First, the idea floated by Hillary herself that her supporters need some kind of "catharsis" before they can be convinced to vote for the presumptive Democratic candidate is patronizing (matronizing?) on its face. It's exactly the kind of notion that feeds prejudices about why a woman would make a lousy president: that a female is more likely than a male to sacrifice common sense and reason to the altar of emotion, and God help us if her finger is on the button when she's having one of her...days.

It's surprising that a woman as smart as Hillary would buy into that line. Or, maybe it isn't so surprising if you believe that she's really out for Hillary and that the whole "Joan of Arc of the Women's Movement" trope is just her vehicle for getting where she wants to be.

For those "dead-enders" (to quote Donald Rumsfeld, which I try not to do too often), who would rather vote for John McCain or sit on their hands than settle for half a loaf, I have three words: "Supreme Court nominee."

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You don't have to be a big Obama supporter to agree that McCain's current line casting doubt upon his opponent's patriotism is beneath the integrity of a war hero who served his country with distinction, and contrary to the "campaign of issues" he pledged to conduct what seems like eons ago.

There are two possible conclusions to draw here: the charitable one, which is that McCain is truly a man of honor and principle who listens to his advisers too much, which means he's a patsy. Or, that he's a charlatan who's sold his soul to fulfill his dream of becoming President.

So, this is what they call "experience."

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Rising taxes, insurance premiums and the higher cost of just about everything down here are causing more and more of us to question that big move from Up North.

Every once in a while, when we hunker down in our cracker boxes and try to push that storm tracking line on the TV away from us through sheer force of will, those Jersey winters don't seem so tough in retrospect. A little shoveling, big deal. The house was all paid for, for crying out loud. Why DID we move, Herbert?

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It's such a rare event when the good guys (meaning we consumers, as represented by state regulators) win a round, that it's worth a cartoon. In this case, Allstate has been caught using the hurricane threat to gouge customers, and had to pay a hefty fine (along with rebates), the cost of which cannot be passed along to the consumer. I'm sure they'll figure out a way to offload the penalty, regardless. After all, their marketing tells us they're good with their hands.

Speaking of the Good Hands, it's always fun to draw cartoons about insurance companies, because they employ feel-good images like hands, umbrellas, and good neighbors in an attempt to inject a little humanity into what is, at its heart, a rapacious industry selling us an abstract, intangible product. These images create perfect avenues for satire; I've used the hands before in many configurations. Annoyingly, there have been plenty of opportunities to do so.

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The Founding Fathers were pretty smart when they inserted the word "more" into the phrase, "in order to form a more perfect union," in the Constitution. They were recognizing that humans are fundamentally flawed, and that the best they could hope for was to keep improving the forms of government they devised.

The problem with a state-run operation like China's is that the State derives its authority from the assertion that it is inherently perfect, and therefore knows best. Hence, we see the Chinese doing things at the Olympics like substituting a girl with perfect teeth to lip-sync for the real performer, who will now grow up imagining herself to be forever unacceptable to society.

Gymnastics, apparently, favors the really young. So, what does the State do when there's a mandatory minimum age of 16 for contestants? They doctor their papers. This perfection thing is serious business. I was watching the poor Chinese girl who snagged only a bronze in the All-Around behind two Americans. You could read the shame all over her face, a shame that will be handed down in her family for generations. It's a good thing the Chinese won gold in the team competition, or they'd all be herding yaks in Gobi Desert Re-education Camp #14 by now.

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This cartoon tries to combine two ongoing issue threads at the same time: the Edwards scandal in all of its blossoming glory, and Bill Clinton's petulant refusal to recognize that Barack Obama is qualified to be President, even though he repeated throughout the primaries that his wife was ready to take over from Day One.

In a quest for impact, I tried to boil the drawing down to its barest essential elements. All you need to "feel" Bill Clinton is those narrowed eyes, the light-bulb nose, and the authoritative (sometimes accusatory) finger pointed in your face. No point in cluttering it up with distractions like shoulders, shirt, background, or even a neck.

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If we needed some kind of a signal that President Bush considers himself in the home stretch, this is probably it. No longer concerned with his polling numbers, which are in the toilet, he has decided it's time to start distributing plums to his friends.

A recent Presidential directive that does not need the approval of Congress now allows his business-friendly regulatory agencies to approve projects (self-regulate!) without getting the necessary clearances from Fish and Wildlife and the EPA. Creatures whose survival stand in the way of progress have long been a bane of the plutocrats, and now we can satisfy ourselves with photos of what they used to look like. Since Vice-President Cheney prefers shooting his cronies to shooting quail, even he probably won't miss the wildlife anymore.

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