In 1890 the Punch cartoonist, painter, and book illustrator, Sir John Tenniel, drew a cartoon, titled Dropping the Pilot, that had Kaiser Wilhelm II putting German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck “ashore” so he could personally take “the helm” of the German Empire that was created by the hard work of Bismarck.

In 1945 Daniel Bishop used a variation to depict Winston Churchill losing the election.

PZ Myers at Pharyngula has up a modern variant by Steve Bell, with the Shrubbery as the Kaiser, Rummy as the Chancellor, and the entire “ship of state” lying on the bottom.

Very nice snark, that will probably appeal generally to history geeks who are aware of the earlier cartoons.

Last July I wrote about this battle of symbols and the limited number of VA approved symbols for grave markers.

CNN is now reporting: Soldiers’ widows sue for pagan symbols on headstones. Actually they are suing over using the Wiccan five-pointed star in a circle symbol, I wouldn’t get into characterizing it beyond that point.

No one complained when the US Army Air Corp used a five-pointed star in a circle on US aircraft during World War II. Five-pointed stars are quite popular on the flag. You can display the atom-A of atheists and the stylized H for humanists, so why is there a problem with allowing the Wiccans to use their symbol?

The VA has been stalling, probably hoping the widows would give up, but they have just been forced to go to court. Wicca is a religion recognized by the military. Wiccans hold meetings on military bases, and Wicca appears on dog tags. This is just more Christianist pettifoggery, forcing people to jump through more hoops because they won’t do what a small group of spiteful people want.

Nothing but Server Error 500 from Blog*Spot blogs:

Monday, November 13, 2006

Blog*Spot blogs on the current version of Blogger are showing 500 errors. Our engineers are investigating. Blogger.com and blogs on the new version of Blogger are unaffected.
Posted by Pete at 18:33 PST

I’m having issues with Firefox after Windows decided to pull a reset of its own accord. My defaults are whacked and reloading didn’t clean up the problem.