Dicky's Doodles &Scribbles

Cartoons,editorials and comment about current events and more.

Monday, December 31, 2007

Have A Great '08!!

Friday, December 28, 2007

Advertising In Space







A number of years ago a few companies explored the idea of placing giant, illuminated bill boards in low space orbit. These structures were to be made of mylar and other materials and several different technologies were considered.
Fortunately Congress passed legislation, authored by Ed Markey, (D, Massachusetts) and stopped the projects.
Can you imagine how obnoxious such a thing would be? It is beyond words!!

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Ron Paul; Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo

New Hampshire Newspapers Rip Romney



Three days before Christmas the Concord Monitor, a somewhat left leaning New Hampshire newsper, printed a scathing editorial urging New Hampshire Republican primary voters to reject Romney. In unusually strong terms the paper outlines a number of issues they say calls Romney's leadership and character in question.
Then today the Manchester Union Leader also denounced Romney on it's editorial pages. Now this is a leading right wing newsper, a strident voice for conservative causes.
The editorials are printed below:

Concord Monitor staff
December 22. 2007 3:00PM

If you were building a Republican presidential candidate from a kit, imagine what pieces you might use: an athletic build, ramrod posture, Reaganesque hair, a charismatic speaking style and a crisp dark suit. You'd add a beautiful wife and family, a wildly successful business career and just enough executive government experience. You'd pour in some old GOP bromides - spending cuts and lower taxes - plus some new positions for 2008: anti-immigrant rhetoric and a focus on faith.
Add it all up and you get Mitt Romney, a disquieting figure who sure looks like the next president and most surely must be stopped.
Romney's main business experience is as a management consultant, a field in which smart, fast-moving specialists often advise corporations on how to reinvent themselves. His memoir is called Turnaround - the story of his successful rescue of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City - but the most stunning tutnaround he has engineered is his own political career.
If you followed only his tenure as governor of Massachusetts, you might imagine Romney as a pragmatic moderate with liberal positions on numerous social issues and an ability to work well with Democrats. If you followed only his campaign for president, you'd swear he was a red-meat conservative, pandering to the religious right, whatever the cost. Pay attention to both, and you're left to wonder if there's anything at all at his core.
As a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 1994, he boasted that he would be a stronger advocate of gay rights than his opponent, Ted Kennedy. These days, he makes a point of his opposition to gay marriage and adoption.
There was a time that he said he wanted to make contraception more available - and a time that he vetoed a bill to sell it over-the-counter.
The old Romney assured voters he was pro-choice on abortion. "You will not see me wavering on that," he said in 1994, and he cited the tragedy of a relative's botched illegal abortion as the reason to keep abortions safe and legal. These days, he describes himself as pro-life.
There was a time that he supported stem-cell research and cited his own wife's multiple sclerosis in explaining his thinking; such
research, he reasoned, could help families like his. These days, he largely opposes it. As a candidate for governor, Romney dismissed an anti-tax pledge as a gimmick. In this race, he was the first to sign.
People can change, and intransigence is not necessarily a virtue. But Romney has yet to explain this particular set of turnarounds in a way that convinces voters they are based on anything other than his own ambition.
In the 2008 campaign for president, there are numerous issues on which Romney has no record, and so voters must take him at his word. On these issues, those words are often chilling.
While other candidates of both parties speak of restoring America's moral leadership in the world, Romney has said he'd like to "double" the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, where inmates have been held for years without formal charge or access to the courts. He dodges the issue of torture - unable to say, simply, that waterboarding is torture and America won't do it.
When New Hampshire partisans are asked to defend the state's first-in-the-nation primary, we talk about our ability to see the candidates up close, ask tough questions and see through the
baloney. If a candidate is a phony, we assure ourselves and the rest of the world, we'll know it.
Mitt Romney is such a candidate. New Hampshire Republicans and independents must vote no.

Manchester Union Leader, Dec. 26,
The Romney backlash: Conservatives are coming home

THERE IS A reason Mitt Romney has not received a single newspaper endorsement in New Hampshire. It's the same reason his poll numbers are dropping. He has not been able to convince the people of this state that he's the conservative he says he is.
Like a lot of people in New Hampshire, we wanted to believe Romney. We gave him the benefit of the doubt. We listened very carefully to his expertly rehearsed sales pitch. But in the end he didn't close the deal for us. Now, two weeks before the primary, the same is happening with voters.
Republicans and right-leaning independents in New Hampshire gave Romney a chance. His events have not been sparsely attended. Nor have they been scarce. He's made more campaign stops here this year than any other Republican, even John McCain.
And after a year of comparing Romney to McCain, of sizing up the two in person and in the media, Granite Staters are turning back to McCain. The former Navy pilot, once written off by the national media establishment, is now in a statistical dead heat with Romney here.
How could that be? Romney has all the advantages: money, organization, geographic proximity, statesman-like hair, etc.
But he lacks something John McCain has in spades: conviction.
Granite Staters want a candidate who will look them in the eye and tell them the truth. John McCain has done that day in and day out, never wavering, never faltering, never pandering.
Mitt Romney has not. He has spoken his lines well, but the people can sense that the words are memorized, not heartfelt.
Last week Romney was reduced to debating what the meaning of "saw" is. It was only the latest in a string of demonstrably false claims -- he'd been a hunter "pretty much" all his life, he'd had the NRA's endorsement, he marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. -- that call into question the veracity of his justifications for switching sides on immigration, abortion, taxes and his affection for Ronald Reagan.
In this primary, the more Mitt Romney speaks, the less believable he becomes. That is why Granite Staters who have listened attentively are now returning to John McCain. They might not agree with McCain on everything, as we don't, but like us, they judge him to be a man of integrity and conviction, a man who won't sell them out, who won't break his promises, and who won't lie to get elected.
Voters can see that John McCain is trustworthy. Mitt Romney has spent a year trying to convince Granite Staters that he is as well. It looks like they aren't buying it. And for good reason.

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

How Politics Work; #3

Monday, December 24, 2007

How Politics Work #2

Merry X-mas!






Hope everyone has a great Christmas and don't get stressed out like Santa here!
...And have a great '08!

Sunday, December 23, 2007

How Politics Work; #1

Saturday, December 22, 2007

NFL Too Greedy!






I am a native Texan and like many others I am a life long football fan, especially a Dallas Cowboys fan. I am really outraged about the battle between the NFL, Jerry Jones and the cable and satellite networks.
This battle of the billionaires sickens me. I am a good ole boy of modest means, living on Social Security disability and just barely scraping along financially and now, because of sheer greed and a power struggle me and millions others like me have already been deprived of one big game, Cowboys v Packers, but tonight, Saturday Dec. 22, we will lose another game to the NFL network.
Will the Cowboys turn around following their last game? Will Tony Romo’s thumb be a problem? Will Romo’s girlfriend be allowed anywhere near the stadium?
I wont be able to watch and see tonight.
I can’t express strongly enough how outraged I am about this! How dare Jerry Jones and Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner, charge us more money than we already have to pay for cable to see games that, until now have almost always been available for free, on the public airwaves, which the public, that is all of us, has never charged them for their use.
The Cowboys, the NFL, Jerry Jones and all the rest make tons of money from the games, merchandise and all the other things they do. Now they want more! Now they want to control an entire NFL network which will likely, in time, become the only place to see NFL games and it will probably go to an entirely pay per view system.
I think it is time to step in on the state and federal level and protect the sports fans. Jerry Jones and the NFL are nothing but greedy for more money, more power and now more control. They want to stick it to the average football fan so all of these millionaire players and billionaire owners can get a bigger piece of the pie! I say no way. Let’s put an end to this right now!
I have written letters to state and federal legislators and my local newspaper but I will miss tonight’s game none the less!

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Bush Mid East Moves Too Late Too Anemic!







This is a cartoon I did for the Flour Bluff Sun in the early days of the Bush administration.
At the time the second Intifada was just getting going, touched off by Ariel Sharon's deliberate provocation. Sharon was a retired general and a member of the Knesset. He enraged Palestinians with a visit to the Temple Mount, known to the Palestinians as the El Aqsa Mosque. Sharon went there with a large military bodyguard which was in violation of the existing agreements. This sparked off violence which continues to this day.
The Bush administration stood by and did nothing. They could have used the influence of the United States to help dampen the violence but chose a hands off policy. The violence spiraled and eventually Sharon would become Israeli Prime Minister, Arafat would be weakened and pave the way for an eventual Hezbollah take over years later.
Sharon is still in a coma now and Arafat is dead. Bush, in spite of his sputtering Annapolis meeting, remains in a stupor.

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Rudolph The Red Nosed Candidate!





Rudy Giuliani's nose is glowing red of embarrasment as more details of his tenure as mayor of New York City come to light. It does seem a bit unseemly for the city to provide security details, at taxpayer's expense, to protect his mistress. What's the problem? His wife had one too!
It seems a bit odd that the Repugs were in such a snit about a Presidential blow job and now many of them are quite willing to overlook Rudy's pecadilloes.

Monday, December 17, 2007

No Reagan On Rushmore!







Recently I read an article about an effort to place an image of Ronald Reagan on Mount Rushmore. What a lousy idea! Reagan has been mythologized by the neo-cons and Republican candidates regularly invoke his name but Reagan was a really a failure as President and we are still suffering from policies he initiated such as the busting up of PATCO, the air traffic control union, his outrageous deficit building spending, his tax policies which set us on the road to the wide income disparities we now see in our country and his bumbling foreign policies which have especially hurt us in Latin America even to this day.
Reagan in no way belongs in the pantheon of Presidents represented in that famous landmark.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Bush Says Those Who Oppose His Tax Cuts Foment "Class Warfare!"




This is a cartoon I did when Bush first ran for President. He was advocating tax cuts for the wealthy and claiming they were for "the American taxpayer." Things haven't changed much. He still says those who oppose the favoritism to the wealthy and huge corporations are guilty of promoting class warfare.
By the way, he did say "warfore." That's just another example of Bush speak, such as "nukular."

GOP Refuses To Admit Waterboarding Is Torture


Saturday, December 15, 2007

Early Days In Bush Administration







This is a cartoon I did for the Flour Bluff Sun in the spring of Bush's first year in office.

An Inconvenient Truth...Like It Or Not!







Yesterday I watched Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth. I guess I must be the last one to have seen it and of course I knew that the film had earned an Oscar and has been the subject of much discussion, as well as ridicule from the haters of the far right.
Even if some of the stated facts are incorrect, as some have said, that's minor quibbling I think, the film does make a powerful statement.
In light of scientific meterological data there can no longer be any doubt that the climate is warming. Many still question whether man is causing this change.
I feel that is not the central question. There is no doubt that human activites have wrought many changes, most for the worse, on our planet. If that is not the primary cause of climate change it is certainly a major contributing cause. Air and water pollution is a major problem in it's own right.
In an odd coincidence I was watching Wolf Blitzer on CNN yesterday afternoon after I had watched the movie. Blitzer had Glenn Beck on his program for one of the many interminable self serving network program promotions. Now Glenn Beck is another of the many scare mongering hate merchants of right wing talk, sort of a Rush Lite. Beck spent his time trashing Gore and the movie. How did he know I had just watched it? Hmmm...Anyway Beck was frothing at the mouth claiming global warming was a liberal myth and how environmentalism would be bad for business and making his most startling claim, that engaging in global treaties to improve the environment would be a loss of American sovreignity. That's an absurdity!


Links:
http://salcostello.blogspot.com/
http://midlifemutations.blogspot.com/
http://www.ostroyreport.blogspot.com/
http://fuzzyandblue.blogspot.com/
http://jcdesigns.blogspot.com/
http://majikthise.typepad.com/
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/
http://www.slate.com/
http://www.dailykos.com/
http://www.impeach07.org/
http://sonnyboy3.wordpress.com/2007/08/22/bush-needs-brain-again/

Friday, December 14, 2007

Say It Ain't So Bud, Roger, Andy, Jose, Et Al !


Thursday, December 13, 2007

Christmas Grinch G.W. Bush Vetoes S CHIP Program; Again!!






In case you missed it the first time, it has happened again! President G.W. Bush, who once attempted to characterize himself as a "compassionate conservative," has again veoted the S CHIP program which provides health insurance to millions of middle class and poor kids.
Demonstrating that he has no clue about the real world Bush said "He didn't want people to discard their health plan for a government health plan." He ignores the fact that many millions in the U.S. have no health care plans and trust to good fortune they and their kids wont get sick or injured.
G.W. get's the Grinch award!!

Happy Winter's Solstice!



For those who profess no religious belief and still enjoy celebrating the holidays it might be interesting to note that this time of year in the northern hemisphere has been observed for thousands of years, well before the emergence of Christianity or Judaism, as the "death" of the dark winter months and the "birth" of the sun as the days began to lengthen once again.
Many cultures share a tradition of this type and it was an important event in the life of societies that relied on agrarian success as well as hunting and grazing.
This is another example of prehistoric and pagan beliefs that survive today in our supposedly "enlightened" culture.

Monday, December 10, 2007

Fred Thompson, Squarely On The Looney Fringe!


Fred Thompson made a startling statement in the GOP debate in Miami.
When asked what he would do about Fidel Castro, who has held onto power in Cuba as nine different U.S. presidents have come into office, Thompson replied, with a grin "I'm going to make sure that he didn't survive 10 U.S. presidents."
Now that's a hell of a thing to say. If I understand that statement correctly Thompson is advocating the assasination of Castro. Quite a foreign policy!
If this is what passes for cogent thought and leadership then we have come to a sad state in this country.
If Fred Thompson is the answer then it is a mighty strange question!

Friday, December 07, 2007

Mitt Pandering On Religious Question






Mitt Romney made his speech yesterday, aimed at reassuring so-called evangelical Christians that he is a ‘real’ Christian. He also said religion should not be a test for public office.
He is right about that but then he takes his pandering a bit too far when he made this statement.
"Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone," he said.
What does that mean? If you have no religion or if you are an agnostic or atheist then you are not entitled to freedom in our society?
Romney also said there was a place for religion in public office. This flies in the face of centuries of governmental practice and attempts to breach Jefferson’s “wall” between state and religion.
This is wrong. Religious orthodoxy has no place in the government and if you need examples of why this is so just look at the theocracies we are dealing with in the Middle East. It really works there doesn’t it?
Mitt Romney comes across with the authenticity of a con man. He deserves the appellation “slick” far more than former President Clinton.

Thursday, December 06, 2007

Medicare Miasma



Here is a story told to me by my buddy Al K. Traz.
I went down to Old Joe’s Bar Room the other day. You know, on the corner by the square.
The regulars were all lined up as usual. I saw my buddy Chuck McGinty. He looked bad.
“What’s up Chuck?“ I asked.
“Just had my first experience trying to use the Medicare account which I was put into early in the year. It was not a good experience,” he said, his head low and his eyes all blood shot and red.
He continued, “I needed to replace the face mask for my CPAP machine. I called the company which had provided me with my machine and was told they had to have an order from my doctor. They also wanted my insurance information. I replied that I had Medicare, parts A&B.”
He went on to relate the drawn out run around that ensued over the following several days.
“So they finally told me I could come get the mask. When I got to the clinic I was told that my co-pay for the mask would be $142.00! I was stunned! Prices for the same part online ranged from $42.00 to $69.00 or so. I was not told I would need a co-payment and I expected to just come there and pick it up. No such luck! I did not have that amount to pay.”
Now he still needs a new mask and will get it online. He just hopes it will fit and it will take at least a few days to arrive. Chuck gets by on Social Security. They withdraw $93.50 per month from his check to pay his Medicare premium.
Chuck says he thinks the medical supply company is overcharging for their services and products.
“They get away with this because they charge it to insurance companies or Social Security or agencies such as Nueces County Indigent Care. I am pissed off. I have been dealing with these folks since last week and wasted a lot of time and a trip into the most busy shopping area in town, at Christmas shopping frenzy time, and still do not have this piece of molded plastic which probably cost a couple of bucks to produce.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Thank God we don’t have socialized medicine.”

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

NIE Estimate Exposes More Bush Lies



The Bush adminstration has once again been caught in lies which have been used to deceive about mid east policies. George W. Bush has demonstrated that inconvenient little things, such as the facts and the truth, are not as important as are his own preconceived notions when it comes to the Middle East and foreign policy in general.
The recent revelation of the 2003 NIE finding showing that the intelligence community, and the Bush administration, has known since that Iran had discontinued their nuclear weapons program.
So does that change the hostility and saber rattling the Bush administration has been directing towards Iran?
Of course not! One thing you can say about George W. Bush and his inner circle, they never have let the facts get into the way of their ideas about foreign policy!
Today, Tuesday, Dec. 4, The President said in a press conference that his policy towards Iran is unchanged. He said, basically, that maybe they don't have a nuclear
weapons program but they might some day so we still remain belligerant and hostile. So now the president is basing policy on unknown future possibilities, not actual facts!
Rand Beers, who resigned from Bush's National Security Council just before the Iraq war, said the report should derail any appetite for war on the administration's part, and should reinvigorate regional diplomacy. "The new NIE throws cold water on the efforts of those urging military confrontation with
Iran," he said.
Undeterred by the disclosure U.S. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, said the risk of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon remains "a serious problem."

Saturday, December 01, 2007

Voice From The Past...William Jennings Bryan





“The nation is of age and it can do what it pleases; it can spurn the traditions of the past; it can repudiate the principles upon which the nation rests; it can employ force instead of reason; it can substitute might for right; it can conquer weaker people; it can exploit their lands, appropriate their property and kill their people; but it cannot repeal the moral law or escape the punishment decreed for the violation of human rights.” --William Jennings Bryan, 1900