Ben Sargent by Ben Sargent
- August 27, 2009
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Drew Sheneman by Drew ShenemanAbout Ben Sargent
Tired of "politically correct?" Want an editorial cartoon that is quick to call out the bumblings of U.S. politics and cuts slack to no one? Pulitzer-Prize winner Ben Sargent is paying attention and making Washington have second thoughts about that little thing called the First Amendment.
© 2009 Universal Press Syndicate - All Rights Reserved.
Comments (45) Jump to Comments Form
HUMPHRIES
said,
2 months ago
ANandy, is there any hope for you or are you now the GOP standard bearer.
devee
said,
2 months ago
Touching and perfect. Thank you.
James Bettag
said,
2 months ago
What would the GOP know about Hope or Change? Half of the GOP are only interested in making their religious views the law of the land, while the other half are concerned only with making money by serving their monied masters; mainly Healthcare and Oil lobbyists. Neither half cares anything about the country or the people. Great cartoon. Thanks. RIP, Mr. Kennedy.
charlie555 said, 2 months ago
This is such a perfect example of meaningless rhetoric. I can only pray that the post-Kennedy generations feel insulted to be talked to like this, and laugh that we bought into it.
Time to bring back, “Where’s the beef?”
deadheadzan
said,
2 months ago
When we get meaningful health care reform, that will be the beef steak.
jkshaw said, 2 months ago
Is there no way to ban Anandy? At least the other wingnuts who waste bandwidth with their tasteless remarks are normal trolls (these cartoons ARE grouped as left-leaning you realize righties, don’t you?). Anandy, on the other hand, sounds most of the time like a drooling lunatic.
motivemagus said, 2 months ago
He used to be better. Now I (mostly) ignore him. When he goes way over the line, I’ll flag him. So far, he’s merely been insulting.
ray32648 said, 2 months ago
I tend to live by the old “It’s better to remain silent and be though an idiot…” adage.
charlie555 said, 2 months ago
deadheadzan
For sure. Maybe the rhetoric will die with Camelot and real dialogue can begin to fix this problem.
parkersinthehouse said, 2 months ago
get real
this forum would be dull without the nandys and stripers and loraxes and the pups and the bumpers and the oharas et. al
right?
fennec said, 2 months ago
I dunno, parker. I stop reading their long ones ‘cause I know what they’re gonna say and I get bored. I prefer when we actually get a few people talking about ideas instead of propagandizing about their pet peeves/projects/whatever.
HARVIN GWIN said, 2 months ago
Hope is something weaklings and slaves indulge in.A lovely,sense dulling drug for the powerless.Like religion.Hope and faith serve to anesthetize the slavish American populace against the ghastly reality that they support and maintain an ultra-violent terrorist oligarchy utterly disinterested in their welfare…a fact that the hopers and the faithful cannot sanely deal with.
So they hope…and pray…not to feel.
HUMPHRIES
said,
2 months ago
parkerinh … remove the avitars and one is at a loss to see any difference. May as well be one redundant poster.
johnking said, 2 months ago
Right on, Charlie! If Sargent had anything substantive to say, he wouldn’t have to rely on these silly,
repetitious platitudes. Work, Cause, Hope, Dream are all devoid of meaning beyond the desire to buy votes for the Dems out of the public treasury and to destroy American borders. Some crappy legacy it is, regardless of all the weepy rhetoric to the contrary.
Michigander said, 2 months ago
Well done, Mr. Sargent.
believecommonsense
said,
2 months ago
some come to these pages to attack, often using near-identical language; some come to try to be clever; some come to try to learn from others, often from those with opposing views; some come to attempt to impart information and engage in dialogue if possible
i prefer the latter two categories, though I appreciate and sometimes chuckle at the cleverness
charlie555 said, 2 months ago
HUMAN LIFE INTERNATIONAL’S STATEMENT ON THE PASSING OF SENATOR EDWARD KENNEDY
We must, as a matter of precept, pray for the salvation of heretical Catholics like Senator Edward Kennedy, but we do not have to praise him let alone extol him with the full honors of a public Catholic funeral and all the adulation that attends such an event. There was very little about Ted Kennedy’s life that deserves admiration from a spiritual or moral point of view. He was probably the worst example of a Catholic statesman that one can think of. When all is said and done, he has distorted the concept of what it means to be a Catholic in public life more than anyone else in leadership today.
Obviously we don’t know the state of Senator Edward Kennedy’s soul upon death. We don’t pretend to. We are told by the family that he had the opportunity to confess his sins before a priest, and his priest has said publicly he was “at peace” when he died. For that we are grateful. But it is one thing to confess one’s sins and for these matters to be kept, rightfully, private. It is another thing entirely for one who so consistently and publicly advocated for the destruction of unborn human beings to depart the stage without a public repudiation of these views, a public confession, as it were.
It is up to God to judge Senator Kennedy’s soul. We, as rational persons, must judge his actions, and his actions were not at all in line with one who values and carefully applies Church teaching on weighty matters. Ted Kennedy’s positions on a variety of issues have been a grave scandal for decades, and to honor this “catholic” champion of the culture of death with a Catholic funeral is unjust to those who have actually paid the price of fidelity. We now find out that President Obama will eulogize the Senator at his funeral, an indignity which, following on the heels of the Notre Dame fiasco, leaves faithful Catholics feeling sullied, desecrated and dehumanized by men who seem to look for opportunities to slap the Church in the face and do so with impunity simply because they have positions of power.
It is not enough for Kennedy to have been a “great guy behind the scenes” as we have seen him referred to even by his political opponents. It is also not praiseworthy to put a Catholic rhetorical veneer on his leftist politics that did nothing to advance true justice as the Church sees it or to advance the peace of Christ in this world. Every indication of Senator Kennedy’s career, every public appearance, every sound bite showed an acerbic, divisive and partisan political hack for whom party politics were much more infallible than Church doctrines. Whatever one’s political affiliation, if one is only “Catholic” to the extent that his faith rhymes with his party line, then his Catholicism is a fraud.
As the Scriptures remind us, there is a time for everything under the sun. This, now, is the time for honesty about our Faith and about those who are called to express it in the public forum. If we do not remind ourselves of the necessity of public confession for public sins such as Senator Kennedy was guilty of, then we are negligent in our embrace of the Faith and we are part of the problem. As Pope Benedict has reminded us recently, charity without truth can easily become mere sentimentality, and we must not fall into that error. A Catholic show of charity for the family must not eclipse the truth that is required of all with eyes to see and ears to hear.
Senator Kennedy needs to be sent to the afterlife with a private, family-only funeral and the prayers of the Church for the salvation of his immortal soul. He will not be missed by the unborn who he betrayed time and time again, nor by the rest of us who are laboring to undo the scandalous example of Catholicism that he gave to three generations of Americans.
Sincerely,
Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer,
President, Human Life International
Copyright 2009 - Human Life International
Permission granted for unlimited use. Credit required.
Human Life International
4 Family Life Lane – Front Royal, VA 22630 U.S.A.
Phone: (540) 635-7884 Fax: (540) 622-6247
E-mail: hli@hli.org Website: www.hli.org
fbrewer said, 2 months ago
What a mean-spirited, small-souled deluge of bile. The good accomplished by the Catholic Church is in spite of this sort of un-Christian nastiness, not because of it.
Rev Euteneuer, I’ve known many Christians; many of my friends are Christians. You, sir, are no Christian.
HUMPHRIES
said,
2 months ago
I know which judgement of the almighty’s to fear should I have sat at the Kennedy table or charlie555’s. Have to agree with fbrewer.
charlie555 said, 2 months ago
Amazing! Rev. Euteneuer judges only the Senator’s actions, which all Christians are called to do.
Posters dare judge a priest appointed by the Holy Father to do this work.
fbrewer said, 2 months ago
@Charlie - when a priest uses his office in this fashion, you are ####ing right I dare to judge him.
Does the Holy Father appoint priests to sodomize choirboys? Should I not judge them either, because “they’re just doing God’s work?”
Where is the Rev Euteneuer’s judgment of the actions of Rush Limbaugh when he spews his hate-filled lies and urges his listeners to violence?
Where was the “good priest’s” condemnation of torture and unjust imprisonment when the previous administration decided they didn’t need to pay any attention to the laws of God or man?
When I see comments from a priest or a bishop that actually reflect the teachings of Christ, I pay careful attention. I don’t see that from this priest. Or you.
HUMPHRIES
said,
2 months ago
must have slept through my cathechism class and have missed an awful lot at mass over the years cause I don’t ever recollect being told I’m called upon to “judge” others. Do however seem to recall several warnings about “judgement of others”.
d_legendary1 said, 2 months ago
I thought God was in charge of judging…
charlie555 said, 2 months ago
Sigh…
Again, it’s not judging men. It’s objectively judging their actions.
Never mind. I guess this concept is lost on some.
fbrewer said, 2 months ago
@charlie - objectively? seriously?
DrCanuck said, 2 months ago
Yuh, it’s judging the actions; THEN attacking the man.
fritzoid said, 2 months ago
You see, what charlie understands that the rest of us don’t is that the Pope is infallible. ALL Popes are infallible, but this one’s exponentially infallible because he’s undoing the so-called reforms of his merely conventionally infallible predecessors.
We know this Pope is infallible because of Apostolic Succession, which states that the infallibility of Popes has been magically handed down through an unbroken string since Jesus made Peter infallible. Which means that this infallibility survived intact through the Medici Popes and Borgia Popes who were infallible in their ability to sire bastards and sell church offices and send armies and assassins against heretics, Protestants, atheists, scientists, or even other Catholics if they were from the wrong political faction.
So if the Pope is infallible, it appears that charlie maintains that anyone appointed by the Pope for a specific job must likewise be covered by some sort of penumbral infallibility. Who are we to question Euteneuer, since the Pope himself can vouch for him? God speaks through the Pope, the Pope speaks through Euteneuer, and Euteneuer speaks through charlie.
d_legendary1 said, 2 months ago
Well Charlie i guess judging the action is like judging the individual that made that action. Without action, there is no reaction is there? At least that’s what science tells us.
Two things wrong with your assumption FRITZ. The pope is not an infallible person. Only morons who believe in fairy tales think that he is. Second no one appointed Ted Kennedy to his position. He was elected. So a lot of people had to have liked the guy in order for him to take office.
A lot of wasted English just to say that some one is correct because some dead saint said so. BLEH!
wminfield
said,
2 months ago
some liberals come to these pages to attack, often using near-identical language; some liberals come to try to be clever; some liberals come to try to learn from others, often from those with opposing views; some liberals come to attempt to impart information and engage in dialogue if possible
i prefer the latter two categories, though I appreciate and sometimes chuckle at the cleverness
fennec said, 2 months ago
wmin, the exact same might be said for the conservatives on these pages. As far as I can see, the exceptions may be the religious Absolutists. They come to preach.
believecommonsense
said,
2 months ago
geeze, wminfield, you just plagiarized me !!
if that was supposed to be a retort back to my comment, it’s not … because my comment was general, neither citing conservative nor liberal …
so what was your point?
Akenta said, 2 months ago
bcs I knew that sounded familiar. Always sounds best the first time you hear it - loses some meaning when it gets copied :-)
wminfield
said,
2 months ago
Yes BCS, it was meant as a retort. 2/3 of the posts before yours were general attacks on aNandy or Rebulican posters. Parker, fennec, and Hump had made direct attacks on Republican posters and their avatars, so your comment seemed to follow that line of thought.
If you meant Posters from both sides of the aisle, then my apologies. I guess you and I agree on some things.
My comment wasn’t meant to just copy what you said, but to point out that you could say the same about posters left, right, or lib, and to see if anyone would catch the way in which I said it.
d_legendary1 said, 2 months ago
My last post was also proving a point as well. But I guess it went over your head. Can’t win’em all!
wminfield
said,
2 months ago
d_legend, I don’t know if it went over my head or not. I have to be honest I stopped reading Charlies thesis after the first sentence or two (just because of time restraints and not being that interested in Kennedy’s soul), and subsequently didn’t pay much attention to the followups on that theme.
believecommonsense
said,
2 months ago
wminfeld said If you meant Posters from both sides of the aisle, then my apologies. I guess you and I agree on some things.
I accept your apology, and it wasn’t just what I meant, it’s what I said. I deliberately didn’t say liberals or conservatives because I meant posters in general. So i guess we do agree.
d_legendary1 said, 2 months ago
Its all good. After all, everyone here is anonymous anyway.
fennec said, 2 months ago
wmin, please tell me exactly what attack I made on any Republican or avatar in my posting. My comment was applicable to anyone who posts in a formula without new thought, regardless of political inclination.
Wildcard24365 said, 2 months ago
I must say, assuming there is an afterlife, I am curious about Teddy’s whereabouts now.
Is he judged on the occasional misdeed, or by the work he did to improve social equality and a fair shake for all? Was his stance on abortion really abominable, or did he recognize that a policy with some concessions was the least of several evils? Did such a stance outweigh whatever good he did for his constituency?
Or is he judged at all, but happily received into the arms of a loving God he believed in?
As a Christian, I’m not so sure Jesus was so much about getting a good seat in Heaven as He was about making life better for people in THIS life.
charlie555 said, 2 months ago
wminfield
It wasn’t my thesis, but that of Human Life International.
I posted it as an explanation of why many Christians object to the media canonization of Kennedy.
DrCanuck said, 2 months ago
Wildcard, you are touching upon an issue that has been argued among Christians for 2000 years, whether salvation is achieved through “works” or through “faith.” Peter said works; Paul said faith. Some Christians claim judgment occurs at death; some claim the dead sleep until the end times. Take your pick; you’ll be able to find something in the Bible to support any view you may happen to make up.
fritzoid said, 2 months ago
“Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was an hungered, and ye gave Me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave Me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took Me in: naked, and ye clothed Me: I was sick, and ye visited Me: I was in prison, and ye came unto Me.” But those whom Christ commends know not that they have been ministering unto Him. To their perplexed inquiries He answers, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.”
charlie555 said, 2 months ago
“Peter said works; Paul said faith.”
No they didn’t. Various “scholars” make these simplistic generalizations.
The tradition of Christianity has always been that works without faith are dead. It doesn’t matter what a man does if he doesn’t obey the Lord first and foremost.
fritzoid said, 2 months ago
Jesus answered, “A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who both stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead. By chance a certain priest was going down that way. When he saw him, he passed by on the other side. In the same way a Levite also, when he came to the place, and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he traveled, came where he was. When he saw him, he was moved with compassion, came to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. He set him on his own animal, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. On the next day, when he departed, he took out two denarii, and gave them to the host, and said to him, ‘Take care of him. Whatever you spend beyond that, I will repay you when I return.’ Now which of these three do you think seemed to be a neighbor to him who fell among the robbers?” He said, “He who showed mercy on him.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”
Of course, there was no such thing as “Christian tradition” when Christ preached; his audience were mostly Jews. And Samaritans were not Jews. The Jews HATED the Samaritans. Does it appear that Christ held the Samaritan’s works as “dead” since he was not of the True Faith? I think that on Judgment Day, the “virtuous pagans” will come out well, particularly in comparison to Pious Hypocrites.
It’s sometimes surprising when you start comparing the religion OF Jesus to the religion ABOUT Jesus.
charlie555 said, 2 months ago
I didn’t say Faith, I said faith. Any man who sincerely obeys whom he professes to be God (for His sake alone) may have faith and may be saved.
Kennedy professed to be a devout Catholic and mocked what he professed to believe. He denied tenets of the Faith for which other Catholics have given their lives.