Thursday, September 27, 2007

Last cartoon of the week

This is the kind of stuff that really pisses me off. Of course the story of Bush crony Ray Hunt will probably be way under reported (not to mention under cartooned), but what gets my blood boiling is the thought that our troops are being killed in Iraq while these Texas oil men plan to drill for oil and profit amongst the bloodshed.


This story ran in Newsweek last week, and I saw nary a peep out of cartoonists. There are only a couple of us who are even interested in the Caspian region and other areas of NW Asia. Shame on us for not going after Bush on this. We all know Ahmadinejad is whacked. How many cartoons can we do on that speech? Sorry, I like to save my spit for the end of the week...

Here's the background story (yes, you should read it):




And here's my rough:



















And here's the finished drawing. I added more detail in the oil derricks, and learned that in the states they call these "Texas Grasshoppers."

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

So what you're saying is that even though a head of state that has spoken freely and regularly about the destruction of both America and Israel - America because they support Jews, and Israel because of course they are Jews - what you are saying is that "Hey, enough of that petty little issue. . . look, a sketchy story about another oil conspiracy."

Brilliant.

Besides, the one evil Texas oil man indicted in the Oil For Food scam was of course a strident opponent of the war and a big Democrat donor.

Ed Hall said...

"Anonymous" wrote: "So what you're saying is that even though a head of state that has spoken freely and regularly about the destruction of both America and Israel - America because they support Jews, and Israel because of course they are Jews - what you are saying is that "Hey, enough of that petty little issue."

No. I'm not saying that at all. What I am saying is that I've seen enough "Ahmadinejad is Coo Coo" cartoons. We already knew that. I would welcome more cartoons on the political ramifications of his stance on Israel. I for one am GLAD that he spoke at Columbia - it showed the world, better than any cartoon ever could, this guy's true colors.

And, as for the long running relationship between the Bush and Hunt families, I think that is a little more than "sketchy." The guy has purchased a $35 million parcel of land for W's Presidential library! Or wait, didn't you read the article?

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I read it, but the Hunt connection is an old one.

So what? A family of long standing wealth has connections to other familes of long standing wealth. Really. So what?

The Clintons are the most notoriously connected political family in our modern history, and it is a current topic with the dirty Chinese money cropping up again.

Where's the cartoons?

Bob Torricelli, William Jefferson. . .

The Democrats of course do not have a monopoly on dirty money, but there is a definite paucity of cartooning on it, while any legitimate connection between wealthy supporters and the GOP is taken as implicit corruption by the typical cartoonist.

As for the article itself, the only reason we're there is because of the oil. Not in the goofy Leftist world of conspriacy theories, but simply because the oil gives the bad guys power. Left to their own devices, they use that oil derived power to wage war on the West.

The bad guys who don't have access to that much money, oil derived or otherwise, do not warrant the attention of the US military, much the same as the police pay more attention to gang members than they do jaywalkers.

That an American oil company is investing in the now relatively open Iraqi market is totally legitimate and only warrants suspicion in minds haunted by ideologically fueled paranoia.

Again, there's no nefarious conspiracy connected to the DNC and Oscar Wyatt, a person who was obviously breaking the law, despite his oil money and the connections between himself, Saddam Hussein and the Democrats he donated to.

But a legitimate businessman who happens to support the man you oppose invests quite legally in his life long business, and suddenly there's something sinister in the air, . . .

even though the very article you cite even says that the administration had nothing to do with Hunt getting the deal.

And the attempt at implying there's something wrong with the Kurds being able to develop their oil rich territory only gives the lie to the transparent slant of the article. This is an old issue with the ethnic peoples of that area, and the main reason Saddam murdered somewhere in the neighborhood of 300,000 Kurdish people; their traditional homelands happen to sit on top of a whole lot of oil.

(I didn't notice the "other" button before)

Anonymous said...

It should also be pointed out that this article is of course an editorial that is light on facts, and heavy on implication.