Cartoon Saturday...and the Jersey Girl's Meme

Dow Jones and the S&P 500 have recorded the worst January in their history; while you were paying through the nose for gas, Exxon posted the largest annual profit in its history ($45.2 billion); professional extreme-right-wing blowhard Rush Limbaugh is on record snorting that he hopes President Obama fails; a woman who already had six children has given birth to octuplets; and five newborns have been killed in a hospital incubator fire in India.

If you didn't need Cartoon Saturday before, you surely need it now.

Hardly a day goes by that there's not a news story about some vile, greedy eejit (thanks, Fiona!) who has figured out a new way to steal from you using a computer. It's nice when they get their just desserts ...

She's been gone from the web for more than a year, but I still miss Numeric Life. If nothing else, each day she gave us numbers that could entertain, rather than frighten us. Of course, not all numeric people are equally good with numbers ...

And speaking of the reactions to bad numbers, wouldn't you just love to see this one? ...

Wouldn't you sometimes like to be a fly on the corporate boardroom wall? ...

I love my morning newspaper. Reading the news online just isn't the same, and you can't swat a fly with a flat-panel monitor the way you can with a rolled newspaper. All the same, if newspapers die out, how will we get the word? Maybe like this ...

And finally, as the Democrats take their turn at trying to fix the ghastly wreckage of the economy, perhaps they have some better ideas than the Republicans. Or maybe not. We can only hope ...

And on a new topic ...

Jersey Girl Wanderlust tagged me for a meme this past Thursday. Those of you who have been reading my rantings for very long know that I usually don't like to do memes because I have enough things to write about on my own, and because they help make blogging a worse time sink than it already is. But since Wanderlust is new to my little online family, and because her meme is short, simple, and involves books, I'll go ahead and take it on.

Here are the rules for her meme:

* Grab the nearest book.
* Open the book to page 56.
* Find the FIFTH sentence.
* Post the text of the next two to five sentences in your blog along with these instructions.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one; pick the CLOSEST.
* Tag five other people to do the same (I'm going to pass on this part of it...just as I don't usually do memes, I don't usually tag others...if it appeals to you, go ahead...just let Wanderlust know that you've done it so she can see what you've done).

Okay. The nearest book is the one I'm reading during my morning and afternoon commutes - American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, by Jon Meacham. Starting with the fifth sentence on page 56, we have:

"In Kentucky and elsewhere, Jackson fretted about what were drily known as internal improvements - projected roads and canals that were to be funded by the Federal government. The issue was at the heart of a philosophical argument. Was Washington's role to be a limited one, leaving such matters to the states except in truly national cases, or was the federal government to be a catalyst in what was known as "the American System," in which tariffs and the sales of public lands funded federally sponsored internal improvements? As president, Jackson favored the former, John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay the latter."

Sounds rather like some of the arguments that still rage today, doesn't it? Anyone else want to take a stab at Wanderlust's meme ... have at it. Wanderlust, back over to you!

Tomorrow, I'll take up the meme Fiona tagged me with yesterday. It looks like this will be my week for exceptions to policy...but then, it's Fiona, and she's a dear, and I'm afraid she might call me a "wee eejit" if I don't do it.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo