brainrow

Cartoonist Tom Tomorrow reviews 2009: The Year in Crazy. There’s also a part two.

We’ve got shortages of all sorts of things, but we do seem to have an inexhaustible supply of The Crazy.

Cartoonist Ruben Bolling explains the stock market, and perhaps the whole economy.

Cartoonist Jim Morin shows us a real healthcare death panel, and Pat Oliphant unmasks another merchant of death.

(Both discovered via All Hat No Cattle.)

Cartoonist Ruben Bolling looks at how the government is cracking down on malefactors in the banking industry a year after the economy collapsed. (Click the image to see the entire cartoon.)

All Hat No Cattle has discovered the GOP Healthcare Plan. You know, I thought it was a joke until I came to point five in the plan; then it sounded just like the Republicans. (Click the image to see the whole plan, and when you get there, scroll down and look at some of the other cartoons there. I particularly like the press asking whether Obama’s overexposed, and the quote of Dom Hélder Câmara.)

GOP HEALTH CARE PLAN
The “Stay Well, America” Act

The Republican health care plan is very simple.

1. If you are sick, something is obviously wrong with you.
2. If you believe in personal responsibility, then you know that ’something wrong with you’ is your fault.
3. Why should the government pay to fix something that is your fault?
4. The way to put things right again in life is to get right with God. And prayer is free.
5. Therefore, we demand a tax cut.

Stay well, America.

(I’ve put the text here because it’s only an image at All Hat No Cattle, and wouldn’t show up on a web search.)

Cartoonist Tom Tomorrow created this cartoon explaining the origins of our current health insurance system back in 2001. He recently re-ran it because nothing has changed. (Click the image to see the full cartoon.)

The webcomic xkcd suggests that the coarsening of our political discourse started a long time ago. (Click the image to see the cartoon.)

(If you like, you can read the actual Lincoln-Douglas Debates for perspective.)

Cartoonist Tom Tomorrow asks what if Democrats behaved more like Republicans?

(Click the image to see the whole cartoon.)

Some polls show public support for healthcare reform dropping. I can’t help thinking it’s because Democrats — especially in Congress — are already acting too much like Republicans.

In November, voters elected Barack Obama and gave Democrats large majorities in the House and the Senate. Add one party-switcher named Arlen Specter, and Democrats now have 60 seats in the Senate, a so-called filibuster-proof majority. I don’t believe voters were hoping for the timid, corporate-interests-first policies that too many Congressional Democrats seem to be embracing right now.

Does the Democratic leadership think they’ll finally be strong enough to fix the healthcare mess only after the 2010 midterm elections? Do they imagine they’ll be in a stronger position then, if they can’t manage to get anything done now?

Bill Maher said of Obama, “He is Michael Jordan playing on a bad team. There’s nobody to pass the ball to.”

Congressional Democrats, you were elected to do a job. Stop running scared. Do the job. Do it right. Let the voters judge. The surest way to lose in 2010 is to fail to deliver the change voters demanded in 2008.

“Are these the shadows of things that must be, or are they the shadows of things that might be?”

Joy of Tech warns me to repent before it’s too late.

Too late for me… save yourselves!

Joy of Tech has useful and informative warning labels for bloggers. Some should be printed out and stuck on the blogger’s own monitor, but a few should be prominently displayed on the blog page itself.

I enjoyed the Mike Judge movie Idiocracy, so long as I could suppress the gag reflex — it’s funny, but gross.

But Randall Munroe’s webcomic xkcd makes an excellent point:

More harm has been done by people panicked over societal decline than societal decline ever did.

By George, he’s got something there. You can click the image to see the complete comic.

Those who aren’t already familiar with xkcd might be startled by the crude stick-figure drawings, or by the crude language sometimes present in the comics. I think those things are simply evidence of society’s decline and inevitable collapse, but I could be wrong.

Via Cartoon Brew: If you’re a fan of Warner Bros. cartoons from the 40s, this musical number may sound familiar to you. It’s called Powerhouse, and it was written by Raymond Scott, and often borrowed by cartoon composer Carl Stalling.

If you’re as old as I am, you may even remember harmonica bands. Unless your memory is going.

The whole world is celebrating Obama’s election:

From the front lines of Iraq to more genteel spots like Harry’s Bar in Paris, the election of Barack Obama unlocked a floodgate of hope that a new American leader will redeem promises of change, rewrite the political script and, perhaps as important as anything else, provide a kind of leadership that will erase the bitterness of the Bush years.

No, really — the whole world, as seen in this exclusive documentary image at The Joy of Tech — click the image to see the complete cartoon.

Cartoonist Don Asmussen reminds us that, even on the Fourth of July, we must always be on the lookout for people who aren’t patriotic enough.

At a difficult time like today, can we really trust this country to anyone who doesn’t jump through meaningless symbolic hoops to prove his patriotism? And can we trust those who do jump through meaningless symbolic hoops? I mean — maybe it’s all part of some grand master plan to make us believe that they’re patriotic even when their actions hurt the country.

Cartoonist D.C. Simpson looks at McCain’s job qualifications. (Click to see the whole cartoon.)

I also like this cartoon about the brilliance of Karl Rove. And this one, on a long eight years.