Officials See Threat in Bush Newspaper Cartoon

Trying his best (he's a confusing cartoonist) to show support for bush, cartoonist Michael Ramirez seems to have shot himself in the foot with his difficult-to-comprehend cartoon depicting bush as one of the persons in a famous 60's photograph of the horrors of war. Personally, I feel sorry for the guy, for not having a better grip on what it takes to be a political cartoonist, and having to go through trying to prove his loyalty to the right while defending himself against potential allegations concerning stuff that makes the Secret Service rightfully jumpy. What an incredible mess. The lesson? THINK BEFORE YOU DRAW.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25376-2003Jul21.html

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Secret Service is studying a pro-Bush cartoon in the Los Angeles Times, showing the president with a gun to his head, as a possible threat, U.S. officials said on Monday.

Cartoonist Michael Ramirez said the drawing, which ran in Sunday's paper, was only meant to call attention to the unjust "political assassination" of Bush over his Iraq policy.

The cartoon, based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph from the Vietnam War, depicts Bush with his hands behind his back as a man labeled "Politics" prepares to shoot him in the head. The background of the drawing is a cityscape labeled "Iraq."

"We're aware of the image and we're in the process of determining what action if any can be taken," John Gill, Secret Service spokesman, said.

An official who asked not to be named said: "The Secret Service does take threats against all of their protectees very seriously and they have an obligation to look into any threat that's made against any of their protectees." The official did not elaborate.

Ramirez is a staunch troglodyte; to misunderstand this cartoon is ridiculous, but then so did Novak and Begala...

People have become so spooked by the shocking run of luck of this bunch of gangsters in the White House that every slip-up and outright disaster is thought of as a Rove trick or some other too-clever-by-half tactic. These guys are not so good. Some of them are quite smart, but the operation, as a whole, is decidedly Bush League.

Ramirez has NEVER drawn a cartoon that wasn't virulently pro-Bush and anti-human race. He won't, either. He'll be among the last defenders.

All anyone has to do is look at his past cartoons. I especially remember the one during the run up to the last election when Bush was claiming that the Dems were leaving us vulnerable by stonewalling Homeland Security until workers' rights guarantees were made: Junior was piloting a two-seater biplane, and Daschle was in the observer's seat pointing the machine gun at Fearless Leader's head. Nice guy.

Of course, what Junior was really doing was leaving us vulnerable unless he could destroy government employees' rights. The Demoebas couldn't muster a spine to call him on this, though...

Ramirez is a wing-nut racist fuck. He has crosssed the line of human decency a million times. While he has a right as an artist to be as inflammatory as he wishes, he has carried SO much water for Bush, I am glad he shot himself in the foot. He is the Rush Limbaugh of political cartoonists.

It has to be just a little bit scary to find out what it's like when the SS pounces on a cartoon you did and calls it a threat.

Maybe something like this will finally teach a right-wingnut like Ramirez just what loose cannons are on the team he's playing for. The Freeps were hysterical over this assault on their appointed messiah, and they're willing to turn on Ramirez to satisfy their own simplistic view of the world.

Next time, he better stay with stick figures and brightly-colored Crayolas, so as not to tax the brains of his fellow troglodytes.

It was a sad day for Times readers when Paul Conrad retired and they inserted this friggin’ twit.

....we're in the process of determining what action if any can be taken," John Gill, Secret Service spokesman, said.

Like Ari telling us we'd better watch what we say.

The guy's an idiot, and the Secret Service have GOT to have better things to do with their time. It's a goddamn CARTOON for godssakes. The only reason it's a problem is some dumb wingnuts seeing it, not understanding, and writing letters complaining about it.

To shut these Freeptards up, the SS issued this statement, just to make it look like they give a crap, they'll tell Ramirez to be more careful next time, Ramirez will publically explain the cartoon on Faux Nooz, the Freeptards will be happy as clams, and that'll be the end of it.

They just have the intelligence of their leader. Don't want G DUHbya surrounded by people who'll befuddle him with fuzzy math and fancy talk.

Let them get a taste of what they have been wishing on anyone who legally protests! Who knows. Maybe after he gets done shitting his pants, Ramirez will turn into a liberal following this experience! :D

He has always catered his work to the stupidest ....so they didn't get it and turned him in! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

At least now in the morning when I am reading my paper, drinking my coffee and come across his blathering bullshit, I'll ave something to snicker about!

*

Or don't we?
s_m

here's the LATimes.com Ramirez cartoon collection:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-include-ramirez.ssipage

here's the cartoon in question:



and here's the old 60's photo that "inspired" it...

There was an article in the National Review a few years back calling for the assassination of Chelsea Clinton, a SS protectee. It was a gross and despicable article, and the author was never charged with a crime. As far as I know, he wasn't even "interviewed" by the SS and told to cut it out. The SS doesn't do their job for Democrats. Just ask Jack or Bobby Kennedy.

...it may have lessened his enthusiasm for being elected President.

Gore would never have gone along with PNAC,
but Holy Joe Lieberman would have been happy to give them their war.

... thanks for helping me to remember that vile piece of journalistic crap. Contrast this spiel from Derbyshire with the cartoon and I feel the cartoon just pales in comparison. Ironic that Derbyshire touches on that despotism knows well how to deal with their enemies! Where is the SS when you really need them, especially if you are a Democrat!

http://www.nationalreview.com/derbyshire/derbyshire021501.shtml

Chelsea is a Clinton. She bears the taint; and though not prosecutable in law, in custom and nature the taint cannot be ignored. All the great despotisms of the past — I'm not arguing for despotism as a principle, but they sure knew how to deal with potential trouble — recognized that the families of objectionable citizens were a continuing threat. In Stalin's penal code it was a crime to be the wife or child of an "enemy of the people". The Nazis used the same principle, which they called Sippenhaft, "clan liability". In Imperial China, enemies of the state were punished "to the ninth degree": that is, everyone in the offender's own generation would be killed, and everyone related via four generations up, to the great-great-grandparents, and four generations down, to the great-great-grandchildren, would also be killed. (This sounds complicated, but in practice what usually happened was that a battalion of soldiers was sent to the offender's home town, where they killed everyone they could find, on the principle neca eos omnes, deus suos agnoscet — "let God sort 'em out".)

We don't, of course, institutionalize such principles in our society, and a good thing too. Our humanity and forbearance, however, has a cost. The cost is, that the vile genetic inheritance of Bill and Hillary Clinton may live on to plague us in the future. It isn't over, folks. Dr. Nancy Snyderman, a "friend of the family" (how much money did she give them?) is quoted as saying that Chelsea shows every sign of following her parents into politics. "She's been bred for it," avers Dr. Snyderman. Be afraid: be very afraid.

Seems to me that still Derbyshire laments that "clan liability" isn't institutionalized. Why didn't the SS investigate this? Seems to me this is hate-filled speech and damn well incitement!

now i remember..well maybe this "writer" will live along enough to see chelsea run for president and i hope he will be really afraid....

To his own head or one of our Soldiers

politics=summary execution by policeman --- bush= unidentified civilian who may or may not have been quilty of a crime. then add iraq war= vietnam war...i have no idea how this guy put all this together..but i bombed in logic class...

all democrats and liberals.

Hello? SS? ANYBODY HOME? This is a direct call to kill people and not a single response?

I really think we're in for another civil war - only this time, I won't care if "it" (the enemy) has ANY relationship to me - they will be on the wrong end of their threats to me to never theaten me again!

I will not go peacably into the box cars/showers!

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY?

Let's not forget of course her infamous verbal regurgitation regarding the Starr witchhunt's discovery of sex in which she observed that the only question left was whether Clinton deserved impeachment or assasination. She expressed her preference for both, impeachment and then death by hanging. http://www.counterpunch.org/freedland05192003.html Of course, as is par for the course, no SS agents were dispatched to investigate her evident support for the assassination of the President.

His toons suck anyway. Maybe he can draw nice tatoos in jail.

The cartoon is stupid.
The reaction is stupid.
There is no bright side to it.

And on the same day that Wolfie said there should be an end to
outside interventions in Iraq.

"They come in threes".
Gotta wonder what the third one is.

Edit: many candidates, none convincing so far.

.

Carfull what you ask for, you may get it. He supports this administration and this is what he gets, serves him right. Will this change his thinking any? I doubt it.

Likewise this guy knew nothing about Viet-Nam either.

The guy in the photo is General Loan

Thursday, 16 July 1998 General in '68 Vietnam execution dies

On Feb. 1, 1968 Nguyen Ngoc Loan, whose execution of a Viet Cong prisoner on the streets of Saigon in 1968 became one of the most chilling images of the Vietnam War, died Tuesday. He was 67. The former South Vietnamese general died of cancer at his home in Burke, a Washington suburb. He fled South Vietnam in 1975, the year the communists overran the country, and moved to Virginia, where he opened a restaurant.

Loan was director of South Vietnam's national police and the North Vietnamese had just begun the Tet Offensive, their huge military push southward. Firefights had broken out all over Saigon, and Loan's police were trying to rid the South Vietnamese capital of Viet Cong guerrillas. Loan led the prisoner, his hands bound, onto a street corner and in front of a group of journalists pulled his pistol and shot the prisoner point-blank in the head. The general told the newsmen that the prisoner was a known Viet Cong captain.

Eddie Adams' photo of the execution won a Pulitzer Prize for The Associated Press. NBC also showed film of the execution. Adams said yesterday that Gen. Loan's actions were misinterpreted because of the picture. "The guy was a hero. America should be crying," said Adams, now a free-lance photographer. "I just hate to see him go this way, without people knowing anything about him." Adams said the man Loan shot had been seen killing others and that Loan was justified in executing him.

http://www.treefort.org/~cbdoten/rvntanks/080-4450.htm

Ramirez has no shame and he has never met a crook he wouldn't defend or a decent human being he wouldn't attack, for a dollar.

He is a brainless Bush foot soldier and he will defend Bush forever, without hesitation, regardless of how they treat him.

Ramirez's consistently tasteless and decidedly unfunny cartoons unwittingly reveal just how vile he and the right-wing are. Once again.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-ramirez22jul22,1,4254085.story

Cartoon in Times Prompts Inquiry by Secret Service
From a Times Staff Writer

July 22, 2003

An editorial cartoon in The Times that depicted a man pointing a gun at President Bush prompted a visit to the newspaper's offices Monday by a Secret Service agent, who asked to speak to cartoonist Michael Ramirez.

The agent was turned away.

A Secret Service official said the inquiry was routine, according to Karlene Goller, an attorney for The Times who met with the agent and later spoke to an official in the agency's Los Angeles office. The government asks questions of anyone publishing material that might be construed as a threat against the president.

Goller said she met with the Secret Service agent, Peter J. Damos, in the newspaper's security office and told him he could not speak to Ramirez. After some discussion, Damos left.

continued-

The agent was also told he couldn't talk to Ramirez

The agent then left.

Per the fifth amendment. tell these thought police to take a hike.

Politics.:shrug: Bush* is scared of everything and so are his disciples