Cagle World

You know what we value most as a nation by what we are not allowed to take on without widespread hysteria. The illuminating metaphor is known as the “third rail” of politics. Lose your footing and step on something we as Americans hold dear and ““ ZAP!

Cartoon by Adam Zyglis - Buffalo News (click to purchase)

Our most lethal third rails are cutting Medicare, cutting Social Security, cutting defense spending, and raising taxes. So, we can’t cut anything and we can’t ask citizens to pay for it. USA! USA!
Our third rails have us painted into a mixed metaphor corner.

This all could be a quaint ideological tug-o-war between Left and Right: Left wants to spend and tax. Right wants to cut and cut. If that were actually true, it would be as simple as choosing your side and making your case. Do you want to be taxed more or do you want the government to spend less?

What’s clouded this question is what the dreaded government actually is. For example: the slogan often used by right-wingers, “We are a nation of laws,” is singing the praise of the government. Who makes the laws? Enforces them? Alters them? The government. Private industry isn’t deciding case law (not yet anyway). It’s not bringing criminals to justice. It’s certainly not regulating businesses to work for the public good. That’s what government employees do. Or in the case of the banks, are supposed to do. Government makes us a nation AND makes our laws.

Saying you have a “legal right” is saying the government agrees with you that you’re entitled to a said action. Legality is what the government decides based on the will of the people.

But you’ll hear people confess they hate government and are exercising their legal right to say so. And they’ll say it without irony. What do they think the government is?

The phrase “government spending” is always a pejorative. It’s a nasty phrase for excess. According to conservatives government spending is always “out of control,” unless it’s on the military. If it’s the military: We support our troops. Wave flags. Apple pie. Debate over.

The military is the government. It’s government funded and government run. Big military is big government. The President is the Commander-in-Chief of the military. You can’t be against government and be pro-military. That’s like being anti-rain but pro-precipitation.

“I’m for fiscal responsibility and a strong defense,” is a weathered battle cry. The two concepts are at odds with each other. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in 2008 the U.S. spent 41.5% of the world’s military expenditures. That’s of the entire planet. The second on the list are the Chinese who spend 5.8%. So what are we spending over $600-$800 billion a year on? Who are we protecting ourselves from? What enemy of ours has had a submarine in the past 20 years? Why do we still have those billion dollar programs?

Going largely underreported, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates spoke at the Eisenhower Library (named for the president who coined the term “military-industrial complex”), last week calling for cuts in the Pentagon’s budget. Gates asked, “Does the number of warships we have and are building really put America at risk when the U.S. battle fleet is larger than the next 13 navies combined, 11 of which belong to allies and partners?”

Gates’ speech highlights the fact that we’re in a solo arms race. Every other nation quit the competition and we’re still sprinting to be on top. For the first time we disclosed the exact amount of nuclear warheads in our arsenal: 5,113. That enormous stockpile has to be maintained and by some estimates we spend $29 billion annually on it.

That’s right, we spend $29 billion a year maintaining weapons we only have so we will hopefully never use them. But bring it up and you’re a thumb-sucking pinko.

We have two current wars we are waging and we are still preparing for other wars our grandparents already won.

Military spending is a third rail hopefully made less charged by Secretary Gates, but not likely. For American politicians speaking about it is taboo. To incorporate the always colorful, currently incarcerated, former governor of Louisiana, Edwin Edwards, he said the only way he could lose the election against David Duke was to be caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy. I’ll add: or admit plans for defense spending cuts.
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Tina Dupuy is an award-winning writer, editor and columnist for Cagle Cartoons. Follow Tina on Twitter @TinaDupuy.

Want to run Tina’s column in your publication? Contact Cari Dawson Bartley. E-mail [email protected], (800) 696-7561.

I don’t know who they are, but I’ve got to hand it to them. I’m too cynical to do what they do.

I speak of the Americans who, every year, donate money to pay down America’s national debt.

The Bureau of the Public Debt — part of the Treasury Department — began allowing such donations in 1961. According to Title 31, Chapter 31 of the U.S. Code, any citizen is free to give a “gift” to Treasury, under the condition that the money will be used only to pay down the debt.

Cartoon by David Fitzsimmons - Arizona Star (click to purchase)

Last year, the government received $3 million in such gifts. Who are the gift-givers? Nobody knows for certain.

Mckayla Braden, senior adviser at the Bureau of the Public Debt, told me that all the bureau does is tally the totals. It keeps no records on the number of individuals who give or the average amount.

Braden was able to share some interesting details and anecdotes with me:

. Gift-givers generally mail in checks — rarely do they include a note of any kind.

. Sometimes they donate their tax-refund checks, after signing the checks over to Treasury.

. Occasionally, someone leaves a large portion of his or her estate to the government. That happened in 1992, when the largest gift on record, $3.5 million, was received.

Over the years, Braden was able to learn about some of the givers.

In the early ’90s, a teacher sent in a large jar of dimes and nickels. The teacher explained that she’d conducted a class exercise on the national debt. Her students had contributed what they could.

Braden remembers one gift-giver who mailed a small money order from a convenience store.

She remembers another fellow who mailed in $10 or $20 every payday. He did so for years.

Though little is known about the gift-givers — it isn’t entirely clear what motivates them — Braden got a sense that most are patriotic people who want to do their own small part to help their country.

“Small” is, unfortunately, the right word.

For the past decade, Treasury has received between $2 million and $3 million in gifts every year. But our debt, growing a few trillion a year, now stands at $13 trillion.

If our debt remained fixed at $13 trillion — and if we applied $3 million every year to pay down that debt — it would take 4.3 million years to pay it off.

And that is with zero-percent interest.

Besides, the gift donations technically aren’t paying down the debt anyhow. All the donations are deposited to the receipts ledger of Uncle Sam’s general fund.

Since we’re running large deficits, the donations simply reduce the amount of money our government will borrow.

The last thing I want to do is give our spendthrift government an opportunity to spend even more.

Nonetheless, I wish more people were as thoughtful as the silent givers — particularly the people who are so eager to expand our government and raise our taxes.

Hey, big spenders, here’s your chance to put your money where your mouth is. You can send your own money to Treasury right now. Just go to www.pay.gov.

How about it, big spenders.

Hello?

Just as I figured.

No wonder I’m such a cynic.

©2010 Tom Purcell. Tom Purcell, a humor columnist for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, is nationally syndicated exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For more info contact Cari Dawson Bartley at 800 696 7561 or email [email protected]. Visit Tom on the web at www.TomPurcell.com or e-mail him at [email protected].

Raging Moderate, by Will Durst

They’ve tried fire and robots and domes and booms and drones and boxes and rosary beads and even pantyhose stuffed with human hair, but so far nothing has slowed the Deepwater Horizon oil spill from creeping towards our Southern Coast like a drunken lobbyist staggering towards a free seafood buffet. And almost as ugly. This maritime miasma promises to be the most monumental attack of sludge to hit American shores since Ann Coulter’s most recent book.

Cartoon by Bill Schorr - Cagle Cartoons (click to purchase)

Hard to say what frightens Gulf Coast residents more; the toxic slick bearing down on their shore or the administration’s guarantee that our government is poised and ready to swoop in with federal assistance. It worked so well after Katrina. The kind of news that prompts residents to wake screaming — bathed in sweat — from nightmares of FEMA loading trucks full of mutant hair sausages never to be delivered. And ice. But never let it be said that Congress doesn’t know how to exploit a crisis. They’ve leaped into action and appointed a panel.

The one positive to come out of this amphibious affliction (besides never hearing another New Orleans restaurant say they are out of blackened redfish) is we can expect to hear a lot fewer of those strident rallying cries of “Drill, Baby, Drill” this election year. They’ve already given way to the more muted “Cap, Baby, Cap,” and threaten to digress into “Tax, Baby, Tax.” Right now though, those responsible seem to be sticking like shrimp to otter fur with “Prevaricate, Baby, Prevaricate.”

BP, which apparently stands for Brainless Pinheads, first announced the seepage from the MC252 well (isn’t that cute) was barely a couple of drips. Nothing to worry about. More oil pooled on your average garage floor. Then it bounced up to 1,000 barrels a day, then 2,000, and now that we’re obviously in gushing territory estimates are not really useful anymore. Numbers can be so misleading.

Chemicals were sprayed on the leak to disperse it, but that was curtailed because the dispersant might be doing more harm than good. They don’t know. Oh, good. Turns out, these guys don’t know a lot. They won’t even say what’s in the dispersant because it’s proprietary. All they can reveal is it’s not harmful. However, if you do happen to get a smidgeon on your skin, you immediately want to flush it with a bleach bath. That they know.

You’d think a company that makes its living poking holes in the bottom of seas would have a plan to close them back up, wouldn’t you? Well, you’d be wrong. Actually, you’d be half wrong. They do have means. Using technology they’re required to install when drilling in other countries. Not here, though. We encourage voluntary participation. And let the industry write the regs. And then pray to the oil fairies.

Maybe this will signal an end to our bowing down to the fossil fuel gods. Maybe Obama will seize this reprehensible moment to carve out an anti-carbon strategy and the whole country will rise as one and demand a national policy based on clean energies and shared sacrifice. Yeah. And maybe ring-tailed squirrel monkeys will replace hockey referees during playoff games. Its times like these that make you wish hari-kari had become a corporate CEO global tradition.

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Will Durst is a San Francisco-based political comic who often writes. This being a dazzling example. Catch him at the Crest Theatre on Saturday May 8, www.thecrest.com, 1013 K St., Sacramento, Calif. 95814, 916.442.5189. And his one-man show, “The Lieutenant Governor from the State of Confusion” on Friday, May 14 at the Holly Springs Cultural Arts Cente. 300 West Ballentine St., Holly Springs N.C. 27540. 919.577.1660. New CD, “Raging Moderate” from Stand Up! Records now available on both iTunes and Amazon.

Copyright ©2010, Will Durst, distributed by the Cagle Cartoons Inc. syndicate. Call Cari Dawson-Bartley at 800-696-7561 or e-mail [email protected]. Will Durst is a political comedian who has performed around the world. He is a familiar pundit on television and radio. E-mail Will at [email protected]. Check out willandwillie.com for the latest podcast. Will Durst’s book, “The All American Sport of Bipartisan Bashing,” is available from Amazon and better bookstores all over this great land of ours. Don’t forget to check out his rooftop comedy minutes at: http://www.rooftopcomedy.com/shows/BurstOfDurst.

Making Sense, by Michael Reagan

In days past, other nations needed a sophisticated and highly trained espionage operation to know the details of America’s military might. Now, they only need a subscription to The New York Times.

Cartoon by Cam Cardow - Ottawa Citizen (click to purchase)

This week, the Obama administration released information regarding the number of nuclear weapons we have stockpiled: 5,113 precisely. This is a mere 16 percent of the nuclear weapons we once had, and the smallest number of nuclear weapons on hand since the Eisenhower administration.

Now, let’s be completely clear that 5,113 nuclear weapons are more than enough. I don’t particularly care to contemplate how many times over the world could be annihilated with that number of nukes. My father, Ronald Reagan, dreamed of a world where our stockpile would be reduced to zero, and that destructive power would be entirely eliminated.

But regardless of the merits of reducing the size of our stockpile — an effort which has spanned decades and multiple presidencies — what I cannot applaud is this administration’s loose treatment of American interests.

In so many ways, President Obama seems to have forgotten that we are still a sovereign nation facing real threats and irrational enemies. Once again, he has made a substantive offer of American intelligence and resources without any known return on investment.

This deeply disturbing pattern would have appalled my father.

Since his inauguration, President Obama has made multiple overtures towards the Iranian government. The response? A report released just this past February by the International Atomic Energy Agency said the Iranians are working even more determinedly in their pursuit of atomic weapons. Their massive enrichment program, perhaps be too large to halt, is now certainly too large for the Iranian government to easily surrender.

During the international climate negotiations in Copenhagen, the United States was only stopped from surrendering massive shares of its economic power by the complete unwillingness to engage on the part of large developing nations such as China, India, and Indonesia.

In dealing with rogue nation North Korea, President Obama has only seen the situation with that intractable county disintegrate. Just over a year ago, North Korea pulled out of six-party talks and ejected all nuclear inspectors. A month later, they publicly tested a nuclear weapon. Now, a South Korean naval vessel has sunk under suspicious circumstances, and even if North Korea is to blame, no one seems quite sure what recourse is available.

And while the Obama administration claims a warm relationship with China, we can’t help but look at tensions over North Korea, Taiwan, currency — even Google — and ask: Really? Does a friendly diplomatic meeting do us any good if we walk away with no progress?

From his multi-nation apology tour to stalled foreign policy promises to this preemptive release of our nuclear secrets, President Obama has repeatedly demonstrated his willingness to give away the store and gain little to nothing in return.

Last week’s attempted bombing in Times Square should have driven home, once again, the very real threats America still faces in this world. The economic, military, and diplomatic strength our country has known for the past half-century is not inevitable. Without strong, strategic leadership this nation, like so many before it, will peak and fade.

President Obama seems not to know, or not to care, and that is one quality we can not afford in our leader.

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Mike Reagan, the elder son of the late President Ronald Reagan, is spokesperson for The Reagan PAC (www.thereaganpac.com) and chairman and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation (www.reaganlegacyfoundation.org). Look for Mike’s books and other information at www.Reagan.com. E-mail comments to [email protected].

©2010 Mike Reagan. If you’re not a paying subscriber to our service, you must contact us to print or Web post this column. Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by: Cagle Cartoons, Inc., newspaper syndicate. For info contact Cari Dawson Bartley. E-mail [email protected], (800) 696-7561.

The adage at Newsweek magazine must be: a picture is worth a thousand complaints.

Newsweek’s current cover will likely bring that many objections from Hillary Clinton alone. During her lengthy tenure in the public eye, Clinton has been depicted in more than her share of unflattering photos – even without any consideration of the pantsuit thing. But Newsweek’s cover image on the May 3rd issue may be Clinton’s worst yet, and it brings into focus the power of photo editing, even in a medium that supposedly never lies.

The photo in question, credited to Charles Ommanney via Getty Images, was taken at a NATO conference in Estonia, which may explain Clinton’s tense expression and apparent fatigue in the fairly tight close-up. It is used to illustrate Newsweek’s report titled, “Obama’s Bad Cop,” or, as the cover line describes the Secretary of State, “the president’s steely messenger.”

Imagine you’re Newsweek’s photo editor, with dozens, perhaps hundreds of images of Hillary Clinton from which to choose. Is it journalistically proper to hunt for an image that looks particularly “steely”? Would it confuse readers if someone called “Bad Cop” was smiling?

A full-page photo by Alex Wong, used by Newsweek on an inside page, shows Clinton with an equally stern expression, but because of a favorable angle and softer focus it is considerably more flattering than the cover image.

The very act of snapping a photo requires editorial judgment about such things as focus, lighting, exposure, angle and background. The process only gets more complicated when editors must crop, position, and even retouch the image, while deciding if it is appropriate to the accompanying story and also fair to the person depicted.

The unwritten rule among news professionals is that reasonably flattering images are used when available, unless the subject is a hated criminal. It’s too easy to find unflattering photos, if that’s the objective, especially when it comes to politicians and celebrities who are photographed thousands of times.

Newsweek’s editors seem to enjoy challenging this convention. Last November they used a photo of Sarah Palin from Runner’s World magazine on the cover, angering some critics who felt the image of Palin in jogging shorts was presented in a misleading context. During the ’08 campaign Newsweek ran a Palin cover photo that was enlarged so much it seemed to intentionally draw attention to unwanted facial hair, pores and wrinkles.

There’s been a lot of discussion lately about how celebrities are depicted in magazine photos. Seems politicians hope to look better, while some entertainers are now willing, if not eager, to look worse. In an odd bit of pushback against photo enhancement, Jessica Simpson appears on the May cover of Marie Claire magazine without retouching or makeup; Kim Kardashian is similarly unretouched in the May Harper’s Bazaar.

There’s no evidence to suggest that Newsweek’s editors added wrinkles to the Secretary of State’s face for the current cover, but they didn’t remove any either. Washingtonian magazine was kinder to Clinton’s boss last year, but out of line, when it depicted President Obama in a beach scene, with Photoshop-enhanced skin tone and swim trunks changed from black to a sexier shade of red.

It’s unethical for magazines to alter news images without full disclosure to readers. It’s less clearcut, but nonetheless troubling, if editors intentionally opt for unflattering photos when better alternatives are available.

So what’s fair and balanced when it comes to magazine images? Not much. Photos never lie, but that doesn’t mean they always tell the truth.

Footnote: For illustration purposes, a small version of the Newsweek cover is running with this column. Shrinking a photo tends to remove wrinkles and facial flaws. I’m sure Clinton would love the magazine cover if it were the size of a playing card.

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©2010 Peter Funt. This column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons, Inc. newspaper syndicate. For info call Cari Dawson Bartley at 800 696 7561 or e-mail [email protected].

Peter Funt is a writer and public speaker. He’s also the long-time host of “Candid Camera.” A collection of his DVDs is available at www.candidcamera.com.