Not Funny

This cartoon is considerably more creepy than what is normally published in the New Yorker. It was sort of unfortunate that I read it the morning after I saw this story.

And while I'm at it, this cartoon isn't funny at all. I don't know what it is about prison rape that sends people into fits of giggles, but you'd think the editors of the New Yorker would have better taste than that. Making fun of Polish names? "We just don't publish that kind of thing." But, condemning American citizens to serial rape? That's comedy gold.

Embarrassing

Over the course of this year, the Oberlin College Republicans have, as part of the "Ronald Reagan Lecture Series" hosted, among others, a climatologist to challenge global warming orthodoxies, a woman to discuss the failures of feminism, and a black guy to discuss the end of affirmative action. Yesterday's speaker, given this hilariously transparent MO, was not particularly surprising, but they made a mockery of themselves in a way I wouldn't really have though possible. On Tuesday May 1st, the Republicans hosted a speaker of Mexican descent who discussed immigration reform. What's the big deal, you ask? The big deal is that they titled it:

"An Evening with a Mexican-American: Essentials of Real Immigration Reform."

Are you fucking kidding me? An evening with a Mexican American? It's like they don't want to be taken seriously. I guess it's kind of brilliant because you can't ridicule something if its title is so mindbendingly stupid it leaves you speechless.

Vetoed

The President vetoed a bill that I don't really understand last week, but it at least made gestures at getting the US out of Iraq. There's now something of a standstill, in which Congress needs to either defund the troops, which no one seems to want, or pass some sort of bill that the President will sign. John Edwards is asking for money to run an anti-war ad directed at Congress in DC, and John Kerry has a great diary at DailyKos already thinking ahead to targeting key Republicans in '08.

Congressional tactics are very very complicated, especially to the extent they intersect with procedural matters, but I think the thing to do is to pass a bill that funds the troops for 2-3 months. When the President comes back to ask for more, pass the bill he just vetoed, or a stricter one. If he vetoes that, give him funding for another short period of time. Right now we just don't have the votes to end the war, but its sure not getting any more popular. If Pelosi makes the Republicans vote to stay in Iraq and support Bush every 2 months until November of 2008, they will have a worse election then than they did in 06. Either that, or sometime between now and then we will see major Republican defections, big intra-party clashes, and hopefully an earlier (but long overdue) end to the American involvement in the disaster in Iraq.