Tom Tomorrow Archive

It's been a while since I read Tom Tomorrow, and I didn't realize how much I missed his cartoons until David forwarded me the latest. Here's his archive (or one of them, another being here.)

Star Wars III

So, I finally saw it last night - loved it (mostly). The acting was still wooden in places. There was only one plot point that seemed too convenient (but I don't remember now which).

I got a real kick out of the political message, once I figured out that there might be one. Of course, it was so subtle that it was hard to be sure if one had been intended, but I'm really good at putting pieces together, so I am convinced that there were 1 or 2 places where some reference to current US politics might have been worked into the script. I wonder if anyone else caught them.

Waterpik site not found by Google?

I searched for "waterpik hose repair" or "waterpik hose repair kit" (I don't remember which) and was sent to a reseller, not to Waterpik itself. In fact, their site didn't show up on the list of matches at all, at least on the first several pages.

The reseller was selling Waterpik kits - at about 2ce Waterpik's price.

When I received it and tried to use it, it failed (because the end of my broken hose near the handpiece was too short) - so I called the customer service number on the instruction sheet - 1-800-525-2774 - and the nice lady on the phone was very helpful - sold me a new handpiece for less than the original hose repair kit.

Why wasn't all this information on their web site? I went looking through their web site for repair kits and found NOTHING. No wonder Google found nothing. So, I wrote them a nasty-gram.

For my friends who might need something like this, write down the phone number. They're really very helpful.

Activist Press

When they're done reforming activist judges - putting only the proper judges in place - will the next stop be the activist Press, using Newsweek's story about the Q'ran as the excuse?

...a story from one anonymous, high ranking source...

Hmmmmmmmmmmm.

What if that story had been planted - to lay the groundwork for the coming attack on the Press?

We won; we get to dictate!

Friday's Newshour was riddled with references to the idea that "we (the Republicans or the religious right) won the election; now we get to dictate the results. Stop acting like a diplomat. Act like a winner."

Such lack of diplomacy sounds like Bush and is exemplified by Bolton - but that's why we need the filibuster. Someone has to put a criminally irresponsible Executive Branch on a short leash and in our system, that needs to be the Congress.

A better solution, of course, would be to:
1. stop filibuster for all judicial nominations
2. require 75 votes in the Senate for any judicial nominee, except for the Supreme Court
3. require 90 votes in the Senate for Supreme Court nominees.

and, while we're at it, require 70 votes in the Senate for all other Executive Branch nominees.

After all, if a country is more evenly divided than 75:25 on an issue, the government's job is to find a common ground and prevent alienating a large percentage of the population. Bullying is not just obnoxious - raw power is dangerous and attempts to exercise it must be punished.

Shrubbish?

This web site Kippi sent me must be made up. After all, any person that brain dead would never be elected to public office - even a small one. He would be too much of an embarrassment.