There are no asterisks in spring

But you kind of expect that level of ignorance from somebody who lives somewhere that there is no Major League Baseball.

You get an asterisk after the end of the season when there's something noteworthy about a new record like a longer season or a postitive test for steroids or something like that.

Speaking of record-breaking baseball performances, true trivia: Mark McGwire's dad used to be my dentist.

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Joe's hair has grown out

...but his eyes remain closed. Having spent about fifteen minutes at Joe Biden's photo gallery trying to find a picture I could use in yesterday's post, I can appreciate how hard it is to find a picture of the guy were he isn't either facing away from the camera, out of focus, badly lit, or any combination of the above.

As for the "joke," yes, I know about the time delays and all that, but everyone else has managed to get their Ana Nicole and Brittney jokes in on time (and funnier) I suppose we should just be thankful that these came in 2007 and not 2027.

Meanwhile, the L.A. Times has dropped Marmaduke to return La Cucaracha to the comics pages. Franklin Avenue is pushing for a return of Candorville, and while I agree that it's a good strip, I fear that the Faustian bargain that would allow it to reappear on the comics pages might also result in Get Fuzzy being dropped for the return of Mallard Fillmore.

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It's name recognition week

And to prove his point that nobody knows who Joe Biden is, Bruce Tinsley draws a generic white guy (with his eyes closed, of course) to illustrate his strip.

Come on, Bruce, we've got a guy who creates material for satirists. That's storybook, man.

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1 down, 400 to go

Today, as part of Tribune Company mandatory cost reductions, the L.A. Times had a ritualitistic blood letting on the comics pages resulting in the dropping of several comic strips, including Mallard Fillmore (as a matter of balance Candorville, which is sometimes funny also disappeared along with La Cucaracha, which was rarely funny and had an eye-melting visual style which I won't miss). Doonesbury and Prickly City remain, as does, inexplicably, Rex Morgan M.D.

As for today's strip, name recognition of Clinton? Of course people remember Clinton. The republicans have been trying to blame everything that's gone wrong for the last six years on him. Curse him for abandoning the search for Osama bin Laden to embroil us in an endless quagmire in Iraq.

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Postings to resume shortly

It's nice to know you guys miss me. I should be back tomorrow, Wednesday at the latest.

Guess the missing last panel

Because the ellipsis at the end of the current last panel indicates that it does continue.

I'm guessing that the final punchline to what Ryan Phillipe Dennis Hopper is saying is that the boomers didn't have real jobs because between Bush and Reagan, they were downsized, outsourced and just plain laid off out those jobs.

In googlebombing news, What's wrong with Mallard Fillmore is now #17 in the results for "Mallard Fillmore" and #39 for "Bruce Tinsley" up by 2 and 3 spots respectively). Here's your cut and paste googlebombing code if you haven't already put it in your blog.

<a href="http://whatswrongwithmallardfillmore.blogspot.com">Mallard Fillmore</a>
<a href="http://whatswrongwithmallardfillmore.blogspot.com">Bruce Tinsley</a>

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So here's a question

If the bow-tied bald-headed bespectactled liberal doesn't know any conservatives and is completely mystified by them, why is he pouring out his heart to a conservative duck?

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I've got nothing here

Bruce has apparently learned that it's easier to have a joke if you have dialog, although there's a tendency to have the words REALLY HUGE not realizing that it's the pictures as much as the text that make for a comic strip. And there's nothing factually incorrect about a child going to college and coming back conservative (although this is worth remembering in August/September when Bruce will go off on one of his America's colleges are dens of liberal indoctrination rants). They also sometimes come back as Hare Krishnas, alcoholics and/or prostitutes.

And I guess there's something to be said about panel two, after all, I didn't realize that conservatives ate children. I think, though, that they only think they're eating endangered species.

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Because, you see, Bruce Tinsley lives in libertarian wonderland

We've also determined that he lives in some sort of time warp. I actually had yesterday off (my wife too). And the Federal Employee that comes to our door most days, aka the mailman, was missed (OK, so it was because of netflix mostly). And apparently Bruce forgot about the government shutdown orchestrated by the republicans back in the late 90s. And like Bruce, they underestimated the extent to which people do notice and appreciate the role of government in their lives.

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Who's a good president

Sure, the duck is entitled to have a favorite president, even if he can't draw him very well (I'm assuming that it's supposed to be the right wing's minor deity, Ronald Reagan). Not much very funny there though.

I suppose that I could point out that the reason no mail came today is because this is the federal holiday called Washington's Birthday (no matter what cartoon ducks or matress salesmen will tell you). I am, after all, here to educate.

Or better still, I can point out the reason why Reagan is such a demigod among the right wingers. It's because he managed in his second term (but not his first) to have the first Republican administration since Harding-Coolidge to manage to have job growth exceed population growth. I mean sure, every single democratic administration (except for one term of Roosevelt, when the country was in the grips of the Great Depression and Europe was sliding into World War II) managed the feet, even Jimmy Carter's administration. So I suppose I could educate people a bit more by pointing out that on every measure of economic well-being and controlling for anything you want Democratic presidencies do a better job of managing the economy than Republican presidencies do, but then I'd have to provide a disclaimer:
Update: Speaking of blown opportunities, Prickly City reminds us that it's two weeks since the astronaut story and Candorville adds that it's two weeks since Anna Nicole Smith. Mallard Fillmore squanders his short lead time by reminding us that it's been one-hundred and forty-two weeks since Ronald Reagan died. And 932 weeks since he left office.

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Are conservatives more generous?

OK, so I managed to find the Jonah Goldberg column. Read it. Marvel at Bruce Tinsley's lack of reading comprehension. Jonah Goldberg in fact, explicitly warns at making precisely the claim that Tinsley does.

And let's note that the Goldberg column is referring to the same study in his second footnote that Goldberg is in his column. So we get two citations out of one study. And as any good social scientist knows, a single study, taken in isolation isn't particularly useful, especially when the study doesn't really compare what you think it does (note that Goldberg has to take the route charitable giving ➝ religiousness ➝ political conservatism). It's been years since I've had access to GSS data and the tools to analyze it, but I'd imagine that one could check the strength of this correlation with the questioning in that survey). I would argue that that last correlation is probably the weakest of the lot and one that's already beginning to break down as religious folk begin to realize that political conservatism is, in fact, generally the direct opposite of what their religious tradition teaches (or so says the devout Catholic who's never intentionally voted for a Republican in his life).

It is worth noting that the most charitable are the working poor (in terms of percentage of their income) while the middle-class are the least charitable. But I think that there's a lot to be said about having disposable income as a factor in giving and the fact that working poor incomes are so low that even a widow's mite of a contribution can be a larger fraction of their income than is the largesse of the wealthy (many of whom donate for the explicit reason of tax avoidance).

But that said, my cursory search found nothing but commentary on the Brooks study, most of which seemed to be of the flavor: See, I told you those damned secular liberals weren't giving their money away.

Having said all of this about charity, let me point you at one that is worth giving to, regardless of your political affiliation: My friend Camilo is doing the AIDS LifeCycle challenge. He's supposed to raise a total of $2500 for the ride and is just one tenth of the way there. So follow the link there, put a donation on your credit card (tack on an $.07 if you're conservative, $.11 if you're liberal, and let's see who's more generous). I'm already in for $100 (donated before the liberal/conservative challenge went into effect).

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The bad poetry continues

Continued evidence that Bruce Tinsley's love life must be awful. I know commenters have pointed out that his biography says that he's married with kids, but I don't believe it. The bio I sent my high school reunion organizers says that I won the Nobel Peace Prize (I sent it before I one Time's person of the year).

Sentiment aside, the scansion continues to be awful in Bruce's poetry although the inner couplet cold have been easily fixed:

So why are you irate...
That Because this card is late

(the strike out and bold shows the edit). Perhaps Bruce needs a new way to sublimate those frustrated desires.

And since it's Saturday, let me point out my advertiser in the left corner and the fact that there are ostensibly related objects of crass commercialism that you can buy from amazon at the bottom of the page (actually, the links at the bottom of the page seem to also be influenced by what you've looked at on amazon as well, and occasionally are just plain random).

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After a flashback to 1998, I guess this is timely

We know that the duck has a two-week lead time, same as Doonesbury. So how come the Doonesbury strips on Rosie vs Trump are already a distant memory? How long has it been since this whole dust-up? I did a quick look in the Doonesbury archives to see when his strips on the topic took place. It's been over two weeks, so at least Bruce didn't just look at Doonesbury and try to make a lame joke.

I can't wait until June when we'll be treated to some witty humor on the death of Anna Nicole Smith, the people's playmate.

In the google-bombing progress report, I've moved up from number 24 to number 19 on the search results for "Mallard Fillmore." For "Bruce Tinsley" I'm at 42, which is higher than somewhere in who-knows-where last time I checked. If you want to contribute to What's wrong with Mallard Fillmore being the number one site when people search for "Mallard Fillmore" or "Bruce Tinsley, instructions are here. If you don't have a blog, the other thing you can do is to a google search on mallard fillmore or bruce tinsley, dig through the results until you find "What's Wrong with Mallard Fillmore". I'm not entirely sure that this amounts to anything, but since Google owns blogger maybe it does affect the ratings.

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Oh God, PLEASE make it stop

The cardinal rule of comics is that once the holiday's over, you move on to another topic for jokes. Unless, of course you're Bruce Tinsley and you're so busy supporting the troops you forget Veteran's Day (even though it's always November 11th), or you decide that your "wit" demands that you continue your "Mallentines" on the 15th and beyond.

Because, gee, there's nothing funnier than Bill Clinton is promiscuous jokes.

And I thought that Bill was supposed to be responsible for her career, and not her baggage. Bruce, you only get to have it one way.

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Bruce Tinsley admits it.

It turns out that all of my speculation about his love life is true (read the strip). Gee Bruce, maybe if you weren't such a racist misogynist, you'd be able to get a date.

In the Walter Williams watch category, there's another article. Well, not an article actually, more an opinion piece by a Wall Street Journal guy, well not really an opinion piece, more a bit of lame reportage to fill the contracted number of column inches.

Because it's all about Hillary vs Obama

One of the recurring features of Mallard Fillmore is the misogyny which is barely concealed beneath the surface. In a lot of ways, Bruce Tinsley is the classic movie serial-killer: He hates women because he ain't getting any (it would explain the whole drunk driving thing too).

Let's see what's wrong today. At this point, there's not much pointing out the complete lack of scansion (although at least he does get AABBA right). But there is the standard-issue viewpoint that the dem primary is pure Barack vs. Clinton (never mind that Edwards has strong support, Clark and Gore aren't officially in (yet), and it's all a year away. Heck in November of 2003, I boldly predicted that John Kerry was going to be the first to drop out of the dem primary, an outcome which turned out to be far from the truth).

Then there's the claim that Hillary Clinton married her way to the spotlight. See, there's why I brought up the misogyny. Any serious observer of politics has to recognize that in fact, Hillary's marriage was the exact opposite of that: By marrying Bill, she ended up putting her own political career on hold for decades, and while it's certainly true that without the name she wouldn't have been a serious contender in New York in 2000, it's also certainly true, that without the marriage, she wouldn't have needed the name because she would have had a long serious political career of her own. She's far from my first choice in the dem primary, but she sure ain't the K-Fed of politics.

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Wrong in so many ways

Of course there's the formal things: Like something that I suppose is maybe a really weak attempt at a limerick, although usually Bruce at least gets the rhyme scheme and here we have something like ?ABBA.

Or "Mallentine" which I suppose is supposed to be Mallard+Valentine and rhyme with Valentine, but the double-L makes it seem like it's an ode to indoor retailing.

Or #23, which implies, that there are 22 more of these in the Bruce Tinsley archives.

How about the substance? Dude, nobody offers a rival a cabinet position as a consolation prize. VP maybe (unless you have Dick Cheney search the country for the best VP candidate), but not cabinet. And while I'm sure that every candidate would like every other candidate to drop out, this sort of deal-making just doesn't happen.

It does, I suppose, give Bruce a chance to draw a poor charicature of Hillary.

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Things I learned from today's Mallard Fillmore

• Bruce Tinsley ain't getting any
• Bruce Tinsley ain't ever getting any.

Because, after all, nothing says romance like, honey I'm so cheap I'll write up a poem that doesn't scan which promises you a gift the day after Valentine's day with the lame excuse that I don't want to spend a lot of money on you.

As for the blue-haired dark-skinned woman (I'm assuming she's African-American), perhaps this is the real reason behind the whole Walter Williams thing: He's trying to impress some black chick and thought that if he endorsed a black guy it'd give him some cred.

Because, after all, black women are totally into middle-aged white alcoholics who support right-wing black crackpots.

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Maybe he thinks one article is victory

Guess what! There's actually media coverage of the Walter Williams-Mallard Fillmore thing.

OK, it's the Washington Times, but it is at least a newspaper, sort of. You can read the article here along with commentary here, here, here and here. I wouldn't bother though, here's the short and easy-to-digest version: Walter Williams isn't running because Mrs Williams won't let him. He's received "hundreds" of supportive e-mails, almost as many e-mails supporting him running as offering to sell him v!agra without a prescription.

As for today's strip, come on, everybody who follows politics (including the media folks), knows at least one prominent black conservative.

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Maybe he doesn't know what "threaten" means

Anyone remember way back when, the duck saying that he was "going to threaten an African-American"?

Then he went on to write:

I think it's high time you were reviled, vilified, slurred, demonized and discriminated against by the media!
/
I demand that you run for president!!

That's not a threat. Not even close.

There's no outrage because (a) you didn't make a threat and (2) you're a cartoon duck! With random italicization and too many exclamation points!!

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