intents and purposes, zero. In our post-9/11 world, where we need police to stop and frisk innocent black teenagers and guard Wall Street statues, we simply can’t take that risk. Close the schools, the hospitals, the libraries, but take away the police? Are you mad?

Take a look at the following, from the NYPD site, about pay and benefits for a police officer:

• $34,970 Starting salary (including holiday pay, uniform pay and night differential)
• Excellent Promotional Opportunities
• A choice of paid medical and dental programs
• 20 paid vacation days
• 27 paid vacation days after 5 years
• Unlimited sick leave with full pay
• Annuity Fund
• Optional Retirement at one half salary after 20 years of service

Wikipedia gives a higher starting pay. “The contract, which runs from August 1, 2006 to July 31, 2010, gives police officers a 17 percent pay raise over its four-year life, and raises starting pay from $35,881 to $41,975, and top pay from $65,382 to approximately $76,000 annually. With longevity pay, holiday pay, night shift differential and other non-guaranteed additions, the total annual compensation for officers receiving top pay will be approximately $90,829.”

Paid medical and dental programs. 20 paid vacation days. Unlimited sick leave with full pay. Optional retirement at 50% salary after 20 years.

Layoffs? Political suicide. Why? Because the police understand the power of a union. They might still prevent murders in a post-layoff situation. If someone staggered up with a knife in his back, I’d like to think that even the post-layoff police would get that guy to a hospital as fast as possible. But a smash-and-grab from an electronics store at 2 a.m.? “Yeah, dispatch, we didn’t make it in time to stop those three perps we didn’t see loading several dozen widescreen televisions into a 2009 white Ford panel van with Jersey plates. Yeah. You’d think we could have covered six city streets in less than 45 minutes, especially with our sirens and all. But, well, we are undermanned since the layoffs.”

The police might start off, right at the beginning, as part of the 99%, but once they get through the initial shakedown, they’re part of the 20-year plan. Job security, a pension, four weeks of vacation (do you get four weeks of vacation?). There’s a bumper sticker out there somewhere that says that there’s nothing worse than a crooked cop and nothing better than an honest one. And I genuinely believe that. I also believe the NYPD has cops that run the whole gamut: thieving bastards to selfless aw-shucks heroes. But even aw-shucks heroes are not going to say, “Well, maybe I shouldn’t get a pension after 20 years of work.”

The police didn’t get all their power just from their guns. In 200 years, something like 800 NYPD officers have died in the line of duty. That’s about four a year. Commercial fishing comes in at 116 per 100,000 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Four per 34,500 would be about 12 per 100,000 for the NYPD. So it’s about 10 times more dangerous being a commercial fisherman. When was the last time the news led with the story of the death of a fisherman?

OWS needs to start learning faster. They are simply taking too long to figure things out.

As Sartre said, death is absurd. Both because all that accumulated experience and knowledge is lost with the final closing of an eye, and because it’s so incomprehensible. There are people I lost years ago whom I itch to call and talk to, then remember they’re Not Here Anymore, and…but I still remember their phone number.

One of my colleagues, fellow cartoonist Rex Babin, died Friday after a two-year battle with stomach cancer I assumed he’d somehow be able to beat because he was so strong and vital. I knew Rex for years. We worked together on the board of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, and he beat me out for the job opening at the Sacramento Bee. I’m sure I’ll expect to see him at the AAEC convention in Washington…and yet…

Rex leaves behind a lovely wife and young son. Which is why I’m posting this. The Bee is putting together a trust fund for his son. I want to donate, but I’m broke due to the complete collapse of income-earning opportunities in print journalism. So I’m going to place some original cartoon artwork up for auction next week. All the proceeds of that auction will go to the Rex Babin Trust Fund, so if you’re interested in picking up some artwork and donating to a good cause, please bid high and often.

Watch this space next week.

From August, 2011…

… when the GOP field had more bogeymen and one bogeywoman.

About me

American Extremists archive

So I published my first guest blog yesterday and already got some feedback, pretty cool if you ask me.  I was asked to provide more details on the day to day for Afghan’s, I should of realized that most Americans have zero concept of life out here, so I’ll try my best to describe it.

I interact with the local Afghan population on a daily basis, my job is to try and sort out problems they have (work stuff, troops in the area, crime, electricity/water, etc).  Please remember that this is my OPINION and not any kind of policy.

Most of the complaints from the local population has to do with the incredible amount of corruption that takes place in their local government and the perception that ISAF and the US are complicit in allowing this to happen.  From police shaking people down to bribes being paid for government job, processing “fees” so your paperwork doesn’t get lost, all of these are having a hugely negative impact on the locals.  What complicates these problems is that there is such a disconnect between the villages and the urban areas that the villagers don’t even have the opportunity to make complaints.  One more layer to that onion is that US/ISAF policy has been to allow the Afghan’s to govern themselves, this has been a spectacular failure, with a population that has 90% illiteracy rate and a “take care of my own tribe first” mentality things have taken a predictable downward spiral.

There are a great number of Afghan’s who never leave their local village, for any reason.  To try and tell them that someone they have never met in a city they will never go to, is in charge, well it’s amusing to them.

In terms of a day to day life for the Afghan people, it’s really just a matter of surviving, day to day, there is no Pashtun or Dari word for “dream or ambition” it’s just making it through life, hoping you get enough to eat, if you are lucky getting the chance to get married.

It’s been a long time since my last cartoon auction, so I’ve just posted a new one.

If you win, you get to choose the topic of my cartoon. Which I will draw. If I want to, I will syndicate it so it will appear in newspapers.

You get:

• The original artwork
• High-resolution files for the artwork
• The right to reprint/post (or donate to a venue to reprint/post) the cartoon once

Opening bid is a mere 99 cents, and there is no minimum, so happy bidding!

Hi, I’m Vast Left, and thanks to Ted for having me as a guest blogger!

I was a longtime donkey-party partisan. But the Democrats’ rejection of the 2006 and 2008 mandates for real, leftward change made a true unbeliever out of me.

Despite recognizing Obama’s Reaganite tendencies, I voted for him as a statement against the GOP and for the first-black-president milestone. Seeing how he’s governed, dragging a country hungry for leftish reform back to the right as perhaps no one else could have, I sorely wish I’d voted for Cynthia McKinney instead.

I declared myself “2L4O: Too Liberal for Obama,” making t-shirts that said so (also in a “2L4O: Too Left for Obama” version). Ted Rall and other luminaries wear 2L4O shirts, which make great starters for an important conversation: the realization that the ObamaDems are part of the problem.

A couple of years back, I added a cartoon feature to my blog, named “American Extremists” (archive site here). The name is an ironic take on the mythology that America’s political system is a tug-of-war between an extreme right and an extreme left—the latter of which simply doesn’t exist in our mainstream politics.

Over the next few days, I’ll be sharing a “best-of” series of American Extremists ‘toons.

Unlike Ted and the other gifted cartoonists in his blogroll, I can’t draw a lick. So, most installments of AE are simply the same talking, truncated-oval heads.

Against all odds, these can’t-draw cartoons have been featured on sites including Salon.com and Naked Capitalism, and it’s a real honor to be able to share some of them (and perhaps some textual posts from time to time) with Ted Rall readers!

If you’ve had your fill of rationalizations, denial, and other tribal foibles in the Age of Obama, perhaps you’ll enjoy them. Either way, I look forward to discussing them and related topics with you in comments, if you’d care to.

This one is called “National Man of Mystery”:

Greetings from Afghanistan:

Before I get started I’d like to thank Ted for allowing me to guest blog, I’m a big fan of his work and politics, I appreciate that he’s given me this opportunity.

I’d like to start today with thoughts on Afghanistan, since I’m here and have been here for the last 3 years I think I have a unique perspective on what’s going on especially compared with what you see on the news.  The recent killings of Afghans by US personnel and vice versa has been debated by talking heads and experts to no end so I’m not going to waste your time, I’m just going to say I’m SHOCKED it doesn’t happen more often.

To say there are cultural differences between US troops and the Afghan populace is kind of like saying Micheal Jordan knew how to play basketball, it doesn’t capture the richness or depth.  I understand why the Afghan’s were upset about the burning of the Quran, religion is the only way they can make it day to day, the promise of heaven and an easier life is paramount here.   The poverty/oppression/lifestyle that they are forced to live with on a daily basis is so far beyond comprehension to anyone in the United States that I won’t even try to describe it, I don’t have the words.  On the other hand I also understand why Afghan’s are dehumanized by some US personnel, it’s easy to do.  I’ve seen human rights abuses (especially men on women) that are intolerable for western values, when you send in an 18 year old from rural Texas and he sees these abuses I’m not sure what kind of outcome we expect.

Until next time, please send me any questions you have from out here.

KJP

I’ve been interviewed by RT television about mainstream media self-censorship.

Interested in guest-blogging on the ? If so drop me a line using the Contact tab above.