THIS MODERN WORLD

If there’s anything else we can do for you, just let us know!

Friday is the last day to order a signed print. After that, I won’t be filling any more orders until next year.

And after this, I’ll shut up about the swag.

Over at Great Lakes, they’re running a little contest — order a set of ornaments and you’re entered to possibly win one of their political marionettes.

Just so you know, I’m not making huge money off these things myself — I just genuinely think they’re really cool. And judging from the responses, so does everyone who’s ordered them:

— A little bit of liberal sunshine in a gloomy world. Thanks!

— Doggone (and penguin-gone), they’re great! I only hope my office gets a tree good enough to hang them on.

— I just wanted to let you know how lovely your ornaments look. My husband and I enjoy your strips in the Village Voice and I read your blog regularly. When I saw the ornaments I had to order them for him as a christmas gift. They’re really nice, and beautifully presented.

— just got my ornaments and all I can say is a gigantic WOW! They looks great, have real HEFT to ’em, they’re lovingly painted (not by Chinese convicts, I trust) and most important, they smell like the plexiglas project I did in metal shop in 7th grade! better than ditto smell, better than gasoline and turpentine together! Just kidding — they are absolutely the coolest. Plus the customized 2004 packaging with your logotype is a nice touch. I hope you sell a million of ’em!

— Just wanted to drop you a note about the Christmas ornaments, which I ordered a while back and received late last week. Not only are they larger than they appear in web photos, but they are also much cooler. Much MUCH cooler. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay cool. And probably underpriced, too.

Photos here.

As Atrios wrote recently, somehow people manage to hear about stories published on the front page of the New York Times even if I don’t link to them. I assume you’re up on the soldiers questioning Rumsfeld about adequate equipment and stop-loss. The right wingers — remember, the guys who support the troops — are trying to downplay this in various ways. Spent some time listening to Limbaugh and glancing over the righty blogs — the main arguments seem to be that (a) the fact that soldiers are scrounging junk piles to try to protect themselves adequately is just proof that the system is working well — i.e., decent hardworking American boys don’t want anything to go to waste; (b) no amount of armor can protect them from RPG’s, so why bother to have any armor at all; and via Drudge, (c) the question was planted by some damn liberal reporter anyway. (As to that last point, only one question is relevant — did the reporter also engineer the spontaneous roar of applause from the rest of the troops in the audience?)

Limbaugh went on to liken the troops wanting decent equipment which might help them live out their tours of duty to his own employees whining because they want bigger computer monitors and the dishes in the break room aren’t as nice as they would like. Yes, that’s right. The fat junkie blowhard thinks that the life-and-death situation for troops in Iraq is no more serious than the size of his assistant’s computer monitor. It literally infuriates me, thinking about it. What a worthless piece of human debris this guy is.

As for the question of whether or not any amount of armor is necessary, I simply suggest you go read this. Read to the end. It’ll break your heart.

Prosecutors in Amsterdam are charging an arms dealer as an accomplice to genocide for selling lethal chemicals to Saddam Hussein between 1984 and 1988.

The suspect, Frans van Anraat, a 62-year-old chemicals dealer who was arrested Monday in Amsterdam, will face charges for “violating the laws of war and involvement in genocide,” said Wim de Bruin of the national prosecutor’s office.

Prosecutors said he had been a suspect since 1989, when he was arrested in Milan at the request of the United States government. But he was later released and fled to Iraq, where he remained until 2003. After the American-led invasion in 2003, he returned to the Netherlands, via Syria.

“The man is suspected of delivering thousands of tons of raw materials for chemical weapons to the former regime in Baghdad between 1984 and 1988,” prosecutors said in a statement.

Here’s a list of materials exported to Iraq from the United States around the same time.

(Edited: typo).