some great cartoons

Don't know if it's coincidence, but I imagine that some of the great cartoons I've seen in the last couple weeks speak to the increasingly surreal, schizophrenic nature of the American identity. As Mr. Oxycontin himself, Rush Limbaugh is now left to criticizing a war mother's story to the point that he compares it to that of Bill Burkett, the Texas Air National Guard officer who provided documents supposedly proving the falsehood of Monkey Prez' service in aforementioned group, but which documents turned out to be false. (Incidentally, the cowing of Democrats on the accuracy of Burkett's claims, if not the documentation, was just another sad display of the well-developed backbone of the "opposition" party on matters of highest principle (that is, if by opposition you mean a complete caving to the slightest claim that you might be soft by a fascistic party with whom Americans really don't agree). But that's another rant for another day. Burkett's claims were actually not refuted and while the documents were not originals, evidence suggested that the documents had been typed out as facsimiles of the originals. But again, I digress.

So Mr. Family Values Drug Addict is left to bash a mother pre-deceased by her son. Nice one. This is all that's left now for the nutjobs on cable news and polluting talk radio. As the war gets worse and worse, watch them disassemble more and more in an increasingly bizarre and disconnected effort to hold on to their supporters. So anyway, this brings me nicely to This Modern Life for this week. In a sense, it's sad that we need such trenchant cartoonists as the wonderful Tom Tomorrow and Ted Rall, but if we are to retain our moral compass, they are the ones who remind the populace of just how backward the Cheney administration and all the dittoheads (incidentally, one would think that would be a rough insult, right? I don't like to be called unoriginal or plagiaristic, but apparently it doesn't bother Oxycontin's fans. Innnnnnteresting.) see the world. So anyway, that is a great cartoon, and Ted Rall who is absolutely fearless also nails it with his latest cartoon. It really is sad that even if Bush or some of the bigwigs in the Cheney administration were uninvolved in so many of these scandals that he wouldn't distance himself from them. That's the truly disturbing part. After Sept. 11, 2001 there were so many calls for Muslims to denounce the evils of Osama Bin Laden and there have been other editorials calling on them to denounce the evils of extremists who claim to be Islamic. (I don't call them Muslim extremists because I feel they are not Muslims, just as Pat Robertson is not a Christian. Christians don't say the sorts of things he does.) But yet when I haven't heard of any Republicans calling for Monkey Prez to fire-or at least discipline-Satan, um, Karl Rove. I've looked on Google and couldn't find one mention of Repubs demanding this. Karl Rove claims that after Sept. 11, Democrats just "wanted to understand" the doomed planes' hijackers. More bullshit. But Monkey Prez is silent on this also. Anyway. It speaks to the man's scruple-free zone. I have known many Christians throughout my life but never have I seen such a callous, hypocritical, cold-blooded man as Monkey Prez. Excellent article about that recently by Arlie Hochschild. Anyway...and of course, just recently, Monkey Prez has the nerve to say that he understands Cindy Sheehan's perspective but that he just needs to have a life. What, after his nap each day, Monkey Prez has become an Oprah devotee? (with all due respect to Oprah) You're on vacation. That means you have a lot of time (unless there really is a lot of brush you have to sweep away, I guess). You are getting totally pimped, for once, in the PR wars, which is really funny. All you'd need to go and do is tolerate Cindy Sheehan bending your ear for a little while and this problem would, well, at least dented. But no, you live in a spin-free zone. Well, certainly a truth-free one anyway. And it's so ironic that your very detachment from reality is what is finally destroying you in the polls. Oh yeah, and The Onion is very funny this week, detailing how Bush is not quite so high on (no pun intended...well...) fossil fuels and has a plan for the US to be off them by 4920. Anyway, that's it for now.