THIS MODERN WORLD

As of this writing, all orders for signed prints have been filled. They’re in the mail, and with luck, they’ll get to you in time for Christmas.

And if I screwed up your order, sent the wrong cartoon or inscribed it wrong or something, please be patient with me. I did my best to get everything out as requested, but I’m a one-man band, and the response to this offer has been much greater than I anticipated.

Also, please note — if you order one of these things now, it’s almost certainly not going to make it out of here in time for the holidays.

So Trent Lott’s holding onto power, at least for now — but Henry Kissinger’s resigning from the 9-11 commission so he doesn’t have to reveal his client list.

Good riddance to the latter, even if it did mean I had stay up last night reworking next week’s cartoon. As to the former — online conservatives spoke with one voice yesterday, and that voice said, Lott is surely going to step down today.

How did they get it so wrong?

It’s almost as if Hannity and Limbaugh, the guys with literally tens of millions of listeners, have a better finger on the pulse of mainstream conservative thought than the bloggers with, well, literally tens of thousands of readers.

But it’s good that these guys are out there, loudly insisting that there is no place for racism in their Republican party. It’s a sort of Sims-world conservatism right now, but change happens slowly, and maybe if they keep pretending, someday it will really be true.

Just not quite yet.

I’m not going to make any predictions on how the Lott thing will turn out, myself. It sure seems like his days should be numbered, but you don’t get as far in politics as he has without being able to weather a storm or two. He’s probably thinking that if he can just make it through the holidays, the issue will eventually die down. And he may be right.

Just got an email from a reader who says he has a third instance, on tape, of Trent Lott remarking that Strom Thurmond should have been President in 1948:

The occasion is the signing of the Spence / Warner Defense Spending Bill in October of 2000, and the remark — which is made by Lott to a woman standing behind Senator Thurmond, who is himself in the process of signing the bill — is NOT directed
to the senator himself, but is offered as an aside (furthermore, this event was in no way intended as a tribute to Thurmond, as the birthday celebration was, and thus seems not to have been inspired directly by any attempt to please Mr. Thurmond w/o any actual endorsement of Thurmond’s Dixiecrat platform, as Lott has claimed the birthday tribute was). The remark is exactly as follows, and though spoken off-camera, is quite audible:
“Yes…he should have been elected in 1947…or 1948, it was”.)

If you’re a journalist and you want to talk to this guy or get a copy of his tape, send me an email and I’ll put you in touch.

Haven’t been listening to the radio rantmeisters today, but I suspect they’re going to be singing a slightly different tune now that Bush has finally weighed in on l’affaire Lott:

President Bush on Thursday sharply rebuked incoming Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott for comments that some have called racist, saying any suggestion that segregation was acceptable is “offensive and it is wrong.”

More. Still wouldn’t bet the rent money on Lott stepping down, though I would happily be proven wrong on this one.

August has some thoughts on the upcoming possible transit strike, which local media are already covering with the sort of hysteria which really should be reserved for the news that a large meteor is hurtling directly toward 34th Street and 5th Avenue.

The first complaint, of course, is against the union’s salary requests: the news is already stating the union demands a 24% pay increase. That’s not even misleading, it’s just wrong. The union’s initial demand was an increase of 8% each year for the three years of the contract. Perhaps it’s high, but it’s a bargaining point, not to mention a reasonable request in terms of cost-of-living math in New York. Since then, the union has lowered their offer to 6% each year. The city, however, stands by its demand that the union gets nothing.

The other major complaint is my favorite, which is the fervent anger that these subway and bus operators- who do they think they are- don’t deserve whatever high salaries they are already getting. To which I address as follows:

You don’t want their job, though. Everyone complains that the subway drivers are making too much money. No one suddenly gets up and decides to quit their job at the firm and start operating subways. Maybe because deep down inside you know it’s a hard laborious task, with insane hours and almost no recognition- as the local papers have so generously reminded us.