"Like Grapes In A Jar"

There are times that doing what we do is incredibly difficult.

Attempting to create fresh new content five days a week, drawing a cartoon, writing a commentary, editing the commentary, finding links, and putting it all together takes a great deal of work. Researching to make sure all the facts are right is another time-consuming task. With regular jobs, families, non-work lives, and occasional traveling thrown in, what we provide for you can take a lot of extra energy at times.

Then there are those days where a politician, or two, or more, shove their shoes halfway down their gullet, and we breathe a sigh of relief for an easy day of work. You could say it's as easy as shooting fish in a barrel - or getting grapes from a jar.

Today is one of those days, courtesy of the leading Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, and current Nebraska Attorney General, Jon Bruning.

In case you missed it, although it was covered locally here, here, here, here, and here, and nationally here, here, and here - we recommend you watch the YouTube video of Mr. Bruning making multiple insults in the span of a few seconds, right here.

In short, Jon Bruning gave a speech at an event in Papillion, Nebraska, last weekend where he compared people who are on welfare to scavenging raccoons.

The racist and classist overtones alone should have scared off anyone with a half a brain from using the comparison he did. That Mr. Bruning also delivered those words publicly in the midst of an ongoing recession, displayed either a severe lack of understanding of the economic sensitivities of millions of Americans - or displayed a craven grab at attention from the media. Or both.

Some of our staff have met Jon Bruning before. At least one has has enjoyed a beverage or two with him at a Lincoln bar. He's not a horrible fellow, though he is definitely a bit green. He's not overtly racist, nor is he overtly classist. He is, however, more than a bit ambitious.

Ambition isn't always a bad thing - but it can easily be abused by powerful outside forces, and turn a rising star of any kind into a puppet zealot. The advisors and assistants an ambitious person chooses to surround themselves with need to be more than just toadies and sycophants - and they certainly can't be incompetent.

Like whichever staff member Mr. Bruning delegated to write the speech he gave in Papillion.

If the goal was to get people talking about John Bruning, the staff member who wrote that disgusting line in his speech certainly did his or her job. We'd also fully agree that the staffer's observation of the tactics of that known slimeball and piece of human trash, Karl Rove, paid off in terms of getting Mr. Bruning attention, from both the press and the public.

Of course, each of us had parents who echoed one another when they taught us that there are different kinds of attention - and the kind Mr. Bruning has received for this gaffe isn't positive.

Since we know Mr. Bruning is an occasional Daily Felltoon reader we'll simply say this to him: Jon...? Find out who the twit is who wrote that racist, classist drivel, and fire their ass. With cause. Regretting you said those words is nice - but Americans are tired of pretty words and apologies.

Americans want leaders who are going to tackle the problems of the present and the future. Not people who surround themselves with those who should know better - and still choose poorly anyway.

Anything worth doing is worth doing well, including giving speeches - and hiring assistants.

Right now, it's obvious you've failed on both counts.

Reaping What Was Sown

When a person lives any length of time in Nebraska, if they're any sort of observant individual, there are a few things they'll likely pick up on.

For example, Nebraskans tend to wear a lot of red. Especially on days that a Husker football, volleyball, basketball, baseball, softball, or other team has a game or match - which pretty much means Nebraskans wear red most of the time.

Nebraskans also tend to be proud of their state capitol building, with the statue on the top named "The Sower". For those of you unfamiliar with Nebraska, The Sower is a  massive bronze statue of a man sowing - or planting - the seeds of the future. Like any farmer, when those seeds have grown into crops, and are fully mature, they'll need to be harvested. If a farmer sows seeds that are filled with weeds and bad seed, they'll likely reap crops filled with weeds and rot.

Sadly, it appears many Republicans, both in Nebraska and around the country - including U.S. Sen. Mike Johanns, the former governor of Nebraska - have yet to learn that simple lesson: that you reap what you sow.

If Senator Johanns had better recall of his Nebraska roots, he might have been more prepared for what he encountered at his town hall meeting on Monday, at the Cornhusker Hotel in Lincoln. To say that his constituents were unhappy would be a bit of an understatement. From a source we had at the event, it wasn't just Democrats, liberals or progressives that were calling for taxes to be raised on the rich - some Republicans were also behind that idea. Sadly, Johanns not only openly opposed that idea, but he made things worse by sowing more lies about GOP plans for Social Security.

Senator Johanns' friend, Sen. John McCain didn't fare much better halfway across the nation in Arizona.

Americans across the country are beginning to comprehend the effects of the bitter seed Republicans have sown all over the nation.

In the latest CNN poll, released on Tuesday, for the first time in history Americans don't believe their elected representatives in Washington deserve re-election. On fact, only 41 percent of Americans think their U.S. House member deserves another term.

The numbers are far worse for Republicans than Democrats.

Fifty-nine percent of Americans disapprove of the Republican party, nearly two out of every three U.S. citizens. At the same time, while 47 percent of Americans disapprove of the Democratic Party, an equal 47 percent approve of Democrats in Congress. Compared to Republicans, that's a 14-point lean by Americans towards the Democratic Party, and away from Republicans.

Tea Party candidates have only harvested growing distain from the people they purport to represent. Only 31 percent of voters have a favorable opinion of the Tea Party, continuing the downward slide of opinion- one of the worst showings since Tea Party numbers started to be measured about 18 months ago.

The results of some the recall elections in Wisconsin last night only further prove our point. [The results of at least one race in Wisconsin can't be trusted as honest - though it appears that Wisconsin Democrats have caved and won't be contesting the results, as they should.]

While many of these numbers seem to have surprised more than a few pundits, we're not surprised at all about the way the pendulum is now swinging back towards the political left.

Instead of making the hard choices, and fighting to conserve those things which have been good about our government - which is what being conservative truly is - the Republican party over the last decade has continually reached for candidates and actions that have merely gained them attention. Whether that attention has been positive or not hasn't seemed to concern the GOP. They've sown the seeds of anger, hatred, ignorance, and arrogance indiscriminately.

It appears, heading toward 2012, the American political right may now be about to reap the fruits of their actions.

No Bull

We pride ourselves on being straight with you, our readers, every day - and today is no exception.

We're not going to say that we're completely unconcerned about the massive drop in the stock market yesterday. Like millions of people, we also have investments, and we also lost some value on those instruments yesterday - so we understand the economic pessimism that seems to be rampant.

That being said, the idea that the American economy is mortally wounded, and that the vultures are sweeping in to clean up the kill is ridiculous. As Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman points out, while stocks dropped like a rock, U.S. Treasury bond prices rose.

That is far from a sign that U.S. debt isn't a safe investment.

It's a sign that the U.S. continues to have a weak economy, and is being held back by two things: a lack of jobs, and a barely functional political system - which we've discussed before. Yesterday, in fact.

The jobs problem in America may not be able to be fixed today - but the political problem may get a jump start towards repair today, with the latest round of the Wisconsin recall elections.

Today Wisconsinites are heading to the polls to vote in six recall races across the state. A mass recall of this nature has never been held anywhere in the U.S. Some officials are expecting turnout rates of seventy-to-eighty percent, which is a level of participation most legislative districts in the U.S. never see, even in Presidential election years.

Then again, we've never seen the kind of corruption and disregard for the law exhibited by the Wisconsin Republican Party and their extremist, far-right wing, corporatist boosters over the last year. Recently, the right-wing lobbyist group "Americans For Prosperity" (as if there were Americans who wished for decay and failure, other than themselves) purposely sent out blatantly misleading absentee ballots to the six districts having recall elections today -- mail-in ballots which had the date of the recall elections wrong. If voters were to have followed the advice of this group of cheats and liars, their votes would have come in long after the races had already been decided.

Of course, the right-wing group feigned incompetence (which we don't think was completely an act) for the misleading ballots, and blamed the printer for their mistake. For an organization that often crows about individual responsibility, we find their hypocrisy both sadly ironic and par for the course.

These GOP state legislators are the same people who have been aiming to kill union rules in the state that gave birth to the union movement in America, who want to roll back child labor laws, wipe out protections for both tenants and landlords (both private and commercial), and enact a far-right wing ideological agenda on a generally moderate Midwestern state.

We agree with the Wausau Daily Herald that the recall elections Wisconsinites are engaged in today are indeed a direct check by the populace over elected legislators.

We also agree with many who have said there far more important things going on in the world today than whether the stock market goes up or down a bit.

In Wisconsin, there's an election today to put the power back in the hands of the people. Let's hope the best candidates win.