The cartoon is amusing.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have something in between the raving insanity of Beck and Limbaugh, and the mannered, fearful timidity of, say, almost every Democrat currently in office?

Maybe it would help if pundits stopped reacting to everyone who criticizes the wimp on the left as if they were the firebreathing freak on the right.

There are hints of the direction our country will be taking in the near future.

• Medicaid is one of our rare social safety net programs — it provides basic health care support for low income, disabled, and elderly people, and is supported by both federal and state level funds. Emboldened by the recent election results, which apparently tell them it’s now open season on the poor, Texas Republicans are talking about ending Medicaid. By refusing to carry their 40% of the Medicaid bill in the state of Texas, they’d lose the 60% coming from the federal government — so poor Texans would lose 100% of their Medicaid assistance. What a deal!

• The Democrats aren’t preparing to stand up for anything, either. They’re already talking about backing down on the repeal of the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in the military. I didn’t vote for the Democrats so that they could turn tail at every Republican whim: they’re supposed to work for the policies Democrats claim to stand for.

  This is pretty much the fat lady singing folks. Democrats are preparing to abandon the fight. We will see them, once again, as they did on LGBT initiatives in healthcare reform, as they did when they passed DADT and DOMA, and Bill Clinton signed them, they take a big crap on us, then come to us and say, “Well, what else could we do? We had to.”

  Don’t you believe it. You tell them, “You could have fought for it.”

  That’s what I want to hear. I don’t seem to be getting it from the Democratic party.

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The Digital Cuttlefish has a poetical version of our grand Republican future.

What was the worst moment in the George W. Bush presidency? You might be thinking it had to be the loss of life in 9/11, or the war and its devastation, or the consequences of his bad economic decisions, but no…to poor sensitive George, it was the moment a black man publicly criticized him.

MATT LAUER: You say you told Laura at the time it was the worst moment of your Presidency?

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Yes. My record was strong I felt when it came to race relations and giving people a chance. And — it was a disgusting moment.

This moment, when dopey incoherent Kanye West clumsily expressed his anger at Bush’s neglect of New Orleans.

Ah, the self-absorbed obliviousness of the truly privileged. Incurious George’s worst moment was when someone said something bad about him.

The election last night wasn’t as bad as it could have been — the teabaggers who’d received much ridicule, Angle and O’Donnell and probably Miller, were defeated (there’s a lesson there, I think) — but sanity did not win out, and the Republicans have taken over the US House, and here in Minnesota, they’ve taken control of both the state house and senate — Democrats have probably won the governorship, but it’s so close that there’s going to be a recount. These next few years are going to be extraordinarily painful. Personally, I’m going to take a hit: the Republicans will do their best to gut education in this state, and while I’ve already taken a pay cut this year, I expect I’ll be seeing more cuts in the future.

It’s not surprising that Democrats lost ground. The economy sucks, which means many people are flailing about for change, and we have to admit it: the Democrats are uninspiring, boring, and unfocused. They can’t deliver a strong message that makes a case for why we should continue to vote for them, and I know in my case that when I went into the election booth, I was simply making an anti-Rethuglican vote; with the exception of a few local candidates, I was not excited about any of the Democrats here.

What really makes me despair, though, is that I can guess exactly how the Democrats will respond to this drubbing. Instead of refocusing on the liberal and progressive values that ought to be their main message, they’re going to turtle up. They do it every time. Instead of trying to distinguish themselves from the loonies on the right, they’ll all move closer to what they’ll call “moderate”, but is actually more of a conservative right-wing position. And the next election will be even worse.

Unless somebody on our side wakes up and realizes that they’re in a fight, and that conciliatory measures are not called for. I’m looking at you, Obama. But somehow, I don’t think he’s the right man for the job.

It’s election day here in the US, but far be it for me to tell you how to vote.

I’ll let HP do it for me.

As for the Republicans — how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical ‘American heritage’…) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead.

Trust me, he knew his distorted dream-cosmoses, too.

It’s a serious question. You’d think a crude thug who thinks assassination is the way to solve the world’s problems would not be gainfully employed as a columnist anywhere, but no—he’s still pumping out the stupid schlock.

I’d like to ask a simple question: Why isn’t Julian Assange dead?

So again, I ask: Why wasn’t Assange garroted in his hotel room years ago?

you’d think Assange, super-whistle-blower of the international left, would be a greasy stain on the Autobahn already.

I think Assange is an asset. I wish we had serious journalists who were willing to ask serious questions and confront the public and the government with the truth — once upon a time, I had the delusion that that was what principled journalists were supposed to do. I still have the idea that knowing the truth is always a better guide to productive action than propaganda. If our military in Afghanistan is worsening the problem, if it is killing civilians and creating new terrorists faster than it is containing them, I want to know that, so I can tell my government that I want them to change policies. Building plans on false fantasies is always a bad idea.

I also think that we’ve got a lot of problems in the United States that can be easily personified and reduced to a scattering of figureheads who fuel the fires of our own destruction. Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin…even Jonah Goldberg. But I do not advocate their murder. I don’t think it would solve the problems they cause (or more accurately, represent), and trying to resolve conflicts like that with blood just leads to more and more destruction. If someone shoots Glenn Beck, then someone else will feel justified in shooting Rachel Maddow, and the insanity will proceed until someone shoots Goldberg, and they retaliate by shooting me.

Assassinations don’t change the truth. It’s not an answer.

And calls for murder by lard-ass militaristic conservatives who dream of someone else doing their dirty work for them are nothing but rabble-rousing cowardice.

So why is the Chicago Tribune publishing the violent fantasies of a jingo-chanting coward?

This is an alien-eye view of what we puny humans have been doing to ourselves for the last 60 years.

It’s all just fireworks until the giant mutant radioactive insects emerge to eat us!