Citizen Barack
In a 2008 campaign speech in Berlin Barack Obama called himself a “citizen of the world”. Whatever his path to citizenship, he hasn’t been a model citizen.
Since his humbling election to the presidency of just the United States, our Citizen of the World has been withdrawing America from the world. That’s left a big vacuum – if a vacuum can be big. Anyway, very bad guys have rushed in to fill the vacuum. The result has been a refugee crisis a WSJ editorial calls “the worst human catastrophe of the 21st century”.
Right on cue, enter Vladimir Putin. Russia is planning to send S-300 missiles to Iran.
During the Bush administration Putin complained about a planned missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic. The purpose of the system was to deter Iranian missiles. In 2009 President Obama withdrew the system.
Back to School
Labor Day is the traditional end of summer break but it seems most kids now stagger back to school in mid-August. All that late summer sweat doesn’t seem to be making them any smarter. The average SAT score in 2015 was 1490, down from 1524 in 2006.
School Costs
IBD says the Department of Educaton runs over 100 grant programs at a cost of $100 billion with nothing to show for it.
Meanwhile student debt is soaring. According the LA Times, tuition and fees rose from $1,832 at an average private 4 year school in 1972 to $31,231 in 2015. Student loans are up 76% to $1.2 trillion since 2009.
The median household income in 1972 was $8,282 according to US Census stats. It was $48,874 in 2012. According to my cartoon math private college costs consume 63% of a family budget now compared to 22% 40 years ago. Paul F. Campos, in the NYT, says if car prices had risen at the same rate as tuition the average car would now cost $80,000.
Why would that be?
Professor Campos blames it on exploding administrative salaries. Utah State Professor William Shugart II writing for American Thinker cites a NY Federal Reserve study to blame federal subsidy itself.
Hillary’s Classified Comments
Mark Thiessen quotes Dave Barry:
“when your opponent is obviously right and you are spectacularly wrong.” The answer, he wrote, is simple: “Compare your opponent to Adolf Hitler.”
Thiessen says that’s what Hillary did when she accused The Donald of wanting to round up illegal immigrants and ship them off in box cars.
Hillary went on to compare Republicans who oppose abortion as terrorists.
She also says that if there were classified email messages on her secret server she didn’t know about it because they weren’t marked classified.
USO Camp Trip
Welcome to Team Kuwait. I spent the dying days of August with the guys above drawing service men and women in Kuwait, Djibouti, and Incerlik Air Base in Turkey. The trip was sponsored by USO. The picture above was provided by our fearless leader Bruce Higdon. Bruce is a great punster, cartoonist, and former army colonel. Not that we would follow him into battle.
USO
Left to right: Illustrator and Disney animator Chad Frye, Eddie Pittman of Phinneas and Ferb fame, Paul Combs a fire fighting editorial cartoonist (he’s a real fireman), Sam Viviano art director of Mad Magazine and caretaker of Alfred E. Nueman and Spy vs. Spy, the guy in the middle is Col. Bruce, Rick Kirkman draws the comic strip Baby Blues and came up with the name Wanda for the lead character because he thought it was funny – that’s my mother’s name, Ed Steckley a Mad contributor and Mad Men advertising artist in New York City, Michael Ramirez a fire breathing 2 time Pulitzer winning IBD editorial cartoonist, in full battle dress for some reason, dork at the end – me.
The two happy guys at the top own all the oil.
The trip was a hit with the troops and their families and rewarding for us.
They shouldn’t have let us into the Chief Petty Officers Club. We drew on the walls (note Alfred E. Neuman’s head peering over the guy on the far right).
We like gallows humor but this is a real gallows outside the base in Djibouti.
Europe Migration
Europe is being flooded with illegal immigrants. So far this year 2,400 have died at sea.
Many are Syrian war refugees. Last week in Austria a truck was found packed with 70 dead migrants. It’s believed they suffocated.
