from the Omaha Reader

Don Walton reported on an idea being floated around by Nebraska Republicans in his Monday column:

Because Washington County already is in the 1st District and bounds Douglas County on the north, why not extend the 1st District boundaries southward and snatch Omaha’s 1st and 2nd Wards?

Move north Omaha’s African-American voters into the Lincoln district to balance population among the House districts, thus avoiding the alternative prospect of considering separation of Bellevue and Offutt Air Force Base from the Omaha district.

Kyle has some further discussion on the proposal over at New Nebraska Network.

Nate Silver has had two great posts today detailing the Senate recount in Minnesota. “Did the Wall Street Journal fire their fact checkers?” takes a look at the facts behind many of the Republican talking points circulating about this race, and “The good news for Coleman” outlines what the Coleman camp is banking their strategy on. Buried in that second post was this gem:

Defeated Presidential candidates sometimes have nine lives, but defeated Senatorial candidates rarely do, and in his career running for statewide office, Coleman has lost to a professional wrestler, beaten a dead guy, and then tied a comedian.

Nebraska cartooning legend Paul Fell has created a new email service — The Daily Felltoon. Subscribers to the service receive a new cartoon in their inbox each business day.

As more newspapers and magazines face growing pressures on their finances, they’ve often made the decision to eliminate high-quality content, including the work of cartoonists. This not only leads to a generally lower quality print product, but it keeps readers from being able to enjoy a more light-hearted view of political and social issues that face everyone, regardless of their political persuasion.

You can sign up to the Daily Felltoon at paulfellcartoons.com/thedailyfelltoon.

from the Lincoln Journal Star

Over the past few months, I’ve been working on art for Powerpop Comics, a new comics publisher out of New Jersey. It was my first stab at an actual comic book, and it has been a fun experience. Everything was kind of under wraps until now, as the site is up, the books are printed and the company is officially in business.

I’m the artist on Weird Thrills, an adventure comic about vampires and that kind of good stuff. The publisher’s intent is to create fun comics that are appropriate for all ages, and I think he’s put together a great story for this. I had no idea what to expect when I got involved, but the story has been a blast to illustrate. It’s also been a great learning experience, as far as the process of putting the pages together goes. I’m penciling, inking, coloring and lettering this thing, so the learning curve was kind of steep, especially with the deadlines.

It’s also refreshing to have a creative outlet that doesn’t involve stepping into the increasingly vicious and decreasingly civil world of political discourse. You have to take a break from that stuff, and a fun adventure story has been the perfect antidote for me.

Powerpop is also releasing a series called Comics Classics, which is comic book adaptations of classic short stories. And if you’re a teacher trying to get your students to read classics, they offer a classroom discount for subscriptions.

No more sales pitches, I promise.

from the San Diego Reader

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from the Lincoln Journal Star

In fairness to Governor Heineman and state GOP leaders, it’s not like Nebraskans have ever forced them to make a sound case for their policy proposals — fear, ignorance and cultural resentment have worked fine so far. I hope to have a column posted within the next few days that makes a reasonable argument against district-based distribution of electoral votes. Nebraska Republicans may wish to take notes if they want to add any intellectual credibility to their case to ensure that the embarrassing blue dot never happens again.

Thanks for a fun 2008, folks.

from thinkprogress.org:

One of the distinguishing characteristics of modern American conservatism is that it believes in a curious concept of “color blindness.” In this view, racism is bad. But absent truly egregious behavior, it’s not something you’d really get all that upset about nor is it something you should be really attuned do. But so-called “political correctness” — meaning something like anti-racism that’s gone too far — is a really serious problem. Any hint of political correctness is worth getting upset about. And the views of actual members of racial minorities as to what is and isn’t racist should be completely discounted. Rather than saying that the prudent and decent white person will steer a mile clear of racist activity — sending out “Barack the Magic Negro” CDs, for example — the best course of action is to deliberately drive straight at the line and then get really upset at anyone who says you’ve crossed it.

This comes on the news that Chip Saltsman’s “Barack the Magic Negro” song parody is actually helping him in his quest to become RNC chairman.