Category Archives: Culture
Feeling the Bern in Venezuela
Hugo Chavez used to give heating oil to poor Americans through Joe Kennedy’s Citizen’s Energy Corp. Now the mayor of Caracas tweets that Venezuelans are hunting cats and dogs for dinner.
Regular blackouts shut down hospital respirators for hours in Venezuela according to the NYT. Glenn Reyonolds, at USA Today, says socialism doesn’t help poor people. It creates them.
The Bern in Venezuela
Bernie Sanders says he’s for Denmark style socialism. Danes aren’t pleased. T.D. Tuccille, in Reason, quotes Bernie Sanders giving a shoutout to Socialism’s ability to make people equally poor:
“Sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is because people are lining up for food. That’s a good thing,” Sanders told interviewers in 1985. “In other countries people don’t line up for food; the rich get the food and the poor starve to death.”
The Venezuelan elite aren’t eating their pets. Chavez’s daughter is believed to have a net worth in the billions.
Brazil
The Olympics are coming to Brazil. The country is in deep recession, the water is filthy, Zika virus is rampant and the president is being impeached. President Dilma Rousseff was suspended by the Senate on Thursday.
She calls it a coup.
Bathroom Battle
Title IX used to mean women get as many athletic scholarships as men. Politico reports the Obama administration wants to expand the meaning of Title IX to allow males who identify as female to use the women’s facilities in schools that receive federal funds.
Ed Whalen in National Review calls this a legal absurdity. He says, using the administration’s reasoning, “An athlete who is biologically male in all respects must be allowed to compete for a position on a women’s sports team if he identifies himself as female.”
The Justice Department considers LGBT bathroom rights a civil rights issue. Loretta Lynch called the North Carolina bathroom law Jim Crow legislation and sued. North Carolina responded by suing the Feds. David French says, “The executive branch has gone rogue by amending federal law through unconstitutional action.”
On the other hand, CNN has a picture of a transgendered person who sure looks like he belongs in the men’s room.
Obama Bashes Brexit
President Obama threatened Britons who favor a Brexit. A Brexit would be a British exit from the European Union in a referendum coming up June 23. Obama said if the UK leaves the EU it would have to move the back of the queue if it wants to do a trade deal with the US.
Obama prefers to deal with undemocratic bureaucrats in Brussels rather than Britons who prefer to retain their sovereignty in London. He claims it could take 10 years to reach a trade deal with an independent UK.
Obama’s intervention enraged London Mayor Boris Johnson who claimed Obama’s Kenyan background makes him hostile to the British Empire. That remark hi-lighted the special relationship between American and British students. Johnson was disinvited from a debate on the Brexit. British students also favor “safe spaces” to protect them from unpleasant ideas.
The Wall Street Journal points out that what Obama thinks may not matter since he’s a short termer.
Just Say No
Here’s a good example of a cartoon gone bad.
On Monday the NYT ran a story about the heroin epidemic spreading across the cities of America.
The Times editors chose to place that story on the front page, right next to Nancy Reagan’s obituary. That would be Nancy “Just Say No to Drugs” Reagan.
Considering that prescription drug abuse is soaring and pot is sold openly in Colorado and other states, it’s pretty clear that, 30 years after Nancy’s “Just Say No” campaign, quite a few Americans are saying “yes” to drugs.
Being a sucker for irony, I drew a cartoon and rushed it off to the syndicate. Only then did I stop to look at what I had drawn. I was perplexed by my own cartoon. It was true, but it was crass. Mrs. Reagan was devoted to President Reagan and the White House. I wasn’t thinking about dumping on her the day after her death but that’s the message my image conveyed.
Fortunately, I had failed to stick Muhammad in the picture so I would live to draw another day. 
I asked the syndicate to withdraw the drug cartoon and dashed off the one above.
I guess this story is an example of the peculiar power of a picture.
Anyway, should you come across this cartoon, just say no.
