Archive for October, 2006

Fan Mail Some fan mail makes me tingle. This one …

Friday, October 27th, 2006 by Ted Rall

Fan Mail

Some fan mail makes me tingle. This one from Steve was one of them:

I’ve been reading your book, Generalissimo El Busho, a collections of old columns and cartoons.
I was struck by how right you were in your predictions about the eventual course of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Keep it up,

Pundits, after all, are paid for being right most of the time. It’s a sad statement about the failure of the capitalist system that the most well-paid pundits in the country–Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity, O’Reilly, Brooks, Friedman, Hitchens, etc.–are consistently wrong. If they were picking bum stocks the way they picked bum pols and wars, they’d get canned. Meanwhile, guys like me and Chomsky–who have been right 95% of the time (my big fuck-up was predicting that Howard Dean would be the 2004 Dem nominee) since 2000–get ignored by many media outlets.

There’s a lot less interest in having pundits get right than in having them parrot whatever happens to be the party line at the time. Fortunately, there are actual American readers, like Steve, who keep score.

Fan Mail Some fan mail makes me tingle. This one …

Friday, October 27th, 2006 by Ted Rall

Fan Mail

Some fan mail makes me tingle. This one from Steve was one of them:

I’ve been reading your book, Generalissimo El Busho, a collections of old columns and cartoons.
I was struck by how right you were in your predictions about the eventual course of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Keep it up,

Pundits, after all, are paid for being right most of the time. It’s a sad statement about the failure of the capitalist system that the most well-paid pundits in the country–Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity, O’Reilly, Brooks, Friedman, Hitchens, etc.–are consistently wrong. If they were picking bum stocks the way they picked bum pols and wars, they’d get canned. Meanwhile, guys like me and Chomsky–who have been right 95% of the time (my big fuck-up was predicting that Howard Dean would be the 2004 Dem nominee) since 2000–get ignored by many media outlets.

There’s a lot less interest in having pundits get right than in having them parrot whatever happens to be the party line at the time. Fortunately, there are actual American readers, like Steve, who keep score.

Judgement House

Friday, October 27th, 2006 by Matt Bors

I have a new comic out that is a bit of undercover comic reporting from a Christian Judgment House. These are a new take on haunted houses which basically serve to convert you to Christianity by showing you hell and other scary sinful acts or in their words, “just present you with some truth”. You can read it online at campusprogress.org and at the Humanist News Network website. You can also catch it in print in the Buffalo Beast, Anchorage Press, Chico Beat, and the Rocky Mountain Chronicle.

I also appear on the Humanist news Network podcast this month to talk about Judment House for a few minutes.

You should definitely listen to the podcast, not for me, but for their interview with Julia Sweeny (famous for her SNL role as Pat). She has a new one woman show called Letting Go of God, about her from Christianity to Buddhism to New Age crap to Atheism. The audio samples on her website are great.

Why? Why why why why why why… ?

Friday, October 27th, 2006 by Abell Smith

Quick comment on the World Series coverage — specifically the patriotism circle-jerk disguised as a Chevy commercial with the John (Cougar?) Mellencamp song playing in the background.

Why in the name of all that is still reasonable in this world is there Katrina footage spliced into at least one of the versions of this commercial? Is Chevy suggesting that the proper response to the Katrina disaster is to go out and spend more money (instead of, say, donating it to people who need it) on another gas-guzzling automobile that will make global warming worse and give us bigger, stronger hurricanes? Does Chevy really think people are too stupid to make this connection? I think most people who drive cars now are not deluding themselves that there are tangible consequences to their actions… it’s like splicing pictures of a smokers’ lungs into a cigarette commercial.

Just wondering… I ain’t no consumer psychologist or anything.

Spurious Democratic Scandals

Friday, October 27th, 2006 by Kevin Moore

democratic scandals
click for comic

Events are conspiring against me. I have no time to write a pithy entry about this cartoon. I’ll just say that if the House predictions fail to materialize (or enough votes are Diebolded away), I will go on a bender to end all benders.

Next Week: I’m going to eat a bunch of clearance candy corn. I’m still not sure what the cartoon is going to be about.

Strike three, or four. I forget at this point

Thursday, October 26th, 2006 by August J. Pollak

Jesus tap-dancing Christ, can we just openly acknowledge that Bob Corker and the Tennessee Republican Party are just a bunch of disgusting racists?

It’s vomit-inducing that they’re going to win the election because of this. So, fine. Bob Corker’s going to win the election. Just fucking admit that he’s going to win because he’s a racist and he’s appealing to racists in Tennessee to vote for the guy who isn’t the scary, scary negro.

Mother shit Christ. Fuck.

Thursday, October 26th, 2006 by Keef

*EXTRA!! EXTRA!! “PASSION”, “DANCES” AND “RED-WHITE..” ARE AVAILABLE AGAIN AT THE K-CHRONICLES.COM STORE!!




But get’em while you can. They’ll be going out of print sooner than you think. (“Fear..” is already there!!)




I’ll have copies of the above three books at Stumptown this weekend….

Closing time

Thursday, October 26th, 2006 by August J. Pollak

As I’ve said every two years, Election Night is basically the Super Bowl for me, in that I become completely absorbed in as much multimedia (and snacks) as possible while following a constantly updating score.

It’ll be interesting to follow the entire evening this time around, though, since if the poll closing times are the same as they were in ’04, and barring and polls being ordered open longer for various reasons, we’ll likely have the Senate decided in the first two hours.

Based on 2004 (and 2005, actually), Virginia will be the first, closing at 7:00 EST. If Webb wins, you might as well call it there, since I can’t imagine any demographic outcome where the Dems take Virginia but not at least one of Missouri or Tennessee.

Ohio closes at 7:30. The only other closings are West Virginia and North Carolina, which are irrelevant, which means that half-hour is going to be devoted almost entirely to Ohio. Again, a must-win for Democrats if they want the Senate.

8:00 PM is the magic hour. New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Tennessee (and Connecticut, but it’s safe Dem unless you’re crazy) close at 8:00 EST. I think Tennessee and Pennsylvania will take some time to count given the latest polls, but again, if either NJ or MD go red then you can call Mitch McConnell the next Majority Leader right then and there.

Rhode Island closes at 8:30, and along with New York closes out the East coast. If Webb, Ford, and/or McCaskill have already won at this point, suggesting Chaffee could win is ludicrous.

So by 8:30 EST, all the key Senate races, save Montana, are going to be decided, give or take the counting time. There are obviously factors like close call counting times and fraud allegations keeping polls open longer, but generally the momentum is going to be visible in the first few hours.

So at least for now, I have no idea who’s going to win Congress or not, but the only prediction I’ll make at the moment is we’re going to find out a lot quicker than many are suggesting.

“Lost Formats” Cartoon Appears in Article About Lost Formats

Thursday, October 26th, 2006 by Jen Sorensen

To my amusement, my “Museum of Lost Formats” cartoon is featured in the latest edition of RLG Diginews, a newsletter about digital preservation for libraries and museums. It appears at the end of the article, following the line:

…prompt action using the manufacturer’s own migration tools will almost certainly produce better results (at least, until the device in Figure 8 becomes a reality).

Figure 8 being the cartoon, which features a machine that can read 96 different formats.

Ted Rall Interview for Halifax’s CKDU Radio I dis…

Thursday, October 26th, 2006 by Ted Rall

Ted Rall Interview for Halifax’s CKDU Radio

I discussed SILK ROAD TO RUIN on CKDU radio in Halifax, Nova Scotia.