Author: Ruben Bolling

Joe Sixpack and Joe the Plumber.  Plus a bonus Joe Lunchbucket.

http://www2.funnyordie.com/public/flash/fodplayer.swf?5320a921

via News From Me.

A Google search just turned this paragraph up, in the Nashua Telegraph's Encore (Okay, yes, I google myself!  You caught me!):

I didn't know they had cancelled the comic, but thanks to Encore's readers for speaking up!

("Disposable."  Don't they know words can hurt people who google themselves?)

Check out this clip from a recently abandoned project from the genii that are David Cross and Bob Odenkirk.

At the start of this year, The Washington Post canceled "Tom the Dancing Bug," and I know from published web reports and the many emails I continue to receive that readers are unhappy with the decision.  I’ve been very grateful for your support.

I was alerted to the fact that Michael Cavna, of the Post, has set up a non-binding poll for the replacement of "Opus" (which will terminate next month), and you can vote HERE.  I hope those of you who have already contacted the Post and myself complaining about "Tom the Dancing Bug’s" cancellation will take this one extra step that actually has a chance of getting the strip reinstated.

Thanks.

P.S.  I heard that Arlo and Janis pal around with terrorists!

I’m going by memory here, but I recall in the movie "The Verdict" (Paul Newman plays a downtrodden lawyer suing a hospital), someone says something like, "Never ask a witness a question that you don’t know the answer to."  Of course at the end of the movie, the opposing lawyer (a smug James Mason) is thrown off base and makes the fatal mistake of asking a witness a question to which he doesn’t know the answer, and the witness’ shocking reply wins the case for Newman’s character.

But the expression on Mason’s face couldn’t match McCain’s in last night’s debate, when McCain gets a response from Obama to a question to which McCain didn’t know the answer (or didn’t know that Obama had an answer).  Check it out, and watch McCain’s face (courtesy Talking Points Memo):

This week’s comic:  Lucky Ducky

By the way, thanks to all who came to the SPX panel a couple of weekends ago.  The panel was fun and interesting (my conclusion:  Obama is not funny), but the real highlight for me was seeing all the "alternative" weekly cartoonists who came for the "Outside Looking In" alternative-political theme of the event — I’m probably forgetting some, but it was great to hang with Ted Rall, Mikhaela Reid, Masheka Wood, August Pollack, Keith Knight, Stephanie McMillan, Jen Sorenesen, Tom Tomorrow, Lloyd Dangle, and Derf. 

Speaking of Derf, he’s got an excellent new graphic novel out, Punk Rock and Trailer Parks.  I knew him as a friend and as a funny three-panel weekly cartoonist long before I saw any of his longer narrative pieces, and I was shocked at how good he is at them.  Anyway, this new book centers around a great comic character, Otto "the Baron" Pizcok, the coolest giant nerd in all of 1979 Akron:

I also got a new book by Derf’s buddy Michael San Giacomo, which I haven’t had a chance to read yet, but looks cool.  It’s Tales of the Starlight Drive-In:  31 stories, illustrated by 23 artists (including Derf), all centered around the 50 year history of the Starlight Drive-In theater.

The Troopergate report reminded me of a blog post I read about the Sarah Palin’s interview with Sean Hannity (I don’t remember where I read this, so I can’t attribute it).  If you saw this, you weren’t surprised by the report’s conclusion; in the interview, Palin inadvertently admits that she’s guilty!  (There ya go again, Sean, with yer "Gotcha" Journalism!)

Hannity asks Palin about the investigation, which was looking into whether Palin’s dismissal of Alaska’s Commissioner of the Department of Public Safety was improperly motivated by his refusal to fire her ex-brother-in-law, which she was allegedly pressuring him to do.

Palin asserts that she asked the Commissioner to transfer to another position simply because she had "an obligation to make sure we had the right people in the right places at the right time in the cabinet to best serve Alaskans."  He refused the tranfer and left the service.  She says:

It had nothing to do with a former brother-in-law, a state trooper who happened to have been married to one of my sisters until about three years ago.

Hannity then says that there was "talk" about this brother-in-law having tasered a 10 or 11 year old boy.  Palin responds:

He did. This trooper Tasered my nephew. And he Tasered — well, that was — it’s all on the record. It’s all there. His threats against the first family, the threat against my dad. All that is in the record. And if the opposition researchers are choosing to forget that side of the story, they’re not doing their job.

See, right there she forgot that her story is that the brother-in-law has nothing to do with the firing, and states that his behavior is an essential part of the story.  She apparently switched to a defense of:  the brother-in-law was such a bad guy I was justified in pressuring the Commissioner to fire him.

She was "tricked" into blowing her whole story and revealing her true motivation by the most friendly, sycophantic interrogator imaginable, Sean Hannity.  This is the person John McCain thinks is ready for games of brinkmanship with the likes of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
and here is the conclusion: