A few days ago, the Democratic Party posted an ad on their website. For once, it was a powerful, effective ad, full of emotional imagery that succinctly presented an unmistakable message: The past six years have been awful, and it’s time for a change. Naturally, the Republicans in Congress and Republican bloggers were outraged! Outraged that the ad was effective, but the official line was they were outraged that the ad showed images of flag-draped coffins coming home.

The Democrats who created that ad stood up and faced the latest bout of fake rage. Naturally, they then tucked their tail between their legs and ran as fast as they could in the other direction, but not before they removed the ad from their website.

Instead of giving in (yet again), why didn’t the Democratic Party respond by saying the real outrage is that these young men and women are dying in the first place in a war that didn’t have to happen, and that it’s their duty as patriotic Americans to point that out?

Why didn’t they point out that, to some people, it’s only ok to feature soldiers in campaign ads when they’re alive or when their widows are staring at George W. Bush in adulation?:

Visit Candorville!

From yesterday’s Lexington Herald-Leader:

Sen. Jim Bunning made newspapers across the United States again yesterday — this time in the funny pages.A national cartoonist with a reputation for wry political humor took a swing at Kentucky’s Hall of Famer after Bunning called for The New York Times to be charged with treason.Candorville, which runs in about 50 papers across the nation as well as another in Ecuador and the Pacific Stars & Stripes, featured a faux political commercial yesterday from “Senator Bunting.” However, the face on the TV is that of Bunning, a Republican in his second term in the Senate and a pitcher in the Baseball Hall of Fame. The strip’s main character, Lemont Brown, hears the ad apparently from the bathroom — the third panel features a flush as “Bunting” denies that his attack on the “Candorville Chronicle” is politically motivated.Cartoonist Darrin Bell said Bunning caught his eye last month after condemning the Times’ report on the Bush administration’s not-so-secret surveillance of international banking transactions.”Senator Bunning at the time seemed to be the GOP’s point man for the treason charge against The New York Times, so he was the logical one to use as a representative for the whole party,” Bell said yesterday. The flush was “the most appropriate” activity that came to mind, he said.He had not gotten any feedback yesterday from Bunning’s office on Capitol Hill. “I don’t really expect to. Somehow, I really doubt they read Candorville,” he said.Bunning’s office did not return calls or e-mails seeking comment for this story.Bell said he doesn’t see his work as falling into either the Democrat or Republican camp. In the 1990s, he was called a fascist for picking on President Clinton.”I just go after whoever’s in charge,” Bell said.As for Senator Bunting, he could make a return appearance, but that depends on Bunning.”He’s got my attention,” Bell said. “The next time he gives me material, I’m going to use it.”

Apparently, one reader was not amused:

I have always thought political cartoons to be inherently anti-Republican, and this has gotten to be even worse with all the nationwide progress witnessed in the last 5 years. It’s even possible that this drawn criticism has in fact lent itself to limiting the progress we have had…because it’s so treasonous and traitorlike.Posted by: Bill

This was one of the comments below the article (comments have since been removed, possibly because the argument got sort of heated. People stopped just short of burning each other in effigy. Barely.The “treasonous and traitorlike” comment doesn’t interest me as much as “limiting the progress we have had…” in the last five years. What progress is that, again? And if there is any progress, how can it be undone by a comic strip? If only Bill would have explained himself further. It would have been fascinating.

Visit Candorville!

Visit Candorville!

This is representative of the feedback to today’s cartoon about Joe Lieberman and the mainstream media:

By candor do you mean your opinion?—no humor? Most people do not want a time table to pull out of Iraq.The people who are against privitization of SS don’t have an alternative solution.Most people don’t want to raise taxes to supprt universal health care.I’m sure the people you surround yourself with don’t think Lieberman is a moderate,but most Americans do,based on facts,not the”mass media”.–Is your comic ever humorous?–it so one sided.-Steve N.

…And my response…

1. As recently as last month, 57 percent of Americans supported a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq.-source2. The people who are against privatization of Social Security DO have an alternative solution: it’s called Social Security. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. A plurality of the country believed in 2005 that the system wasn’t broken, and modest changes to the system, along the lines of the changes made in the ’80s, would keep it solvent for generations.-source3. Most people do want universal health care, even if it meant raising taxes.-sourceIn short, you’re wrong on every count — which leads me to believe that your assessment of the humor in Candorville is probably equally faulty. Thanks for taking the time to write!

Visit Candorville!

As anyone who’s seen a brilliant trailer and then gone to find out that the movie was total crap knows, it’s easy to give a false impression with a few simple editing tricks. For the past couple days, the Drudge Report and other right-wing sites have been downright orgasmic over a 50-second clip that they claimed showed Clinton coming unhinged and being forced by Fox News to admit he failed to prevent 9-11. Watch a longer version of that interview, which has just a little bit more substance following the “I failed” part than the Fox promo would suggest.

Visit Candorville!

There’s been so much whine coming from the direction of the “Fair & Balanced” network that you’d think they were based in Napa. “Boo hoo, Bill Clinton raised his voice! Waaaah, Bill Clinton looked at me angry! Mommy! Mommy! Mommmmyyyyyy!” Today, Fox even tried to portray Clinton’s forceful response to their interviewer as an attack upon all of journalism. Why Ailes confused Fox News with journalism, I have no idea.To hear them tell it, Clinton ripped off his shirt, turned lime green and feasted on poor Chris Wallace’s intestines before relieving himself on the First Amendment. That’s not exactly how it happened.Meanwhile Keith Olberman has a different take on it:

Visit Candorville!

Bradblog.com has been covering multiple incidents of votes being flipped on the electronic voting machines, which will be used by well over 80% of voters next week. All of the reported incidents so far, just as in 2004 and 2002, are incidents in which votes for Democrats are flipped to the benefit of Republicans. Not some. Not most. ALL. Oh well. The Media says they’re only “glitches.” Besides, these “glitches” consistently doing what’s statistically impossible – benefitting only one political party – is just the mother of all coincidences, I’m sure. I’ll file this under “move along, nothing to see here…”

Visit Candorville!

What I learned this week:1. John Kerry inadvertently insulting the intelligence of the troops is far worse than George Bush getting those troops stuck in Iraq without adequate manpower, armor, or planning. It’s certainly far worse than Mr. Bush and his Congressional rubber stamps not having any plan (or intention, it seems) of getting our troops out of that bloody civil war he created.2. Although John Kerry was a highly educated soldier who served with other highly educated soldiers, and has spoken on and on (and on and on and on) about the intelligence, nobility and capability of modern soldiers for more than thirty years, his one botched joke yesterday proves he thinks soldiers are morons.3. John Kerry’s gaffe is more newsworthy than 104 Americans dying in Iraq in one month.4. It doesn’t matter whether Kerry was joking about Bush or attacking the troops. He should apologize for what the Bush White House says he meant, whether he meant it or not.5: The “I’m not going to stand for anyone distorting my awful, bungled jokes” Kerry is far more inspiring than the guy who ran for President in 2004:

Visit Candorville!

Airlines mix up luggage all the time, especially when said luggage is a nondescript black duffle bag. I returned from my Laotian vacation the other day, all rested and tanned. On the long subway ride home from SFO, I got bored, so I opened my duffle bag in search of my i-Pod. I was surprised to find, instead, what’s apparently a manuscript for some sort of academic journal. This is of no use to me. A manuscript can’t play Gnarles Barkley’s “Crazy,” or Shuggie Otis’s “Sweet Thang” while I close my eyes and pretend that’s only water on the seat across from me. I want my i-Pod back. I couldn’t find an address or phone number anywhere in this duffle bag, so I’ll post an excerpt from the manuscript here. If you recognize yourself as the author of this treatise, please contact me and I’ll return the bag to you in exchange for my i-Pod shuffle.

Histury Lessens, an academick paper I have learned as a nation, many lessens from the war in Vietnam. Chief amonst them are that we succeed in wars, unless we quit. Also chief amongst them are that Vietnam was worth fighting because if we had cut and run there, well then the dominoe effect tells you the scourge of Communism would have swept across the globe, hurting folks’ economies. Free markets everywhere would fall under the knuckles of of those who hate freedom.The first casualties of a cut and run policy are business and initiative. And I told the Vietnaminians that at their Stock Exchange today. At a lunch with a bunch of foreign investors, I told every businessman there that if America had only stayed in Vietnam and kept our promise to help them fight for freedom, maybe they would know the sweet love of entrepreneurialship. At the airport when I was leaving to go to Indonesia, I saw folks handing each other business cards and talking on cell phones. I think they got my message.And it made me muse back to the 1970s, when I was a fighter pilot during the war protecting our homefront: How much faster would they have gotten my message if we hadn’t given up on that war? And how many freedom-loving Vietnaminian women and children would be alive and safe today if we were still there to this day, shooting into the jungles and rice pattees to keep Vietnam safe for freedom?And how many nations today would be free and libertied if we hadn’t cut and runned and Vietnam hadn’t become the homebase from where Communism spread across the world and snuffed out the flame of freedom, just as Rummy and Dick and other foresighted people said it would back in the ’70s? And that is why we must stay in Iraq indefinitely, so that what happened to Vietnam and Asia in the decades since we cut and runned, would never happen to Iraq and the Middle East. For me, it’s a lessen lurned.

I miss my Shuffle, so whoever you are, I hope you see this.In a totally unrelated subject, Keith Olberman gave another interesting “special comment” the other day:

Visit Candorville!

OK, let me get this straight: If you criticize Sean Hannity and call for the impeachment of George W. Bush, that makes you an “Enemy of the State.” (I know, I know, Hannity and his kind confusing a man – whether himself or the President – with “the State” isn’t anything new).I don’t know what’s worse — the fact that Hannity chose to name a segment of his show after the favorite phrase of every dictator from Caesar to Hitler, the fact that anyone is actually watching that show, or the fact that I’m wasting my time commenting on it. At this point, commenting on the irresponsible behavior of the Fox News personalities may be no more necessary than pointing out how water is really, really wet.

Visit Candorville!