There are a limited number of signed copies of TOO MUCH CRAZY now available in the Topatoco store.

I love watching Krugman open a fresh can of whup-ass, particularly when David Brooks is the recipient. This morning he responds (without mentioning his op-ed colleague by name, of course) to Brook’s recent praise of Charles Murray’s latest.

So we have become a society in which less-educated men have great difficulty finding jobs with decent wages and good benefits. Yet somehow we’re supposed to be surprised that such men have become less likely to participate in the work force or get married, and conclude that there must have been some mysterious moral collapse caused by snooty liberals. And Mr. Murray also tells us that working-class marriages, when they do happen, have become less happy; strange to say, money problems will do that.

Speaking of Brooks, his own column this morning provides reason number elventy billion and fifteen why David Brooks is a Weasel:

I don’t actually know what sort of person Romney is. He’s a reticent man. He’s unwilling to talk about his roots, home and family history, so it is hard to understand what’s really going on in his head. But he is giving the impression of being a classic other-directed type.

So Romney doesn’t talk about his family history, because he’s reticent you see, kind of a Gary Cooper type. Man of few words.

Oh, also, this:

The candidate’s great-grandfather, Miles Park Romney, was born in 1843 in Nauvoo, Ill., where Joseph Smith founded the Mormon church. Miles Park Romney had five wives and 30 children, and fled to Mexico after passage of the 1882 Edmunson Act that barred polygamy. Among the first Mormons to settle in to the rolling Mexican valley bordering Texas, Miles Park Romney married his fifth wife after the church banned the practice in 1890.

If I were running for President and had an interesting story like that in the family tree, I might be “reticent” too.

An article in CJR about the declining fortunes of political cartooning. Update: There’s apparently a second piece in the works in which our efforts at Daily Kos to counter the trend will be discussed.

We added some new cartoonists to the Comics section at Daily Kos last week — Keith Knight, Brian McFadden, and Ruben Bolling will be running at 6 pm Eastern on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, respectively. There is now officially nothing else like this on the internet. Many kudos to Markos for his continued support of this little art form of ours.

I’m a big proponent of getting outside of your life and exploring things simply because they interest you. I think it’s particularly vital for those of us who toil in the sewers of political discourse to have other enthusiasms, which is at least partly why I went on a NASA Tweetup over Thanksgiving, to see the launch of the Mars rover, Curiosity. It was a great experience — met some fantastic people, spent a few days exploring the Kennedy Space Center and surrounding wildlife refuge, and saw a rocket launch. As I heard someone say, it was like a field trip for grownups! Many more photos below the fold.
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February 1, 2012
State of the primary

…also: today’s comic here.

Bucking contemporary trends, the Chattanooga Pulse is actually adding a comics page. They kicked it off with an interview with me.

Saw this Nam June Paik installation* at the local Target this morning.

*Not really a Nam June Paik installation.

Have been making selections for an Italian compilation of This Modern World, to be published sometime in the spring. Now I just need to find a new American publisher. (Any interested editors should feel free to contact me!)

… adding: the strip runs in 80 papers, as well as on the most widely-read liberal political site on the internet; I’ve got 24K followers on Twitter. Surely there must be a publisher out there somewhere who is intrigued by numbers such as these?

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Jan. 25, 2012
Bedbug Man

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