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Tom Tomorrow brings back a comic strip from 2001, to remind us how Americans fight fundamentalist terrorists.

More retro-funnies here and here.

The Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen on Republican attempts to claim credit for getting bin Laden:

In March 2002, just six months after 9/11, Bush said of bin Laden, “I truly am not that concerned about him…. You know, I just don’t spend that much time on him, to be honest with you.”

In July 2006, we learned that the Bush administration closed its unit that had been hunting bin Laden.

In September 2006, Bush told Fred Barnes, one of his most sycophantic media allies, that an “emphasis on bin Laden doesn’t fit with the administration’s strategy for combating terrorism.”

And don’t even get me started on Bush’s failed strategy that allowed bin Laden to escape from Tora Bora.

I’m happy to extend plenty of credit to all kinds of officials throughout the government, but crediting Bush’s “vigilance” on bin Laden is deeply silly.

Let’s be fair: some things are fundamentally difficult.

I didn’t consider it a black mark against the Bush Administration that they didn’t “connect the dots” before the 9/11 attacks. I didn’t consider it a black mark against the Bush Administration that bin Laden escaped from Tora Bora — even if a case could be made that Defense Department errors made that possible.

Hindsight is easy. Getting the answers right when you can’t even be certain what the questions are — that’s hard.

Getting Osama bin Laden required enormous competence, a lot of hard work, and patience.

But, from The Lost Year in Iraq:

Bremer, who arrived with sweeping plans to remake the country, had a young and inexperienced team, but his staff had passed a political litmus test in Washington. “It’s a children’s crusade … of former Republican campaign workers, White House interns [and] Heritage Foundation people,” says Thomas Ricks of The Washington Post.

Col. T.X. Hammes, a counterinsurgency expert and adviser to Iraq’s Interior Ministry, felt Bremer’s staff could have been better trained. “We had so many of these very, very young people that are dedicated Americans, brave enough to take a chance and go into Iraq to try to do something right for their country,” he tells FRONTLINE. “But [they] didn’t get any training; they have no background. … And yet we put them in charge of planning at [the] national level.”

It seems to me that the Bush Administration didn’t value competence, didn’t respect hard work, and didn’t have patience.

That is the black mark against them.

On Friday, President Obama ordered action against Osama bin Laden.

On Saturday, he spoke at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. The video seems a little different, knowing what we know now — especially when he says, “What a week!” or “These are the kinds of decisions that would keep me up at night.”

Donald Trump, who seemed so important last week, looks about as significant as a damp, soiled dishrag.

Here’s a challenge: how do you make a thoughtful person talking for ten minutes interesting? Here’s one approach.

Rachel Maddow on Republican overreach — Financial Martial Law:

Sometimes, to steal what poor people have, you first have to steal their rights as citizens.

A few weeks ago, Cartoonist Ruben Bolling looked at one kind of government shutdown.

Those unintended consequences can be surprising, sometimes.

From a reader question on a blog at the Washington Post:

In one respect, [Sarah Palin] is like Tinkerbell–if you don’t applaud she fades away.

Wish I’d said that.

Expect the same for Donald Trump.

I said that.

CNN has a fairly thorough-looking list of government services that may be affected by the government shutdown. One highlight:

Troops including those fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq will not be paid on time. Troops will continue to earn money but will receive no paychecks.

Good thing all our military personnel are independently wealthy, huh? Otherwise, we’d have to worry that they or their families might not be able to pay the rent or buy groceries or pay the utility bills.

I think most of the Republicans in Congress don’t know anybody who doesn’t have a trust fund. That’s who their policies seem designed to take care of, anyway.

Another tidbit:

The lawmakers who hold the cards will still get paid. Their staffers might be furloughed, though.

I hope the shutdown doesn’t last very long. A long shutdown will deplete a lot of trust, and many members of Congress don’t have any to spare.

For some mysterious reason, this song has been going through my mind for the past couple weeks.

Rachel Maddow mentioned this brilliant explanation of the current situation:

Jennifer Brunner, a lawyer and former Ohio secretary of state, said a post on her Facebook page this week nicely summed up what she believed was happening. “A dozen cookies are put down in front of a C.E.O., a union member and a Tea Partier,” she said. “The C.E.O. takes 11. Then he says to the Tea Partier, ‘That union guy wants yours.’ ”

Well said.

I dug out a button I’ve had for a long time.

Solidarity helped the people get their rights in Poland. Do you think it could work in Ohio?

Cartoonist Tom Tomorrow mines a rich vein of pure American Crazy to bring us 2010: The Year in Crazy.

There’s too much for just one cartoon, so there’s a part two, also.

(You can click the images to see the complete cartoons.)

With so much Crazy these days, he’s done a whole book titled Too Much Crazy, a collection of his weekly cartoons. I like Tom Tomorrow. If you don’t, reading this book may make you crazy.

Republicans don’t believe in coddling 9/11 rescue workers:

Republican senators blocked Democratic legislation on Thursday that sought to provide medical care to rescue workers and others who became ill as a result of breathing in toxic fumes, dust and smoke at the site of the World Trade Center attack in 2001.

So where did the notion come from that Republicans are somehow the stronger party when the nation is attacked?

I thought maybe it was my imagination, but it seemed to me that gas prices have spiked since election day. This chart from GasBuddy.com makes me think something changed on November 2nd. Coincidence?

It’s also interesting to see what happened around the time of the 2008 election:

Update: I just realized that the 2008 drop coincides with the Bush economic meltdown — how quickly we forget. That was probably a more significant factor than the election.

Psychic prediction: if Republicans win 50 Senate seats (a tie, which would be broken in favor of Democrats by Vice-President Biden), look for Joe Lieberman to switch to the Republican party.

(If pundits everywhere have been saying this for months, I haven’t heard it. I stopped listening to them back in early July.)