January 20, 2015 by Michael A. Ventrella

Obama acts like Democrat, approval soars

Since the November election, Obama seems to have gone into a “screw you guys, I’m doing what I want” mode. He said he’d veto the Keystone pipeline, support free college education, work for policies to fight climate change, argue for gay marriage before the Supreme Court, raise taxes on the very wealthy, and allow illegal immigrants a path to citizenship. Tie that into his policies that removed us from a recession and thrown us into the lowest unemployment rate and strongest economy we’ve seen in many years.

Does this man look worried?

And whaddya know. His poll ratings have risen faster than any time since bin Laden was killed. He’s now got a 50% approval rating, which is very unusual for a president in his final two years. And it might go even higher.

And no wonder. As I’ve pointed out before, the main problem Democrats have is that they shy away from issues that are supported by the majority of the public. They get cowed down by bullies on the right and instead of saying, “Damn right I support health care for all and higher taxes on the wealthy. The question is why don’t you?” they wimp out, lose their backbone, and then they lose elections. And the politicians in the last election who didn’t wimp out won.

A majority of Americans (61%!) support Obama’s plan for free college educations for student who get good grades. A majority supports Obamacare. A majority are in favor of abortion rights, gay marriage, and legalization of marijuana. A majority wants Citizen’s United overturned and think that the very wealthy should pay more taxes. These issues are not radical liberal dreams. They are mainstream, and politicians who embrace them will find favor with the public.

Give the people what they want and they’ll like you. I mean, duh.

Editorial cartoon: Collateral consequences

January 19, 2015 by Michael A. Ventrella

No, no… the Muslims have a point

The Saudi Arabia-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation is planning to sue the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo following its publication of a front cover depicting the Prophet Mohamed.

“It’s hate speech,” they argue. And they have a point.

You see, in most of Europe,”freedom of speech” is limited. They don’t have a 1st Amendment over there, after all. Certain types of speech are illegal, such as denying the holocaust. Nazi symbols are prohibited. In France, there is a law prohibiting speech that is “defamatory or insulting, or which incites discrimination, hatred, or violence against a person or a group of persons on account of place of origin, ethnicity or lack thereof, nationality, race, specific religion, sex, sexual orientation, or handicap.”

What a terrible law.

But the Muslims have a point. If you are banning hate speech, you need to ban all hate speech. You can’t make it illegal for anyone to say something bad about Jews while allowing Charlie Hedbo to insult Muslims with every issue.

My hope is that this lawsuit will point out the hypocrisy of any law that punishes speech.

We have to protect speech we hate. We have to protect speech that is insulting.

Speech everyone agrees with doesn’t need protecting.

Editorial cartoon: The Political Oscars

January 18, 2015 by Michael A. Ventrella

Man in Dress Says Gay Marriage will Harm his Non-marriage

A man wearing a dress in Italy today declared that even though he has never had sex and is not married, allowing all people to be able to marry the person they love will destroy families.

Citing the supernatural, the man argued with a straight face that if people in love create loving, caring families, that such a thing would cause loving, caring families to be ruined.

Surprisingly, his audience did not laugh him out of the room. Perhaps they were just being kind to the old fellow, dressed as he was in a flowing white gown and a quaint little cap, which he said was required by the aforementioned supernatural being who spoke to him in his head and which no one else could hear or see.

Ironically, in other areas the man was completely coherent and spoke passionately about the evils of unbridled capitalism, the importance of caring for those less fortunate, and how we should all love each other no matter what. Apparently, the magical being who speaks to him said, “Whoa there, kid, let’s not go too far. Sure, love them all but don’t let them love each other if you know what I mean.”

Editorial cartoon: A need for education

January 16, 2015 by Michael A. Ventrella

Porn watching highest among the repressed

A new study has found a very high consumption of porn in sexually-repressed middle eastern countries. According to google searches, of the top eight countries searching for porn online, six are Muslim.

This is actually not surprising. The more repressed a society is about sexuality, the more they will secretly seek it out, despite whatever their religion tells them.

We have seen this in America as well. The state that consumes the most porn is Mormon Utah, followed by most of the southern Christian-dominated states (with the exception of Hawaii for some reason). The people who are most likely to say they support “family values” and complain about seeing sex on TV are the ones most likely to be searching it out on their computers.

More disturbing is seeing subject of the porn search. One of the top search terms in Iran is “pain.” In Pakistan, it’s “animals.” Syria wants porn about incest.

In the middle east, searches for gay sex are prominent in their top ten. In America, states where a majority of residents agreed with the statement “I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage,” bought more porn per capita than states where a majority disagreed. In the states that fought against gay marriage, the search for lesbian porn was high on the list.

Hypocrisy runs rampant. And are we surprised by any of that?

Editorial cartoon: The real candidate

January 14, 2015 by Michael A. Ventrella

Yes, the Mohammad Cover is Insulting. And?

NBC just did a segment on their news about how brave Charlie Hebdo magazine is for putting a drawing of Mohammad on their cover after what happened to them. I couldn’t help but notice that NBC specifically refused to show the cover themselves and only described it.

Here it is, in case you are interested.

They then interviewed French Muslims who were upset about it, calling it insulting. “I don’t go around insulting your religion,” they said. “Why must you insult mine?” Fortunately, none of the ones interviewed showed any sign that they intended to cause harm to the cartoonists.

Is the drawing insulting to Muslims? Of course. Just like the thousands of examples I can find of the way Jesus has been portrayed in comics, movies, cartoons, and comedy bits is insulting to Christians.

Tough.

If your faith is so weak that you can’t handle criticism of it, maybe you should rethink your beliefs.

And, just as an aside, killing people who disagree with your religion isn’t really a very smart way to gain converts. Just saying.