What took you so damn long, holder?

SHEESH! What an underwhelming choice for Attorney General. When we need an Avenging Angel.

Welcome to DU, Whoopdedoo!

Glad you're here! I love your screen name!

ALWAYS good to keep the reminders alive - especially about schmucks like him! The more people know how disgusting he is, the less appeal and influence he'll have.

Perhaps.

Um-hmm! That's EXACTLY it. That's how so many of these schmucks become "best-selling authors"

Because their publishers or sponsors or big-bucks supporters make bulk buys - aimed at creating and building the "story." The mere numbers are high enough to qualify as a "best-seller," because they always buy enough to reach the best-seller threshold at the New York Times and other prestigious, important best-seller lists. BINGO! Your author is now a best-selling author. Neat, huh? THEN, you use your media machine to massage that "fact" you just created, sending that author out and getting him/her booked up the ying-yang on all the TV and cable and radio shows - on the pretense that they're a best-selling author (hey, look at this Sunday's "New York Times," eh?) and you make a big deal about their instant credibility as spokespeople and legitimate view-holders and commentators. That's how people like that twisted scarecrow ann coulter make their living. Do the book tour thing and the speakers' bureau circuit. Lots of book clubs out there with an affluent membership, usually elderly, predominantly female, often church-related. And they LOVE booking marquee-name authors to come and speaker.

And when you have this infrastructure of "foundations" and "institutes" like the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation that eagerly fund those bulk buys. Sometimes campaign committees do it and everybody who buys a ticket to the candidate's appearance or luncheon or fundraising meet-n-greet gets a complimentary copy of his/her book, or a copy is left at every place-setting on every banquet table, or it's offered for purchase at the event because the author's there to sign it, woohoo! Or if you join some crank wrong-wing organization, you get a bonus of so&so's book as a welcoming gift - OR "special discounts" on its purchase (as a member, you know!).

The most audacious example of this that I ever saw was back when limbaugh had his mercifully short run with his own ridiculous, ego-stroking TV show. Guess what his backdrop was, on the set - behind his chair and the chair(s) and side tables for his guests? Stacks and stacks of his "The Way Things Ought To Be" or whatever-the-fuck idiot book title he was hawking that year. There was a wall-to-wall panorama of his books. Stacked to human height, clear across the whole set behind where the chairs were, from stem to stern. Had to be thousands of books in that wall-to-wall display facade. I remember wondering who bought them, or how the limbaugh show acquired them and who paid for the books and the shipping/delivery. Probably plenty enough books on that set to clinch ol rushbo a slot on the New York Times Best-Seller List with his worthless waste of trees.

These wrongies are shrewd. They are SHREWD. They're better than anybody at cooking up these sneaky-ass, phonied-up, corner-cutting manipulations, I swear! We need a few devious thinkers on our side - if not to think stuff up so much as sound the alarm when the other side does it. It ALWAYS has to be spotted and then immediately called out for the manipulation it is. Otherwise, GUARANTEED, people will be taken in by it.

Is that all? I won't start celebrating until their ratings have cratered.

They have seriously damaged this country with the constant barrage of distortions, misrepresentations, and outright lies of all kinds. Just leads to a distressingly dumbed-down population. They're disgracefully and pitifully uninformed.

Rachel Maddow pointed out something that really stuck in my mind. It was another one of her many shrewd and illuminating illustrations. While debating the concept of equal time for all, in the media, mainstream and otherwise, and the merits of offering equal time to points of view that might not be deserving of it, she offered (paraphrasing) - "every time we have a report based on a NASA advancement, must we dutifully offer equal time to the Flat Earth Society?"

I find that a more and more compelling argument every day. And I find THAT troubling, too - that I sometimes entertain those those reactions. OF COURSE everyone and anyone has a right to free speech, and to agree or disagree with any point or person. Of course I honor, recognize, and support the First Amendment. Heck, it was part of what I did for a living. But what's to be done about the deliberate revisionist, utterly reckless, and toxic media crop-dusting that's suffocating so many Americans' brains and ability to reason? Independent, discerning, analytical, and well-informed thought seems like a rare commodity sometimes. But then again, why should the likes of o'reilly and that-guy-whose-name-rhymes-with-Vanity be allowed to spew such wanton crap - crap that doesn't stand the test of truth and reality; crap that encourages and incites racism, hatred, prejudice, resentment, anger, and often, violence.

I suppose it would then turn into - "who decides?"

Just another big problem that can't be solved in one evening. And it directly funnels into the whole overriding question - "who's yer daddy?" ALWAYS, there's money to be made whenever an agenda is advanced. So that really governs everything. Remember when dubya said "money trumps peace"? The advertisers still come, don't they?

It's just so compelling! I've been watching it off and on all day!

If you leave the sound up, you can hear the thrumming of the mama hummingbird's wings when she arrives with another feeding to deliver. So teeny! That nest must be about the diameter of a quarter.

Amazing! Little creatures like this always kinda renew my faith. It's like the jewel-tone dragonflies I see in the pond out back on hot sunny days. It makes me think that if the ecosystem can still support delicate magical little creatures like these, maybe our planet isn't lost yet.

Really makes you wonder what is WITH some voters out there?

What the freakin' hell??????? WHAT ON EARTH motivates them to vote for these tyrants and fools and greedmeisters? When I look at these assholes in office, I don't know who disgusts me more - the assholes in office - or the FRICKIN' IDIOTS who buy what they're selling, swallow whole what they're shoveling, and vote for these bastards!!! That's my real worry. The folks buying this crap. Just as guilty: those who decide it doesn't matter, or they're all the same, or it won't make any difference or their vote won't count, or they just are too busy or self-absorbed and don't give a damn.

Then one day they wake up and wonder who the hell is running things into the ground in their city or at the state level, and how on earth those dick-heads could possibly ever have gotten into office...

Kay Thompson's "Eloise." With the coolest "city child" illustrations EVER!!!

Illustrations by Hilary Knight, whose work I would just meditate upon. It simply mesmerized me, how he got expressions, movement, emotions, the fine details, the works! One of my favorite illustrators EVER and his work heavily influenced my drawing, illustrating, and cartooning later on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Knight

And a lot of it, of course, is because the main thing for getting face time, whether you're

an anchor, host, or guest, is your LOOKS. How you LOOK. How you PHOTOGRAPH. Notice how Pox Noise is, with a few exceptions, wall-to-wall fetching youngish blondes. Notice the big lips (yeah, I'm talking about YOU, michelle malkin, with your plastic blow-up doll lips - where'd you get THOSE done, honey? Love that sex-toy impersonation she does every time she's on camera). Some nice little "scenery" there for the aging white Viagra crowd who believe themselves still to have plenty of fire in the fireplace even with all that snow on the roof. I think roger ailes must find that awfully important - since he's old enough (and out of shape enough) that his masculinity is probably failing now, too, and I'll bet he needs an outrageous amount of stimuli to have even a passing chance at a satisfying evening.

Look at some of the peroxide cuties now routinely dispatched by the RNC and the American Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute to be guest commentators and panel members and talking heads on other channels. They even have a black and a Latina. MAINLY females. ALWAYS pretty. ALWAYS well made-up and coiffed and dressed. And ALWAYS lots of blondes. nicole wallace. alice stewart. monica crowley. kellyanne conway. margaret hoover. susan del percio. e.d. hill. Even meghan mccain. And of course the megyn kellys and gretchen carlsons - and gretchen carlson has the added luster of being a former Miss America. Remember laurie dhue? GOD, talk about bumper lips - she could give michelle malkin a run for the ol' trailer hitch!

The republi-CONS are shrewd. I'll give them that. They know what appeals. They know how to get to the lizard brain. They know exactly how to get to the exact buttons that need pressing. Fear and sex. They know most of their aging male audience won't really be paying much attention to WHAT the pretty golden-haired girl on TV is saying. All that will resonate with them is she's pretty, she's great to look at, and she's on the "right" side. What a way to slam-dunk the message home and plaster it all over with "this is the 'RIGHT' thing to do!" Just reinforces it. Who cares if there's shit in that box. Look how pretty it's packaged! Nobody cares! Just look at the pretty. Look at the blonde. Watch the birdie. It's all packaged so nicely that it goes down, and sinks in, as easy and slick as Vaseline on silver - as one of my fellow art students in college used to say. Nobody cares. Nobody thinks twice. Nobody even STOPS to think for even a minute. Independent thought and analysis is completely and effectively bypassed.

They've made a long and careful study of this. Take that to the bank. They've made a science out of it and it's the only "science" they take seriously. What do you think most of those "institutes" and "foundations" and "think tanks" have been up to for the past three or four decades? Perception management, imaging, message manipulation, and a careful study of effective delivery systems, that's what.

(Btw - the giveaway there is how, at this late date, they're all whining and moaning about how they didn't message well enough. There's precisely NOTHING in the equation about WHAT they messaged. It's all about the HOW. The HOW is what they're obsessing about, in trying to figure out what went wrong. No one for even an instant is trying to examine WHAT and WHY, it's all about the HOW. Notice how nobody's talking about changing anything they stand for, or moderating what they stand for, or evolving to a more enlightened, voter-friendly, more widely-palatable, or heaven forbid - an even slightly more progressive ideology. They're all talking about how they weren't CONservative ENOUGH. They still don't get that it isn't HOW they messaged that stunk with a majority of Americans. It's WHAT they messaged that stunk. There's only so many blondes and so many flashing lights and bright colors and orchestrations and chimes and ding-dong bells that they can splash all over the ol' TV screen. At the end, it's WHAT THEY STAND FOR. Not HOW cleverly or strategically they word it, state it, decorate it, manipulate it, or disguise it.)

These folks recognize that Americans are predominantly visually-oriented. A majority of Americans processes information visually. Seeing is believing. Show me like in the "Show Me State." So give 'em pretty all over the place and it won't matter WHAT the message is. You can be sure it'll be delivered, regardless. And the targets won't even know what hit 'em. They'll just have swallowed the whole thing, and swallowed it whole. And by the time anybody COULD presumably stop and think, the swallowing has finished, the "meal" has been ingested, the message has been internalized, and it's time for a nice nap. Job complete. Obligation discharged. Done deal. By the time the nap's done, you have a nicely reprogrammed little lemming who's completely sold on whatever crap you spewed through those pretty little blonde mouths on TV who are so easy to watch and so silkily predatory and kill with the pretty designer stilletos they like to wear at the end of those long blonde legs. Notice how when pretty little megyn kelly went stomping off on her little Election Night crusade to the numbers crunchers down the hall, to defend kkkarl rove's honor and election forecasts, the camera pulled out wide so you could see her from head to toe as she approached, and of course she was dressed perfectly and even virginally (oooh, so innocent, too!) in her nice little white outfit with a pretty little flirty skirt, short at the knees, that showed off her slender bare legs.

These CONservative schemers have also conveniently perverted and neutered even the very word "right" to push it all in and further the slam-dunk, but that's another conversation entirely. I'm surprised they don't perch megyn kelly on some big-ass Harley Davidson or something and have her deliver the "news" that way. And dressed in tight black leather for a nice contrast to her bright blonde hair. DAYUM - that'd be the coup de grace!!!! REMEMBER WHO THEY'RE APPEALING TO!!!!

Btw - think I'm kidding? Look at the choice of wife in some of the biggest aging male windbags - john mccain. newt gingrich. shel adelman. mitt wrongney. Even clarence thomas has his very own personal blonde at his arm. Hell, they all even have donald trump on THEIR arms (even though he's got a brunette for a change - but the first two were, reliably, blondes).

I also notice that there are select blacks (mostly male, though) who speak for republi-CONS, and an occasional Latina as a GOP spokesperson (on CNN), but it's mainly fetching white blondes. With the nice makeup, the chic fashions, and of course, that fancy eye-catching golden hair.

It was - and STILL IS - a freakin' brilliant cartoon!!!

Wow - such a smashingly GOOD point, Victor_c3!

These couples really want children. They adopt. They voluntarily AND willingly go through the long slog of surrogacy, and even, for women spouses, the sometimes even life-threatening challenge of in vitro fertilization. I remember interviewing soap opera star Diedre Hall once, shortly after she and her husband mounted a herculean effort to conceive. It was all in vain. They tried several times - to the extent that she was finally told that she couldn't afford to put her body through that physical ordeal anymore. It put her in a coma. She was told that if she tried even once more it would probably kill her. So they turned to a surrogate mother. NONE of that is cheap, nor is it a swiftly-dispatched-with process, nor is it without risks of ALL kinds. And these couples enter into that willingly, even eagerly.

When I think of how physically arduous pregnancy was for my body, I can only imagine what happens when one is taking injections and undergoing surgery and on monitors all the time and bedridden some of the time. At least I was able to work. She was incapacitated. Thankfully briefly, but still! It is hard enough to have a baby when your body is physically building it. When you think of same-sex couples and the ADDED lengths of rapids they have to paddle through, well, if I'd had any conflicted feelings about it, this willingness to go through an ordeal to become parents would erase any doubt in my mind. These couples want a child (or two) in their lives.

EVERY child should be a wanted child. We have far too many who aren't.