Category Archives: Foreign
War on Isis
On Friday President Obama acknowledged, to Stars and Stripes, three military deaths in Iraq despite his pledge to end war. I planned to draw a cartoon honoring American war dead for Memorial Day. But it kind of morphed into a cartoon about the war living.
Daily Beast reported American Special Forces, wearing Kurdish insignia, were photographed in Syria 18 miles from Raqqa, the ISIS capitol . Meanwhile, the U.S. is providing air support in a difficult Iraqi campaign to liberate Fallujah, again.
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.
Superdelegates
The idea for this one crept into my head while I was reading the NYT story by David Samuels about “Obama’s foreign policy guru” Ben Rhodes.
Rhodes bragged about planting a false narrative about the Iran nuclear deal to make the agreement seem more palatable to the American public. He claimed that the election of Iranian moderates is what sparked the deal. In reality President Obama sparked the deal by reaching out to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei long before that.
I was mulling over that little subterfuge when Bernie Sanders popped up on the television screen (I was multitasking), complaining again about the rigged Democratic primary.
The Economist explains here how the Ayatollah picks the candidates in Iran. Law/Street explains here how superdelegates pick candidates in America.
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.
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.
