Brilliant. This one’s my favorite.

Political cartoons are indeed largely garbage. It seems like at this point they keep making them solely to have something inscrutable to put in future history textbooks.

Going with some local news today, but it’s been an enormous story in the state of Nevada for the past several months. Sandra Chereb writing for the AP:

A troubled lawmaker whose erratic behavior dominated headlines for weeks and instilled fear among colleagues who once called him friend will go down in Nevada history as the first assemblyman ever expelled from the Legislature after his peers voted to oust him Thursday during a tearful floor session.

…

The historic move came after a series of bizarre events involving [North Las Vegas representative Steven] Brooks, who has been arrested twice in recent months and hospitalized for a mental health evaluation.

One of the incidents involved a sword, and several others involved guns. The Assembly barred him from entering the building back in February, just a week after he was sworn in.

And just hours after he was expelled, he was arrested in California after leading police on a highway chase.

PBS Newshour report:

A number of news organizations reported today that President Obama will nominate former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel to be secretary of defense next week. But there was no official confirmation from the White House.

Well okey doke, not sure what the big deal is he—

Former Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel has not, so far, been nominated for the top Pentagon job, but attacks like this TV ad began shortly after news accounts named Hagel the front-runner. They focus mostly on whether he’s sufficiently pro-Israel.

So, to lay this one out:

1. We’re running television ads to influence not an election, but a Cabinet appointment.
2. We’re running television ads to influence a Cabinet appointment nominee who hasn’t even been nominated yet.

Oy vey.

~~~~~~~~~~

Here’s a joke snippet from a conversation I had with Colin about that New York Times piece he posted yesterday:

‘Ili: “They called this phenomenon the ‘end of history illusion,’ in which people tend to ‘underestimate how much they will change in the future.’”

‘Ili: Good, I was worried I’d hit a plateau of grumpiness.

Little did I know that it would only take a day for me to get even grumpier.

Greg Sargent says it’s happening. Good news, I say. Jonathan Bernstein however says Reid’s proposal specifically is a bad idea.

Fantastic feature in the New Yorker by Ryan Lizza. The overal thrust of the piece is thusly. Texas has 38 electoral votes — if Texas flips blue it will be nearly impossible for a Republican to make it to the White House. The Hispanic population of Texas is increasing rapidly and there will come a point in the near future where Texas won’t be winnable for Republicans unless they can win a significant share of the Hispanic vote.

A simple observation but Lizza does a lot of really great reporting to underscore this and also to map out what various Republican factions, both in Texas and nationally, are trying to do about it. Set some time aside and read this, for real.

Walter Olson, Cato Institute:

Last week I observed that Question 6, the same-sex marriage law, had racked up strong vote totals in many Republican areas of Maryland and even carried two big GOP-leaning counties. When I wrote that piece I was working from broad county-level election returns. Now that I’ve had a chance to dig into the precinct-level returns, I can report that the story is bigger than I had realized. From the county numbers we knew that many Romney voters in Maryland must have crossed over to support same-sex marriage; now it turns out that Question 6 actually carried many of the state’s best-known GOP strongholds. Republicans voted for Question 6 in serious numbers around all the state’s major centers of population: in the Baltimore and Annapolis areas, in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and in Frederick. And while the trend showed itself everywhere from small farm towns to blue-collar suburbs, it appears to have been strongest in the best-educated and most economically successful Republican communities.

The country is changing. If the Republican Party doesn’t change as well, it risks its very existence.

The two-part referendum first asked voters if they wanted to change Puerto Rico’s 114-year relationship with the United States. A second question gave voters three alternatives if they wanted a change: become a U.S. state, gain independence, or have a “sovereign free association,” a designation that would give more autonomy for the territory of 4 million people.

With 243 of 1,643 precincts reporting late Tuesday, 75,188 voters, or 53 percent, said they did not want to continue under the current political status. Forty-seven percent, or 67,304 voters, supported the status quo.

On the second question, 65 percent favored statehood, followed by 31 percent for sovereign free association and 4 percent for independence.

This isn’t a done deal yet. The next steps are approval by the US Congress and then Puerto Rico would need to adopt a state constitution. But this is a big, big step forward for Puerto Rico becoming the 51st state in the union.

Alfred Chicken is an old platformer for a few systems: Game Boy, NES, etc. It apparently had an unusual advertising campaign in the United Kingdom, according to Wikipedia:

Karl Fitzhugh, the Product Manager of the Amiga version of the Alfred Chicken video game, ran as the Alfred Chicken Party candidate in the 1993 by-election in the Christchurch, Dorset constituency. The exercise was done to promote the original game’s release. Fitzhugh finished second last with 18 votes, two votes ahead of the Rainbow Party candidate.

He also finished five votes behind the “Ian is King” party candidate.

Candice Choi, AP:

During the next presidential debate, the candidates will be pondering the important questions of our time. But the most controversial may be “Sausage or pepperoni?”

Pizza Hut is offering a lifetime of free pizza — one large pie a week for 30 years — or a check for $15,600 to anyone who poses the question to either President Barack Obama or Republican candidate Mitt Romney during the live Town Hall-style debate next Tuesday.

Capitalism failed. We gave it a good run, but if this is what we have to show for it, we might as well just pack it all up.