A very bitingly insightful comic (if you'll pardon the pun). Note that Ruben Bolling works the banking industry so there's extra insight.

And I still hate the new comic format and wish it would die.

FYI people, there's a Comics link at the bottom of the main page. It's a dumb place for the category links but that's where they put them. If the tabs at the top of the main page had drop-down menus they could list all the categories there, too but they don't so you're stuck scrolling to the bottom.

Salon, this new format for comics is crap. The comic is the star of the page so it should be bigger than it is and usable without having to click to enlarge. Change the text to say "click here on on the comic to enlarge" and make the cursor change to the hand while over the comic, I bet a bunch of people think they have to click on that little red text. The other page content is fine but the comic itself should dominate. Also, clicking OUTSIDE the enlarged comic should shrink it - don't make me hunt for the button in the corner of the image.

Lastly, given that 99% of all the comic comments are about the FORMAT, not the COMICS, that should tell you that you've made a mistake. Even if you're not going to change it (or other things in the new design that people don't like) you should post something visible explaining your reasons and/or saying what you WILL change and when.

I've read and enjoyed this column for a long time. Sorry to hear about the loss of your mother.

At the end of the day all the Republicans will vote against her and all the Democrats will vote for her. Everybody decided what they would do the day her nomination was announced and this committee is just a charade.

There's a part in the Pentagon Papers that crystallised my feeling about Vietnam. It describes a cabinet-level meeting in the autumn of 1963 where the pros and cons of supporting a coup against Diem were discussed. It was felt that neither the Diem government nor any potential replacement was likely to provide success against the regime in the North. Given this, Robert Kennedy asked why the US was in Vietnam if both courses led to failure.

That right there is the essence of Vietnam to me. The fundamental question - namely, would the endeavour further the West against communism - was assumed from the get-go and never really re-examined.

Fallonius, there's an old saying, "Empty vessels make the most noise." It's extra-true when it comes to Internet message boards. The screeching hatemongers, for all their breathless vituperation, are a very small minority.

And the commenters here have nothing on the people on youtube or on most videogame forums - if you don't read those, be thankful...

This sounds a lot like a seizure to me and having had quite a few of those this year I'm quite familiar with them (more than I would like, really).

The slurring and shaking, the rapid recovery and the short period of unconciousness coupled with the clear MRI scan all add up to a tonic-clonic seizure to me.

Sally Ride was the first American female astronaut, but both Valentina Tereshkova and Svetlana Savitskaya preceded her into space. Shannon Lucid is arguably more notable (perhaps the most notable after Tereshkova). You can see the whole roster at http://www.astronautix.com/articles/womspace.htm sorted by duration in orbit except for Tereshkova.