Riddle me this: when is a cartoonist as shallow and one dimensional as his own creations? When his name is Ted Rall. The San Antonio Express-News ran a short story covering a convention being held in Texas that is serving as a gathering place for some of the nation's increasingly fewer political cartoonists. Rall has been chosen as the president of this seemingly ever more irrelevant organization and apparently the Express-News found his glee at this nation's ills to be interesting copy.

Naturally, the Express-News gave us the Rallian set up for today's "ills":

An unpopular war, a shaky economy, the prospect of a border fence, a delicate climate seemingly seeking revenge this summer, soaring food and fuel prices, and a potentially polarizing presidential election -- it all adds up to a gloomy forecast for most Americans.

All these claims are, of course, liberal shibboleths and lack any context. Merely the mouthing of these topics is enough for the media to say "see, it's all going to hell."

I don't normally follow Ted Rall's work. But when J.M., a member of our military serving in Iraq, wrote NB about Rall's recent column and cartoon, I had a look. I'd say our soldier was being restrained in describing Rall's work as "particularly offensive."

I'm displaying one panel from his cartoon of October 22nd. You can view the whole of it here. As you'll note, the point is to celebrate the death of our soldiers, since they are "idiots" whose removal from the gene pool causes the average IQ back home to soar.