Even though I think he jumped the shark years ago, once in a while he comes up with a great one.

This strip was so funny because it's true. And it's so true it fuckin' hurts!

Yeah, that pretty much sums up the picture.

and Leon Panetta pissing himself before the wrath of Kit Bond . . . and the failure to investigate torture . . . gosh, we sure don't want to offend any of those lawbreakers. It would be partisan to think that powerful criminals should fall prey to outraged Justice.

tom should write a cartoon on michelle releasing obama's testicles before he goes and confronts those scary, oh-so-threatening republicans in congress next time

... wait for it... wait for it....

Just for the record, *I* don't think This Modern World has ever jumped the shark.

Highs and lows, ups and downs, sure, but if anything, I think the strip's consistency has gone up. Though, obviously, it had an extraordinary assist over the last eight years.

Apparently now it's about Michelle leading Barack around by the balls. SHE'S the one in charge! I haven't heard this one before...I'm so psyched to get in on the ground floor. Can't wait to see what knuckledraggers pick up on it.

Or we can do something.

Until Democrats don't make efforts to have their own media, Democtratic party will always be in disavantage in this country.

If the left says no puppies should be killed and the right says all puppies deserve to be killed, the moderate stance that 50% of puppies can be killed is not at tenable one.

A New Deal-type of bailout is an all-or-nothing gambit. Screw bipartisanship. He should have oversized the plan and had the Republicans choke on it. But then, I say that because I like the idea of Republicans choking.

In two short years, we get the next congress. If the Dems gain seats, you'll see two things happen. One the democrats will care a lot less about bipartisanship, and the republicans will care a lot more (trying to remain relevant and to sign on to the success that continue to propell democrats).

If the Dems lose seats, then they will make an effort to be more centrist (in the American terminology)so as not to seem obstructionist, while of course the Republicans move to the center to cement their gains in hopes of taking back their power base and perhaps the whitehouse.

Yes, if the party were a single unit marching in lock step, you could pass anything you wanted without the opposition partys support. But for both political and practical reasons some move to the center is necessary.

States don't go from red to blue over night. And a state that was a solid republican state two years prior, that is now slightly more blue, still has to keep in mind the rhetoric that kept the state red for so long.

By 2010, we will be able to see how the nation is really looking. If 2008 represented a rejection of Bush, or a rejection of the right.

It's simply a matter of browbeating the shit out of the disloyal minions. Democracy is so 20th Century anyhow.

I hope that when weirdo wrote

"Until Democrats don't make efforts to have their own media, Democtratic party will always be in disavantage in this country"

s/he meant

"Until Democrats make efforts to have their own media, Democtratic party will always be in disavantage in this country"

The central organizing principle of the current body politic is that the media are literally, not figuratively, the propaganda arm of the same corporatocracy that owns and operates the Republican party, and the vast majority of the lobbying and fundraising mechanisms that form the real infrastructure of our government. This has been obvious for some time now, yet it's rarely mentioned out loud or in print -- and most political discourse reads as if this were not the case.

Even with the country -- and the whole world -- at the brink of utter catastrophes (plural), the people directly responsible for all of it still came within 10 %age points of being elected! It's a near-miracle that Obama was elected at all, and it's no surprise at all that the Congressional Dem's are still acting as if the Republicans were still the majority, because that's the reality of the power structure.

Any plan of operation that doesn't start with recognizing these realities and dealing with them is very likely to fail at least in part.

God help us -- because we're unlikely to be able to help ourselves otherwise.

Yes. I meant exactly what you say. Sorry for my English. I am a foreigner and I make mistakes. And I agree with every word in your post.

Modern politics is a game that is played at the media. Democracy means that people vote. If you can change the ideas of people, you can change their vote. Human ideas come from perception. If you can change the perception of people, you can change their ideas and, hence the vote. And what modern people do derive their perceptions for? The media.

(Milan Kundera says in "The immortality" something along the lines "My grandma, living in Bohemia, could not be fooled. Nobody could tell her that economic situation was good while her homeland experienced hunger. The modern Frenchman is happy when the TV news anchor tells him that delinquency has decreased in France. He drinks a little of champagne to celebrate this fact and, meanwhile, a man is killed two streets from his home")

I am from a foreign country. There, the media are dominated by the left. This is why the left has been winning elections consistently (being the right an exception).

In USA it is the other way around. Republicans "own" the media and Democrats are an exception.

As a Republican said in Salon, "it takes a lot to elect a Democratic president in this country. How much worse can it get?

To elect a Democratic president, you have to have an unpopular Republican brand, you have to have an unpopular Republican administration, you have to have gas that's hit five bucks a gallon, you have to have a housing bubble pop. And then that's still not enough, then you have to have an economic meltdown. McCain was tied coming out of the convention until the economy melted down. And that's still not enough. Then you have to have a Democratic candidate who moves toward the center and proposes tax cuts for 95 percent of Americans, who says oil drilling might be OK, who says that what the unpopular president is doing in foreign policy and defense is terrible but he's going to keep the same people. The secretary of defense, General Petraeus. Even Bush's policy of preemption in Iran. Barack Obama said he would do anything, anything, anything to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons.".

Sorry for the long quote but I think it is worth it.