Tom Toles for February 07, 2014

“If you like your doctor……..and if you like your health insurance……..”.Hmm

…and we just plain old cannot trust you so we are not going to do any of the things we said we would accomplish just to prove we actually have shiftoblamanitus which is contagious and festered up from the bottom of a fetid pot of tea which we all foolishly drank from.

If it’s a tax, it’s one I can live with. Give my money to the government or give my money to scheming corporations who USED TO be able to deny me coverage if it was not profitable. Hmm…

Had to look up that last one: “Sporotrichosis is a long-term (chronic) skin infection due to a certain fungus.”

Any “cures” for the dreaded female disease, “Huckabee’s Libido” ?

dear martens second it is unfortunate that @ypoons 7666 is correct

That elephant hospital has substandard performance. Time to shut that whole thing down.

You might want to look into all that the “Founding Fathers” wrote and thought before you presume to characterize their thoughts, views, and values as those of modern conservatives: it’s a bad idea as in some cases, it is flat wrong, and bad in other cases because it slanders modern conservatives who are not nearly so racist, sexist, imperialist, or ethnocentric as the majority founding fathers were. Here’s two quotations from Jefferson, for example: Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, October 18, 1785:“But the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property … [ One ] means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise.” Jefferson writing about African Americans in 1781: “They are more ardent after their female: but love seems with them to be more an eager desire, than a tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation. Their griefs are transient. Those numberless afflictions, which render it doubtful whether heaven has given life to us in mercy or in wrath, are less felt, and sooner forgotten with them. In general, their existence appears to participate more of sensation than reflection. To this must be ascribed their disposition to sleep when abstracted from their diversions, and unemployed in labor. An animal whose body is at rest, and who does not reflect, must be disposed to sleep of course. Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me, that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous.” He also thought they smell bad. One can hardly deny that Thomas Jefferson was one of the principle Founding Fathers, yet the modern conservative would certainly deny as “socialism” the sentiment in the first quotation, and deny the second as racism. And by the way, the Founding Fathers only wrote part of the Constitution, of which the Bill of Rights is part, and all the subsequent amendments also, all are equally parts of the Constitution; the meaning and interpretation of which, as it applies to the modern world being vested in the Supreme Court. Oh, and calling our founding documents “sacred” is in violation of them: it elevates them to the status of things to be worshiped, and thus implies the establishment of religion. In the first draft of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote “sacred and undeniable” but at Franklin’s recommendation that was changed to “self-evident” as Franklin thought that no political opinion should be called “sacred.”Personally, I find the last paragraph of your posting to be the most un-American as well as irrational thing I have read in awhile. White the current president has made some big mistake (who hasn’t?), yet he still represents to many of us the best of the thoughts, views, and values of the Founding Fathers, and of the America I love. While I can understand why many disagree with him on many issues, the venom he inspires in some can have nothing to do with their love of their country, or their respect for its founding principles. I won’t presume to judge upon what their hatred is based, for whatever it is, it is an illusion.

If the “Penalty” is NOT considered a “Tax”, then the “Individual Responsibility Requirement” (IRR) is Unconstitutional: http://tinyurl.com/7cs9xkz …leaving compulsion to participate, unenforceable, as written. The SCOTUS adjudged it a Tax. One provision does not make a Bill, Program, Law, “legal”, but one provision can certainly make one “illegal”.

Anything you can think of. Just say anything you can think of. There will always be ignoramuses to believe it.

“You’ve probably heard of them – they’re the doormats at the White House, thanks to the most recent occupant. (And Please don’t gin up a “Bush comparison” tirade in response – most presidents have bent these documents to their will — but the current president wipes his Gucci shoes on them every day in anti-American disrespect.))”-Yet another excellent, excellent expression of hatred of Obama, which is the primary Republican/Fox “news” viewer’s agenda.

The so-called “Fair Tax” is the antithesis of what Jefferson was talking about: no tax at all on property, no tax at all on the sale of land or other real estate, or gold, or antiques, or access … just another scheme to make the rich richer and and keep everyone else in his place. Not to mention the distance it would go in rendering the nation impotent in governing itself, in “establishing justice” or “promoting the general welfare.” - I real Neal Boortz’s book. - Though it would be interesting to see what would happen if some country adopted his pie-in-the-sky scheme. Still, I would hate to wish misery on other people merely as an experiment.

“FAIR TAX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Thank you, thank you, thank you, Harley, for at last revealing that you are IN FAVOR of something. It is a very UN-troll like thing to do. These discussion boards would be a lot better if we spent more time defending what we like (as you just did), rather than merely attacking what we dislike (as I just did).

If the Obama administration managed to get the Palestinians and Israelis to come to the table the Obama haters would still be ripping him. no? Very few of them are true conservatives, they’re reactionaries. Must be tough for Obama to be the Anti-Christ and President at the same time. Doing the Devil’s work while destroying America is exhausting. As Rachel Maddow so succinctly put it. conspiracy is easier to understand than complexity.

Just another expression of hatred of Obama — much longer and more venom. .Everything he did is wrong? Maybe we should still be in Iraq. Maybe we should have gone through another depression. Maybe the stock market shouldn’t have doubled.-Just more venom.

pro-Islam? Really? Your fear of Islam precedes you. I mean I could say another President is pro-Christian and it should have about the same meaning. I am afraid that with you it does not. By saying such things you are wearing your fear/hatred of Muslims on your sleeve. Such fear and hatred is irrational. Few Muslims are terrorists. If you do not hate them, why does it matter if he’s “pro-Islam” or not?