Thursday, February 12, 2009

Bipartisanship rejected

I think we just witnessed a Republican Senator's self-immolation. That was the most pathetic spectacle I think I have ever seen. What could have possessed Judd Gregg to pull a stunt like this? At least he acknowledges that his political career is now over and won't be seeking re-election in 2010. That is the one good thing to come out of this mess. And I'll bet that Bonnie Newman is pretty ticked off right now.

So, after campaigning for the job and going through the whole vetting process, Gregg now decides to blindside President Obama by announcing his "change of heart" just as Obama is making a public appearance at an event in Peoria, Ill. to promote the stimulus package. How insulting.

Well, good riddance. I didn't see any upside to appointing Gregg in the first place since he refused to support the stimulus package and even demanded and got a Republican replacement for his Senate seat from a Democratic governor.
At leat now, we are pretty much guaranteed to get a Democrat in the Commerce slot for the first time in eight years.

Oh, and while this little charade has been hogging the limelight, Leon Panetta has just been approved to be CIA Director. Remember when that was supposed to be a big problem for the Obama administration? Also, Hilda Solis' nomination for Labor Secretary looks like it will go through very shortly as well.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Troublemaking columnist returns

Uh Oh! The Express-News is running another column by that troublemaking liberal blogger.
Didn't they learn their lesson the last time?

Inauguration gigapan

This is an amazing photo from Barack Obama's inauguration. It allows you to zoom in and see close up to an incredible degree. Check it out.

Monday, February 09, 2009

Cage Match

When the Wingnuts say “Jump!”, the Express-News editors say “How High?”

This weekend Express-News Ombudsman Bob Richter announced in his column that the local paper is backpedaling on its decision to dump the Mallard Fillmore comic strip because a lot of wingnut dittoheads called the paper to whine and complain. So they are going to take the nauseating and noxious strip and jam into into the comics section, which is already crowded with right-wing fodder like Prickly City and B.C., all so that we can have “balance”. By balance, of course, they mean keeping a 3-to-1 ratio of wingnut fodder to anything deemed “liberal.” Kind of like the 3-to-1 ratio of conservative columnists to liberal columnists that they maintain on the Op-Ed page.
But the worst part of the decision, is that to make room for Mallard they are going to dump “My Cage”, one of the new, up-and-coming strips that they added over the past year.
It is bad enough that they ignored “Rudy Park” after its one-month stint as a “guest comic”. It’s bad enough that they relegated “Curtis” to a Sunday-only slot and dropped the week-day comics. It is bad enough that they don’t have a Sunday slot for “Pearls Before Swine”, but now they are goin to dump “My Cage” which I have come to enjoy a great deal recently. There are not a lot of “must read” comics in the E-N for me - the kind that I will take the time to seek out and read even when I am in a hurry - such as LuAnn, Zits. Pearls Before Swine and Non Sequitur. But My Cage had slowly worked its way up into that pantheon for me.

One of the authors of My Cage was as surprised as I was and left the following comment on Richter’s column:

Wow. I have to say...I’m stunned. I write ‘My Cage’ and we get a lot of really positive feedback from the good readers of this paper. Despite all the other papers we’re in, I’d say 25% of our feedback is from this paper and 99% of that is overwhelmingly positive.
Huh.
In fact, when we held a contest for readers to appear in the strip last year our three winners all ended up being form THIS paper. One reader even baked a cake in the form of our lead chracter. Actually, you can read all about it here:
http://blogs.mysanantonio.com/weblogs/comics/2008/05/expressnews-readers-to-appear-1.html
I’d really hate to lose touch with all the readers we’ve gotten to talk to. The feed back and suppost has been greatly appreciated.
Hopefully if you won’t reconsider the decision, we can at least have a chance to say good bye. Too bad. I really liked this paper. Huh. Very shocking.
-Ed Power
Writer of ‘My Cage’
mycagecomic@yahoo.com


I have tried repeatedly to leave a comment myself without success. I don’t know if there is a technical glitch or if my comments are being singled out for deletion. But I would encourage anyone else who is interested to go and leave the good folks at the E-N a comment about this situation.