brainrow

Revealed at last, the secret origin of our modern political discourse:

Okay, Kurrgo, your ray worked. You can check the results yourself by monitoring Fox News or C-SPAN. Now, please turn it off!

Cartoonist Don Asmussen explores issues with the new “papers, please” law in Arizona. (Click the image to see the full cartoon.)

Next step: change the state’s name to Aryzona.

Author Dennis Meadows, from a recent PBS American Experience program called Earth Days:

We’ve been on this planet for several hundred thousands of years, and during most of that time, anybody who looked far into the future didn’t have much survival value. I mean, if you’re in the midst of a battle with a mammoth or something, you don’t sit there and say, “Well, let’s think about three years from now;” you run.

And so, for a long period of time, the advantage went to those who focused on the immediate situation. And, I think, as a consequence of that, now that we are faced with issues which will really unfold over centuries, we’re genetically and institutionally ill-adapted for it.

Web cartoonist Francesco Marciuliano shows us where short-term thinking will lead. (Click the image to see the whole cartoon, which is funnier and scarier than this little excerpt.)

Little known fact: Nikita Khrushchev was, in fact, a Republican.

On second thought, maybe not. More likely he was just a role model for Republican Senators:

Senate Republicans, united in opposition to the Democrats’ legislation to tighten regulation of the financial system, voted on Monday to block the bill from reaching the floor for debate.

They weren’t voting against the bill. No, they were voting against even starting debate on a financial reform bill. The argument seems to be that, since government is imperfect, it should not be allowed to set rules for the folks who nearly wrecked the economy.

I wonder what voters will think of that, come November?

Friday night on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, the panel was discussing how John Paul Stevens, the Supreme Court’s retiring “liberal lion,” had been considered a moderate Republican in 1975 when he was appointed by Gerald Ford. Susan Eisenhower, granddaughter of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, said:

I think Republicans can still be moderate today. It’s their choice. I think the demographics have changed hugely, but what I think is absolutely stunning about what’s going on right now — where are the elder statesmen of the party, and why aren’t they standing up and insisting that this party take a more constructive view?

You know, anger is not a public policy prescription.

Maybe not, but it seems to be the only thing the GOP has got these days.