Cartoon Saturday

The controversial WikiLeaks website has published hundreds of thousands of classified documents stolen from the US government; eleven persons are dead in Taiwan and many thousands homeless in mainland China in the wake of typhoon Megi; a 19-year-old college student was attacked and killed by a shark off a California beach on Friday; National Public Radio is facing a huge backlash from both the left and the right - albeit for different reasons - for firing news analyst Juan Williams for making non-politically-correct remarks about Muslims in a televised exchange with conservative talking head Bill O'Reilly; and the issuers of title insurance are running for cover as many high-speed foreclosures are proving to be based on incomplete, backdated, or outright fraudulent documentation.

I don't know about you, but I really need Cartoon Saturday to help keep things in perspective.

The endless waves of attack ads, half-truths, and exaggerations generated this election season are easier for some of us to take than for others ...

You all know that I'm a fan of the traditional book, as opposed to the various models of electronic readers that are cropping up everywhere. It's not easy to be a traditionalist ...

Nobody wants to pay taxes, but everybody wants all the things taxes pay for. Public services have long had to augment their budgets with bake sales, car washes, charity auctions, and other creative fund-raising schemes, but the time is coming when those won't be able to make up the difference any more, and stronger measures will be needed ...

Back before I met Agnes, I had a foolproof way of picking out wines: if it had a nice label with pictures of castles, flowers, or naked ladies, it had to be good. Agnes patiently instructed me in the art of how to pick a good (and often quite expensive) wine, but in these tough times it's sometimes difficult to justify paying the high price of a really good bottle. You need to look at other options ...

It's only a matter of time before high-tech meets up with our cherished childrens' stories ...

And finally, honesty may be the best policy, but sometimes it could use a little sugar-coating ...

The temperature outside my study window was a brisk 45 degrees (7 degrees, for you folks in Celsius lands) when I woke up this morning, but it's supposed to make it up to a sunny high in the low 70's (about 22 Celsius) later on. Fall is definitely here. Tomorrow, we're scheduled to take a trip to a local pumpkin patch with granddaughters Leya and Elise, and the weather is supposed to be great then, too. Yee-hah!

Coming up in the week ahead: Cartoon Saturday will have its Halloween edition on Saturday, followed on Sunday by a special Election Edition all you jaded voters won't want to miss. Be here.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

P.S. - Update on my running survey of election-related flyers in my local congressional race: two more glossy ads attacking Republican candidate Keith Fimian have arrived, one attacking his views on Social Security and Medicare; the other attacking his positions on medical care, stem cell research, and abortion. Both ads were paid for by the Democratic Party of Virginia (you can find this information in tiny boxes in distant corners of the flyers), and neither mentions the relevant positions on those issues taken by Democratic incumbent Gerry Connolly. The overall score is now:

Democratic Material (favoring Connolly or opposing Fimian): 14. Of these:
Supporting Connolly: 1
Opposing Fimian: 13

Republican Material (favoring Fimian or opposing Connolly): 7. Of these:
Supporting Fimian: 2
Opposing Connolly: 5

I don't know how much it costs to print and distribute this drivel, but I'll bet it could have been put to better use funding schools or giving police and firefighters a raise.

Just a thought.

B.