I don’t even know why I bother but I frequently check out the editorial cartoons on yahoo.com. Sometimes they are funny (yes I do laugh at some of them that reflect poorly on the Republicans because they are usually spot on) but most of the time I feel like I’ve been hit in the gut when I read them. Today was one of those days.

I made the unfortunate choice of clicking on Ted Rall’s editorial cartoon for 9/16/06. It is one thing to ridicule the President politically but another to attack him in a personal manner that hurts his family. The same thing goes for Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. Why would anyone think it was appropriate to do an editorial cartoon about the sex life of Madame Secretary? Rall has already depicted Sec Rice in a racist manner so I guess portraying her as a woman of loose morals is no big deal to him.

According to Rall’s little drawing, Rice has slept her way around the world including a one night stand with Chirac. Rall then promotes the sick fantasy that so many Libs are obsessed with by depicting the President of the United States in bed with Madame Secretary. Rall’s caption for that panel is simply nauseating – “Gossips say she is stroking more than George W’s ego during their weekends together at Camp David.”

Reuters reported on Saturday (hat tip to Drudge) that the controversial British film about the assassination of President Bush actually won a critics’ choice award at the Toronto Film Festival. I imagine you’re all surprised:

"Death of a President," which stirred controversy in the days ahead of the festival, took home the Fipresci prize, which is chosen by international critics. The film, a fictional documentary showing the assassination of President Bush, was noted by the jury "for the audacity with which it distorts reality to reveal a larger truth."

See, now that’s exactly what moviegoers want these days: a film that distorts reality to reveal a larger truth. Of course, in a disturbing sort of way, that’s better than the normal media blathering which distorts reality to reveal a tapestry of lies in order to further the goals of one of the nation's major political parties. But, I digress:

Drudge is reporting that at a recent Roger Waters concert at Madison Square Garden, the former guitarist of the famed rock band Pink Floyd advertised some anti-Bush sentiments on a floating pig. For those unfamiliar with the band, when they were touring many years ago to promote their album “Animals,” during the song entitled “Pigs,” a huge, floating, inflatable pig was part of the props. Apparently, in this instance, the pig was graffitied with campaign propaganda (Update -- video here):

ROGER WATERS [PINK FLOYD] CONCERT TOUR HITS NORTH AMERICA AND NYC WITH FLYING PIGS, URGING DEM VOTES IN ELECTION, 'IMPEACH BUSH' WRITTEN ON REAR OF PIG FLOATING OVER AUDIENCE... One concertgoer writes: 'Seeing Bush's name written across the pig's arse made me howl'... The pig had graffiti. 'New Yorkers/Don't be led to the slaughter/Vote November 7'... another attendee played off the hit 'Another Brick in the Wall': ''We don't need no thought control,' even from Mr. Waters'...

This wasn’t the first time on this tour that Waters was so political:

An underappreciated accomplishment of the past five years has been the continued reduction in the number of people on welfare.

The welfare caseload, after declining dramatically in the first four years after Welfare Reform was enacted, might have been expected to level off, or even rise slightly with overall population growth, after the initial impact of the 1996 law wore off.

After all, the reduction in the number of welfare recipients during the 1990s was stunning. From a peak of over 14 million in 1994, and over 12 million at the end of 1996 (over 4.5 million families) when the new took effect, the number of those receiving welfare came tumbling down to about 5.5 million by the end of 2000 -- a decline of nearly 2 million per year.

I'm not sure that anyone expected the numbers to steadily fall after the first four years of reform, but that is exactly what has happened. Here are the details for famillies and recipients on welfare as of the end of each calendar year beginning with the turn of the century (000s; the index to data for all years back to 1960 is here):

The Real Clear Politics blog reported Sunday an interesting headline switcheroo apparently purported by the Associated Press (hat tip to our friend at GOP Video).

RCP linked to an AP article on Friday which originally had the headline “GOP Gains Ground in Battle for Congress.” However, according to an RCP reader, when he or she clicked on the hyperlink for the article, the headline read “Poll Shows GOP Not Making Its Case."

RCP’s Tom Bevan wrote on this issue:

Not everyone is happy to see gasoline prices drop. On CNN's Live Saturday, network senior political correspondent Bill Schneider raised the question of whether dipping prices are part of a conspiracy orchestrated by big oil companies.

Said Schneider about lower gasoline costs: "That's good news for Republicans if only because it could reduce voter anxiety." He then noted: "Industry sources cite a lot of reasons, including higher fuel inventories, a so far mild hurricane season, the truce between Israel and Lebanon. But this oil industry critic believes that what drove prices up was speculation. And a report from a bipartisan congressional investigation may be having an impact."

"This oil industry critic" was one Tyson Slocum of the Naderite Public Citizen. Schneider then speculated that, "The dropping prices may last just a couple of months. Long enough to get through the November election. Could that be what the oil companies want?"

Is CBS’s new “freeSpeech” segment on the “Evening News” really free? Maybe not, as TVNewser reported Saturday (hat tip to Drudge) that Bill Maher – who had been invited on to be one of the free speakers – was told that he couldn’t discuss religion:

“On Friday's Real Time on HBO, Maher explained that CBS approached him to do a 'freeSpeech' segment on the new Evening News. He asked if he could talk about religion but was rejected and told that he would be provided with a list of 'approved' topics," an e-mailer says.

The actual transcript of what Maher said Friday night concerning this issue is as follows:

Over at The Corner today, National Review's Jonah Goldberg noticed that the AP dispatch on Congressman Ben Cardin's prejudiced/fired blogger leaves out the "D" word for Democrat:

Rep. Benjamin Cardin has fired a campaign staffer who posted racially charged comments against his opponent on the Internet, the congressman's campaign said Saturday.

The staffer's blog includes references to Oreo cookies. Cardin's opponent, Republican Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, who is black, has said people threw Oreos at him during a 2002 debate as a slight directed at his race and political views.

The Chronicle today has published a piece titled "Border fences -- and fantasies", that claims that illegal immigration has increased because of the California border fence project (Called operation Vanguard) and calls the larger border fence approved by Congress recently "tomfoolery".

The piece, though, is contradictory and filled with absurd reasoning in its desire to torpedo a larger border fence idea. On one hand the Chronicle claims that the current fence has not stopped immigration and is useless, yet on the other has caused immigrant's to bring their entire families because the fence keeps them inside.

On CNN's Reliable Sources on Sunday morning, Gloria Borger, CBS News Capitol Hill correspondent and U.S. News columnist, conceded that the revelation that then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was who leaked the fact that Joe Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, “was sort of a big yawn” to the news media “and why we didn't cover it that much, is because, first of all, everybody was anticipating a Karl Rove indictment, and that would have been a huge, huge story.” So, when “Karl Rove was not indicted, the air went out of the balloon at that particular point.” To put it mildly. Host Howard Kurtz called media coverage of Rove “overheated,” suggesting that “a lot of journalists practically had the date circled on the calendar when he might be charged."

The CBS Evening News at least ran a story, unlike the ABC and NBC evening newscasts, but a very skewed and incomplete report, as detailed in my September 7 NewsBusters item, “CBS Interviews Armitage, But Skips Rove and Asks if He Owes Apology to Wilson?” (Brief transcript of Borger's exchange with Kurtz follows)

Matthew Sheffield's item on Ben Cardin's staffer with the slurs is buried on Page C-6 of the Sunday Washington Post, described as a minor case of the blogger "stumbles." But George Allen's off-hand use of the word "Macaca" is on the front page again today, albeit in restrained form, not explicitly using the mysterious M-word. Michael Shear's article on the role of bloggers in the Virginia Senate contest began this way:

Virginia's U.S. Senate race has catapulted bloggers into the middle of electioneering and controversy as campaign supporters use their online forums to connect with voters, raise money and spread gossip. Liberal bloggers -- two of whom are on the payroll of Democratic challenger James Webb -- fanned the flames last month after Sen. George Allen aimed a derogatory remark at a young Webb volunteer. That hype has helped Webb close a double-digit Allen lead in public polls and was a blow to the Republican senator's possible presidential bid in 2008.

Starter: Does anyone watch the Sunday morning news interview shows anymore?

I wonder how much we'll be hearing of this news in the political press and how much Marylanders will from their MSM:

Rep. Benjamin Cardin has fired a campaign staffer who wrote racially charged comments on an Internet blog against his opponent, Republican Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, who is black, Cardin's campaign confirmed Saturday.

The blog includes a reference to "Devouring the Competition" by eating Oreo cookies, which Steele has said people threw at him during a 2002 debate as a slight directed at his race and political views.

In a statement, Cardin also condemned "anti-Semitic" comments written by the female staffer on her own Internet blog [formerly at persuasionatrix.blogspot.com].

One important fact left out of the AP report I quoted above is that the story was broken by our friends over at Wizbang. AP reporter Brian Witte's behavior in this instance is all too familiar. Blogs are often not given the proper credit they deserve for reporting, especially if they're conservative ones.