First blog ever and I already got feedback

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.

Return of the Cartoon Auction

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!

“Please allow me to introduce myself…”

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”:

Thanks to Ted and update from Afghanistan

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

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If you’re a webpage designer, information architect, or SEO specialist with a left-leaning bent and an interest in being on the ground floor of a startup out to change the world, I’d love to hear from you.

SYNDICATED COLUMN: Handicapped

Conventional Wisdom Is Wrong. It’s Romney’s To Lose.

Catching Barack Obama in a rare moment of candor, an open mic found the president confiding to his Russian counterpart that he expects to win this fall. “This is my last election,” he told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

Last, yes. But I wouldn’t bet on Obama winning.

The corporate pundit class has largely conceded the general election to Obama, already looking ahead to 2016. The mainstreamers have their reasons. Their analysis is based on good, solid, reasonable (inside the box) logic. All things considered, however, I would (and have) put my money on Mitt Romney this fall.

This isn’t wishful thinking. I voted for Obama last time and wanted him to succeed. He failed. His accomplishments have been few and have amounted to sellouts to the right. Even so, the prospect of watching Mitt Romney move into the White House fills me with as much joy as an appointment for a colonoscopy. And I think he’s going to win.

For me, the D vs. R horserace is a parlor game with minor ramifications for our daily lives. Whichever corporate party wins, unemployment and underemployment will continue to worsen, income disparity will widen, and most of our taxes will fund the worst approach to international affairs since a former Austrian corporal blew out his brains out in a bunker under Berlin.

Thanks to the Occupy movement, real politics is back where it belongs—in the streets. That’s what I’ll be watching and working. With a lot of luck (and even more pepper spray) this will be a year of revolution rather than more electoral devolution.

Revolution is inevitable. But we don’t know when it’s coming. So the 2012 campaign may still matter. Besides, handicapping elections is a game I enjoy and am good at. During 17 years of syndication my pick to win has only lost once (for the 2004 Democratic nomination). So, on the off chance that you’re one of those who still cares about our husk of a democracy, who hangs on every meaningless development of a political process devoid of politics—or you’re just a betting person, here’s my thinking.

Barring an assassination or a scandal, Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee.

Obama currently leads Romney by about four to five points. But that’s not nearly enough of a lead to carry him to November. History shows that Republican nominees steadily increase in popularity throughout the summer and fall of an election year.

In April 2004, for example, John Kerry led George W. Bush by eight points. But Swift Boating erased that lead, and then some.

In order to win, a successful Democratic nominee has to begin with a big margin. That early lead must be large enough to wind up in the black, after months of being whittled away, when the votes get counted in November. I can’t see Obama pulling far enough ahead soon.

Incumbency is a huge advantage. If the election were held tomorrow, Obama would prevail. But the election is not being held tomorrow. It’s being held in November.

By the time they head to the polls this fall, voters’ brains will be drowning in months of hundreds of millions of dollars of slick, demographically targeted, pro-Romney attack ads. Republican campaigns are more effective at this sort of thing, and as Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum can attest, Romney’s consultants pull no punches. Obama’s current lead will be a faded memory.

Every political campaign comes down to a contest of narratives. In 2008 Obama developed an effective sales pitch: Hope and Change for a nation exhausted by eight years of Bush, 9/11, war, taking off your shoes at the airport, and a full-fledged global economic crisis to boot. Obama’s advisers turned his biggest weaknesses—his inexperience, race, unusual name and foreign background—into assets. Here was a new kind of president. Just the guy to lead us out of the Bad Old Days into something better. McCain-Palin’s narrative—a cranky old ex-POW paired with a zany housewife-gone-wild—didn’t stand a chance.

This year the narratives favor Romney.

Romney is already pointing to the biggest issue on people’s minds, the economy, and claiming that his background as a turnaround artist qualifies him to fix what ails us. His prescriptions are Republican boilerplate, vague and counterproductive, but at least he’s doing something Obama hasn’t—talking a lot about creating jobs. Voters prefer useless attentiveness to calm, steady golfing (Obama’s approach). And—despite its illogic—they like the run-government-like-a-business narrative (c.f. Ross Perot, the Bushes).

Obama is boxed in by three-plus years of inaction on, well, pretty much everything. He’ll argue that he’ll be able to “finish the job” during a second term, but that’s a tough sell when you haven’t tried to start the job—in 2009, when Democrats had huge majorities in both houses of Congress. His single signature accomplishment, healthcare reform, is disliked by two-thirds of the electorate. The recent “good news” on the economy has been either insignificant (net positive job creation of 100,000 per month for two months, less than one-tenth of one percent of the 25 million jobs needed) or falsified (discouraged workers no longer counted as unemployed).

Despite what Obama tells them, Americans know things are still getting worse. Similarly, Obama’s recent, feeble, impotent rhetorical attempts to shore up his support among his Democratic Party’s disappointed liberal base will probably not generate enough enthusiasm to counter other factors that favor Romney.

You can’t vote for the first African-American president twice. Unless he picks a woman as vice president, a vote for Obama will be a vote for the same-old, same-old. The history-making thrill is gone.

At this writing the Republican Party appears to be in disarray. No doubt, Romney is emerging from the primaries battered and bruised. His awkward and demented soundbite stylings (“corporations are people,” “the trees are the right height”) will provide fodder for countless YouTube parodies. But Romney hasn’t been damaged as much as the official political class seems to think.

Republicans are a remarkably loyal bunch. United by their many hatreds (liberals, blacks, gays, poor people, Mexicans, Muslims, foreigners, etc.), they will set aside their comparatively low simmer of anti-Mormon bigotry this fall. Picking a standard-issue white Anglo Christianist thug as veep will cinch the deal.

The GOP enjoys a huge fundraising advantage, especially via the new-fangled SuperPACs. Romney has raised $74 million against $151 million for Obama, but look for that ratio to flip after he locks up the nomination. Cue those vicious, potent ads mentioned above.

About the only major factor working for Obama is the presidential debates. Romney doesn’t stand a chance against the cool, articulate Obama.

Of course, it’s a long way to November. A lot can happen. It’s very possible for Obama to win. But that’s not how it looks now.

(Ted Rall’s next book is “The Book of Obama: How We Went From Hope and Change to the Age of Revolt,” out May 22. His website is tedrall.com.)

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