I just saw a commercial that strongly and clearly lays it all out:

The democrats passed a bill that would have brought the troops home.

The president vetoed it.

The Republicans supported his veto.

The veto can't be overturned unless YOU do something about it.

It was a commercial put out by John Edwards. Whatever you think of him as a candidate for president, that commercial is exactly the message that needs to be made. Hammered on with the same relentless drive that the Republican sound machine so excels at. It's simple, direct and the conclusion is obvious. You can no longer both support the Republican party and support the ending of the war. Choose one or the other, but you can't have both.

This is the message that Reid and Pelosi should have delivered themselves. They should never have come close to using the word compromise, because there was no compromise. Bush got what he wanted, as he always does, with no apparent real dissent. This is why people are so angry with the Dems.

As Conason points out, the Dems are given chances all the time to take the rhetorical high ground, and time and again, for some reason they either won't, don't, or just don't even think about it.

Zik zik zik!

And a new phrase enters the lexicon, or should.

Zik zik!

As a bonus, the cartoon is spot on in its observation that in Americ -- I mean our northern planetary land mass -- withholding your belief in some guardian space spook is weird and suspicious while claiming a personal relationship with that same space spook is normal and desirable. And just think: all you have to do to prove that relationship is to claim that you have it!

Zik zik!

Or tried to. Big yawn. Very poorly done. Several non points were made to prove one predetermined conclusion: Only really really clever people such as we can understand the many reasons why everyone else is entirely wrong. History is wrong, the hype machine is wrong, and Sgt. Peppers is really not a bit more relevant to the history of music than that really loud belch I emitted the other day.

Perhaps the most interesting quote was where they are so eager to make their case that they essentially call Kurt Cobain a liar. "Kurt Cobain claimed the Beatles were his touchstone, but you don't hear it in his music." Meaning, I guess, that Cobain doesn't even have a clue to his own influences, because it sure as hell couldn't have been the band he claimed was a touchstone. That's like me saying that I first fell in love with writing as a kid by reading the short stories of Ray Bradbury, and these two saying "Oh no, silly Tideswimmer. Ray Bradbury wrote sentimental tripe about rocketships landing and taking off in small-town America. Such nonsense!"

Bottom line: this sort of automatic negation is not criticism; it is boring and easy. Please do better next time.

The JFK assassination was so overrated!

Exactly! Totally! That was just what I was thinking.

All these old people going on about how they can remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news and stuff, and all I'm thinking is geez, get a life!

True that! They're all like "No one could believe it; we were all just stunned." It sure seems like people were easily stunned back then.

Absolutely! If you're stunned by that, then what does that leave you for when a real assassination comes along?

Exactly.

Martin Luther King, now there's an assassination for you. Hell, even Bobby Kennedy, might have more of an emotional punch. I can see getting all upset and stuff about those, but JFK? It's just such a non-event. I can't believe we're even talking about it.

I know! I'd put Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison all croaking ahead of JFK getting shot any day.

Right! But even that's not a good example because there was this band in Cincinnati called The Whirligigs that was better than all three of them combined, except that nobody knows about them because they only put out one album, and by that I mean only ONE album; one single pressing, one copy. And I met a guy, who knows a guy who actually listened to it once, and that guy said it kicked the shit out of anything The Beatles ever recorded or could even think of recording. And yet no one says they can remember where they were or what they were doing when The Whirligigs broke up. It's ridiculous. Society has everything upside-down.

As a society, we are so hosed. So completely messed up.

It's like, you know, if Syd Barrett had never gone crazy, we wouldn't have to have suffered through the sonic null-zone of "Darkside of the Moon."

Exactly! Roger Waters as the anti-christ! I'm loving it! Will you have sex with me?

Oh those Looney Laws! Other countries sure are a crack up sometimes. Next thing you'll tell me that presidential elections in other countries don't even go on for two whole years. How can the electorate possibly get all the information they need before then? Pfff.