brainrow

Political cartoonist Pat Oliphant shows us the Republican election strategy for 2010. (Click on the image to see the whole cartoon.)

I agree with the little guy in the corner: try to snap out of it!

President Obama speaking at a Democratic Party fundraiser in Atlanta on Monday.

Republicans ran the country into the ditch, and did nothing to help get it back out.

Finally, we get this car out of the ditch … we’re about to start driving forward again, they say, “Hold on! We want the keys back!”

You can’t have the keys back! You don’t know how to drive!

And I do want to point out: When you get in your car, when you go forward, what do you do? You put it in “D”. When you want to go back, what do you do? You put it in “R”.

You don’t want to go into reverse, back in the ditch. We want to go forward. We gotta put it in “D”.

What will those darned activist judges say next? Cartoonist Don Asmussen may have the scoop. Some observers predict a massive cootie outbreak.

(Click on the image to see the entire cartoon.)

The first time a nuclear weapon was used in anger was 65 years ago today, when a uranium bomb of a type never before tested was dropped over Hiroshima, Japan. The bombing doubled as a test of the design. It worked.

The second time a nuclear weapon was used in anger was three days later, over Nagasaki, Japan. That was a plutonium bomb of a type tested just once, less than a month before, in the New Mexico desert. That design worked, too.

The third time a nuclear weapon was used in anger hasn’t happened yet, 65 years later.

I’m not sure what that tells us, but I sure hope it means something.

Ever since we were born, we of the Baby Boom generation have been followed by entrepreneurs ready to cater to our every need or wish. Now that we’re getting old, there’s a new lifestyle magazine about death in England.

Look for a booming industry here in the United States soon, catering to the upscale death market.

How do you persuade someone to wear a seat belt? Here’s an ad from England:

I think I’ve entered my second childhood, or maybe I just never got out of my first.

I’ve been thinking about things I’ve known about for a long time, and letting myself be astonished all over again. Things that would make a sophisticate roll his eyes and say, “Well, duh!”

Things like this:

Ludwig van Beethoven started losing his hearing early in his career as a composer. His deafness grew progressively worse over time. Yet Beethoven wrote some of his greatest works — some of the greatest music ever written by anyone — when he was already profoundly deaf.

Or this:

During the entire time he served as President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt was totally paralyzed from the waist down. From a wheelchair, he led the country out of the Great Depression and through World War II. He died less than a month before the surrender of Germany, and about four months before the surrender of Japan.

Human beings are pretty remarkable people. There’s always more to them than meets the eye. Sometimes, a lot more.

Spanish bagpipes.

Stolen in its entirety from Daily Kos:

Let me see if I have this straight: in the last few days members of the GOP have savagely screwed the unemployed, protected the bankstas, trashed Thurgood Marshall, implied rape and incest is part of God’s plan, defended BP, threatened to either end social security or screw over 20 million plus people who have paid into the system for at least 20 years by making them wait until age 70 to see their benefits, and screwed homeless veterans with children. That about it, or is there more?

There’s always more.

And yet the cable TV talking heads think Democrats are going to have an uphill fight against the GOP in November.

This is new (to me, anyway): Cartoonist Barry Deutsch shows us the 24 Types of Libertarian. Maybe you recognize some of them? (Click the image to see the full cartoon.)

Via A Blog Around the Clock:

Learn from the past, set vivid, detailed goals for the future, and live in the only moment of time over which you have any control: now. —Denis Waitley

So, I guess you’re saying my strategy of regretting the past, dreading the future, and being paralyzed in the present isn’t the best option? If only you had told me this in the past!

Cartoonist Clay Bennett says libertarians make bad lifeguards. Click the image to see the full cartoon.

In other cartoons, he examines the Republican sympathy for Bluto and asks, “Do you still want a government that’s run like a business?“

If you don’t have much time to read for pleasure, you should check out Six Word Stories. (Warning: some strong language.)

It all began when someone bet Ernest Hemingway he couldn’t tell a complete story in just six words. Hemingway won the bet, with this:

For sale: baby shoes, never used.

Lots of astonishing stories at the site.

The web comic Medium Large suggests you should be careful when it comes to voting your religion.

Click the image to see the whole cartoon.

I think this goes on all the time inside the book trade, but it’s odd when Amazon offers consumers a book called Untitled on Obama Administration.

Bob Woodward, one of the reporters who dug out the story of Watergate, is a perennial author of bestselling insider-y tales from the White House. Clearly, he’s got a contract to deliver one of those books in September, about the Obama Administration.

We don’t know what’s going to be in the book, but Woodward’s always good for a couple juicy headlines. We don’t know who he’s talked to or what he’s going to say, but Amazon knows there are plenty of folks waiting to get in line to wait for Woodward’s take on the new guy.

Come September, the words on everyone’s lips will be, “Have you read Untitled on Obama Administration?”

I’m thinking blockbuster. I’m thinking Pulitzer Prize.

I’m thinking “Six Crises, and Counting”.