Rhode Frog: Classic Toon Tuesday

Danger Mouse was not a Looney Tune. For those of you who are thinking of the Grey Album, think again (no disrespect - I love me some Gnarles Barkley, of which DJ Danger Mouse is one half. And my mother loves it that she paid for an English degree and I say things like, I love me some...). Danger Mouse was a British cartoon from the early 80s that Nickelodeon aired during it's broadcast infancy. And I firmly believe that, if it's British, it's funny. Even though the villain, Silas Baron Greenback, is a frog, I still love this cartoon that reeks of my happy 80s childhood.

"He's the greatest, he's amazing, he's the greatest super agent in the world!"

I also believe that certain characteristics from Austin Powers were stolen from Danger Mouse - Penfold said "crickey" first, and he said it best. And Nero was the original Mr. Bigglesworth.

Was too!

And don't even get me started on how Danger Mouse and Penfold were totally a couple. I mean, come on. They lived in a phallic symbol. Penfold was definitely DM's bitch. Everytime they took a bath together, Danger Mouse dropped the soap. And, back in the day, after each Danger Mouse episode they would air - wait for it - Banana Man! I rest my case.

Bits & Pieces

Senator Al Franken has proposed a "Pay for War" resolution that would require Congress to raise taxes and/or cut spending before authorizing new acts of war, so that American foreign adventures can't contribute to the national debt.

In "The Long Road Home," historian Ben Shephard tells the neglected story of the refugee crisis the Allies faced when, at war's end, millions of displaced persons -- among them prisoners of war, slave laborers and survivors of concentration camps -- had to be repatriated to their homelands or resettled somewhere else.

For most of the last century, talk of secession, nullification and the rest of the extreme states-rights lexicon were relegated to the fringiest parts of the political fringe. But since Barack Obama entered the White House in January 2009, mainstream Republican rhetoric and proposed legislation at the state level have both warmed to the hoary idea that state governments can take their relationship with the federal government on what amounts to an a la carte basis or perhaps abandon it altogether.

Is the tantalizing dream of a universal library dead? Some scholars and librarians across the country fear it may be, now that a federal judge in New York has derailed Google’s bold plan to build the world’s largest digital library and bookstore.

...the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office... finds that a large part of the supposed savings from spending cuts would go, not to reduce the deficit, but to pay for tax cuts. In fact, the budget office finds that over the next decade the plan would lead to bigger deficits and more debt than current law.

...Republicans in Mississippi are divided over a wholly different wedlock issue: interracial marriage.

Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz writes in this month's Vanity Fair about the corrosive, self-reinforcing wealth concentration that has hijacked American politics, in which the America's future is sacrificed to give ever more money to an ever-smaller group of oligarchs.

Classic Toon Tuesday - Danger Mouse

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