Recent Comments

1. over 12 years ago on Minimum Security

   Nope. “The Planet” is not dying… just lots of species… just the margin of habitability that is necessary for human society as we have developed it.

   “The Planet” will survive past the probable extremes of this next human assisted climate change. It will be a different place where most of us would not prefer to live.

   Remember the movie “On the Beach?” That was a fiction of what might happen with planet-wide nuclear war caused radiation kill-off. At the end, there are religious revivals on the theme “The is still time.”

   For them, there was not still time.

   For us, there is.

   However, the time to stop the worst impacts is about to run out.

   Denialism is not a help.

2. over 12 years ago on Doonesbury

   We think “The United States” is A society. It is actually a wildly varied bunch of social units.

   There are parts of Texas where a large percentage of where the majority of people think all of this is as absurd and anti-American as… I do. However, there are part of Texas (and lots of other states) where different religious groups and different political groups dominate. We have all been taken down the garden path. Of course, some are happy with that. Some are leading us down the garden path.

   Look at how well Rick Santorum is polling in the deep South… and… some other places. Exit polls in Mississippi (of the Republicans voting) said most voted for him because he shares their religious views.

   Nearly every state has pockets of… different… views. Some have overwhelming same views.

   We, on the liberal side, have to work harder and smarter.

3. almost 13 years ago on Minimum Security

   And, Climate Change came in dead-last (oops) in a poll of important issues among Americans.

   Every day of work on trying to build some action on our carbon emissions makes it clear we are doing something wrong.

4. almost 13 years ago on Candorville

   In Namibia, they have found what seems to be the earliest life-form. It is a sponge about the size of a speck of dust.

   Two thoughts: 1) By the definitions of the anti-choicers, that would be an un-born; 2) Most of the rest of us have evolved and should feel sorry for those whose brains are still at the sponge level.

5. almost 13 years ago on Skin Horse

   Be warned! If any of the Republican Presidential contenders should get elected, this is one of the government agencies they will close!

   That is the reason Gov. Rick Perry stumbled in naming the ones he would shut-down. It is so secret that he did not know the name. Of course, there are lots of other things he does not know.

   Beyond that, I assume this strip is banned in places like Mississippi, Alabama, Iowa… oh… you know the list! And the reasons.

   Their loss.

6. almost 13 years ago on Ham Shears

   An interesting new comic. I’ll be looking to see where it goes.

   This is a reminder of why the Republican Presidential contenders are… like they are. America is “progressively” becoming a more… interesting… society. There are, however, lots of left-behinds who are scared to death by the changes that most of us welcome.

   Hurrah for Ham Shears and his friends!

7. almost 13 years ago on Tim Eagan

   Does anyone recall a governmental and social process called “democracy.”

   Of course, for that to work, we need several important parts of the community: 1) a sense of community (not the same as being a member of an attack group); 2) an informed electorate (informed on the operations and meaning of democracy and not just about the biases of their own “side”); 3) understanding that Adam Smith, John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and others were complicated thinkers and need more than just patriotic flag-waving; 3) recognition that the United States (which seem more and more reverting to “These” United States) is part of a long development that is still a work under construction; 4) That calling people you disagree with by un-true labels does not promote democracy (see # 1).

8. about 13 years ago on The Other Coast

   Sad comments in a lot of ways: 1) the mini-bio of the cartoonist notes that he is from New Zealand via England to the U.S. So, his awareness of WW-II & WW-I is different than that of what has evolved in the U.S. (in part, the numbers and percentages of casualties and in part how our governments, churches and others have chosen to treat war and the suffering that goes with it – here we prefer to do lots of wrapped-in-the-flag, everybody is a hero-warrior, and ignore the men and women who were doing the fighting); 2) It is only after Vietnam that politics has swallowed the actualities of war and made it a campaign issue. The WW-I generation did not condemn their children who tried to keep us out of another war – the men and women I knew from WW-II never condemned the children they raised to live in a better-life, post-Depression, post-death world. My father, a career navy person, discouraged both his sons from becoming part of the military. He knew what happens

   So far as “self-indulgent, narcissistic crybabies,” I suggest the writer go to veterans of Korea and Vietnam say that to their faces. Perhaps that might get a better reception with some other audiences.

9. about 13 years ago on Lalo Alcaraz

   Its a good graphic presentation of reality.

   Somewhere, possibly, in a “Red” heaven (or Hell) Karl, Frederic, Vladimir and Joseph are chuckling. They said it would keep approaching this point.

   And, when it gets as bad as it in the U.S., now, the rulers have, in the past, here, wised up and bought-off the rest of us… for awhiile.

   Sometimes the ruling class makes a big mistake…. Think “French Revolution” and “Russian Revolution.”

   “Class Warfare” has been with us in the U.S. since the 1600s. We need to read history without the falsehoods that have fooled most of us.

10. about 14 years ago on Tim Eagan

    Let’s see the hands of everyone (in these posts and in the real world) who has thrown what they think is the “S” bomb (call it Socialist and that totally destroys whatever they say is Socialist)… who has studied… no… just read any objective history of the evolution of market systems.

    What? No hands? Oh, those of you who watch Faux say you learned all you need from those paragons of intellect on the “Fair and Balanced” network… sorry. You really need to get some other information sources.

    If it was not real lives being damaged by the clearly power-driven absurdities of the string-pullers of the many sincere and misled “Tea Party” types, it would be funny to watch them mangle the intents of real people like Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and others.

    Sorry, guys & gals, waving a “Gadsden Flag” (look it up) or dressing in spiffy Continental Soldier costumes does not make you an expert on the U.S. Constitution and how it evolved from British political and social inspirations.