New cartoon here. Longtime readers will recognize this one as a sequel to Deep Undercover from 2005.

My friends at Credo have given away almost all the free stickers they’ve printed so far. We may be back with a different design at some point, but for now the plan is to shut the offer down when the counter hits 5,000. That’s not very far away, so if you want to get in on this, you should probably do it sooner rather than later.

*By “given away” I mean “promised to give away” — I don’t think the actual mailing has gone out yet.

UPDATE: all gone.

Howard Zinn has passed away.

James O’Keefe, the filmmaker behind the notorious ACORN videos, has been arrested by the FBI and charged in a plot to wiretap Sen. Mary Landrieu’s phone tamper with phone lines.

I’m sure that all the conservatives who took those videos & jumped immediately to every conclusion will now be telling us we should not jump to conclusions. And of course we should not, for who among us has not been arrested by the FBI while attempting to wiretap a US Senator? Oh the crazy things you do when you’re a kid.

Or maybe the FBI is controlled by ACORN. They are all-powerful, as I tried to warn you all in this cartoon.

More seriously, though: WTF?

… TPM has the affidavit.

As Haiti continues to make painfully clear, some people have real problems, and I don’t really want to make too much of personal transient difficulties. Suffice it to say that any week encompassing a root canal, a death in the family and a surprise stay in the hospital is mostly a week I would have rather avoided, if given the option. Which oddly, I was not.

But the only real reason I mention any of this is by way of explanation and apology: as a result, the next cartoon up will be a rerun from 2001. (There aren’t that many people who have my entire life’s work committed to memory, right?) After that, not sure — hoping to once again start providing the cartoons you have come to expect, cartoons so timely they seem to have been ripped from, you know, relatively recent headlines. But things are a little bit up in the air for now, so bear with me.

Adding: new (old) cartoon here.

And so blogging mostly won’t, for the next week or two.

… adding: new cartoon here, of course.

Special tangentially-related song title edition.

(… and a reminder: free TMW stickers here!)

You can sneer all you want at Pat Robertson. You can condemn him all you want. And I’ll join right in. He deserves everything you care to say about him, and much, much more. He is a seriously disturbed man.

But you dismiss and ignore him at your peril. Remember: this man used to call up the fucking president of the United States. And he got through. And the president listened to him.

You ever had that kind of access to power? Got it now? Thought not. Me, neither. You got his hundreds of millions of dollars? Got millions of fans giving you hard-earned- bucks? Nope, I don’t have them either.

Sure, go ahead: Repeat the obvious: Of course, it’s a sad state of affairs when an ignorant, moral degenerate like Pat Robertson is so influential to the most powerful men - and yeah, it’s basically men - in the world.So what? Don’t ever forget he had that access, and still has access, to far more powerful men (and the occasional woman) than you can even imagine. So…

Until that changes, you should never, ever, underestimate him, or his unbelievable power - not only in the public discourse, but in the direction of American governance, jurisprudence, and culture.

The rest. Read it and ingest. I’ve never understood the mindset that suggests the crazies should be ignored because they are momentarily out of power. To put it in terms to which Pat Roberston might relate, the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.

Lisa Derrick at Firedoglake has a collection of good organizations to give to money for Haiti. Registered nurses can volunteer to go in an effort being organized by the union National Nurses United.

As George W. Bush said about 9/11, “Through my tears I see opportunity.” It turns out that now, according to the Heritage Foundation, similar opportunities are available after the catastrophic Haitian earthquake:

Amidst the Suffering, Crisis in Haiti Offers Opportunities to the U.S.

In addition to providing immediate humanitarian assistance, the U.S. response to the tragic earthquake in Haiti earthquake offers opportunities to re-shape Haiti’s long-dysfunctional government and economy as well as to improve the public image of the United States in the region…

While on the ground in Haiti, the U.S. military can also interrupt the nightly flights of cocaine to Haiti and the Dominican Republic from the Venezuelan coast and counter the ongoing efforts of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to destabilize the island of Hispaniola. This U.S. military presence, which should also include a large contingent of U.S. Coast Guard assets, can also prevent any large-scale movement by Haitians to take to the sea in rickety watercraft to try to enter the U.S. illegally.

Meanwhile, the U.S. must be prepared to insist that the Haiti government work closely with the U.S. to insure that corruption does not infect the humanitarian assistance flowing to Haiti. Long-term reforms for Haitian democracy and its economy are also badly overdue.

Good to see that, in the midst of the today’s confusion, someone’s focusing on what really matters: making sure America’s 210 years of superhuman cruelty toward Haiti continue without respite.

(Thanks to David Rosnick for sending this.)

AND: Another of Heritage’s anti-experts on Haiti, Ray Walser, referred to Haiti’s capital in National Review as “Port of Prince.” (Click below.) He’s since corrected it, thus invalidating my theory that all Heritage employees have the part of the brain removed that produces shame.

The frog and the scorpion: a traditional parable revised.