This cartoon ran last March, a few months before the subprime crisis really began to hit critical mass. At the time, most of the feedback I got from readers suggested that I did not know what I was talking about, or that I was making too much out of a minor trend.

Little did we all know …

From Norman Solomon (via email):

When I picked up a ringing phone Monday morning, the next thing I knew a producer was inviting me to appear on Glenn Beck’s TV show.

Beck has become a national phenom with his nightly hour of polemics on CNN Headline News — urging war on Iran, denouncing “political correctness” at home, trashing immigrants who don’t speak English, mocking environmentalists as repressive zealots, and generally trying to denigrate progressive outlooks.

Our segment, the producer said, would focus on a recent NBC news report praising the virtues of energy-efficient LED light bulbs without acknowledging that the network’s parent company, General Electric, sells them. I figured it was a safe bet that Beck’s enthusiasm for full disclosure from media would be selective.

A few hours later, I was staring into a camera lens at the CNN bureau in San Francisco while Beck launched into his opening. What had occurred on the “NBC Nightly News,” he explained, “was at best a major breach of journalistic integrity.” And he pointed out: “The problem isn’t what NBC is promoting. It’s what they’re not disclosing.”

A minute later, Beck asked his first question: “Norman, you agree with me that they should have disclosed this?” The unedited transcript tells what happened next.

Read the rest of this entry »

As a lifelong fan of the crudely named and endlessly frustrating Cleveland Indians, I couldn’t help but smile to see that folks in Colombia are also willing to turn fellow human beings into mascots for a team that never wins the title.

Ladies and gentlemen, the last-place Cartagena Indians:

The kids reminded me of my own friends when we were that age. And Cleveland Stadium was about as well-kept back then, too.

However, my friends and I never had our psyches gently pummeled quite like this:

Those are three beautiful Colombian children playing with Santa Claus. Right next to a sign twice as big as they are, urgently warning families to stop paying kidnappers.

Can you imagine growing up with that? What would that have done to how you feel about yourself and the world?

I don’t even pretend to know the answer for myself.

Wexler Wants Hearings, where Judiciary Committee members Robert Wexler (D-FL), Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) call for impeachment hearings for Vice President Cheney, has almost 90,000 signatures as of Monday afternoon. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to sign it—the more people who do, the more likely it is big online groups will jump in and make it a cause of their own. Then we could be talking about 500,000 signatories…which in turn would make room for all kinds of good things.

link

The Secret Library of Hope
12 Books to Stiffen Your Resolve
By Rebecca Solnit

Hope is an orientation, a way of scanning the wall for cracks — or building ladders — rather than staring at its obdurate expanse. It’s a worldview, but one informed by experience and the knowledge that people have power; that the power people possess matters; that change has been made by populist movements and dedicated individuals in the past; and that it will be again.

Dissent in this country has become largely a culture of diagnosis rather than prescription, of describing what is wrong with them, rather than what is possible for us. But even in English, a robust minority tradition can be found. There are a handful of books that I think of as “the secret library of hope.” None of them deny the awful things going on, but they approach them as if the future is still open to intervention rather than an inevitability. In describing how the world actually gets changed, they give us the tools to change it again.

Here, then, are some of the regulars in my secret political library of hope, along with some new candidates:

The rest.

For a teeny paperback that came out over two months ago without any big-paper reviews even expected, this write-up in the current Sunday Boston Globe was certainly a pleasant surprise, one I share here despite the demands of modest decorum because my publisher really likes it for some reason when people buy my books:

“[I]ntriguingly informative… revelatory — and wryly funny about some very serious subjects… Harris’s sly wit and infectious curiosity make understanding world chaos fascinating reading… witty, horrific, and necessary…”

Holy crap. Thanks, Globe. I liked a lot of your reporting on the Aqua Teen bomb scare, too. I’d want to buy you a beer or something, if you weren’t like this giant disembodied corporate entity and all.

So one last plug here (and really, I think this is it): if you want a last-minute gift for a friend who can read, (or ten copies, heck, it’s the holidays!), here’s the Amazon link.

Now read the next post about Wexler’s call for hearings and the rule of law and stuff. Just a teensy bit more important than my puny little book.

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the website Wexler Wants Hearings, where Judiciary Committee members Robert Wexler (D-FL), Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) call for impeachment hearings for Vice President Cheney. If you’re the kind of weirdo who thinks the rule of law is a good thing, I strongly encourage you to sign the petition supporting them and then tell everyone you know about it. They have 56,000 people already in just two days, and the more clamor they hear from us here in Lilliput, the more willing they’ll be to go further.

Traveling around South America for a couple of months. My Spanish still sucks, so my translations may not be perfect, but estoy aprendiendo. Deal with it.

You know you’ve arrived in Bogotá when the airport is filled with signs warning you not to mule.

Interesting that the deterrent here isn’t jail, violent reprisal, or any other punishment — they’re appealing to shame and family honor.

Here’s another anti-mule sign, this one posted in front of the McDonald’s in the airport food court.

Again, the emphasis is on family shame above all other deterrents. Including the nice young men with with large weapons nearby.

Not sure what that says about Colombian culture, but it’s hard to imagine the US analog having any effect: Kids! If you got involved with drugs — your parents wouldn’t like it.

Yeah. That would totally work.

Not sure how well it’s working in Colombia, either. But still, fascinating to see.

Update: The second one may be closer to “And have you already told you’re family you were a mule?”. The same general gist. I’m still working on my Spanish, obviously. Yo disculpe para cualquier errores durante este proceso.

Robert Wexler (D-FL), Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), all members of the House Judiciary Committee, have created a website calling for impeachment hearings for Vice President Cheney:

WEXLER WANTS HEARINGS

This is particularly significant because Wexler isn’t a member of the progressive caucus, which indicates the center of gravity on the issue is shifting. The site has additional information, including their new op-ed and ways to support them.

From Stop Big Media and the talented Matt Thompson. (See some of Thompson’s previous work here.) You may notice how both videos make use of the work of a certain progressive cartoonist.

I think this tops anything we secularists could do to Christmas. (Painful as it is, I do recommend watching it all the way through — it’s bad on so many levels, it approaches an Ed Wood level of unintentional genius.)