Blind disloyalty

Lalo Alcaraz keeps it simple.

We've had plenty of jokes over the past seven years about the Republican knee-jerk response to anything Obama proposes, like suggestions that he tell conservatives to breathe so they'll asphyxiate themselves.

And it was understandable that they would oppose Romneycare Obamacare, because it did constitute a public-sector expansion, and they have, in recent years, lined up with the privatizers, which you can blame on kowtowing to fatcats or simply to an appeal to Randian selfishness, but, wherever it came from, their stance was, if a recent switch, at least ideologically consistent.

This time around, as he points out, they have to oppose peace, which you would think would be a hard sell in a nation whose leadership hasn't tried very hard to pay the human cost at home of the last two Republican wars and remains stymied over how to clean up the murderous chaos we left behind.

In the immediate once-burned-twice-shy wake of Vietnam, we fought our wars through proxies, as this current meme suggests. We armed Iran to fight Iraq (whoops -- other way around. I was thinking of when we sold Iran weapons under the table, not when we sold Iraq weapons openly.) and we supported al Qaeda Osama bin Laden the patriotic anti-Soviet mujahideen in Afghanistan and we armed drug cartels anti-socialist freedom fighters in Nicaragua, but we kept our own boots off the ground.

What is inconsistent and appallingly dishonest now is that, despite the widespread coverage of Iranian dissidents who took to the streets to protest dubious election results, the jubilation in those same streets over the accord is being held up by rightwingers as evidence that the mullahs "won" the negotiations and that the average Iranian supports them specifically because the pact is one-sided and unfair.

Well, it's hardly surprising there has been little effort to explain the complex divisions of Iran's political system, or the divide between urban, modern Iranians and the conservative country folks, given that there's been little effort to even note that, while we've spent a couple of decades training Americans to hate Arabs, Iranians aren't Arabs.

Though it may not be a conspiracy.

 

Mox nix in any case. As Pat Bagley notes, it really doesn't matter who knows what about Iran or what is in the treaty or who supports it or how many other nations helped to craft it or what it will accomplish or how it will be enforced, because, whatever the treaty consists of, it's one more reason to hate Obama.

The terms of the treaty will not be heard over the din of the dog whistles.

 

On a humorous but ultimately no less depressing note

Mr. Lowe, Mark Pett's fun-but-short-lived strip about teaching, has been in reruns at GoComics and is currently in its very finest arc, the appearance of Ms. Jade, the burned-out veteran teacher.

Here are the most recent pair of strips, but, if you are involved in education and can take some *ouch* along with your laffs, you'll want to follow this (it starts here).

The thing is, though, the real Ms. Jades are no joke.

Most teachers are working hard and many are doing very, very good creative work, or, at least, trying to do so, despite the bureaucracy from above and the lack of support from the Ms. Jades on their own level.

I've heard the stories -- "I'd love to do that in my classroom, but I'd never be allowed to" -- and I've dealt with the foot-dragging of internal committees and the puppet show of phony "shared-decision-making" myself, and I've covered the school board meetings and I even got to sit in with Senator Susan Collins and the faculty of a blue-ribbon school as they told her their fears and misgivings over NCLB and how they would never be able again to do the fine work that had won them that award.

I featured Ms. Jade along with some other thoughts about the damage done by burned-out teachers in this posting. Now, NCLB is under review in the Senate but I'm sure the privatizers and the believers in bullet-points and test scores will have more influence than the people who actually teach our kids. Or try to.

Okay, I guess that doesn't seem so funny after all.

 

Penguin's in the Cradle

Evidently, I'm about the only person who isn't throwing confetti over the rebirth of Bloom County.

I liked Bloom County. Bought my boys Opus and Bill the Cat T-shirts for Christmas. Clipped the strip for the refrigerator often. Got a book or two or more.

However, as noted two days ago, I'm skeptical about sequels in general, and it doesn't much matter whether they involve Finches or Penguins.

I greatly admired the decisions of Gary Larson and Bill Watterson to step away from their highly successful, much loved, influential strips when the bloom was off the rose.

But let me be clear: I think it's fine that Breathed wants to draw some new Bloom County strips and, if they're good, I'll enjoy them.

No confetti, though. It's not the Second Coming. 

In fact, it's kinda the Fourth Coming, because Bloom County became Opus became Outland, and then fizzled out and faded and stopped being anything, and now it's back and pardon me if I treat it like the Dad who always talks about going fishing together but never gets beyond buying a couple of rods and reels and putting them in the garage.

Here's an interview Michael Cavna did with Breathed and he doesn't sound too excited about it, either. But he's going to do some strips, only mostly when he feels like it and not on a regular schedule ...

     ... but we'll get together then, yeah. You know we'll have a good time then.

 

Now here's your moment of then:

 

 

Comments

[Sean Martin]

Have to admit, I'm of two minds about the return of Bloom County, On one side: YAY!!! One of my all-time favourite strips, and certainly one that got me into this lousy business. :-)

On the other... his art style, especially in the last days of Outland and Opus and some of the books, was soooooooooooooo black heavy that he made Opus look like a gritesque caricature of Opus.

But from the two strips I've seen this far of Bloom County 2015, it looks like he's returned to the lightness of tone that enhanced the general silliness. Let's hope he stays there.

And yeah, this is all about Trump running. Has to be.

[Murdoch]

Didn't we arm Iraq to fight Iran?

[Mike Peterson]

Whoops -- yeah, you're right.

Hard to keep track of the turncoats without a program.