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A frame from the June 16th edition of This Modern World:

Ha that’s funny!  Because like even though some crazy conservatives might actually think that, they wouldn’t actually say it out loud, would they?

Michael Scheuer on Glenn Beck’s show last night:

Transcript:

Scheuer: The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States. Because it’s going to take a grass-roots, bottom-up pressure. Because these politicians prize their office, prize the praise of the media and the Europeans. It’s an absurd situation again. Only Osama can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their government protect them effectively, consistently, and with as much violence as necessary.

Beck: Which is why, I was thinking this weekend, if I were him, that would be the last thing I would do right now.

Why do conservatives hate America so much? Why do they think it must be destroyed before they can save it?

For a whole lot more of Michael Scheuer’s batshit crazy analysis, read this column he wrote for the Washington Post that ends with:

…The Republicans do not have the votes to stop Obama, and the world will not be safer for America because the president abandons interrogations to please his party’s left wing and the European pacifists it so admires. Both are incorrigibly anti-American, oppose the use of force in America’s defense and — like Obama — naively believe that the West’s Islamist foes can be sweet-talked into a future alive with the sound of kumbaya.

So if the above worst-case scenario ever comes to pass, Americans will have at least two things from which to take solace, even after the loss of major cities and tens of thousands of countrymen. First, they will know that their president believes that those losses are a small price to pay for stopping interrogations and making foreign peoples like us more. And second, they will see Osama bin Laden’s shy smile turn into a calm and beautiful God-is-Great grin.

Michael Scheuer is an ex CIA man and he worked again as Special Advisor to the Chief of the bin Laden unit from September 2001 to November 2004.   He now works as a news analyst for CBS News.  I wonder how much longer he’ll have that job…

UPDATE:  Daily Show coverage of this story here.

…Needs your help.

We all know the economy is bad and likely to get worse in the days ahead. I’m sure you know people who’ve been affected. I want to tell you about a friend of mine who recently took a huge hit, cartoonist Tom Tomorrow, creator of “This Modern World.”

In January, Village Voice Media, the largest group of weekly newspapers in the country, indefinitely suspended all syndicated cartoons. In a single day, Tom’s strip was cut from 12 papers. Obviously that means a loss of income for him. Perhaps even worse is the lost connection to readers who faithfully turn to Tom and his sardonic penguin Sparky to help them survive the absurdities of the world around us.

Political cartoons have a powerful history in the United States. Many cartoonists were the Jon Stewarts of their day, quickly cutting complex issues to their cores. Decades before the Revolutionary War, Ben Franklin sketched a disjointed snake to rally the colonies to unity, creating a lasting symbol of the time. Herb Block’s incisive visual commentaries played a significant role in the public perception of Watergate. Alt-weeklies have provided a home to some of our finest subversive comic art, from Bill Griffith’s “Zippy the Pinhead” to Simpsons-creator Matt Groening’s “Life in Hell.”

Read the rest here.

Related post here.

And another thing you could do to help out Tom Tomorrow is BUY HIS BOOK!

Everything you need to know about Alan Greenspan’s economic policy in six panels of This Modern World.

Or more like yesteryear… 50 years ago in New Haven Connecticut where they are currently filming the new Indiana Jones movie due out in 2008.

A small part of the city was dressed up to look as it would fifty years ago, complete with authentic vintage guitars in the shop windows.

Check out the photos here.

This Modern World is quite good this week. 

Enjoy.

Over at This Modern World, Jonathan Schwarz has a this post:

Permission slips 

Today: 

Q: Thank you, Mr. President. Earlier this week, you told a group of journalists that you thought the idea of sending special forces to Pakistan to hunt down bin Laden was a strategy that would not work…recently you’ve also described bin Laden as a sort of modern day Hitler or Mussolini. And I’m wondering why, if you can explain why you think it’s a bad idea to send more resources to hunt down bin Laden, wherever he is? 

THE PRESIDENT: Pakistan is a sovereign nation. In order for us to send thousands of troops into a sovereign nation, we’ve got to be invited by the government of Pakistan. 

Man, I hope no one tells President Bush or Vice President Cheney about this! They’d be really mad! 

2004 State of the Union Address: 

BUSH: America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our country. 

Two months later: 

CHENEY: The United States will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our country. 

I believe that’s what all the Bush supporters called a “flip flop” during the 2004 campaign. 

I wonder what they call it now.

Bob Herbert is back from what seemed like a long vacation to his regular readers.  In today’s column, he writes about how the Bush Administration has managed to destroy our national character.

The invasion of Iraq marked the beginning of the change in the American character. During the Cuban missile crisis, when the hawks were hot for bombing – or an invasion – Robert Kennedy counseled against a U.S. first strike. That’s not something the U.S. would do, he said.

Fast-forward 40 years or so and not only does the U.S. launch an unprovoked invasion and occupation of a small nation – Iraq – but it does so in response to an attack inside the U.S. that the small nation had nothing to do with.

Who are we?

…

Another example: There was a time, I thought, when there was general agreement among Americans that torture was beyond the pale. But when people are frightened enough, nothing is beyond the pale. And we’re in an era in which the highest leaders in the land stoke – rather than attempt to allay – the fears of ordinary citizens. Islamic terrorists are equated with Nazi Germany. We’re told that we’re in a clash of civilizations.

…

And Senator Lindsey Graham, a conservative South Carolina Republican who is a former military judge, said, “It would be unacceptable, legally, in my opinion, to give someone the death penalty in a trial where they never heard the evidence against them.”

How weird is it that this possibility could even be considered?

The character of the U.S. has changed. We’re in danger of being completely ruled by fear. Most Americans have not shared the burden of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Very few Americans are aware, as the Center for Constitutional Rights tells us, that of the hundreds of men held by the U.S. in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, many “have never been charged and will never be charged because there is no evidence justifying their detention.”

And you are in luck, because today you can read his column without a subscription to Times Select, if you go here.

What are you waiting for?

Oh, and if you want to read what Mr. “McBobo” Brooks has to say today, you’ll have to go to The New York Times website with your subscription, or you can go over to This Modern World and read what Tom Tomorrow has to say about Brooks’s Bush-licking column.

No blogging from me for the past week or so.  Could be burnout or it could be this.

That’s Johnny Dowd at the Tractor Tavern last Friday night.  I chose this cell phone photo over some better ones because it’s representative of how I remember the show.  Sort of a whisky blur.  If you get an opportunity to see Johnny Dowd, go. 

Rather than go back in time and try to throw up some lengthy posts that I should have put up during the last week, I’ll just quickly run through a few topics.

If the Republicans really wanted to increase the minimum wage, they could have done it very easily by putting forth a bill that did just that instead of tacking on an amendment to a bill that would permanently cut taxes on the estates of the incredibly wealthy. 

As Bob Herbert pointed out in his column today, the politics of the ruling party is one of extreme cynicism. 

The buying power of the minimum wage is at a 50-year low. Members of Congress have raised their own pay by $31,600 since the last increase in the minimum wage nine years ago. For Republicans to exploit the plight of workers buried in economic hardship in order to put millions of additional dollars into the portfolios of the already wealthy is beyond egregious.

Herbert points out that the R’s are already using the HR 5970 votes of Democratic senators they are targeting in this November’s elections to falsely claim that the Democrats were against increasing the minimum wage.  Take a look at HR 5970 for yourself.  The title reads “Estate Tax and Extension of Tax Relief Act of 2006″ and you’ll have to dig pretty far into to it to find where the minimum wage part of the bill was tacked on, yet the R’s will continue to call it the “Minimum Wage Act.”

Joe Lieberman lost to Ned Lamont, but he still thinks he’s in the game.  Greg Saunders has the appropriate sports analogy over at This Modern World.  E. J. Dionne, Jr. recognizes that Lieberman’s desperate, last-minute campaign tactic of separating himself from Bush (and it nearly worked!) is a sign that Republicans are in trouble and that the R’s themselves may have to distance themselves from Bush to improve their chances for reelection.

Paul Krugman got it right with this column about the new partisan political culture. 

Now we’re living in an age of one-letter politics, in which a politician’s partisan affiliation is almost always far more important than his or her personal beliefs. And those who refuse to recognize this reality end up being useful idiots for those, like President Bush, who have been consistently ruthless in their partisanship.

Speaking of useful idiots, Dennis Miller is definitely not funny anymore.  Well he hasn’t been since shortly after 9-11 when Bush’s manufactured threats permanently switched him into FEAR mode.  Oh, and he’s probably a very wealthy man and enjoys those tax cuts.  That’s all pretty disgusting, but seeing the former SNL news anchor go to work for FOX News makes me wanna hurl.

And today is a RED ALERT DAY.  Be very afraid like they want you to be.

It never ceases to amaze me how far the spokespersons for the Far Right will go to argue in support of heinous war crimes. Take this statement by Rush Limbaugh yesterday:

“Until civilians – frankly, I’m not sure how many of them are actually just innocent little civilians running around versus active Hezbo types, particularly the men – but until those civilians start paying a price for propping up these kinds of regimes, it’s not going to end, folks. What do you mean, civilians start paying a price? I just ask you to consult history for the answer to that.”

Rush Limbaugh
On the Qana Massacre
July 31, 2006

And compare it to this statement by Rush’s nemesis, Osama bin Laden:

“We declared jihad against the US government, because the US government is unjust, criminal and tyrannical. It has committed acts that are extremely unjust, hideous and criminal . . . As for what you asked regarding the American people, they are not exonerated from responsibility, because they chose this government and voted for it despite their knowledge of its crimes in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and in other places.”

Osama bin Laden
On His Fatwa Against America
March 1997

Rush has become his own enemy.

What kinds of fools listen to this man on the radio every day? How many listeners are there?

13.5 million listeners per week. Sigh…

Quotes via This Modern World, via Billmon.

This week’s edition of This Modern World is very good, and it features your old pal Charlie Brown.

Now about that recent publication, Hell in a Handbasket, a collection of Bush era cartoons by Tom Tomorrow. Have you bought it yet? He really, really, really would appreciate the sale. Buy one for a friend too.