Pat Oliphant for June 18, 2013

Oliphant really is in a snit lately The AP thing must have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. Hope his tax returns for the last twenty years are in order. Heck, hope he took out citizenship somewhere along the way so he can’t be deported.

I would never downplay the malevolent aspects of private enterprise. My theory is that just as we have separation of powers and loyal opposition in government, we also need Big Government, Big Labor and Big Business to balance and watchdog each other.

I now know someone with a Reagan phone. It was Reagan’s project, originally – expanded by GW Bush to provide cell phones.

As I say, I now know someone with a free GOP phone. It comes with 25 minutes a month.

Just so those of you who think it’s Obama’s program know where it started and what it offers. It’s grotesquely inadequate in terms of job hunting, but it might just keep a job for someone who has one, if they keep it under lock and key and don’t get reckless with 911 calls or something.

Wouldn’t be very surprised if it was said before: We are more and more becoming serfs in Screwtopia.

why worry about it you never get out this life alive anyway so just go with the flow and have fun when you and work hard when you can’t.

that should be " have fun when you can" i have a tendency to leave words out, maybe i just too dumb.

You used to be so much better Oliphant.

Oh Lordy, anyone who thinks that all the NSA stuff is anything new is deeply naive or just hasn’t been paying the slightest bit of attention. You want something MUCH closer to home that will REALLY scare the solid waste out of anyone with a synapse, read and consider this recent article from The Washington Post: http://tinyurl.com/lcnwumk Still think you’ve nothing hide and nothing to worry about? Then read this piece that’s going viral by one Moxie Marlinspike: http://tinyurl.com/qzbxmns Nightmares for all. But don’t worry, Big Brother, and Big Business, are watching over us all, and they’ll decide if any of us is doing “right” or “wrong.”

Now the various leftist are attacking Oliphant for not being supportive of the government that is violating privacy. Figures. We libertarians have been alarmed for decades and now it’s just weird to watch the left justify more government spying.

69% of the student body at an unnamed college were in favor of the government intruding into the privacy of Fox News employees and their families. I do not recognize this country anymore.

Unless this is a restricted college, ALL graduates, engineers included, get their degrees at ONE ceremony. Guess we know Ima’s level of education now. Or at least how far he/she/it didn’t get!

“Soon [you’l]l be out amid the cold world’s strife,soon [you’ll] be sliding down the razorblade of life.”

Tom Lehrer, 50 years ago. Greatest one-liner in history, stillnever been topped IMHO. Tho’ “Would you buy a used carfrom this man?” runs it a close second….

Forgive the long posting, but it’s at the end of the time until the next cartoon, so probably nobody will read it, anyway..The word “plutocrat” was in more common usage in the early portion of the twentieth-century. It was always a somewhat old-fashioned, dusty word to me. But it seems to be making a comeback these days, maybe because social issues today and then are so similar. H. L. Mencken used the word a lot. I went back to some of his writings to trace its usage and stumbled across a section pertinent to this editorial cartoon. It’s from “The Art Eternal,” 1918:.“For the habitual truth-teller and truth-seeker, indeed, the world has very little liking. He is always unpopular, and not infrequently his unpopularity is so excessive that it endangers his life. Run your eye back over the list of martyrs, lay and clerical: nine-tenths of them, you will find, stood accused of nothing worse than honest efforts to find out and announce the truth. .“Even today, with the scientific passion become familiar in the world, the general view of such fellows is highly unfavorable. The typical scientist, the typical critic of institutions, the typical truth-seeker in every field is held under suspicion by the great majority of men, and variously beset by posses of relentless foes. If he tries to find out the truth about arteriosclerosis, or surgical shock, or cancer, he is denounced as a scoundrel by the Christian Scientists, the osteopath and the anti-vivisectionists. If he tries to tell the truth about the government, its agents seek to silence him and punish him. If he turns to fiction and endeavors to depict his fellow-men accurately, he has the Comstocks on his hands.. “In no field can he count upon a friendly audience, and freedom from assault. Especially in the United States is his whole enterprise viewed with bilious eye. The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth. A Galileo could no more be elected President of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter facts of life in bandages of soft illusion.”.(I added extra paragraph spacing to make the above quotation easier to read.).I imagine every person reading this, no matter what his political belief, will take its meaning favorably toward himself. What is truth? And how many people are in the world, seven billion? I suppose you’d get nearly that number of different replies.

It doesn’t really have anything to do with the point of the cartoon, but: Many colleges have multiple graduations, although I suppose except when there’s a separation of undergraduate and graduate degrees all can participate in the main event if they wish. I would guess that all colleges have major receptions/ceremonies for some subdivisions of the graduates, both departmental and political.. Engineering, architecture, education, medical fields, etc.

I agree, so why are they not going after MSNBC employees instead.