I've missed Honey, and I'm glad she's back. I bet Duke has missed her even more, but he will never admit it.

Perhaps it is time to change Honey's choice of wardrobe. I understand that the green suit is satirical, but I think it betrays and feeds an ignorance among Americans as to what China is really like. When she was Duke's lackey in America it was kind of funny -- an old guard Chinese lovingly slaving for her master -- but it really doesn't fit an Olympic bureaucrat, and it gives the impression (as she is the only Chinese person we see) that all Chinese are still colorblind, brainwashed robots. Considering how often I see the word "Commies" used pejoratively for the Chinese on American forum boards, perhaps we should be sensitive as to how we view, and dehumanize, this nation.

I'm voting for McCain, but I laugh just as hard at the strips that poke fun at McCain as I do at the ones that poke fun at Obama. It is a pleasure to see balance restored to Doonesbury. In the 2004 campaign, it was all Bush, all the time. John Kerry got a free pass. Balance is good, balance is funny, balance is a public service. It helps the citizens decide who to vote for.

I was just reading your Blowback page and the discussion about Obama in Europe. "No one's ever campaigned for President in Europe before." I would wonder about that, but probably no other candidate has ever be so popular in Europe. Hey, even we Europeans are longingly waiting for a successor to Bush who is a bit more open-minded to the world. The world is actually facing lots of challenges and we urgently hope that the States may help to bear them, not to increase them by deepening wars, environmental pollution, their economical recession and so on. Who wonders that thousands of people in Berlin were keen to make their one picture of a promising successor? Maybe other candidates have tried to campaign in Europe, but the necessity for a better successor has never before been as strong, so nobody cared...

Thirty years ago I had the Rent-A-Puppy idea. The part of the business plan you missed is that older dogs become breeding stock -- so the business can continue. Hourly, daily or weekend rentals. To carry this one step forward with the same business model: Rent-A-Baby...

I loved today's strip. A friend of mine recorded a song called "Chick Magnet," about, well, cute puppies attracting chicks! He and another friend of ours who has a few-months-old baby girl have been trying to decide which is a bigger chick magnet: the puppy or the baby.

I believe the answer Rick is looking for is "Ron Paul."

It is no stretch of the imagination to say that Obama is making the same type of splash in the world as the Beatles or the Pope. I think he'll be good for us!

Thanks for Sunday's strip, Garry. I've been a George fan since 1966.

Okay. Okay. We are dying to know what the Obama character will look like.

Today's strip about Obama, with his one trip, being the first person to ever campaign in Europe for President ignores the fact that almost every candidate for the U.S. President in recent years has "campaigned" in countries overseas. John McCain has made eight (yes, eight!) trips to various countries during this campaign. The remarkable coverage Obama received is certainly an item for the journalistic world to explain, but, perhaps it is because Obama was so successful in his mission and others were not...

In today's strip Joanie says, "No one's ever campaigned for President in Europe before." Only partly true. In 1998, while building his image as a presidential hopeful, then-Governor Bush paid a visit to Israel in what was seen as a campaign maneuver. Not exactly Europe, but serving a similar purpose as Obama's recent visit: establishing himself as a player on the world stage.

Today's strip is funny, though when I first started reading it I thought they were watching the legal proceeding from Guantanamo and every other word was bleeped out. Forget about the seven dirtiest words, they won't even let any language through.

It's going to be rather difficult to book Wilford Brimley for McCain's event. He's dead. Of course that might all be part of the joke, I guess. He could appear at McCain's event the way he does in the Liberty Medical "Diabetes" commercials, through the magic of an extensive archive of pre-recorded statements....

Editor's note: It has been brought to our attention that Wilfrid Brimley is very much alive. We regret the error, but are glad to find out that it was one.

I've been following the current storyline with Sid trying to help with the McCain entertainment thing. Possibly Sid could recruit the barbershop quartet from the "Swift Boat Veterans For Truth", so popular a few years back.

B.D. drinking; Please! He's having one beer. And, BTW, if the scenario of a wounded vet, shit-canned by a careless and irresponsible government, doesn't make you want to down a sixpack, your heart is not in the right place...

Connie Stevens is for McCain. Thought you'd like to know. Keep on! Excelsior!

Not to be too picky, but Obama is giving his speech at Invesco Field at Mile High, not Mile High stadium. Mile High Stadium, which despite its age many fans adored for the park's industrial aesthetic and loud steel decking, was demolished in 2002. Although Invesco has many more luxury boxes, more stalls in the women's bathrooms, and gourmet concessions, the newer stadium holds no industrial charm and no great Mile High memories, and consequently generates little fan devotion. The Field was even referred to by its sponsors, Invesco, as "the big diaphragm" (as reported by local media). And given the levels of success achieved by the Broncos in recent years, Obama's appearance at Invesco Field is pretty likely to be the most captivating event to ever occur there.

B.D.'s beer drinking does not, of itself, automatically portend a relapse, but we do worry about our fictional friends, don't we? Neither do I want B.D., Boopsie or Sam to suffer, but one of the things that makes his story successful is that it is both satirical and authentic. Trudeau has managed to tell a compelling story without falling into pathos, melodrama or other soap opera traps. Whatever happens next will, I believe, appropriately advance the story.

I am absolutely horrified to see B.D. drinking again. I had such hope for him after he said, "Not a drop since December 3rd ... I overheard my daughter say she was afraid of me." (I believe the strip in question was April 18, 2006.) B.D.'s been such a drunk, for so very long, and it's caused his family so much pain (not to mention the potential damage to his liver). Does this mean he's relapsed?

"But isn't that all just politics?" I know it's been said before, but, this stuff is sheer genius. The last few weeks have been brilliant. I vote for more sabbaticals.

Jody Morrissey need not worry. Subtlety is not required. Too bad you couldn't work in a choice D) Oh, yeah? Google "John McCain, Islamic terrorist" and you get 2.7 million hits!

In the current Straw Poll about the New Yorker "Politics of Fear" cover my vote for "C" is satire. I wonder if the choices offered are subtle enough to register this...

I think it is great that so many people care about religious persecution. It is very telling, however, that the strip must focus on the persecution of Christians to get people riled up. If the strips had been about oppressed Kurds, Jews or a particular Muslim minority in Iraq, would people be demonstrating so much concern?

In today's strip, Alex says it's "too late" for her to promise to remain sexually abstinent until marriage. Not so! A large part of the 'purity pledge' phenomenon is 'secondary virginity'. Quoting from the True Love Waits site: "You may have been involved in premarital sexual activity and wish you could blot it out of your past and be rid of all the memories. ...This second virginity comes by asking for God's forgiveness through Jesus and by committing to stay sexually abstinent until marriage."

Of course, publications such as Congressional Quarterly and the Kaiser Family Foundation have reported that abstinence vows only delay the average onset of sexual activity approximately 12-18 months. And studies from the CDC and the National Institute of Child Health show that abstinence vows do nothing to lower STD rates -- it only means that those teens are less likely to use protection once they do have sex (which most of them do end up doing, anyway).

In the end, you have to ask yourself, which is better: Rushing into a poorly planned lifelong commitment because your hormones are raging but you've sworn to "wait until marriage"? Or educating yourself about your personal rights, STDs, pregnancy, and all of the physical and emotional risks involved; obtaining the proper protection and understanding how to use it; and then experimenting sexually until you find the right life partner for you?

I think, in a left-handed way, this is the point GBT is making. Right now, it's not Gee-Dub's problem, and he's not making it his problem. The problem is that of Middle Eastern Christians. And it appears they're having a hard time coping. Also, I imagine the American military finds inter-group violence of any kind to be a problem for them and their mission in the region. (On a separate note, I wonder where the "99.9%" figure came from...)

Reading today's strip with Roland Hedley talking over the news drove home the contrast between US TV news and most foreign TV news, like the BBC, German, French, and the Arab collection you can see via Link TV. Watching these, you realize how little actual information US TV news offers.

Thank you for the recent Doonesbury storyline on the problems facing Middle Eastern Christians due to the military and political conflicts ongoing in the region. As a Christian in America who has had the privilege of meeting some of these fine people, I have been trying to bring attention to their situation. The media (especially Fox News) and even the evangelical leaders (Pat Robertson, the late Jerry Falwell, John Hagee, Rod Parsley, and others) refuse to consider it, since the Middle Eastern Christians are not "their" kind of Christians -- and because supporting those followers of Christ comes into conflict with their ideological reading of the Bible, which reading sees the political state of Israel as absolutely essential to God's plan for the end of the world. Any people(s) who find themselves in conflict with that Israeli state are siding with the enemies of God. (Bad theology and bad ideology lead to persecution and hardship for good people.)

Again, thank you for telling the difficult story of these Middle Eastern Christians. May it have some positive effect on opening people's minds to understand the impact our actions have on people who share many of our beliefs and values!

With regard to the current series about Iraqi exiles, especially the strip today, I am only partially amused by the FOX News mike. In point of fact, the talking heads at MSNBC and CNN do the same thing. Namely, they do not let the folks making the news actually speak for themselves, or even report fully and accurately what the folks making the news have said or done. Instead, the reporters tend to talk, on and on and on, among themselves, often speaking at the same time. The viewer is left pretty much uninformed.

It would be great if Roland could also report on the Kurds. We haven't heard much about them lately.

It's not just the Arab Christians. There are Israeli Christians, Egyptian Christians, Iranian Christians -- Christians in every nation of the Middle East. They get it from all sides. Some claim that Christians are the most persecuted religious group on earth. While that might overstate the case, Christians are having a hard time in the larger Middle East conflict, and their story has not been told. Thank you for giving them a shout-out.

It seems to me it's not George Bush's fault that 99.9% of Arab Muslims can't tolerate living with people who don't share their religion, when there is no dictator making them do so.

Thank you for the new story line here. We have several friends that were over in Iraq, and one talked about one of the "car bombs" that was reported as killing people at a market. It was a market area located outside a Christian Church that had just finished services and everyone was leaving. He directed me to a site that an Iraqi friend of his started up to report on the many bombings, kidnappings and attacks on Iraqi Christians of every denomination. This is the second most under-reported story out of Iraq, the first being that the coalition forces are doing good things.

I agree with Linda Weinberg that it would be wrong to think that Costco employees are somehow not worthy. However, in the context of the strip, I understood B.D. and Toggle's mom to be making, for the sake of humor, the deliberately obtuse assumption that Toggle was asking BD to buy him a girlfriend at Costco, as though girlfriends were among the merchandise that Costco stocks. Employees never entered my mind. FWIW.

Great strip today, about the endless equivocations. Whenever they bombed civilians in Afghanistan, it was always "Taliban and Al Qaeda leadership," until they hit the Canadians. And now they're back to denying it every single time. It's from the same bag of tricks as hiding the coffins and the military funerals. This is what they've learned from Vietnam: lie shamelessly through your teeth; it's enough to fool 51% of actual voters once every four years.

I just want to say how much I appreciate the current series regarding Christian refugees from Iraq. I'm so pleased that someone has the foresight to "get behind the news." I'm particularly saddened that the 15 year old child had to go to her "work" as a prostitute. (Yes, I know it is a comic strip, but these things no doubt happen).

The storyline involving Roland and the Iraqi Christian family deals with an under-told aspect of the whole Iraqi scene. Under Saddam Hussein, Iraq's Christian minority (Assyrian Orthodox, Chaldean Catholics, and a number of smaller Protestant groups) had far more freedoms than Christian minorities in most other Middle Eastern countries. People who know the Iraqi scene say that this is largely because Saddam in his youth had a number of close friends who were Christians.

Post-Saddam, the Christian minorities are in a double bind. Iraqis who opposed Saddam see the Christians as people who benefitted from Saddam's regime. Iraqis who supported Saddam (or who support various extremist Islamist groups) associate the local Christians with the West.

This is another example of reality being far more complicated than ideology would allow.

I think I like this new story from Syria. It's about time the people who GWB wanted to liberate (or said he wanted to liberate) got a chance to tell Trudeau's readers about the result. The dead or wounded US soldiers are not the only victims.

In fact this story is what I waited a long time for and what I expected, when the artist took a three months leave...

Todays strip perfectly illustrates the bullying that war supporters do and their simplistic ways of distilling complex issues into sound-bites. Nobody wants people to suffer under dictators, but we can't be the world's policemen, no matter how noble that role would be. We don't know enough about other countries to make the blanket statements our leaders have, and we look stupid for not challenging them.

Thanks for pointing out, in today's strip, that there are Arab Christians too -- generally forgotten in the chattering about Sunni and Shiite factionalism.

Oh all ye friends of/parents of/children of, Costco employees -- stand and point at Toggle's mom. Who's she to be too good to have a Costco employee date her son? The joke is funny but I didn't like who got skewered.

Leo's showing me potential here that naturally accords to youth. He'll fight his way out of this one and I think I know how. Clues: his hearing doesn't seem affected and he has demonstrated entrepreneurial spirit.

But the one who is really growing is B.D. Something is there and some sort of game is on for him. The strip just absorbs me more and more...

Handbasket. I think it's been going since 1968, but it sure has been picking up speed since 2001. Toggle's story so far has been moving and informative. Now I realize his aphasia also provides a killer vehicle for some much needed comments.

Toggle's story line resonates with vets and their families, whether Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan, because the story isn't political, but that of the universal soldier, with the irony of veterans wounded physically as well as mentally. As the poet said, it "tells the truth, but tells it slant." Thanks!

Toggle is one of GT's greatest characters ever. Both his timeliness and relevance are unfortunate (to be polite); but a fantastic characterization. Kudos.

Any chance Leo could get out of the trailer and into a custom-built adaptive house? This is a fantastic program, and even though Leo's mom's trailer is undoubtedly "cozy," Leo certainly deserves better!

First, welcome back. I've missed your work. I know this isn't what you intend, but the current set of strips, including today's where Toggle struggles, then blurts out a word that sums things up, is veering perilously close to using his affliction for laughs. Of course, this may be my personal prejudice against the whole "the mentally ill/challenged/damaged are wiser than we are" cliche (I loathed "Forrest Gump" for example).

I literally burst into tears reading today's flashback in which Joanie's dream visit with Andy comes to an end. Then below, there was a Dr. Whoopee strip about the need for AIDS education. I know GBT couldn't single-handedly stop people dying of AIDS, but he was sure out there raising public awareness at a time when rational, responsible public discourse was disastrously lacking. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Three Americans in today's strip:
-- a young guy who's lost part of his brain
-- an older guy who's lost his leg
-- a mid-aged woman who's lost her home

That word pretty much sums it up.

Welcome Home, Toggle! Please, please let him apply for Chapter 31 Vocational Rehabilitation Services so he can get Independent Living Services. These can help him maximize independent living skills, heighten community involvement and enhance quality of life. Toggle's mom can go to www.vetsuccess.gov to find out more and help him apply on-line.

And my vote goes to giving the Purple Heart Medal to veterans with TBI and PTSD and other mental illnesses that come from being in battle. A wound is a wound!

Your respect for veterans and soldiers continues to impress me so much. Well done.

Huah! Of all the storylines, Toggle's is the one that I follow the most, from that fateful fade-to-white panel which made my eyes tear up to the most recent strip. So, I guess he isn't going back to active duty...

Hey, I'm very glad you're back from vacation. I would never, ever begrudge someone their well-earned time off, and I hope you enjoyed it. That being said, it's nice to have new strips again.

Combat veterans talk their own unique lingo when they get together. B.D. and his pals remind me of the Vietnam veterans talking when I was in the Army, and earlier when I heard my uncles talking about their experiences in World War II and Korea. Some things never change. Roman legionnaires knockin' back brews and tellin' war stories probably sounded exactly the same.

For those who might not understand some of the lingo:

comm: communication, radios
cooking off ammo: shooting
dismounted: on foot, not in vehicles
eyes on: observing the enemy
fobbit: base working personnel; FOB (Forward Operating Base) plus hobbit = fobbit
fubar: Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition (except no one says "fouled")
Iraqi Death Blossom: the tendency of undisciplined Iraqi Security Forces to overreact to contact, spraying return fire indiscriminately in every direction; the term "death blossom" originated in the movie "The Last Starfighter" as a maneuver in which a single starfighter can wipe out an entire armada.
ISF: Iraqi Security Force
knuckleheads: generic term for the enemy
lit up: fired on
play clothes: body armor, helmets, etc.
walking in rounds: firing, and using the bullet strikes to "walk" your rounds into the target

I have the impression that GBT somehow thinks Obama is too good to believe and therefore is critical. Just for your info, regarding people working for Obama without pay, as was implied in a strip, my son is working for him as a low level organizer and is being paid decently but not extravagantly; he is also, unusually for such jobs, being paid full health benefits. Let's hope that that is a great sign for the future! GBT seems to be an old curmudgeon on this subject.

I am disappointed in the latest strips. They are all about retelling questionable remarks made by unmentionables, concerning the presidential candidates. Just by the retelling you are expanding their remarks into fact, to the uninformed, or agreeing with those who like to gossip about things that aren't true. There are other strips in my newspaper that are also doing the same thing, so Doonesbury is not alone. I just expected more from GBT.

In today's strip Mike and Alex agree that it's "philosophically impossible" to prove a negative. Don't be silly. Just read this article by Stephen Hales on skeptic.com.

Isn't it a little disingenuous to call Obama on classifying "he's Muslim" as a smear? It's obvious that he has to treat it as a smear, not because he and his core supporters think there's anything wrong with being a Muslim, but because the people making the accusations think it's a smear, and they have a big, paranoid audience, all of whom have votes that count just as much as the votes of reasoning people. Sadly, there's a fine line here, as on the campaign finance issue, between moral courage and outright stupidity...

I love Doonesbury, but I have a criticism of today's strip, which seems to equate being called a Muslim with a "smear." I note that Sen. Obama's website has also classified this as a smear. Do Muslims feel smeared when they are acknowledged to be Muslims? I'm troubled by the easy resort to this "smear" rubric because it plays into the mindset and verbiage of prejudice. Perhaps Sen. Obama should come in for some pointed ribbing over his growing allergy to all things Muslim...

No! Don't let Duke manipulate Honey to serve his own Berzerkistan Olympic interests! She's already broken free of the slimeball, so don't let her fall under his sway again!

If the Berzerkistan Olympians story line continues into the Games themselves, perhaps some Berzerkistani adaptation could be made of the traditional Australian cheer for international competition: ("Aussie, Aussie, Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!"). Anyway, welcome back GBT!

Regarding today's strip with the Bushisms about justice: Some people do not comprehend the difference between justice and revenge. I met a liberal who believes that all punishment is about revenge. Bush, I believe, thinks that justice is deserved revenge. Justice is about restoring a social contract and trust. Revenge is enforcing injustice and evil in return to "even the score".

As a chronic Uncle Duke fan, I was beginning to miss his give-and-take-and-give with Honey. But, of course, you knew that. And now she's back. Continued thanks for the greatest strip ever. (And I'm a Republican.)

Not long ago in this forum, it was noted how Garry Trudeau sometimes changes the elements within a scene from panel-to-panel and even from day-to-day so that cups, vases, tables and even pictures on the walls may be seen to move around or appear and disappear during the story arc. Connoiseurs of Trudeau scene-switching will want to check out the great strips associated with the new FAQ question regarding when Duke and Honey Huan first met. There's an excellent example of scene-switching during the meeting between Ambassador Duke and Chairman Mao.

Thank you for the trip down Memory Lane with Honey and Duke. I laughed my ass off.

Here's a California girl jumping on the bandwagon -- welcome back Garry! We missed you! The new stuff out of Berzerkistan is better than ever -- can't wait to "share" with a friend who lives in Berkeley.

The nightmare is finally over! What a relief. Reruns are okay but there is no replacement for the real thing, that skewering of current events putting things in perspective.

Thanks for coming back, we need you! (From yet another Canadian province. I see Canucks are leading the cheering squad!)

Welcome back!!!!!! I hope it was an enjoyable break.

Ta da! He's back. Caloo, calay, oh frabjous day!

I think we've been on re-runs since January. Has Garry Trudeau retired?

Editor's note: Nope. GBT is nearing the end of a 12-week leave which began on March 23rd. New material resumes on Monday, June 16th.

Happy 35th Anniversary to "Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! " This is one of the great milestones in strip history, notorious enough that it was banned that day by The Washington Post. I don't suppose they're commemorating. Also, Tuesday was 30 years since one of my personal favorites, the pollster and the housewife. That was pasted in my high school locker for months. This week must be good karma for GBT.

Wow. I consider myself fairly well-informed regarding the workings of our government and the backgrounds of our candidates, but seeing the flap about McCain and lobbyists, especially today's batch about Charlie Black, suddenly made me realize how prophetic Doonesbury was being with the Berzerkistan story line. Next time I encounter a Doonesbury story line that seems out in left field to me, as Berzerkistan did at the time, I'll take it as a sign that my research may be too shallow.

One of the hazards of running Flashback strips is that there's no guarantee that the price of gasoline won't change. Carl is probably buying his water by the gallon. Most of the bottled water I see being bought is in smaller bottles -- half a liter or so -- and the price can get up to a dollar a bottle without too much trouble. Since a liter is a little more than a quart, that comes out pretty close to two dollars a quart, or eight dollars a gallon. Incidentally, I saw a report about a week ago that said it takes 15 million barrels of oil to make all of the bottles for water sold in the USA and that 8 out of 10 of those bottles are not recycled but end up in landfills.

I read Doonesbury faithfully, and decided to write and tell you what is on my mind after reading this morning's strip. I have been drinking bottled water for six or eight years now. Not as a novelty but out of necessity. I live in South Carolina, and our water may be palatable most of the time, but the water company has several water sources; some are great, but some are not so good, and some are terrible. Being from New Jersey, I was used to drinking "Delaware punch" (water from the Delaware River) which is very good quality all the time. I moved down here when I retired, and found that the water wasn't quite what I was used to drinking, but I drank it anyway. Then my dogs started throwing up, and I heard from the vet's that the water was doing it. So I started buying water by the gallon for the dogs and the dogs quit being sick. Then the water company decided to go to a really rank water source, and I was afraid that my wife and I would get sick from it, so we started buying water.

Off and on we go back to the city water, but to get to my point, in today's strip you say that water costs twice as much as gas. So I figured out the price of water and it comes to less than $1.20 a gallon. The last time I bought gas it was $3.51 a gallon for mid-grade. It's also not true about plastic not degrading over a short time -- if this were true we would all be wading hip deep in white plastic coffee cups by now. Thank you for allowing me to clear the air a bit.

If you don't check the Flashbacks every day, you're missing amazing little gems like the strip that appeared 20 years ago today, on May 8, 1988: Republican hopeful Ron Headrest chooses his running mate, George Bush. The punchline, "Ready to follow from day one!", acquires new resonance in the context of the current election cycle.

Editor's note: To get to the Flashbacks page, click the "Archive" tab at the top of today's strip, then click "Doonesbury Flashbacks".

For me Doonesbury is a great learning experience as far as slang phrases are concerned. In a rerun I noticed "wall action," a phrase I missed (or thought I knew) the first time I saw it. By use of Urban Dictionary and Google, I found out it refers to how one's "friends" use a Facebook feature. No, I didn't recently fall off a turnip truck. It's just that I am a member of the less than 1% of the population who have no interest in Facebook or its features. A mild criticism: Mr. Trudeau, although he gets props (I learned that from the strip, too) for including pop phrases, should keep in mind that he is writing for a general audience, not just Gen Xers and Millennials. (I learned those jargon words from web pages List of Generations and Generations, which I recommend to Mr. Trudeau if he runs out of things to do during his break from writing the strip.)

Re the "prolonged primary" Straw Poll: Why is anyone to blame? We have learned quite a lot about our country from this process. Who gets credit for that? If you say "the news media", I'll croak. I say Hillary. Without her, this would have been over long ago.

I just want to say thank you, because Doonesbury has been a great teaching tool for me. I am 14 years old, and have been a huge Doonesbury fan since last December when my Dad gave me Heckuva Job,Bushie! for a Hanukkah present. He starting reading Doonesbury when he was a teenager, and has a number of the early books. However, the 1970s politics were relevant to him and not confusing, which is not true for me. After I got hooked, I started from Still A Few Bugs in the System, even though I hardly knew anything about Watergate or the Nixon administration. I have since learned a lot about every presidency from Nixon to Reagan. It also inspired me to write my term paper on student protest of the Vietnam War, in which I had to restrain myself from quoting Mark. Anyway, I love Doonesbury, and it has been very educational for me. Thanks!

As a reader of military history, I was highly entertained by "Murphy's Laws of Combat", the April 30th post on The Sandbox. It occurs to me that several of these must date back long, long before the 21st century. For example, the first ten sound likely to have originated with the Assyrians, let alone the Roman army. I wonder when the rest were first thought of.

I'm disenfranchised in the Straw Poll this week! My greatest peeve about this election year is the painfully drawn-out primary process. And my greatest peeve about just about anything involving coverage of current events this year is the fact that nobody, but nobody, gets it regarding whose fault the long-drawn-out primary process is.

We all knew damn well a year or two ago whose fault it was. Then, constant media coverage focused on the jostling to see which state legislatures could get away with starting the season earlier than ever, and which ones would stoically stay put in May or June. We all know that the state legislatures can't be controlled very well by the Parties, and we now know (thanks to the Supreme Court this winter) that the Parties don't have to answer to the courts or anyone else regarding the fairness of their internal process, because legally they are private associations of people. So how idiotic do we have to be to be brainwashed by the media and its pundits into blaming a candidate, or even the media itself, for the fact that the season is way too long for anyone to endure? People are so desperate that some even think it would be best to decide the nominees ASAP and let the people vote in their primaries afterwards (why bother with democracy at all?).

The fault is 100% in the egos of the legislators in the various states. They all ought to sign a truce and organize a six-week primary season. I wanted so bad to click like a ton of bricks on their button in the Straw Poll!

Had the DNC's "leaders" the requisite imagination or methodicalness, we wouldn't have the Michigan/Florida problem, and the race might have ended a while ago. Going much farther back, had the DNC not instituted a primary system that fails to reflect the way the national election is held (and counted), the race might have ended a long time ago. People in my neighborhood have been talking about those two circumstances since long before the MSM picked up either in its campaign coverage. It seems likely the same conversations happened in many other neighborhoods in many other towns. The worship of notions over facts in the DNC is astonishing. That's why I'm not a Dem PCO anymore...and I've been working on Dem campaigns for 25 years, since I was 14. The idiocy inside of the party machine is just too much.

I couldn't vote in the current Straw Poll because the real culprit was not among the choices. The media, Clinton and Obama are all doing what I'd expect given the circumstances (and Hillary does have a long-shot chance if unforeseen events stampede the superdelegates in her direction). I blame the Democratic Party for setting up such a problematic calendar of elections and caucuses and then not being able to enforce their own rules, either on the States to stick to the schedule, or on the candidates to avoid over-the-top attacks on opponents. Personally, I support Barack, but would definitely vote for Hillary over McCain (though that increasingly feels like choosing the lesser of two evils).

I really liked the Toggle story arc and I just wanted to say Good Job developing a character people could relate too. I hope to see more of his recovery. I know that he is just a comic character and I don't want to sound like some crazy, but I liked his effect on the strip and the self-revelations that his ordeal brought about. Thank you for the good work, and if you keep writing it I promise to read it.

Today's 35-year Flashback in which Joanie relinquishes all custody of J.J., simply broke my heart. I suppose it's nothing that divorcing or separating fathers haven't done throughout history, but still, this one moment is the turning point: Joanie's estrangement from J.J. for the rest of J.J.'s childhood and adolescence, perhaps repeated in J.J.'s estrangement from Alex. Just breaks my heart.

What is it with the readers of Doonesbury? Don't they understand that the comic strip is populated by characters? Characters who are not the author. Characters who have their own notions of right and wrong. Characters who -- if the author is halfway on the ball -- stay in character. When Earl includes Venezuela among the pariah states, he is expressing the point of view of Earl, not the point of view of Garry Trudeau. Duh!

In today's strip, the first frame has Duke's son saying to his father, "Sudan, Venezuela, North Korea -- you name it! We've been contracted by every pariah state you can think of!" There is nothing in fact to support the label of Venezuela as a pariah state. We returned from Venezuela three weeks ago. While there, we met with a senior U.S. Embassy official who stated unequivocally, "Chavez is certainly not a dictator." In addition, the current Venezuelan government has done much to improve the lives of the large majority of people in the country who have lived in poverty for decades. It is simply gratuitous, State Department pablum regurgitated. We expect better from Doonesbury.

In today's strip you grouped Venezuela with some notoriously evil regimes. This puzzles me. Though Chavez has no respect at all for Pres. Bush he seems to be truly dedicated to the welfare of Venezuela. He has brought medical help for its indigenous peoples, and had many sent to Cuba for cataract surgery, etc. Though the propaganda in this country derides him for using his country's oil wealth for the benefit of Venezuelans, from their viewpoint he's a Godsend. These people have it tough enough without you creating a bad image.

I, on the other hand, just love the Duke & Son strips on the dictatorships. I think they are some of Trudeau's funniest and most biting comics! (Even though Duke is not one of my favorite Doonesbury characters.) But that may be because I grew up under tyrannies (my father was a diplomat) and I have done a fair amount of international development work in the last decade or more, so I understand the reality of the situation. Meanwhile, the ones with Mike's mother and Zipper and B.D. did not tickle me much at all. Different strokes, eh?

Mondays are hard enough. (Spring thawing makes them harder for some reason; perhaps it's noticing all the work ahead of us, and all that didn't get done last year before the snow flew.) An incredibly slow response time (gremlins in the cable lines no doubt) only fuels my frustration with the Duke flashback. Mr.Duke's has long been my least favorite thread. There's enough of his kind in the reality-based community in D.C. centers of power these days. Sorry to rant, and register a rare complaint. GBT does so much to shine the light in the darkness. I suppose one should just grant him this bastard child run amuck. Carry on...

Wow. I feel so bad about those poor little millionaire girls. The world at their feet and all the money they'll ever need. It must be soooo hard to face daily life when you don't have to worry about getting a real job, about whether you can afford gas or food. Being rich and famous, what a tragedy.

Here at Wesleyan University, for decades, we have held an event known as "Zonker Harris Day" on the third Saturday in April. It has become a tradition. It is basically a festival, with great live music, delicious food, arts, crafts, and overall outdoor celebration. It is one of the highlights of the year here. Dozens of students devote time and energy into planning the event, and hundreds upon hundreds of students show up.

This year, Wesleyan's administration decided that they didn't like the idea of calling it "Zonker Harris Day", because they felt that was an inappropriate drug reference. There was a huge outcry from the student body. You can read about it here, in the first of dozens of articles and letters on the subject that have appeared in the school newspaper paper.

There have been protests, there have been negotiations with the administration, and in the end, it has all gotten us nowhere. However, we haven't given up. The festival is still going ahead, this Saturday. We are calling it "He Who Must Not Be Named Day"...

I just want to say that I really enjoy reading the soldier and Marine blogs posted in The Sandbox. It is great that they have an outlet to let their voices be heard, and it is amazing that more people are not aware of their situations. I commend their service and I am grateful for their service.

Sometimes I feel like hitting all three responses to your Straw Poll, like this morning with the "bitter" and "clingy" question. I can remember presidential elections back to Kennedy-Nixon in 1960, and by the end of every one of them the electorate has turned into a bunch of grumps. We're ticked-off at everybody.

I just wanted to say "thanks" from an old WPI guy - '72 who has enjoyed your strip for all of these years. You have made me laugh, cry, smile fast and smile slow and most of the time, have made me think. Almost always you have made my days better. Thanks again.

I've been wondering for a while what families of deployed and returned soldiers felt about the less than sympathetic response that Boopsie and Sam gave to B.D. upon his return from his long visit with Toggle. The response posted on Blowback was negative, and since we've been immersed in B.D.'s POV of his journey of recovery, I was initially surprised. However, now I wonder whether his wife and daughter were merely responding to "the straw that broke the camel's back" after years of trying to be supportive to B.D., but maybe needing some of that for themselves as well.

I just re-re-read the old Vietnam strips, and enjoyed seeing how happy B.D. was when he was with Phred. Big smiles! I wonder if he has ever been as happy since, even with his little daughter.

FYI: At Wesleyan University, Zonker Harris Day -- a student-run music and arts festival held every spring, on the same day that many prospective freshmen visit campus -- has been a beloved tradition since the 1970s. This year, University Administration has pulled funding for the event, insisting that the name be changed because the term "Zonker Harris" projects a "hippie-druggie" stereotype that the school is trying to get away from. Many students perceive this action as the latest effort to "mainstream" Wesleyan, and transform a school generally associated with quirky activists into a more preppy Little Ivy...

At last, I got it! It's been bugging me ever since Jorge came on the scene. This morning I finally realized who he is. He's the twin brother of Manuel of Fawlty Towers fame! He must be the smarter one...

LEDs are the least energy consuming piece of electronics we have. It's that warm capicator. It's that hot CPU. It's the standby state on the circuit boards, the trickle state on the battery chargers, the on-standby circuits of the phones, web devices, and appliances we all depend on. Don't ask me if your TV is really off when it's dark. LED power is the latest, best illumination source we have.

That reminds me of the one-hour-power-failure-to-save-the-planet gig this weekend: Great idea, brilliant concept, stupid execution. 1. People were encouraged (okay, okay, browbeaten) to turn off lights. Then they were encouraged to drive to a nearby hilltop to check the visual. Fact: More power was consumed getting the old Volare up that hill than was ever saved by turning off the lights. 2. B-ball games started the same time the power-out-thingy did. Tell me who turned out the lights but not the tube? Don't make folks choose between survival and the tube. Not now, not today, not ever. I'm just saying...