21. October 2008 by admin.

PBN: This is a real conversation I had with my oldest daughter.  She didn’t get the movie channels.

I’ve been trying to think of a decision McCain has made since gaining the nomination that I agree with.  Or even that seemed to make sense.

His choice of Palin for veep is excretable.   Coming on the heels of his attempt to paint Obama as inexperienced it seemed either painfully hypocritical or woefully ignorant.  I understand his need to shore up his conservative base, and his desire to add a woman to the ticket to try to woo disgruntled Hillary supporters, but a small town mayor and first term governor under investigation for abuse of power was the best he could find?  Was Elizabeth Dole giving Bob’s Viagra a run for its money when he called?

I wish I could have been in the Straight Talk Express when the stock market tanked the day McCain made his fundamentals and strong statement.   That had to be the day team McCain realized the universe hated them.  The bewildering decision for McCain to “suspend” his campaign to inject himself into the well developed Congressional/Administration negotiations only added additional chaos and implied that McCain was making decisions by the seat of his pants instead of after careful deliberation.  That’s a stupid but understandable trait in a fighter pilot.  It’s potentially disasterous for a man leading the most powerful country in the world.  I still suspect that his attempt to postpone the original debate was an attempt to co-opt the VP debate and avoid the chance that Palin would embarrass herself more than she already had before a national audience.  Nothing I saw or read indicated that McCain’s presence positively influenced the eventual outcome, and the rebellion of the House Republicans underscored his inability to forge consensus and lead his own party.

Drop Bill Ayers already.  No one who doesn’t already support McCain cares.  Today “Weather Underground” is a spelunking report, not a feared terrorist organization.  Ayers doesn’t even have the street cred of having done time for his crimes, prosecutorial misconduct notwithstanding.  If a passing association with a member of a discredited organization espousing a discredited dogma is the best the anti-vetting department of McCain’s campaign could come up with against Obama, then the best argument against voting for Obama is he is too damn boring to be president.

I still don’t like Obama much.  His message of Hope and Change comes across as hypocricy and catering.  His famed charisma must be hiding behind his elite intellectual snobbishness.  But I’m still going to vote for him, because at this point I can’t find a reason not too.

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17. October 2008 by admin.

A plus about the credit crisis: I’m not getting inundated with credit card offers anymore.

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16. October 2008 by admin.

Who did the McCain campaign hire to teach John how to act on camera, William Shatner?

The bifurcated screen for last night’s debate was very unfortunate for the GOP nominee.  McCain spent most of the time looking wooden, and the rest angry.  He also came across as rude, continually interrupting and talking over Obama.  His carriage, demeanor and body language painted the picture of an unhappy man lashing out in anger.  Given the way world events have worked against his presidential run I can understand why John would be frustrated, but wearing his heart on his sleeve like he did last night just strengthened the arguments of his critics’ claims that he doesn’t have the temperament to be president.

Not that Obama did much better.  His sly smiles and aloof demeanor reinforced his image of being a snobbish elitist.

Side Note:  A lot has been written today about the amount of time McCain dedicated to William Ayers, the liberal peace loving terrorist of the 60’s.  I haven’t seen anything about McCain’s lack of support for ethanol subsidies.  This isn’t new news, but when a national candidate disses an issue this important to the Midwest (we may be fly-over states, but we still have electoral college votes) I would have expected to see someone mention it.

PBN: I just thought the seating arrangement last night was funny when juxtaposed on their presumed political leanings.

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15. October 2008 by admin.

So where are Wall Street’s legendary balls?

The Government has opened the credit window wide open, is injecting craploads of cash directly into the banks, has guaranteed interbank loans, and has done everything execept enter the commercial paper market itself (instead we’re just handing the banks money directly, but that’s a different story).  Given all that, why can’t the stock market build momentum for a rally?  I mean, 900+ points is pretty decent, but only for a day?  C’mon folks, would a second day of enthusiasm hurt you?  What happened to the image of the steely eyed trader taking a risk for the big rewards?  Is the market capitalist dead, buried under the piles of cash the government is dumping over Manhatten?

Maybe we have become a nation of whiners.  Investing is designed to be risky, with the greatest risks offering the greatest rewards.  But now we seem unwilling to accept the concept of loss, and are willing to only take a chance when we know the government will rush in to bail us out if we guess wrong.

America was born of speculation and the promise of reward for risk.  It’s sad to see how far we’ve fallen.

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13. October 2008 by admin.

My friend Khris is letting me use space on his server for a lot less than my current provider, so I’m starting the process of migrating everything over.  He installed CMS Made Easy because my HTML skills are still abysmal, and while I like they’re interface, I would really like to copy the Girl Genius format where the comic/whatever is on the left and I can stack other info on the right.  Does anyone know of a template I can plug in for this style?

PBN is my belief that Chris Columbus had the ultimate “right place/right time” experience.  He was wrong on just about everything when he planned and executed his voyage, but he is built up to grade schoolers to almost a cult status.  The historical reality is much different, but by the time people start learning it (if they ever do) they’ve stopped caring.  Worked out well for Chris though.

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9. October 2008 by admin.

I’ve been very bad this week; things keep getting posted late.

I’m working on minimizing that in the future.  I may even succeed.

The latest installment of Always Time To Do It Over will be posted today.  It’s going to be a bit short, but sometimes they just are.

Politics has obviously been the predominant theme over the last few weeks.  This makes PBN easy to figure out (they usually aren’t made until the day they’re posted) but annoys some readers who aren’t that interested in my political take and would prefer I stick with the Geek/gaming jokes.  To those readers I promise, after the election the political humor will subside.  Slightly.

Last post I promised explanatory blurbs for the comics, and since the only ones I can remember are the last 3, those are what we’ll recap.

The report of the abysmally low approval ratings crossed my consciousness as a NPR wake up alarm.  My sleep fuzzed mind processed the information and asked itself: If this is a government of the people, are we a nation of self-loathers?  This is why my wife sends the kids in to wake me instead of doing it herself.  The coupon clipping dialogue is fairly typical of what happens at the kitchen table Sunday mornings.

I was grocery shopping and saw the Seal cereal.  Whoever designed those boxes is clueless or one sick puppy.  Which is probably the animal we’ll next see on a cereal box.

I watched the debates with a collection of friends and family of various political stripes.  The debate comic is a collection of their observations.  Between them and my being to lazy to change even the poses in the panels, this was a really easy strip to draw.

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8. September 2008 by admin.

I would like to thank the U.S. Government for making my job as a cartoonist so easy.

When it was first announced that Fannie Mae & Freddy Mac were going into receivership,  I started working on the verbage for the takeover.  Treasury Sec. Paulson gave me the weekend to reminate, and I’m pretty happy with the result.  Of the comic at least, not the government intervention.

It galls me, but I have to agree the move was necessary.  Continued turmoil in the housing market is an albatross around the neck of the economy, and if there’s any hope of breaking the recession there needed to be a big check on the downward economic news spiral.  Unfortunately, it’s being written from our childrens’ future.

The housing mess was avoidable.  Proper oversight would have caught the NINJA (No Income, No Job or Assets) loans, and this morning we discovered  Freddie Mac had overstated its financial cushion.  And yet, over the next few days the directors of Fannie & Freddie will be given a nice quite severance package in the millions.  They don’t deserve it.  If any small business owner had gone bankrupt while obfuscating their debts, they would be ruined and face potential legal action.  Take the golden parachutes and instead use them to pay off the mortgages of people who bought houses in good faith, the ones who didn’t try to pick up a McMansion but instead tried to buy into the American dream.  The three bedroom, 1 & 1/2 bath folks.  Pay off their mortgages and let them put that money into buying that new car they need, or saving for their kids’s college, or even just to be able to quit that second job so they can spend some time in the home they’re fighting for with the family for whom they bought it.

And a thought to leave you on:  We just put the housing market  under the control of the people who didn’t act to protect it in the first place.

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5. September 2008 by admin.

I don’t remember any protesters at the Democratic convention.

That’s what struck me most while watching Sen. McCain’s acceptance speech last night.  John’s speech was repeated interrupted by protesters being drowned out by delegates and images of the protesters being frog marched through the aisles.  I understand the incumbent party is going to draw more ire from the disaffected, but given the fervor some Republicans have against Obama, not to mention the anarchist and other groups who just hate government in general, I would have expected at least some attempted disruption during the Democratic convention.  Are the Republicans really that much more civilized?  Did the Republican Convention’s security really suck that bad?  How did those people get in the hall anyway?

I was glad to see that John said nice things about Barack last night.   After the hate-fest that was Wednesday, I was looking for a ray of positive energy and anti-partisanship.  I was really impressed with the McCain campaign for releasing the coolest political ad last Thursday where John congratulated Barack on his historic nomination.  It reminded me of the John McCain who ran his Straight-Talk Express into the ground seeking the candidatecy, and who excited me a lot more than Obama has ever managed to do.

Notice the past tense?

McCain the Candidate has become McCain the Canned.  Since he sealed the nomination he has become handled, packaged, controlled.  He is disciplined, on message, and boring.  His spunk, his spontaneity, and his willingness to be himself despite the consequences are gone.  It makes me sad.

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4. September 2008 by admin.

Doing something new, I’m going to provide small blurbs explaining the background of the Paper Bag Ninja comics.  I hope you’ll enjoy seeing how the creative process worked and it’ll remind me to post regularly.

Today we get a two for one:  when I updated the site on Monday, I forgot to actually post the new comic.  I didn’t realize my error until Wednesday, so today I posted the Thursday comic but left the Monday comic posted on the main page as well.

Monday’s comic was my first reaction to the announcement of Sarah Palin as the GOP VP nominee (say that 3 times fast, it’s kind of fun).  After all the fuss about Obama’s lack of experience, the McCain Campaign seemed to ditch that line of attack overnight.  Only to see it resurrected against them by the same party that had been claiming for months that it wasn’t truly important!  Each candidate embodies change indeed.

Thursday’s is typical of conversations between myself and my wife.  She is a much more grounded person than I am, and much more appreciative of people and policies as humanistic entities instead of power blocks to be manipulated.  But sometimes even she can’t help analyzing the situation from a political viewpoint.

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4. September 2008 by admin.

After a 3 month hiatus, I have returned.  Why, you may ask, was I gone so long?

Because quite frankly, things got boring.

The candidates were trading recycled fluff at each other, 4th Edition had come out for D&D and the world hadn’t ended, and inflicting my meandering musings on you, gentle readers, fell down my priority list.  I had planned on returned after the conventions were over, when the presidential race would be heating up and things should be interesting.  But I was pulled out of my stasis pod early.

I watched Sarah Palin speak last night, capping the list of people who came in second to John McCain, and while I thought she did a decent speech, as an undecided Independent voter I don’t feel it is the slam-dunk knock-it-out-of-the-park (I know I’m mixing sports metaphors) the pundits are claiming.   But that’s not what pulled me back to the keyboard.

I spent last night with a vague sense of discomfort watching Romney, Huckabee and Giuliani rant and Palin emote, and only after the tv was off did I figure out why.

During the Democratic convention everyone went to great pains to laud John McCain for his service and sacrifice.  The speakers seemed required to emphasize he was a good man, even if they disagreed with his positions.  I saw little if any reciprocal love from the Republicans, and the poor sportsmanship and return to the politics of division was jarring in its contrast.  The GOP came across as mean tempered bullies sucking sour grapes, and completely lost the opportunity to steal Obama’s mantle of running a different type of campaign, of moving away from politics as usual.  I’m hoping John assumes a more statesman like approach tonight; if all the Republicans show is hard edges, they may enthuse their base but I don’t see them  winning the undecided center.

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