Cartoon Saturday ... on Friday?

Special note: Cartoon Saturday appears on Friday this week because Agnes and I will be out of town for the weekend and I may not have Internet connectivity. The next post will probably appear Sunday evening or Monday morning. Sorry for the confusion, Mike ...

Oh, what a week it's been ...

The GOP is gleefully pouring gasoline on the fires of a series of real and imagined scandals, working overtime to ensure that the Obama administration is tied in knots and can't accomplish anything: Benghazi, IRS targeting of conservative groups, the Justice Department's subpoenaing of the telephone records of Associated Press reporters as part of a leak investigation ... oh, and let's not forget the routine votes to eliminate Obamacare.

Nothing's going to get done in Congress until the next presidential election, so you might as well sit back, relax, and enjoy the cartoons. The ones you didn't elect, anyhow.

In honor of our elected reprehensives, our theme selection of cartoons this week deals with the genus headupus deasses, otherwise known as the common politician ...

There's an art to managing your in-boxes if you're a mover and shaker in politics ...

I think the President has the same nightmare ...

I don't know if there's fine print in the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision that gives a quantity discount for the purchase of politicians by special interests ...

Why lie outright when you can baffle everyone so well with cherry-picked quotes and statistics? ...

And rounding out our salute to the political class ...

 Things are never quite all black and white ..

As government agencies scramble to live within the constrained budgets brought on by the Sequester, there are some pretty novel approaches to economy emerging ...

I don't know if John has a dog ... but if he does, his house probably looks something like this ...

And how would you like your news presented, sir? ...

And finally, last weekend we lavished love and praise on our mothers for Mother's Day. And then came the day after ...

And that's it for this week's edition of Cartoon Saturday. Agnes and I are in Chicago, attending the wedding our one of the members of our extended family, and are enjoying a weekend away from Disneyland-on-the-Potomac. I'll tell you the whole story when we return. In the meantime, have a good day ... more thoughts once we're home.

Bilbo

Lingerie That's Really Shocking

There are a great many things that I would love to be able to say about the ridiculous grandstanding and buffoonery taking place in Disneyland-on-the-Potomac, masquerading as legitimate Congressional oversight. Sadly, I have to take a pass because I'm so angry about it that I need some time to gather my thoughts to write coherently. I'll get to it in the next few days ... in the meantime, let's talk about rape prevention underwear.

Yes, Dear Readers, last month Time Magazine ran this odd, if interesting article - Indian Students Develop ‘Rape-Prevention’ Underwear. India, of course, has been in the news because of a series of brutal, high-profile gang rapes and other vicious sexual attacks against women.

Three Indian engineering students have developed lingerie known as Society Harnessing Equipment, which incorporates “anti-rape” features to help women protect themselves against sexual assault. According to one of the developers, the underwear includes a GPS link and a cell phone transmitter which would send an SOS text to police and emergency services and to the girl's parents, and is capable of delivering a 3800 kV shock to an attacker.  The circuitry for the GPS and associated sensors are located near the breasts, where research indicates women are likely to be first assaulted.

The article goes on to note that the idea of devices to prevent rape is not a new one*. In South Africa the controversial Rape-Axe, a latex device worn by a woman like a tampon and studded (pun intended) with inward-facing, razor-sharp barbs to impale an attacker's private parts, was first introduced in 2005. Though the Society Harnessing Equipment can reportedly deliver up to 82 powerful shocks, it’s quite a bit more humane than the Rape-Axe**. 

The students are hoping to make their design available for purchase soon.

Not to make light of a serious issue, I think it would be interesting if we had a device which would deliver powerful shocks to the brains of elected reprehensives who are otherwise brain-dead and fixated on self-aggrandizing showboating*** rather than serious investigation of real issues.

Have a good day. Enjoy that electronic lingerie.

More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

* Of course, the famous chastity belt was meant to discourage not only rape, but consensual (if unapproved) sexual relations.

** Not that "humane" is necessarily a quality one might wish to apply to anti-rape device.

*** Yes, Mr Issa, I'm talking to you.

More Odds and Ends

My brain just doesn't seem to be getting into gear this morning, so I guess I'll just share a few assorted odds and ends with you. It beats having to think coherently at this hour.

We'll be traveling to Chicago this weekend to attend a wedding, and since I've never visited more of Chicago than O'Hare Airport I thought I'd do a little research into the things worth seeing and doing in the City of the Big Shoulders ...

The Tea Party has found something existential to spin up about - America's favorite federal agency, the Internal Revenue Service (or IRS), has been caught paying extra-intrusive attention to the tax-exempt status requests of many conservative and anti-government groups. Nothing like waving the red tax flag in front of the bull that's already hysterical. Read the background of the story here. The issue apparently arose out of poorly planned and executed attempts by the IRS to parse the tens of thousands of requests for tax-exempt status which have poured in after the Supreme Court's wonderful Citizens United decision. The portion of the tax code which applies to political groups seeking such status is "501(c)(4)." I think I'll apply for tax-exempt status under section ... oh ... "501(gg)(917)eieio/wtf." The tax code is so vast and complicated, who'll ever know?

In other news guaranteed to fire up those who already mistrust the government, the Justice Department apparently has used wide-ranging subpoenas to obtain the telephone records of reporters working for the Associated Press (AP) as part of an investigation into the disclosure of classified information about a failed al-Qaeda plot. According to published reports, federal investigators obtained cellular, office and home telephone records of individual reporters and an editor; AP general office numbers in Washington, New York and Hartford, Connecticut; and the main number for AP reporters covering Congress. It's not only the Chinese who are hacking you.

Pretty soon we'll run out of government agencies to focus hatred on ... in addition to DOJ and the IRS, everyone loves to despise the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms; FEMA; the FBI; and the National Security Agency. How long will it be before scandal hits, say, Head Start?

I'm reading a very interesting book by historian Nathaniel Philbrick - Bunker Hill: A City, a Siege, a Revolution. It's an engrossing and educational look at the city and the time that spawned the traditional American opposition to government, taxes, and just about everything that limits freedom. Strongly recommended.

And that's it for today. Time to draw a deep breath, put up my mental shields, and head off to work ... buoyed by the knowledge that I can retire in 1273 days. Not that I'm counting, you understand.

Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

Mothers' Day, 2013

This marks the sixth year that I have revised and updated my traditional Mothers' Day post. If you've read it before, you may want to see if you recognize the changes.

Today is Mothers’ Day, the one day each year we set aside to honor the lady we undervalue the other 364. It’s the day we remember the person who made our hurts better, explained our homework, cooked our meals, washed our clothes, drove us where we needed to go, warned us about our less-savory acquaintances, embarrassed us in front of our friends, and did her best to point us down the straight line of a moral and upright life.

Mothers are the wonderful and woefully underappreciated people from whom the Army and the Navy stole their one-time recruiting slogans - the Army's "We do more before 9 AM than most people do all day," and the Navy's "It's not just a job, it's an adventure." With all due respect to Soldiers and Sailors everywhere ... you guys ain't got a clue.

Somewhere in my web surfings I found this little riff on how we look at our Mothers at different ages:

Age 4: Mommy can do anything!
Age 8: Mom knows a lot!
Age 12: Mother doesn't know everything.
Age 14: Mother doesn't know anything.
Age 16: Mother is so old-fashioned.
Age 18: Her? She's out of it.
Age 25: Mom might know something about that.
Age 35: Before we decide, let's ask Mom.
Age 45: What would Mom have thought about that?
Age 65: I wish I could talk that over with Mom.

It’s true.

My mother passed away twelve years ago at the age of 74. She spent a long and honorable life raising four children who, I like to think, made her proud ... most of the time, anyway. And in her twilight years, her once-formidable mind ravaged by Alzheimer’s Disease, she missed much of the result of her love and care and sacrifice – a son who finally knows how to dance (and who may yet write that book she thought he had in him), a small army of grandchildren, and six beautiful great-grandchildren who will never know her love and wisdom and the off-the-wall sense of humor that brightened the lives of everyone who knew her.

The next generation of Mothers has taken over. My beloved daughter Yasmin and the best daughter-in-law in the world, Tabitha, between them are raising the world’s six greatest grandchildren (Ava Rose was born last November). And someday those wonderful grandchildren will sit down on Mothers’ Day and reflect – just as their grandpa does today – on the marvelous, magical lady who gave up so much of her own life and dreams to make them who they are.

Take the time today to give your Mother a hug and a kiss. Someday, you’ll wish you had.

And so again this year, I wish my own Agnes, Yasmin and Tabitha, Amanda and Fiona, Chrissy, Kathy, Miss Cellania, and all the other mothers out there doing the world's toughest job, a very happy Mothers' Day and many more to come.

We couldn't be what we are, or do what we do, without you.

And lest you think I'm getting too maudlin about the whole thing, here's a picture from long ago of my Dad with four then and future moms: my daughter Yasmin, my sister Lisa, Agnes, and my mother ...

We're a weird family, but somehow we've all turned out all right. More or less.

Have a great Mothers' Day!

More thoughts later.

Bilbo

Cartoon Saturday

Can you believe we're almost halfway through May, and closing in on halfway through 2013? I think I need a drink.

Focusing their full attention and energy like a laser beam on the problems and issues most affecting average Americans, Republicans in Congress have sprung into action to ... beat the Administration savagely with a Benghazi stick; in Cleveland, three young women held captive for more than ten years escaped, along with a six year old child fathered by the man who kidnapped them and imprisoned them in his home; the death toll in the collapse of a sweatshop factory in Dakka, Bangladesh, has risen to more than 1000, even as a woman was pulled from the wreckage on Friday - miraculously alive after being buried for 16 days; after cemeteries in Boston and surrounding cities and states refused to accept his body for burial, accused Boston Marathon bomber Tamarlan Tsarnaev was finally buried in a cemetery in Virginia; and 78,000 people have applied so far for seats on a one-way trip to Mars projected for the year 2023*.

Every week, we need the cartoons more and more ... let's get to them ...

For our theme cartoon selections this week, how about a look at the cautionary tale of Humpty-Dumpty ...

There's the artistic version ...

The tale told from the point of view of all the king's men ...

And some of those who may run to help may also have an ulterior motive ...

I think a lot of parents can appreciate the black humor in this one ...

It happened on the Jurassic Parkway ...

I never thought about the cascading bad effects of too much texting, not being a serial texter myself, but apparently some music teachers have ...

I guess this is one of those freedoms most appreciated and enjoyed by our elected officials ...

Did you ever wonder what some of those mythological characters were really like, and what they did outside of the tales we learn in school? Here's an example ...

None of us are getting any younger ... even our silver screen heroes ...

And finally, one of my favorite movie quotes comes from Cary Grant in the classic film "Arsenic and Old Lace" - "Insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops!" I have a similar view, and often think I have a great deal in common with this fellow ...

 And that's it for this week's edition of Cartoon Saturday. I hope you are looking forward to as calm and relaxing a weekend as you can manage, and are making your plans to honor The Lady tomorrow on Mothers' Day. Come back then for my traditional Mothers' Day post.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* Sadly, the people who are protesting the horrible tyranny under which they are forced to live in this despotic America do not appear to have signed up. You'd think they'd be happy to go someplace where there are no laws, no illegal immigrants, and they can have all the guns they want.

Think Before Shooting Off One's Mouth; or, Before Using Mouth, Be Sure Brain Is Engaged

From the Department of How Utterly Stupid Can You Get comes this amazing story: Protest Group Plans July 4 March on Washington with Loaded Rifles.

Oy.

Iraq war veteran and Internet talk show host Adam Kokesh is organizing thousands of protesters to march into Washington, DC on Independence Day with loaded rifles slung on their backs. According to Mr Kokesh, writing on his website,

“We will march with rifles loaded and flung across our backs to put the government on notice that we will not be intimidated and cower in submission to tyranny. We are marching to mark the high water mark of government & to turn the tide. This will be a non-violent event, unless the government chooses to make it violent. Should we meet physical resistance, we will peacefully turn back, having shown that free people are not welcome in Washington. . . . We are truly saying in the SUBTLEST way possible that we would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.”

A few thoughts ...

First of all, the thought of thousands of armed extremists does not bring to mind the word "subtle."

Second, Mr Kokesh ... and those who believe as he does ... have absolutely no concept of what tyranny is. If you want tyranny, consider Nazi Germany* or Stalinist Russia or the Uganda of Idi Amin. If tyranny means any set of laws that prevents you from doing whatever you want, whenever you want to do it, without any restrictions, then yes - you are living in a tyranny.

Between 1980 and 1982 I lived and worked in what was then called the city of West Berlin. Those of you who are old enough will recall that West Berlin was a city completely surrounded by a well-guarded wall known to the East German government as the "Anti-Fascist Protective Rampart (Antifaschistischer Schutzmauer), and to the rest of the world as The Berlin Wall. People attempting to leave East Berlin by climbing over that barrier were subject to death ... and, in fact, at least one person was killed by East German Border guards while I lived there.

If you want tyranny, Mr Kokesh, try that on for size.

I know the sort of spittle-punctuated hysterical rhetoric my comments would generate in far-right circles. Too bad. I have written often enough about my support for all of our Constitutionally-guaranteed rights ... not just the much-abused right to "keep and bear arms" enshrined in the Bill of Rights. But as I learned many years ago in grade-school and high-school Civics lessons**, there's a difference between freedom and license***, as much as many people nowadays tend to ignore the distinction. With freedom comes responsibility.

And, in my opinion, equating the rule of law with "tyranny" is irresponsible.

Staging a march by thousands of armed people spoiling for a fight with what they view as a tyrannical government, is irresponsible.

Spouting wild conspiracy theories and political buffoonery without any foundation in history or in common sense, is irresponsible.

The Constitution guarantees us many freedoms. Sadly, it does not also guarantee that a degree of intelligence and personal responsibility will come along with those freedoms.

Six grandchildren I love deeply are growing up in a country full of heavily-armed, hate-filled idiots who have no idea what they're talking about, shouting slogans at each other in a self-perpetuating quasi-intellectual echo chamber that just reinforces their own fears and prejudices.

And that scares me a lot more than the imaginary bugbear of a tyrannical government.

I'm glad I'll be out of town on the 4th of July.

Have a good day. Think for yourself, rather than parroting dumb slogans and irresponsibly twisted historical fantasies.

See you back here again on Cartoon Saturday.

Bilbo

* That would be the real Nazi Germany, that built concentration camps, engaged in genocide, and triggered the war that killed tens of millions, not the imaginary Nazi Germany of right-wing (and left-wing) extremist fantasies, in which anyone opposing what one wants to do is frivolously called a "Nazi" and compared to Adolf Hitler.

** Any of you old enough to remember those? Too bad we don't teach good citizenship any more.

*** One definition: "Freedom that allows or is used with irresponsibility; disregard for standards of personal conduct, licentiousness."

Odds and Ends About Language

I normally wouldn't be posting today, but since I have an 8 AM dental appointment and don't have to go to work first, I thought I'd use the bonus time to ruminate on one of my favorite subjects: language. Read on, if you're so inclined ...

As a linguist and a lover of language, I found this article from Time Magazine to be very interesting: Understanding How the Brain Speaks Two Languages. There has long been debate about how we acquire language - if our brains are hard-wired from birth to find and master the patterns of sounds we hear those around us make, or if we just learn by memorization and repetition. And why can some people master multiple languages easily, while others struggle with just their native tongue? This is not a subject of interest just to those of us who love linguistic arcana ... wouldn't it be useful to understand how it is that politicians can speak out of both sides of their mouths and never be called out on it? The ability to speak more than one language is undeniably an advantage, not only for travelers who need to find the nearest bathroom or train station, but for coping with the unprecedented flood of refugees and immigrants, most of whom speak little or no English. Here's a question - how many of you, Dear Readers, can speak* more than one language?

Staying with the topic of languages, science writer Tia Ghose wrote about the search for the Original Language in LiveScience: Before Babel? Ancient Mother Tongue Reconstructed. Ms Ghose describes the linguistic detective work suggesting that the ancestors of people from across Europe and Asia may have spoken a common language. The Bible, in Genesis 11:1-9**, tells the story of makind's attempt to build a tower to heaven, and how God scrambled their languages as punishment for their hubris ...

Reconstructive linguistics provides evidence for the existence of a single, common language spoken by people as far back as 15,000 years ago by tracing the history of words common to many languages, such as mother. This is related to the search for the hypothetical language called Proto-Indo-European, thought to be the common ancestor of the modern Indo-European languages spoken across Europe and south Asia.

Interested in languages, alphabets, writing systems, and related stuff? You can lose yourself in a wonderful website called Omniglot***.

Not interested in languages, alphabets, writing systems, and related stuff? Come back tomorrow for thoughts on another topic.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* By "speak," I mean, "be able to communicate on a basic level," not necessarily "deliver a major speech on higher mathematics."

** This is, of course, the story of the Tower of Babel. This cautionary tale gives us the word babble to describe confused and nonsensical speech, such as Republican economic theories, the Democratic party platform in general, and almost anything from Glenn Beck.

*** If you visit the Omniglot website and select "Links," it will take you to a large number of other fascinating language-related sites. It also has the usual list of disclaimers about lack of responsibility for external sites, and contains this fascinating disclaimer: "Some sites may contain traces of nuts."

(Don't) Gimme That Old Time Religion ...

It is said that there are two subjects one should never discuss at dinner (or, indeed, at many other times): politics and religion. This can make it difficult to have a conversation with a far-right Republican, but given the quality of discourse on both sides of the political and religious divide, this may not be a bad thing.

Those of you who have been reading this blog for any length of time know that I am not a conventionally religious person. It's a worldview that I've come to over the decades as I've watched the hideous things done in the name of religion ... in the name of the idea that anyone who doesn't believe this way and no other is automatically bad (at best) or liable to be killed outright (at worst). You can read some of my earlier diatribes here and here if you're so inclined.

Consider this recent event: At Least 27 Dead in Bangladesh Blasphemy Law Rioting. Yes, hysterical mobs in Dakka, Bangladesh, rioted and murdered dozens of people, insisting on the imposition of an anti-blasphemy law that would punish persons who defame Islam with death.

Consider also the disgusting, widely-condemned bigotry of the Westboro Baptist Church, the members of which press their belief in what they believe is the sin of homosexuality by demonstrating at the funerals of people who have nothing at all to do with the subject.

The linkage of deeply fundamentalist religion and violence was explored in this compilation of articles and studies at Religion Link.

Bottom line: to all too many people, religion is not a guiding philosophy or an exhortation to "love one another as I have loved you."* It's an excuse to draw wide red lines between people and whip up hatred of "the other."

So thanks, but don't bother giving me that old-time religion. Especially if you think it empowers you to kill me if I choose not to believe your version of it. With all the problems we have in the world, this is one we just don't need.

Have a good day. Live the Golden Rule. It's all you really need.

More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

* John 15:12.

In Which We Name a New "Ass Clown of the Month"

It's been a month since we last presented the coveted Ass Clown of the Month award to Republican Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky for his principled, high-road approach to shutting down potential opposition to his reelection. Since then there have been many worthy candidates clamoring for attention and the ACOM designation. The Senate was an early favorite, based on the strength of its spineless cave to the gun lobby in defeating every single attempt to reduce gun violence, but it's been edged out by the amazing display of overheated rhetoric displayed by the two individuals who have tied - yes tied - for the award for this month. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the joint winners of the Ass Clown of the Month Award for May, 2013:

"Great Successor" and "Respected General"

Kim Jong-un of North Korea

and, in a repeat of his spectacular performance in winning the Ass Clown of the Year Award for 2012,

National Rifle Association Executive Vice President

Wayne LaPierre

For their proven mastery of ridiculously paranoid, over-the-top rhetoric geared to getting the maximum amount of attention with the minimum amount of rational thought and behavior, Mr Kim ("throw all enemies into a cauldron, break their waists and crush their windpipes!") and Mr LaPierre ("We are in the midst of a once-in-a-generation fight for everything we care about. We have a chance to secure our freedom for a generation, or to lose it forever. We must remain vigilant, ever resolute, and steadfastly growing and preparing for the even more critical battles that loom before us.") share the May 2013 honor as Ass Clown of the Month.

Well done, gentlemen! May you rise to ever-higher levels of lofty buffoonery.

As for the rest of this day, Agnes and I will be heading out shortly to cheer on our friends who are competing in the final day of the Washington Open DanceSport Competition, followed by a few hours of (hopefully) just chilling and relaxing after yesterday's marathon of ziplining, soccer playing*, musical chairs, and other activities utterly unsuitable for the over-60 crowd with our local grandchildren. I hurt in places I'd forgotten I had places ... good thing Ben-Gay ointment comes in 55-gallon drums.

Have a good day. More thoughts on Tuesday.

Bilbo

* Actually, more like racing around the yard, flailing at a large ball and laughing hysterically.

Cartoon Saturday

Welcome to May ...

Raging wildfires described as a "Devil's inferno" and "nearly uncontrollable" threatened thousands of homes near Los Angeles; a civilian-operated Boeing 747 cargo jet crashed in Afghanistan in a horrifying accident caught on dashboard video, while a few days later a KC-135 air refueling aircraft crashed in Kyrgyzstan; in Houston, a man armed with a semiautomatic pistol fired numerous shots into the ceiling of the airport departure area, fortunately not harming anyone else before killing himself; and a North Korean court has sentenced a U.S. citizen to 15 years of hard labor, charging him with committing unspecified "hostile acts" against the hermit kingdom.

Well, so much for May being an improvement over April. We need cartoons, and we need them now...

For our selection of theme cartoons this week, let's look at cartoons featuring numbers, letters, and symbols, which can be funnier than you might suspect ...

Who was behind the 8 ball here ...?

A little cosmetic surgery can help improve one's image in a lot of ways ...

I never completely understood the concept of imaginary numbers until I started watching members of Congress and political pundits throw statistics at each other ...

And lastly, I thought this one was a particularly clever pun on a lot of different levels ...

You need the right truck to carry the load ...

Do you suppose God would have fooled around with burning bushes and stone tablets if he'd had a Facebook page or an e-mail or Twitter account ... ?

Paging Congressman Paul ... Congressman Rand Paul ...

Two cartoons with a bit of a twist on life out on the range ... first from the perspective of the Bovine-Americans ...

and then from the cowboys ... the more modern of whom may not approach riding the range in the traditional way ...

And finally for this week, it pays to be careful nowadays, when even background checks on gun purchasers - supported by 90% of the public - are viewed by some as drastic infringements of their rights. You never know what rights you may be violating with a simple question ...

And so we end the first Cartoon Saturday of May, 2013. It looks as if it's going to be another weekend of fine weather here in Disneyland-on-the-Potomac, and for Agnes and I it will be the usual whirlwind of activity: getting up early tomorrow to work in the yard and the garden before spending much of the day with our local grandchildren, and then getting up early again on Sunday to take pictures and cheer for our friends who are competing at the Washington Open Dancesport Competition. These relaxing weekends will be the death of me yet!

Have a good day and a great weekend. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo