Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau

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  1. Ravenswing

    Ravenswing said, about 1 month ago

    I have to admit I’m always bemused - and more than a touch angry - at the right wing hypocrites who scream about taxes while having their hand out behind their back for subsidies or other government payouts.

    Then again, this comes from the right wingers whose definition of “family values” seems to be “I can do what I want behind everyone’s back, of course.”

  2. Alabama_Al

    Alabama_Al said, about 1 month ago

    “We don’t need government handouts”, what a joke. I’m sure many have read about the recent floods in Georgia, especially within the Atlanta area. Apparently a lot of businesses and homeowners have discovered that building structures in “100-years flood plains” (where floods seem to happen more often than once in a 100 years) or a home alongside a picturesque bubbling brook which suddenly became a raging torrent may not have been real good advance planning. Until about a week ago, many of these owners didn’t see any reason to pay for flood insurance.

    So now what are the Georgia public officials – many of whom quite contemptuously and vocally scorn the “socialism” of the Obama administration, to the cheers of their constituents – now doing? As predictable as the sunrise, they are calling on Federal assistance. And I really want to hear those affected by the floods who receive this financial assistance tell me again how they are paying too much in taxes.

  3. Orgelspieler

    Orgelspieler said, about 1 month ago

    Well, you have to admit that a life expectancy of around 35 would force congress to concentrate on the issues.

  4. baslim_the_begger

    baslim_the_beggerGenius_badge said, about 1 month ago

    Farm subsidies! That was different! I was doing my patriotic duty and not growing surplus and ruinin’ the market for my fellow small farmers! Well, okay, some of them were big corporations, but still we were doing the right thing! What do you mean, don’t grow something and don’t get paid for not growing it. You ever been a farmer? You don’t turn down free money!

  5. Potrzebie

    Potrzebie said, about 1 month ago

    I really can’t understand why a farmer would not grow as much as possible. Doesn’t the world need food and agricultural products? Wouldn’t the cost of living go down if prices went down?

  6. bmwk12ltc

    bmwk12ltc said, about 1 month ago

    The point is that this is G. Trudeau’s spin of what the protesters are saying. It’s not what they are really saying but by putting it out here like it is it will condition people into thinking they know what the protesters are saying. Like a 3rd rate comedian who got more tv time than Ms. Palin and since she did many people never listened to what Ms. Palin had to say.

  7. JonD17

    JonD17 said, about 1 month ago

    Potrzebie, I think you realize this, but you have perversly answered your own question. You see if the cost of living did go down, so would the entire capitalisitic philosophy. Just as Baslim is alluding in his prior post.

  8. Tigger

    TiggerGenius_badge said, about 1 month ago

    Old case of Do as I say, not Say as I Do.

  9. Tigger

    TiggerGenius_badge said, about 1 month ago

    @bmwk1ltc

    Ms. Palin was so clueless She didn’t know the duties of the Office she ran for. She had zero Clue the Duties of the Veep.

    Ms. Palin made Kelly Pickler look smart.

  10. Nemesys

    Nemesys said, about 1 month ago

    I think that Garry’s implication that raging senility is driving seniors to be worried about their healthcare is rather senile of him, but at least he has that excuse. Many of the other commenters should know better.

    As to handouts, I don’t think anyone questions socialistic programs that enable us to help each other in times of crisis. They work to the common good, and it’s a weak red-herring argument to equate them with other less worthy programs. What many folks do question are those people who enable others to form multi-generational lifestyles out of receiving handouts. The only “common good” that accomplishes is enslaving citizens to vote for liberals to keep their addicted goodies coming.

  11. Michael

    Michael said, about 1 month ago

    Remember that, while it does make a statement, it is still a comic strip and the opinion of the artist. Yet, I happen to agree. I’ve heard of no seniors in the real world willing to give up Medicare.

    There is much hypocrisy in the “my country right or wrong” extreme right. It’s not THEIR country anymore? Oh boo hoo. This is the 21st century, not the 19th. Get rid of your “stars and bars” and over it. Succession? Right; pay for all the services the federal government is currently providing.

    And Ms “dumb as a box of rocks” Palin? Oh, please. A Journalism Major who couldn’t even name ONE single publication. Her excuse was that she was nervous? Yeah, life is like that, especially in the public eye….

  12. fbjsr

    fbjsr said, about 1 month ago

    As a Republican I never understood the farm subsities program started by a Democratic president and congress. It made much more since to pay the farmers to grow the food and then send it to the parts of the world that needed it and give it to them. This would not affect local prices. I don’t belive in paying somebody to do nothing. What your missing about health care and you wont listen because you already know everything. We don’t care if you set up something to help the unisured. What we don’t want is it to be forced on the rest of us. It’s about freedom of choice. If Obama came out and said we are going to expand medicare to help younger people who need the help it would pass. What we dont want is Pelosi and Frank saying we know better and this is what everybody (except congress) is going to get.

  13. Susan001

    Susan001 said, about 1 month ago

    Tell you what–let’s just lock up all seniors and retirees in “internment camps” like in the movie WILD IN THE STREETS.
    Or better yet, just shoot ‘em dead!

    You pseudo-“conservatives” make me wanna puke!

  14. beaniebones

    beaniebones said, about 1 month ago

    fbjsr, you want to help the uninsured but not forced on you. You want freedom of choice. Hmmm…have you ever looked up the word OPTION in the dictionary? That’s what we bleeding heart tree huggers are asking for, a Public OPTION. As in CHOICE. Why don’t conservatives understand that?

  15. bmwk12ltc

    bmwk12ltc said, about 1 month ago

    the point I was making wasn’t if Ms. Palin was qualified it was an example of how most people haven’t a clue about the issue or the person because the impression they have isn’t based on fact just what someone else says that is represented. Which really says something about how clueless they are.

  16. fbjsr

    fbjsr said, about 1 month ago

    jond17, actualy if you read about it before you before you spoke. Farm subsidies were started because the price of food dropped so low that the cost of growing was more than what they made selling it. This was causing the smaller farmer to go bankrupt. Capitalism would have allowed this to happen and the ones who stayed in business would have been able to charge more. Instead we gave these farmer money not to grow which causes the price to go up. Also a 100 year flood plane does not mean you are only going to get one flood every 100 years. It means that are going to get at LEAST one flood during that time. You could get one every year.

  17. Chikuku

    ChikukuGenius_badge said, about 1 month ago

    Sarah Palin is a butcher of Bambis and burner of books.

    She never reads anything because she thinks she already knows everything.

  18. Jo Jo

    Jo Jo said, about 1 month ago

    I doubt Trudeau is trying to “trick” anyone into believing that this is what the protesters are saying, as the protests have been fairly well-covered ( I rarely watch cable news shows and I see lots of stories about them ); and of course none of them are demanding a repeal of Medicare or Social Security. What he’s doing is highlighting a basic inconsistency in the argument against a public option or government subsidies of health care, and doing it in a pretty amusing way. If some of the marchers and protesters shouted “No ADDITIONAL government supported health care!” I think it would be more difficult to lampoon. Instead, the death panel and communism and Obama-as-Hitler signs make the opposition seem pretty uninformed and knee-jerk reactionary.

  19. jtpozenel

    jtpozenel said, about 1 month ago

    I would have no problem taking “government” handouts.

    I would like to get some of that money back that I handed in.

  20. MisngNOLA

    MisngNOLAGenius_badge said, about 1 month ago

    Beaniebones, apparently you don’t understand what the “public option” part of the healthcare insurance bill is. It’s not whether you have the choice to get or reject healthcare insurance, it’s that the government will provide one of the choices that it forces you to make. Public option will simply be chosing the government as your health insurance provider as opposed to say Blue Cross, or Kaiser Permanente, or such. The bill itself includes provisions to “fine” people who do not purchase health insurance. Does that equate to the “option to choose” in your world? If so, you don’t understand the argument being put forth.

  21. Joe Allen Doty

    Joe Allen Doty said, about 1 month ago

    Some of the complaining senior citizens who don’t want government hand-outs are either living in Public Housing or they live in privately owned apartment complexes or houses and get rental assistance from HUD’s Section 8 programs.

    My older sister and her husband live in a privately owned apartment complex for seniors and disabled people in the little community of Mulberrly, KS. On the wall of one of the buildings where the name of the complex is also “USDA.”

    Well, since that is considered a rural apartment complex, the USDA takes care of part of the expenses for running the place. All of the apartments are the same size and the monthly rent is $430 per month with all bills paid and that includes 115 Cable TV channels. They do have to pay for phone service (and internet service, if desired).

    On the bulletin board in the Community Room there, I saw the requirements for living there. I also saw that if a person had been accepted by HUD Section 8 Programs, his monthly rent would be based on a percentage of his monthly income which would be 30 percent of his income.

    I told my sister that If I lived there and had transferred my Section 8 to there, I wouldn’t be paying as much as they nor the singles living there are paying.

  22. fbjsr

    fbjsr said, about 1 month ago

    The public ‘option’ is not an option for us. It is an option that the goverment can run all health plans as apposed to them being privatly run. We would not have the option to say we dont want this or even to decline health insurance at all. Joe I haven’t seen any senoir citizens complaing about hand outs. They are complaing about being forced to do something. If you took all the senior citezens and told them they had to live in the place you described you would see them complain about it.

  23. seablood

    seablood said, about 1 month ago

    Angry, frightened seniors ? That’s the generation that wanted to send my generation to fight in Viet Nam. And when some of us refused, they called us unpatriotic, cowardly traitors! That’s because they were ignorant then and , apparently, they are still ignorant.

  24. jack75287

    jack75287 said, about 1 month ago

    The problem with this strip is that we really need health care a few times in our lives. I mean really I am not talking about sour throats here. Food we need everyday for the most part. Yes the cost of farm subsidies dose increase the cost of food. If the cost of food was not high no one could afford to operate a farm and feed us. I know it is a terrible circle.

  25. fbjsr

    fbjsr said, about 1 month ago

    seablood, before you claim to be part of the generation that was sent to nam by these “ignorant seniors”. I am in my early 50’s and I am too young to have gone to viet nam. The senoirs in this strip are nam veterans. The “ignorant generation” your refering to was the one that fought in WW2 and saved the world. Unfortunatly they are growing less and less every day.

  26. OldHipster

    OldHipster said, about 1 month ago

    Seniors got HANDOUTS?

    Wowsville!

  27. seablood

    seablood said, about 1 month ago

    fbjsr,
    I am in my 60’s, and the Viet Nam War was very prominent in my college years. I lost a lot of my friends there. I didn’t go. And there are still PLENTY of seniors alive that are too young to have fought in WW2 but were old enough to call us cowards and traitors for not going off to die. Most of them are now dottering.

  28. sennheiser

    sennheiser said, about 1 month ago

    fbjsr, You missed something in your statement “It made much more since to pay the farmers to grow the food and then send it to the parts of the world that needed it and give it to them. This would not affect local prices.”… It actually would not have made more sense to do things that way.

    Consider that had farmers here grown the food and given it away, not only would worldwide prices for this food have dropped, netting other farmers even less profit (local prices) and less ability to stay in business, but this would have destroyed whatever local markets existed in those countries where the american products were sent.

  29. pbarnrob

    pbarnrob said, about 1 month ago

    Unintended consequences - bite us on the A$$ every time we think we’ve got it all covered…

    The naive know not their mistakes. -And repeat them.
    The foolish blame others for their mistakes. -And repeat them.
    The intelligent profit from their mistakes.
    The wise profit from the mistakes of others.
    –Rick Berry, /Stepping Off The Mat/

  30. blueprairie

    blueprairie said, about 1 month ago

    I have no problem taking government handouts. After all, it was the GI Bill that put me through college. I have no problem with preferential admissions practices, either; the dean told me up front I was getting in because I was a veteran.

    I guess it all depends on who’s doing the giving, and who’s doing the taking.

  31. fbjsr

    fbjsr said, about 1 month ago

    sennhieser, I meant to areas that were not capable of buying it. Areas of true famine.

  32. Badto Thebone

    Badto Thebone said, about 1 month ago

    Trudeau points out the irony of republicans who appose health care. Cut subsidies to corporations and multimillionare farmers. Leave the small farms alone. Why ADM and Dixie Sugar ect get subsidies is beyond me.

  33. cholldekkgher stenstenstaffgher

    cholldekkgher stenst... said, about 1 month ago

    Did somebody say a day at the beach?
    When? Which beach? Where?

  34. Fairportfan

    Fairportfan said, about 1 month ago

    bmwk12ltc said

    the point I was making wasn’t if Ms. Palin was qualified it was an example of how most people haven’t a clue about the issue or the person because the impression they have isn’t based on fact

    Actually, i never saw any of those Palin parodies you allude to, because i don’t watch much TV.

    I promise you, Clueless Sarah was quite successful on her own in making herself look ridiculous and emphasising her total unsuitability for the office she was running for.

  35. MisngNOLA

    MisngNOLAGenius_badge said, about 1 month ago

    Fairport, and Joe Biden showed his suitability how?