I’ll be participating in Omaha’s 24 Hour Comics Day this year. Check out Doomkopf.com for all the info.

There’s been an absence of cartoons here lately, and there will be until tomorrow, so please enjoy this great cartoon from Jeff Koterba in yesterday’s Omaha World-Herald. Regular readers of this blog are probably expecting me to be sarcastic, but I thought it was excellent.

FiveThirtyEight.com features Omaha (and that one electoral vote) in its latest On the Road entry.

I’m glad to see someone in Lincoln is a Daily Dish reader too.

Check out the dozens of recently uploaded cartoons by Lincoln artist Pawl Tisdale. They are hilarious.

Here’s a sample of what you’re in for:

Threatened Journalist is a new anonymous blog from someone within the San Diego Union-Tribune. It provides some honest and depressing insight as to what it’s like inside a crumbling paper. Today’s post is about the temptation to discourage interns from entering the newspaper business; yesterday’s was about the departure of longtime columnist Gerry Braun.

from today’s staff editorial:

You may have noticed that some of our news stories have been missing a few noticeable voices recently. Those voices include University of Nebraska-Lincoln Chancellor Harvey Perlman, other campus vice chancellors, associate vice chancellors and many more sources you’ve grown to expect to read in our coverage of important campus topics.
…
Let us explain the situation our reporters are encountering: These people, mainly administrators, aren’t talking to us. Therefore, we can’t interview them. Without interviews, we can’t quote them in our stories. Here’s why:

At the beginning of the school year, our newly developed projects desk started asking for documents from university officials.

Let’s just say our administration wasn’t too happy with us asking for documents, and soon some of the most important voices on campus received an e-mail from Susan Poser, associate to the chancellor, telling them that Perlman said to not answer any questions or look into any inquiries or requests for documents from journalists working at the Daily Nebraskan…

I had a request for this a few weeks ago and kept forgetting to put it up, so in the absence of a Reader cartoon this week, here’s the cover art for the Lincoln Journal Star‘s football preview Sunday supplement from last month. The request was to portray coach Bo Pelini as a superhero.

And as always, I love to show the stages…
Continue reading →

From The Daily Dish:

We are being asked to believe that [Obama] called Sarah Palin a pig. If the people making that accusation have half a brain they know it’s not true. This is not a question of interpretation. It is a fact. So we now find out again that John McCain is prepared to tell an absolute lie – in public, verifiable, uncontestable.

He does not have the minimal public integrity to be president of the United States.

The Economists for Obama blog addresses the hypocrisy, including McCain’s own use of the phrase when discussing Hillary Clinton’s healthcare plan and McCain’s joke about Chelsea Clinton being ugly. Just add it to the list of intellectually dishonest rules these people expect everyone but themselves to follow. I say “these people” because there are conservatives, including the above quoted Andrew Sullivan, who are disgusted at what “conservatism” has become.

Anyone who watched Palin and McCain’s speeches knows they’re not above telling blatant lies. Anyone who’s seen Steve Schmidt continue to claim Obama will raise everyone’s federal taxes knows they’ll lie to anyone who’ll listen.

The important thing to remember behind this is that, with the exception of Schmidt, these lies aren’t coming from surrogates, angry bloggers or passionate supporters; these lies are coming straight from McCain and Palin themselves. Whether it’s regarding the bridge to nowhere, the plane on ebay or Obama’s proposals, they are continuing to repeat things they know to be untrue.

UPDATE: And how does the McCain campaign characterize Obama’s support of a bill that taught children warning signs to protect themselves from sexual predators? Why, it’s “Barack Obama wants to teach sex ed to kindergartners!” As Sullivan has now said, “McCain has demonstrated in the last two months that he does not have the character to be president of the United States … And McCain – no one else – has proved it.”

UPDATED AGAIN! Now McCain’s new ad, called “Fact Check,” lies about FactCheck.org!

In “its latest ad, released Sept. 10, the McCain-Palin campaign has altered our message in a fashion we consider less than honest,” Factcheck said Wednesday on its website. “The ad strives to convey the message that FactCheck.org said ‘completely false’ attacks on Gov. Sarah Palin had come from Sen. Barack Obama. We said no such thing. We have yet to dispute any claim from the Obama campaign about Palin.

• Read Apology not Accepted by Joe Klein.
• More at the New York Times Caucus blog: Rendell: ‘The Big Lie Strategy’