This image has been doing the rounds, but best I can tell, this is the source. Note the request to preserve spending while cutting the ability to pay for it.

Nebraska’s “Tea Party” gets some national attention, likely getting forwarded around thanks to its stupidity — “No taxation without representation” was apparently the chant of the day. Bravo, morans.

So Ben Nelson has claimed he is leaning against the budget because of how much it is going to cost, even though he is fighting efforts to change student loan subsidies that would save taxpayers $4 billion per year.

Well, he’s now also one of nine Democratic senators who voted to cut the estate tax for multi-millionaires at a cost of $250 billion over the first ten years, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

from yesterday’s Washington Post:

This would have been outrageous even before the current economic and fiscal mess. Now it is outrageous and nonsensical. Senators should not be fooled by estimates that understate the true cost of this tax cut or promises that it will be paid for somehow. Any senator considering voting for this amendment should ask him or herself: Even if that were true, aren’t there better uses of hundreds of billions of dollars than reducing taxes even further for the tiny sliver of Americans subject to the estate tax?
[…]
The hypocrisy here is breathtaking. Reducing the estate tax would harm charities because it eliminates some of the incentive for making charitable bequests — yet some of the very senators who back estate tax cuts were quick to denounce Obama administration tax proposals that they argued would hurt charitable giving. More fundamentally, it is hard to stomach those who argue for more tax cuts — and then bemoan the failure to stanch rising deficits.

Most of why I hate April Fool’s Day is because a good number of people have confused clever pranks or satire with just telling lies.

Another reason why I hate April Fool’s Day is because sometimes there is genuine news that is so absurd you are afraid to treat it seriously. And unfortunately, Congressional Republicans released their budget today. I just have to wonder how this budget — which responds to the last eight years by calling for more tax breaks for the rich and contrasts itself with Democratic budgets offered from people who haven’t been born yet — differs from something a satirist might’ve written up to mock how absolutely insane the House Republicans have gotten.

I’m seriously open to the idea that I’m just falling for an elaborate dirty-lib-blogosphere prank. But after last week’s disaster, which fell on the inconspicuous March 26, I consider myself pretty susceptible.

I know I promised no more sales pitches, but this whole comic book artist thing is fun, and so talking about something I genuinely enjoy doing doesn’t feel nearly as shameless as “please buy this!” which was what I imagined when I made the aforementioned promise.

I just wrapped up art on issue #2 of Weird Thrills, one of the offerings from new publisher Powerpop Comics. You can see a few of the pages at Powerpop publisher Hobby Jones’ blog. I’m working on the cover this afternoon, which I have started documenting over at my neglected portfolio site, cheeksofgod.com. Once that’s finished, I’ll start working on the art for an Edgar Allan Poe bio that will run as the backup story in Graphic Classics #1, another Powerpop title.

So I guess the sales pitch part is this: I like illustrating these comic books, so the more copies get sold, the longer I’ll get to do it. You can buy subscriptions and individual copies at the Powerpop website — $2.99 per issue, $16.95 for a 6-issue subscription of either Weird Thrills or Graphic Classics, or $26.95 for a 12-issue subscription (6 issues of both titles at a 25% discount).

If you subscribe, I’d be happy to autograph your copies or send you a character sketch or something like that.

You’re going to get a bonus cartoon this month — I’ll tell you that much.

10. I think this was my not-so-subtle attempt to send a message to the Journal Star regarding their choice of syndicated cartoons.

9.

8. I may be able to do a Top 10 Rejected Mark Christensen Cartoons of 2009.

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2. Ernie Goss and the Platte Institute were such fertile territory that they’re going to get two cartoons in one chart position.

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Previous top rejects of the month: February | January

Jonathan Chait has a new article in The New Republic about Obama’s problems with forming a solid bond among the Democrats in Congress, much of which is due to the inherently contradictory goals of the so-called centrists. The article devotes a good chunk of space to Ben Nelson, surely thanks to just how easy Nelson makes it to point out the utter absurdity in his policy positions.

The most emblematic objection has come from Nelson, who is balking at Obama’s plan to save money on college loans. You might suppose that a fiscal conservative like Nelson would agree with Obama’s plan to save $4 billion on a social program. But he does not, for reasons that provide a useful window into the rot afflicting the congressional Democratic Party.
[…]
Obama thus proposes to save the taxpayers more than $4 billion per year by ending the guaranteed loans. This is as straightforward a case as you can find of a fight between special interests and the public good. Nelson opposes it because one of the lenders that benefits from federal overpayments is based in Lincoln, Nebraska.

as printed in Saturday’s Lincoln Journal Star:

Long-term deficit predictions have proven notoriously fickle — George W. Bush inherited flawed projections of a 10-year, $5.6 trillion surplus and instead produced record deficits — and if the economy outperforms CBO’s expectations, the deficits could prove significantly smaller.

You’ve got to admire this version of history. The surplus-turned-record deficits we saw at the end of 2008 apparently had nothing to do with eight years of massive tax giveaways, the huge prescription drug benefits or two ongoing wars — the CBO just issued “flawed projections” in 2000.

You can see a peak of what I was teasing here by visiting The Cowboy Dave Band’s myspace page.