Cuba, Iran & Health Care
Bob Englehart is one of America's greatest Editorial Cartoonists. As I have expressed many times in this forum, Editorial Cartoonists are often the best sources for topical news. Mr. Englehart worked at the Dayton Journal-Herald from 1975 till 1980 and since then he has been the superstar at the Hartford Courant. His brilliant cartoons regularly appear in USA Today and hundreds of other newspapers.
This is a Bob Engelhart gem this week. He uses 8 words to say more pertinent things about President Barack Obama's nuclear deal with Iran than other journalists say in 8 whole pages of articles, columns, and editorials. Mr. Engelhart is reminding the world that the President will get {and is getting} assaulted by the U. S. Congress coming down on his head while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the 17 Republican presidential candidates are attacking his flanks. In other words, even when President Obama accomplishes a difficult, rare, and overall beneficial feat that most Americans and most people around the world desire, there are sure to be conservatives and right-wingers primed to unmercifully attack him.
At this critical stage in America's history, John Boehner -- Speaker of the House and just two steps from the White House behind only the President and Vice-President -- is the top man in the U. S. Congress, which most Americans consider a dysfunctional body dominated by right-wing Republicans. Above is another gem this week from Bob Engelhart. This time he uses 13 words to show a teary-eyed, chain-smoking John Boehner reacting to President Obama's nuclear deal with Iran that sensible people consider a "Pragmatic Necessity To Avoid War" as a sub-headline in USA Today states. Of course, Boehner and other war-mongers in Congress -- Graham, McCain, Cotton, Rubio, etc. -- vow to upend President Obama's gallant efforts to avoid what would be another non-winnable, endless war. President Obama and his Secretary of State John Kerry worked tirelessly for almost two years to get the best possible Iranian deal, and they were supported by five other world powers as well as all 28 members of the European Union. Yet, Boehner and his Congress, which has an approval rating barely out of single digits, typically oppose most things most people need and desire while always promoting most things special interests greedily desire.
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As he did recently, Speaker of the House Boehner has a particular ploy to embarrass and insult both the sitting two-term President of the United States and the Office of President of the United States. Boehner again will provide more support for a foreign leader -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu -- than for his own country or his own President. Americans are supposed to be sufficiently programmed to accept that. But around the world, it shocks America's best friends as well as its prime enemies.
This is U. S. Senator Tom Cotton, the youngest of America's 100 Senators. He is from Arkansas. He is 38-years-old. 2015 is his very first year in the U. S. Senate. From 2005 to 2013 he was in the U. S. Army or the U. S. Army Reserves. But he graduated from Harvard University. Then he graduated from Harvard Law School. Of the Big Four war-mongers in the U. S. Congress, Senator Cotton makes Lindsey Graham, John McCain, and Marco Rubio look like veritable peace-nicks! As a newshound, every morning from 6 to 8 A. M. I switch back-and-forth from the three main U. S. television networks and the four cable networks. By daybreak Eastern Time on the morning President Obama's Iranian nuclear deal was announced, Senator Cotton was all over the networks assaulting the President unmercifully even before anyone had even read the details of the hard-earned agreement. Most of all, Senator Cotton seemed eager to make the point that, instead of giving diplomacy a chance, the mighty U. S. military could wipe out little backward Iran in very short order. He reminded all of us that the U. S. spends "600 billion dollars a year on defense" while Iran only spends "30 billion dollars a year." I cringed when Senator Cotton told CNN's Chris Cuomo, "A war with Iran would last a few days." It seems to me that people like Senator Cotton back in the 1950s got the U. S. involved in the easy Korean War and in the 1960s in the easy Vietnam War and more recently in the easy Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. In my humble opinion and with all due respect, Senator Cotton, I believe you are a very dangerous man and I believe anyone who has children, grandchildren, and/or great-grandchildren should agree with that assessment. As President Obama understands, peace and diplomacy are preferable to war and mayhem. Arkansas, in my opinion, has done America and the world a disservice by sending you to the United States Senate. An Iran War an easy war? Really? Senator Cotton is a reminder that only great, peace-loving Commanders-in-Chiefs -- such as Abe Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Barack Obama -- should decide when and if America should go to war, but only when all other alternatives are absent.
At age 53 and in the homestretch of his two-term presidency, Barack Obama is a very decent and brilliant man. As a lifelong conservative Republican, he is the first Democrat I have ever strongly supported although I now deeply admire the assassinated John Kennedy and 90-year-old Jimmy Carter. Mr. Obama has more than lived up to my very careful assessment of him. In the last 8 months he has greatly enhanced his legacy with at least four major actions: {1} His bold and historic efforts to normalize relations with Cuba; {2} his bold and historic Universal Health Plan; {3} his bold and historic efforts to keep Iran from getting a nuclear bomb; and {4} this week, July 16th, becoming the first American president to visit a prison to highlight his 43 pardons of drug-related criminals that he believed were over-sentenced and helped account for the fact that the U. S., with 5% of the world's population, has 25% of the world's prison population, costing taxpayers over $80 billion a year but still leaving them vulnerable in crime-infested cities. Indeed, some unbiased historians have already opined that Obama's Universal Health Plan may one day be equated with FDR's 1935 Social Security Bill and LBJ's 1965 Civil Rights Act. His overtures to Cuba, in the judgment of the world, are bent on correcting what has been one of the all-time greatest scars on America's image.
This brilliant Editorial Cartoon was created by Steve Sack, the Pulitzer Prize-winning genius at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune who is nationally syndicated by Creators Syndicate. Study this gem. It shows President Obama trying to explain his Cuban overtures to some right-wing idiot who is busily driving a chase car, which has its two left-side wheels raised on jacks. The right-wing idiot, as has been the case for 50 years, is telling President Obama not to bother him because, hey!, he's going to catch, recapture, and destroy Cuba any day now! Meanwhile, poor little Cuba, while trying to escape, is also totally minus functional wheels and its driver, Fidel, appears to be an 89-year-old white-bearded geezer. On December 17, 2014, as he announced his plans to normalize relations with Cuba, a sane and decent President Obama said, "When you have tried something for 50 years and it hasn't worked, it might be time to try something different." The Cuban exiles and their right-wing sycophants, meanwhile, are bound and determined to keep America's odious Cuban policy in place for another 50 years -- you know, so it can also punish our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Study the above gem; the driver of the chase car is typical of the self-serving minority that oppose President Obama's pro-democracy positions -- Cuba, Iran, Health Care, a Judicial System that unfairly and in some cases eternally imprisons the innocent or the not-so-bad people, etc., etc. Eventually, the majority of Americans might realize that they must protect their democracy or it will be hijacked forever by those similar to the driver of the chase car that Editorial Cartoonist Steve Sack depicts above. If you study this cartoon, you'll be observing a masterpiece.
This is Steve Sack holding the bottle of champagne. He is being congratulated at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune shortly after he captured the Pulitzer Prize For Editorial Cartooning in 2013. He deserved it.
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