Voices From Russia, Too

Saturday, 13 August 2011

13 August 2011. Politics Thorough a Cartoonist’s Eyes…

The Tea Party deficit hawks are going to drag the country down, Nobel Prize laureate Joseph Stiglitz said so, and he’s right. He grew up in gritty Gary IN, not in wooded and bucolic suburbia (like some I could mention, both religious and secular, but I won’t). He predicts that to slash spending without raising taxes would lead to massive job losses… I fear that he’s right…

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It’s become obvious that the Republican Party doesn’t care how many people are thrown out of work and suffer, so long as they can defeat Barack Obama next year… or so they think…

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Tea Party math… Less Government = More Money for their Wealthy Backers… any questions?

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Rick Perry‘s religious posturing is blasphemous, in the strictest sense of the word. NO TRUE CHRISTIAN CAN VOTE FOR SUCH IMPIETY… full stop. You can have Christ or you can have Jayzuss… the Saviour of the World or the God of American Exceptionalism… do choose carefully…

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Rupert Murdoch = Fox News = the Tea Party = the Free Market = Slavery for You and Yours… that’s quite clear, isn’t it? You CAN avert it…

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Do you REALLY want a GWB clone in the Oval Office? I didn’t think so…

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The individual ‘baggers aren’t very bright… their leaders have hoodwinked them and they’re leadin’ ’em by the (long) nose. However, NEVER turn your back on any of them… you’ll regret it if you do…

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Their 401k’s tanked… poor babies! Didn’t they tell us that private enterprise was going to give all us perfect retirements? God laughs…

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BILLIONS for bombs… peanuts for relief… Compassion… the Tea Party Way…

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The Five Percenters gave you a measly 1 percent raise last year (if you kept your job, that is)… they gave themselves a 23 percent increase… that’s called “class warfare” and “redistribution of income”… and the working class is losing the war…

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S&P gave junk investments (such as Enron) AAA ratings… it made a 2 trillion USD (58.3 trillion Roubles. 1.4 trillion Euros. 1.25 trillion UK Pounds) error in its calculations of the US debt… we’re supposed to take its “downgrade” of the US credit rating seriously?

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The Five Percenters party hearty = the Working Class pays all the bills = The World According to Rush and the Tea Party

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An aside to all Orthodox Christians out there… Paffhausen sucked up to the First Profit of the Mormons… the Mormons won’t condemn polygamy unreservedly… I believe that his moralistic bleats are rather unconvincing, no? Birds of a feather DO flock together…

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Paul Ryan is a fanatic devotee of Ayn Rand… he believes that might makes right and that the “race belongs to the swiftest”… I think that his pretensions of being a Catholic are hypocritical and false in consequence…

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A single cruise missile (with all its ancillaries) costs 1.5 million USD (43.8 million Roubles. 1.05 million Euros. 920,000 UK Pounds)… a schoolteacher in New York State earned 67,000 USD (1.96 million Roubles. 47,000 Euros. 41,100 UK Pounds) in 2009, that’s a little over 22 years of paychecks… and the US fired off 124 of those things in just the first days of the war. Another way of putting it is that it would have paid the salaries of 2,776 teachers for a whole year. The Tea Party has BILLIONS for bombs… none for teachers… that tells you their priorities… and they DON’T favour you…

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Saturday, 6 August 2011

6 August 2011. Politics Through a Cartoonist’s Eyes… and Some Thoughts to Think Upon…

You mean NOTHING to the Republican Party… only the Five Percenters matter. You? “Die… and decrease the surplus population”.

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John Boehner had NO problem increasing the debt ceiling every time that Shrub Bush asked for it…

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Anyone who applies for unemployment after 1 July 2011 will have NO extended benefits… they’ll only have 20 to 26 weeks worth, when the “average” length of joblessness is 40 weeks… the Republicans know this… but it would inconvenience their oligarch paymasters, so, they’ll not say a thing…

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Don’t blame President Obama for this… GWB founded this agency; it’s HIS creation, through-and-through. I wonder what Ike would’ve said about this? He DID warn us about the Military-Industrial Complex, didn’t he?

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Here’s a perfect personification of Jonas Paffhausen and all of his former Episkie pals…

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We can’t fund schools! We’ve got to buy bombs! You don’t need to know how to read to open up an MRE

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The Tea Party slobbers its approval of stock market gamblers and commodities speculators… what about you?

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In the USA, petrol went up 20 percent… in Europe, it went up an average of 8.6 percent… none dare call it “price-gouging”.

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“To the winner belongs the spoils”… “Only the productive should benefit from society”… “Those unemployed freeloaders won’t get a job until their benefits run out”… if you believe ANY of that… you’re a godless pig, and you’re not only my enemy, you’re the enemy of all mankind… and I’ll oppose you and fight you as long as I’ve breath in my body…

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Who conjured up the monster? Why, it was the Tea Party with their “deficit hawk” madness. You can believe Rush and Michelle… or you can believe Nobel Prize laureate Joseph Stiglitz… I don’t think that you need to guess my choice!

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There are three main props of the Tea Party extremists. The first is Perpetual Warfare against the Impure. There are wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, an incipient war simmering in Yemen, and a planned war in Syria. There are BILLIONS available for bombs… in the Tea Party’s view, if we take food out of the mouths of poor kids, that’s OK… bombs on wogs are more important. Here’s what General Smedley Butler, USMC had to say about politicians, businessmen, and the wars they foment:

The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then, it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then, the flag follows the dollar, and the soldiers follow the flag. I wouldn’t go to war again as I’ve done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defence of our homes, and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket. … War’s a racket. It always has been. It’s possibly the oldest, easily, the most profitable, surely, the most vicious. It’s the only one international in scope. It’s the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. … In the World War, a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows…

The second prop of the Tea Party is a touching faith in an untrammelled Fundamentalist Free Market. Here’s what Professor Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize laureate, said of that:

Free market policies were never based on solid empirical and theoretical foundations, and even as many of these policies were being pushed, academic economists were explaining the limitations of markets… for instance, whenever information is imperfect, which is to say, always. … The fall of Wall Street is for market fundamentalism what the fall of the Berlin Wall was for communism. It’s not the conspiracies that wreck the world, but the series of wrong turns, failed policies, and little and big unfairnesses that add up. Still, those decisions are guided by larger mind-sets. Market fundamentalists never really appreciated the institutions required to make an economy function well, let alone the broader social fabric that civilisations require to prosper and flourish. … There’s one way out of this seeming impasse… expenditure cuts combined with an increase in taxes on upper-income Americans and a reduction in taxes on lower-income Americans. The expenditure cuts would, of course, by themselves reduce spending, but because poor individuals consume a larger fraction of their income than the rich, the “switch” in taxes would, by itself, increase spending. If appropriately designed, such a combination could simultaneously sustain the American economy and reduce the deficit. … Excessive leverage has large societal costs. Banks, and especially the big banks, need to be restrained. … The reason that the invisible hand often seems invisible is that it’s often not there.

The third prop of the Tea Party is Radical Sectarianism (AKA Fundamentalism, Evangelical Protestantism). This is its strongest column of support. Here’s what Our Lord Christ said about Sectarians and their fancies:

Not every one that saith unto me, “Lord, Lord”, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.

The Gospel according to St Matthew 7.21-23

Before I go, there was one other saying of the Lord Christ that applies to the Tea Party and its supporters:

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so, every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit; neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore, by their fruits ye shall know them. 

The Gospel according to St Matthew 7.15-20

Here are the fruits of the Tea Party:

  1. Wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, a coming war in Yemen, and a planned war in Syria (and the bloody butcher’s bill that falls on ordinary families)
  2. Taking the bread out of the mouths of the unemployed and putting it in the boodle bags of the oligarchs by cutting extended UI benefits
  3. Cutting senior’s healthcare in order to safeguard the lowest tax rates in the developed world on the affluent
  4. Two million dispossessed families, with five to six million more to come
  5. An increase in petrol prices 2.5 times the increase in European markets
  6. One in six Americans now on food stamps
  7. Increasingly-invasive searching by the TSA and other “security” agencies

The conclusion’s clear… in Our Lord Christ’s words, the members and supporters of the Tea Party are “bad trees”… Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Orthodox people should ponder the fact that JP, the konvertsy, Potapov, and the First Families support the Tea Party. Ergo, if the Tea Party’s a “bad tree”, only fit to be hewn down… what does that make them? Think well before answering…

BMD

Thursday, 28 July 2011

28 July 2011. A Russian POV… The Humanitarian Catastrophe in East Africa

Editor’s Foreword:

Today, we hear much from Internationalist Democrats and New GOP Tea Partiers about the supposed NEED for the USA to bomb Libya. The money that goes to buy a day’s worth of bombs would alleviate much of the suffering you’ll see in the graphic images below. They have BILLIONS for bombs… NOTHING for human compassion. I’ve no use for the likes of Eric Cantor or Hilary Clinton or John Boehner (or that overpaid braying jackass Rush Limboob)… they’re ALL evil; they’re ALL godless worshippers of Mammon.

GRASPING BASTARDS!

BMD

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Editor’s Afterword:

The Next time that you hear Rush or Hannity or Lil’ Mizz Sarah or Beck ranting away… remember these pictures. They don’t care at all about this situation… there’s no oil there for their transnational paymasters to steal. Each of the cruise missiles fired at Libyan civilian targets costs over a million bucks to buy and fire. How many Somalis would that money feed? Ponder that, if you would. We don’t have infinite resources… we can feed the hungry, or, we can bomb Libya. We’ve chosen to bomb Libya… that says volumes about us, NONE of it good. All too many of those who support the bombing have the god-damned gall to call themselves “Christians”… do excuse me as I hurl!

BMD

Tuesday, 19 July 2011

19 July 2011. Politics Through a Cartoonist’s Eyes…

Note well that the Tea Party screams about invasion of privacy via government regulation, but says NOTHING about the shredding and meltdown of our freedom under the Patriot Act and the police-state Department of Homeland Insecurity… rather, they wish this pointless hellishly-expensive agency and this nakedly repressive act to continue… one wonders why…

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The present tax rates on the wealthiest are HALF of those levied in the Nixon era… there were plenty of rich folks then, I seem to remember… what’s WRONG with that picture?

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It’s quite simple… as Nobel Prize laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz pointed up, if the “deficit hawks” have their way, it’ll start a downward and perpetual cycle… less spending would mean lower profits for business… the Five Percenters would shed workers rather than decrease their rapacious appetites… which would lead to more spending cuts… ad infinitum.

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America has to sacrifice, dontcha know… that is, everybody EXCEPT for the Five Percenters! I seem to notice that none of the loudest Neoliberal Free Marketers offer to take the slightest pay cut to save jobs. NONE. Certainly, it puts a new spin on the rants of Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann, and Tim Pawlenty, doesn’t it?

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We HAVE to cut education… we have Congressional junkets (that Michelle Bachmann takes advantage of), a generous Congressional healthcare plan (defended by John Boehner), three pointless wars (and a fourth “war-in-waiting” in Yemen), and the Department of Homeland Insecurity to pay for. We NEVER needed a “Department of Homeland Security” in the Cold War… why do we need one now? There’s no visible enemy… al Qaeda is nothing but the rightwing’s bogeyman, anyone who believes in the nonsense about the “War on Terror” deserves a long stay in a home for the feebleminded.

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