Bors Blog
Archive for February, 2010
Aerial Activism
I’m a little late with a Joe Stack cartoon – my schedule sometimes does that to me – but I wanted to point out that white privilege apparently extends to domestic terrorism. Glenn Greenwald wrote well about the media’s inability to drop the T-word on a non-Muslim.
Just imagine the discussion if: Joe Stack was a radical Muslim. Joe Stack was a black militant Marxist opposed to capitalism. Joe Stack as he was, but with a larger plane that killed, say, one hundred people instead on one. Tinkering with one small factor such as race or religion is the deciding factor in whether conservatives will set up a Facebook shrine for the attacker or for the imposition of martial law. They are unprincipled maniacs.
I’m sure we’ll see more attacks soon.
Wednesday: More Tim Burton Remakes
It Had To Happen
Behold: an editorial cartoonist labels his cartoon an “editorial cartoon.”
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Douglas MacGregor
The News-Press Feb 27, 2010 |
Illustration Friday
A woman puts on makeup in her car while tossing trash out the window.
Social Networking
It’s easy to forget that sites like Facebook don’t exist simply for the sublime pleasure of reuniting you with high school classmates you vaguely remember, but actually seek to make a ton of money collecting personal data to sell targeted advertising and map consumer habits. If a corporation, government agency or religious institution presented us with that plan on paper, we’d be repulsed… so someone made it fun!
Won’t you be my Facebook friend?
Sketches
From last night’s New Oregon Interview Series on urban planning. Below is Portland Monthly editor Randy Gragg and architect Brad Cloepfil. The sketch of mayor Sam Adams is not included since it turned out looking like poo.
I got lucky at the after party by which I mean I won an oversized Coors shirt in a bar raffle. Finally I can dress to impress.
Developmentally Designed?
It has always puzzled me that the people who ascribe the most insanely vindictive qualities to their god do so approvingly.
Oh No Yoo Didn’t
Not only does John Yoo inexplicably live outside of a prison – he teaches law. See TPM’s latest on his fun legal theories for killing and torturing people.
Mailbag Douchebag
William writes:
Do your research and you will discover that GEORGE is as statist as BARACK Wake up and smell the coffee BOY. The good news is that Arkansas may elect the first openly republican black female to the congress ever.I am going TEABAG at your tea party if you can figure that one out you RACIST SOB
I cannot figure that one out.
Celebrity Rehab
This is running today in The Oregonian.
clicky for biggie
Aaron Campbell, an unarmed black man, was shot dead by Portland cops recently. The citizenry here is rightfully outraged and Jesse Jackson touched down a few days ago as city leaders rushed to contain the damage. (I think Sharpton lands this coming week.) There’s too many local references to explain here, but here are some Oregonian articles if you’d like to read more about the shooting.
Illustration Friday
Someone leaves their dog’s huge turds for others to clean up.
And an illustration for the ACLU. They’ve filed a lawsuit on behalf of a college student who was detained and interrogated at an airport for being armed with Arabic flashcards. Who knows what can happen if you learn Arabic.
Filibustered
You may have noticed that our government has ground to a halt due to Republican obstruction. At this point I think they would block funds to build a 300-foot statue of Ronald Reagan on the White House lawn – even if it peed on poor people. This is the party that, during the Bush years, whined about not getting “up or down” votes on every fascist Bush wanted on the bench. Not that Democrats keep consistent views on the filibuster when they are out of power.
At bare minimum, old white men who want to filibuster should be forced to physically do it and shut the government down. Let them talk endlessly for days and weeks to block health care reform while liberal groups wheel out dying grandmas with red tape over their mouths for the cameras and see who wins that PR war.
What I find most amazing in all this is that Republicans are not doing anything the rules of the Senate don’t allow them to do. It starts out as a ridiculously undemocratic institution, then makes up rules for itself so that some hick in a flyover state can shaft the entire country out of spite.
Pundits like to point out that our founding fathers, in their infinite wisdom, designed the Senate to move at a glacial pace to prevent rushing headlong down some dangerous path. And hooray for that. Whether it’s freeing slaves, letting women vote or being the last industrialized country to provide health care to all its citizens, Senators know it’s best to sit on things for a few centuries and mull it over. Well, unless there is a country that needs bombed.
