Amidst the Gloom...

...A light shineth: Closencounters Online Manga Is Back!!!

While trolling for online anime, I came across this gem by Tsuteru Shiba. It's very well drawn, very imaginative, and very Japanese. The first eight episodes are around 30 gorgeous full-color panels each, and if you have a slow system you can download an entire episode as an e-book. Tsuteru took a hiatus over the summer to deal with server issues amongst other things. I'm tickled pink he's back, posting two panels a week,-even if they're black and white. Actually the more traditional black and white looks pretty cool, I'm looking forward to seeing where he goes with it.

BTW if you've never read a manga- they read right to left, top to bottom, and young men have nosebleeds when they get overly "excited." Read in good health!

How to Change the Subject in One Easy Step:

1. Announce the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense.

Wow. I hate to see him go. He was the Batman of the Justice League of Adults running the Gov’t. I suppose now he’ll be free to attend all of the “hearings” the Dems are planning. Attend and speak even more freely than usual. Should be entertaining.

Moonbats of the Right, Engage.........NOW!

Just kidding.

Last night we saw the end result of a dissatisfied electorate. While in power, the Republicans snubbed their friends and made overtures to their enemies. For every conservative step forward, like the tax cuts and the judges, there was two liberal WTF steps backward like the education bill, the highway bill, the farm bill, and amnesty for illegals. Foreign policy was never properly sold or vigorously pursued enough to capture the right’s allegiance even as the left was in paroxysms of hysterics.

It wasn’t a winning strategy; depressing your base, and whipping up the opposition, and, as the polls predicted, the Democrats claimed the House and may have the Senate. Life goes on. I hope the Republicans take the right lessons from this defeat.

A small point that got me writing: K-Lo at The Corner posted a congratulatory letter from Michael Moore to his people. It opens:

You did it! We did it! The impossible has happened: A majority of Americans have soundly and forcefully removed Bush's party from control of the House of Representatives. And, sometime today perhaps, we may learn that the same miracle has happened in the Senate. Whatever the outcome, the American people have made two things crystal clear: End this war, and stop Mr. Bush from doing any more damage to this country we love. That is what this election was about. Nothing else. Just that. And it's a message that has sent shock waves throughout Washington — and a note of hope around this troubled world.

While Mr. Moore is welcome to his own conclusions as to what this election was about, I have to take issue with his framing it as “The impossible has happened.” What has happened was precisely the possible. Something more possible in America than anywhere else. So, it wasn’t a good night for my candidates or my point of view- it was a great night for democracy. This is exactly what makes America work despite its ideologically fractured electorate.

Back when President Clinton was tromping on civil rights-the FBI files, Waco, Texas, Elian Gonzales, etc.. and selling ballistic missile tech to the Red Chinese, what kept the kept the country from descending into armed revolt was the knowledge that whatever happened, President Clinton was going to be off the stage in 2 or 6 more years. When the Senate failed to find Clinton guilty of impeachable offenses, neither the east coast nor the west burned in protest. Why? Again, the system’s natural pressure release mechanism was at work. Don’t like the result? Wait a few years, vote for change.

So to have Mr. Moore open with “The impossible has happened.” at the moment the left’s Imperial Presidency canard is proved a sham is a particularly vile bit of demagoguery. This is the way the system works, Mr. Moore. Conservatives understand this. Which is why we won’t be riding our Moonbats back in to office in two years. Properly chastened, we shall return with sharpened arguments and a renewed commitment to our core principles. We will get power back, and back to saving your behind whether you like it or not. Cheers!

Gut Check Time

Hit the polls early this morning. No line, I was number 76 at the station. I was thinking it was a sign of low turnout, but a friend told me we had 5000 early voters as of this past weekend. Now won't that make things interesting? No shenanigans at the polling station to speak of. Now, if I was a secular progressive troublemaker, I suppose I could say I was intimidated by being told to "Have a blest day" both by the lady handing out the ballots and and by the lady minding the ballot reader/box. Oh the Theocracy! Oh the Horror!

I happily hit the Straight Ticket for the Republicans, and voted nonpartisanly against all of the incumbent judges who just happened to be Dems. We didn't have any national races on the ballot, so my vote was more along the "civic duty" line than from a deep abiding passion for a particular candidate.

That said, I wouldn't mind seeing Al Roseman take out Julie Boseman. Mr. Roseman ran a tough, no apologies campaign I found refreshing. Ms. Boseman is a Democrat rising star in state politics, attractive, likeable, and probably far too popular to be knocked out, but now's the time to do it.

I am hoping in my heart of hearts for a massive repudiation of the pre-election polling. It hasn't reflected Republican turnout accurately for several election cycles, and I'm hoping this is the year it jumps the shark.

Hope you voted. Maybe in the next week or so we'll know who won.

Top 10 Alternative Punchlines to Kerry’s “Joke”

The patrician John F. Kerry tried this out for an opener to some college kids at a stump speech for the Democrat candidate for Governor of California, Phil Angel-somethingorother.

"You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well.

If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq."

Although it looks like a gratuitous slap at the “grunts”, those poorly educated infantrymen cannon fodder with few prospects, the junior Senator from Massachusetts saw fit to clarify his remarks slightly: Anyone who isn’t a rightwing nutjob [I’m paraphrasing only slightly] can plainly see that this was a poorly executed barb skewering our notoriously ignorant and obviously mentally deficient Commander in Chief, George “Warmonger” Bush.

In the tripartite interests of elevating debate, sharpening rhetoric, and bringing the funny, I’d thought I’d offer these alternative punchlines. Mr. Kerry sets it up:

"You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well...

...If you don’t, you become a tool of a bellicose neocon cabal.

...If you don’t, your village will be missing their idiot

...If you don’t, you end up like Joe Lieberman.

...I pity da fool George Bush! Crazy redneck cracker. I pity da fool!

...If you don’t, you make Texas Tea instead of Lemonade when life hides your cheese.

...If you don’t, you choke on a pretzel. Who eats pretzels, anyway? The twisted! That’s who. And the Dutch. Pennsylvania Dutch. Who aren’t even really Dutch. That tells you something.

...If you don’t, you think Camus is a bovine dromedary. Like Bush. Get it? Bush is dumb.

...If you don’t, the terrorists of the world will not take you at your word and negotiate in good faith.

...If you don’t, you don’t realize that war is not the answer to the question of what is the answer of how does one pronounce a silent W? Not war! Bush eats boogers.

...And the only bush I trust is my own.

I offer these punchlines, humbly sure that they are funnier, more coherent, and less offensive to our brothers and sisters in uniform than the original. Help yourself, Senator!

Because, as they say: Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.