Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for October 17, 2010

Prosthetic romance can be rehabbed as well. Just as long as you don’t use her as a crutch.

Ask your doctor if the X2 is right for you. If your X2 is stiff after four hours, please consult a mechanic.

Ah yes, the prosthetics industry. The ultimate Republican answer to “support the troops”. Send them into the meatgrinder, and then ensure they need support for the rest of their lives.

It creates jobs! Generates new technology! Helps stimulate the economy! What’s not good about that?

:-/

Party in power:

WWI……. Democratic WWII…… Democratic Korea….. Democratic Vietnam.. Democratic

sandfan said, 41 minutes ago…

Nothing that matters.

I’m not sure of your point, sandfan. Two of the four wars you listed were ones we had little or no choice about – that the Democrats were in power at the time was a coincidence. Or are you saying we shouldn’t have been involved in World War II, with Hitler’s war machine overrunning Europe, and our having been attacked, unprovoked, by Japan? Are you saying we shouldn’t have been involved in the UN response to the unprovoked invasion of South Korea by North Korea?

Also, you conveniently forgot the Gulf War, and the two wars currently underway, all three the products of Republican administrations. So, if you’re still keeping score….

Shoulda stayed out of WWII and Korea.

People injured in car wrecks, construction accidents, and shark attacks often need prosthetics too. What political party will you blame those on?

Right, “sandfan” - if Wendell Willkie was elected president in 1940 instead of Franklin D. Roosevelt the Japanese wouldn’t have dared to attack Pearl Harbor and the Germans would have withdrawn back to their borders in the face of the new Republican resolve.

As for historic Republican resolve in keeping the American military strong, consider the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 – the first American peacetime draft. Despite the clouds of war approaching America being obvious to all but the willfully blind, 66.7% of the Republicans (and 14.7% of Democrats) in the House of Representatives voted against even this relative fig leaf of military preparedness. In 1941, 86.7% of Republicans (and 26.3% of Democrats) in the House voted against a renewal of the Act, which passed by only one vote. Then as now, Republicans (who at the time esteemed Roosevelt about as much as today’s Republicans admire Obama) tended to indulge in obstructionism for its own sake.

Commentator: Korea can be debated – not meaningfully, but even so. But WWII? Surely you’re not serious. (Go ahead, you know you want to: “I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley.”)

We entered World War II when Japan attacked us: we declared war on Japan – what choice, exactly, do you think we had? – and Nazi Germany then declared war on us in response. So I’m curious…what’s your version of the alternate history of the world after December 1941 if the U.S. had somehow declined to go to war, so that you think we “shoulda stayed out”?

Party in Power

Civil War ………………… Republican Spanish American …. Republican Grenada ………………… Republican Panama …………………. Republican Persian Gulf …………… Republican Iraq ………………………… Republican AfPak ……………………… Republican

What’s yer point?

I thought sure the Civil War, one of the bloodiest wars in all history would be forgotten. Sometimes wars are inevitable for one of the participants.

Not going all the way back in history;

Afghanistan -Necessary

Iraq - War of choice and not necessary

the Palin doll has been whispering to her in the night about chastity.

watched a documentary on WACO last night. Brazil.

My point was to balance randgrithr’s comment by pointing out that war is not confined to one party. I support this country in every conflict in which it has been engaged, including the current ones.

Political parties don’t start wars. People do.

When did this become a site for ads?

Doonesbury is my favorite comic strip. I’ve been reading it since High School and have collected the entire set of books. The 40th Anniversary Retrospective is on its’ way courtesy of Amazon. I can’t wait! I hope Mr. Trudeau never hangs up his pen.

“The rod in my staff shall comfort me”? Prosthetics have greatly improved the lives of amputees. I don’t see the benefit of separate bathtubs. Oh right - the same “moral conservatives” who started the wars in Afghanistan (only Al Qaeda should have been a “target”) and Iraq would really been offended by a dude with an enhanced “tool” actually in direct contact with the object of his affection. It’s notable that the Flintstones, cartoon characters, were the first on television to show a married couple in bed together.

RichardSRussell said:

Just because one flame war is never enuf for me, how’s this for a firestarter on another one? Which approach do you suppose is more likely to get BD walking like an unafflicted human being again, prayer or technology? Bone up on it thru some research here: http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/

I hope that “bone up on it” was an intentional pun – it would almost redeem the rest of your post.

Provoking a flame war, liking deliberately starting any fire (or war) is the mark of a uncivilized mind with nothing better to do. If that’s your goal, it alone speaks volumes about you.

Which approach would be faster? Technology, most likely. But who provided the natural laws through which medical technology works, or gave us the intelligence and creativity to develop it?

As for the web link, the kindest thing to do would be to ignore such arrogance and willful illogic completely.

I’ll say only this: if anyone doesn’t believe in a God who is a cosmic vending machine – you put in your coin, push the right button, and automatically get what you like – I congratulate them on their intelligence and good sense; neither do I. The God I believe in is a person, and a prayer is asking Him a request, which he can grant or not as He thinks best…and I personally trust his judgment.

There is pretty good documentation that suggests the FDR “allowed” the Japanese to bomb us at Pearl Harbor in order to get the American Public, which was overwhelmingly NOT in favor of entering a foreign war, to change their minds. Sure it worked, and it cost us over 400,000 American deaths.

LBJ and his aides admittedly LIED us into the escalated Vietnam War, again costing us over 50,000 American Lives. Ironically you ignore this while continuing to claim that GWB Lied us into Iraq, but have no actual proof other than “the WMD were not there, as every world intelligence organization claimed!

Given our so-called friends in the world and their lack of appreciation, I wouldn’t have given 1 American Life, and frankly don’t care if the French were speaking German today.

^SCAATY_423, just wanted to let you know I preached about “Vending Machine God” this very morning, so I smiled when I saw your reference.

My sense of prayer is, the most important thing you can get out of it - or want - is intimacy with God. Anything else is really beside the point.

Mr. Holden, Pardon my post, but you, sir, are a jackass. When a country (Germany in this case) declares war upon our country, you are saying, we should have said “We give up.”???

I happen to have been fortunate enough to have had conversations with one of the individuals privy to the “Black Box” and who intercepted the messages sent to the Japanese Embassy on the morning in question. There were certainly things that could have been handled bettter but the meaning of the message was not realized until after the deed was done.

oh here we go again

SPAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

LOVE the dig at those stupid Cialis ads!!!!

Actually, not the civil war, The War of nothern aggression. The north had blockaded the Southern ports, illegally. This action was ordered by the War Criminal, “dishonest “abraham lincoln!!!

Few points: If you don’t believe in prayer, richard, you may ask yourself why evolution left the ability to grow a new limb with the “lower” animals. What was nature thinking if it always gives us better gifts through evolution?

Dis honest Abe was a Republican that canceled the right of free press and free speech during the war, setting the trend for the group wanting in now.

Cd, I agree 100%.

This is the first saucy Doonesbury strip I have seen.

The Revolutionary War was started by a bunch of radical liberals. The conservatives were the Tories, loyal to the king.

Just because the military doesn’t want the banged up, amputated people that they produced doesn’t mean these same vets can’t hold respectable jobs in the civilian world, regardless of prostheses or wheelchairs.

It’s hard to believe the low level of intellectual discourse here. Let me paraphrase, “all wars were started by Democrats”. “No, all wars were started by Republicans” “Well the ‘good” wars may have been started by Democrats but that’s alright because they were justified”.

People, can’t we agree to agree that there are stupid people, scoundrels or worse in both parties? That said, let’s choose the ones we think may be the best from amongst all the parties represente.

I happen to be an engineer who was involved in DARPA’s Revolutionizing Prosthetics project which aims to bring prosthetic arms and hands out of the age of cable-actuated “claws” (some of my company’s work appeared on the cover of National Geographics Magazine back in January). I can’t believe the line of comments above that implies that the military (and explicitly the Republican Party) justifies the conflict on the grounds that it improves technology and stimulates job growth. The people within the military that we have dealt with on the prothetics project are ONLY concerned with improving the lot of people who have lost their limbs (a group not limited to soldiers, by the way; a friend of mine lost her arm to a bacterial infection she got from an exposed cut while gardening!).

The thing that intrigued me about this DB column was the explicit mention of a real company’s name (Otto Bock). Has product placement caome to the comics? And DB of all places?!

@justice22 - Learn your history! When did the Germans declare war on the US? AFTER the US Declared war on Japan.

I lost a cousin at Pearl Harbor, and the case against FDR is pretty well documented by well known and respected historians. I don’t think anyone with access to the “black box”, whatever that is, would know what FDR was planning. FDR and his Progressives ignored the Military for 2 decades and then plunged us into a War for which we were not prepared. They bear the brunt of the responsibility for the 400,000+ American lives lost.

No one wants to overlook the inherent evil in the Nazi’s regime, but the Left is certainly willing to overlook Stalin, who actually murdered more people than Hitler, and with the same savagery. In fact many people in the Progressive Movement became spies for Stalin and betrayed the US.

There is no one Party/Person to blame for any war; but we’ve gone past that to promoting a Progressive Agenda that’s unconstitutional at worst and socialist at best.

For all you people who still believe the long-discredited myth that FDR knew of the attack at Pearl Harbor in advance and did nothing to stop it in order to drag the US into war with Japan and Germany see the info presented here: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1889/did-roosevelt-know-in-advance-about-the-attack-on-pearl-harbor-yet-say-nothing

While it certainly is not proof (what “proof” can be given 70 years after the fact that someone did not know something) the logic of the argument is pretty compelling.

I’m not going to say all you folks are silly, because that would be rude of me. However, reflection compels me to opine that conspiracy theory websites, and parsing conflicts with the party in power at the time, is probably not what Santayana or Bertrand Russell meant in their respective statements about learning from history.

I hate that cialis commercial. I doesn’t make sense.

It’s a German company established shortly after WW1.