By the time you read this today - even before we publish this today - the future King of England, Prince William, and his new bride, Princess Catherine, will be married, have gained new titles (Duke And Dutchess of Cambridge), and will have been celebrating for some time at Windsor Castle.
To be frank, while we admire some of the pomp and circumstance of such a massive event, the media circus that goes with it is something we could do without.
We think the most important part of the young royals' wedding will be the same as any other wedding of two people we hope to see live a long and happy life together - the marriage.
Every current member of our staff has been with their spouse for a long, long time. Even though we have all been involved in professional pursuits that - at times - have had our significant others concerned about our finances (if not our sanity), our spouses have allowed us to work in cartooning, broadcasting & media, and language translation & editing without much complaint or persuasion to choose other, more lucrative, career paths.
To say our spouses are fantastic is an understatement. They've all been nominated for sainthood, in our hearts, for standing beside each of us every step along the way.
We understand, in part thanks to our careers, some of the kinds of twists and turns that Kate and William will likely experience. Everyone thinks that the royal family members have life easy - and in some ways, they do. We doubt, for example, that either William or Kate will ever go truly hungry. The benefits of their station are enormous and unique, much as many of our own benefits are to us. The people we know, and the connections we have, make us blush sometimes at what seems like our sheer dumb luck. While we rarely acknowledge it publicly, we often wonder how we got to such fantastic places in our lives.
There is a price to pay for that good fortune, however - for us, as well as for William and Kate.
The responsibilities we have are heavy and many. For example, we will be, once again, traveling this weekend, to several events and meetings, and our abilities to truly rest will be limited, as they often are when our duties and loyalties call us away from our reading corners and couches. But as we noted, we've been blessed with some incredible people in our lives, and we're more than happy to trade a few harried trips down the interstate, and through airports, in order to collect the benefits of friendship and our careers that we've been so lucky to obtain.
To whatever degree you have been blessed, we're sure you also understand about the weight of your responsibilities, and the benefits of your own place in life too.
We also know that those benefits are always made sweeter by having our significant others in our lives, to share those great moments with them.
In the midst of all the hustle and bustle this weekend, we hope that Kate and Will do what we entreat all newly married couples to do: take a minute, just a moment, to be with each other, not as prince and princess, or media celebrities - but just as a couple of people who care about each other deeply.
We hope they take our suggestion for a momentary holiday from the craziness of their own wedding day to celebrate the one thing that always has gotten each of us through our own difficult times in life.
Our very significant others.
May you have a moment of your own this weekend to share with the people you care about most.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Obama To America: It's Time To Grow Up
There has been action on political topics of note around the country - like the latest infuriating news about the attempt by the Keystone Cops of safe oil handling, TransCanada. They continue their efforts to drive the Keystone pipeline through places in Nebraska where the people who live there really don't want it. Today, though, we're going to follow the President's lead from Wednesday.
We're going to address this issue just one more time.
In case you missed President Obama's press conference on Monday, we can give you the "Shorter Obama" as they say on Twitter. In short, he presented his long-form birth certificate, and told the nation - especially the media - to grow up.
We have a whole slew of problems to handle as a nation, problems we discuss and debate with you every day here at The Daily Felltoon. The Federal budget. The Federal debt ceiling. State budgets. State laws. Wars that our country is involved in, like Afghanistan and the cleanup still going on in Iraq. Wars we're just sending drones and aid supplies to, like the evolving civil war in Libya.
We've got diseases to fight, education to fix - and even our professional sports franchises aren't immune from the war on workers.
There are more challenges facing our country at one time than we've ever seen before. These challenges don't just affect one small group of us; they are facing all of us together, regardless of race, creed, sexual orientation, or any other divisive measure one can conjure up. Yet millions of idiotic Americans have chosen to consciously, purposely, be obtuse about the truth of this President's birth - Americans who we feel are, to be blunt, racists.
No other President has EVER had to go through this kind of a ridiculous media circus before. This insult to logic and decency called "birtherism" has dishonored the office of the President, in ways no botched election, no ginned up excuse for war, and no stained intern's dress ever could have. In short, it's an embarrassment.
Yet, instead of simply calling out the idiots and the racists, our President has been courteous, genial, and tried to ignore the insane accusations of the birthers for years now. He has given them not just the initial, fully legal birth certification that Hawaii considers the ONLY legal proof of birth (which he did over two years ago). He has also finally gotten the clearance to release the "long-form", not technically "legal" birth certificate - which he did Wednesday.
We are proud of how he stood up for himself on Wednesday, as are all Americans who actually want to get to work solving the problems we collectively face.
There are still those who will say that this was just another ploy by President Obama.
So instead of insulting those people, and calling them worthless, we're going to let President Obama have the very last words on this topic that we hope to ever write:
We're going to address this issue just one more time.
In case you missed President Obama's press conference on Monday, we can give you the "Shorter Obama" as they say on Twitter. In short, he presented his long-form birth certificate, and told the nation - especially the media - to grow up.
We have a whole slew of problems to handle as a nation, problems we discuss and debate with you every day here at The Daily Felltoon. The Federal budget. The Federal debt ceiling. State budgets. State laws. Wars that our country is involved in, like Afghanistan and the cleanup still going on in Iraq. Wars we're just sending drones and aid supplies to, like the evolving civil war in Libya.
We've got diseases to fight, education to fix - and even our professional sports franchises aren't immune from the war on workers.
There are more challenges facing our country at one time than we've ever seen before. These challenges don't just affect one small group of us; they are facing all of us together, regardless of race, creed, sexual orientation, or any other divisive measure one can conjure up. Yet millions of idiotic Americans have chosen to consciously, purposely, be obtuse about the truth of this President's birth - Americans who we feel are, to be blunt, racists.
No other President has EVER had to go through this kind of a ridiculous media circus before. This insult to logic and decency called "birtherism" has dishonored the office of the President, in ways no botched election, no ginned up excuse for war, and no stained intern's dress ever could have. In short, it's an embarrassment.
Yet, instead of simply calling out the idiots and the racists, our President has been courteous, genial, and tried to ignore the insane accusations of the birthers for years now. He has given them not just the initial, fully legal birth certification that Hawaii considers the ONLY legal proof of birth (which he did over two years ago). He has also finally gotten the clearance to release the "long-form", not technically "legal" birth certificate - which he did Wednesday.
We are proud of how he stood up for himself on Wednesday, as are all Americans who actually want to get to work solving the problems we collectively face.
There are still those who will say that this was just another ploy by President Obama.
So instead of insulting those people, and calling them worthless, we're going to let President Obama have the very last words on this topic that we hope to ever write:
"I know that there’s going to be a segment of people for which, no matter what we put out, this issue will not be put to rest. But I’m speaking to the vast majority of the American people, as well as to the press. We do not have time for this kind of silliness. We’ve got better stuff to do. I’ve got better stuff to do. We’ve got big problems to solve. And I’m confident we can solve them, but we’re going to have to focus on them -- not on this."
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Now Is Not Then
For our faithful readers, the fact that we have a long-standing dislike of false equivalencies - especially in politics - is nothing new. It's not that there aren't similarities between the parties and their supporters, especially the fanatics on both ends of the spectrum. We've pointed out those comparisons numerous times over the years.
The problem we've always had with false equivalencies - especially in the modern political sphere - is when those comparisons are based on superficial similarities, and not true factual differences.
Like the comparisons that are beginning to pop up in the media on the town hall meetings we're seeing all over the nation right now.
In case you missed it, during the current Congressional vacation - the fifth one they've taken so far this year - Congresspersons of both parties have been holding town hall meetings. Some of these town hall meetings have been passionate affairs, much like the raucous events of the summer of hate in 2009.
If you were paying scant attention to the news, you might simply dismiss this latest round of town hall meetings as another group of disaffected, ignorant people, probably supported by some kind of outside money.
If that's what you're thinking about this current set of events, you'd be wrong.
On the merely superficial level, there have been no significant acts of violence at any of the current town hall meetings, to our knowledge. Nor have there been credible threats of physical violence towards congresspersons, or attendees toting weapons, loaded or otherwise. Those factors alone make the current meetings different from those of 2009.
As journalist Josh Marshall pointed out yesterday, there are those in the media who will simply stop with the ostensible resemblance, come up with some simple label to slap on the current discontent of voters, and attempt to blow off the real reasons behind this current display of anger about what Republicans, under the proposed Ryan plan, would do to Medicare.
As another journalist, Steve Benen of Washington Monthly pointed out on Tuesday, Democrats and those who support Medicare are hammering Republicans everywhere over the insane idea of a voucher-based, all-private health insurance plan for seniors replacing what we now know as Medicare. Republicans and corporatists are crying like babies, accusing left-leaning Medicare supporters of scare tactics.
As Mr. Benen also points out, "Political rhetoric isn't "demagoguery" when it's true. If a political message leads the mainstream to feel scared, it's not necessarily "scare tactics" if people have good reason to worry."
The fact is, the current Republican budget plan will end Medicare as a stable, long-term, entitlement for American citizens - one that most working Americans have already paid into and have earned. Further, it's a plan that not even all Republican leadership fully supports.
This year, 2011, is not 2009, and we wish some of our colleagues in the media would stop for a minute and focus on the facts, and not just the stupid pictures and audio coming from the current set of town hall meetings.
The problem we've always had with false equivalencies - especially in the modern political sphere - is when those comparisons are based on superficial similarities, and not true factual differences.
Like the comparisons that are beginning to pop up in the media on the town hall meetings we're seeing all over the nation right now.
In case you missed it, during the current Congressional vacation - the fifth one they've taken so far this year - Congresspersons of both parties have been holding town hall meetings. Some of these town hall meetings have been passionate affairs, much like the raucous events of the summer of hate in 2009.
If you were paying scant attention to the news, you might simply dismiss this latest round of town hall meetings as another group of disaffected, ignorant people, probably supported by some kind of outside money.
If that's what you're thinking about this current set of events, you'd be wrong.
On the merely superficial level, there have been no significant acts of violence at any of the current town hall meetings, to our knowledge. Nor have there been credible threats of physical violence towards congresspersons, or attendees toting weapons, loaded or otherwise. Those factors alone make the current meetings different from those of 2009.
As journalist Josh Marshall pointed out yesterday, there are those in the media who will simply stop with the ostensible resemblance, come up with some simple label to slap on the current discontent of voters, and attempt to blow off the real reasons behind this current display of anger about what Republicans, under the proposed Ryan plan, would do to Medicare.
As another journalist, Steve Benen of Washington Monthly pointed out on Tuesday, Democrats and those who support Medicare are hammering Republicans everywhere over the insane idea of a voucher-based, all-private health insurance plan for seniors replacing what we now know as Medicare. Republicans and corporatists are crying like babies, accusing left-leaning Medicare supporters of scare tactics.
As Mr. Benen also points out, "Political rhetoric isn't "demagoguery" when it's true. If a political message leads the mainstream to feel scared, it's not necessarily "scare tactics" if people have good reason to worry."
The fact is, the current Republican budget plan will end Medicare as a stable, long-term, entitlement for American citizens - one that most working Americans have already paid into and have earned. Further, it's a plan that not even all Republican leadership fully supports.
This year, 2011, is not 2009, and we wish some of our colleagues in the media would stop for a minute and focus on the facts, and not just the stupid pictures and audio coming from the current set of town hall meetings.
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