Michael Ramirez for September 06, 2013

Definitely on the increase since 08. More people on foodstamps than are employed. And he’s encouraging more.

Those aren’t holes, they are patches. Look again. Great cartoon, Mr. Ramirez!!

The rich and the corporations suck up more government money than ANYONE! Pay no taxes, get subsidized, hide money offshore, pay less than your secretary when you do pay taxes. Social Security and Medicare are not handouts, rather they are the trickle down Raygun promised us.

1. SS isn’t intended as a pension, but merely an account you pay into for INSURANCE you won’t starve to death, and it doesn’t pay that much. (but does need adjustment for newer actuarial facts!)

2.Interesting that “creative thinking” is brought up by the clan of no thinking OR creativity! Which, glad there’s never any insulting comments from that same group, based on falacies.

Well, speaking from the left, I believe that work is good for people and that everyone who can work should work. And that there should be work for everyone who can work. And if there is work for everyone who can work, almost everyone will work. (There are always a few louts, but really, not that many.) But somehow capitalism never seems able to provide work for everyone. The business cycle is built into capitalism, so periodically you’re going to have a panic, as they used to say, and a lot of people are going to be out of work even though they want to work. You can tell they want to work because they line up hoping to find a job, and eventually when the economy recovers, they do find jobs. So when the economy has tanked and is taking its sweet time to create more jobs, I’m inclined to blame the system rather than individuals.

Let no truth be untwisted. How do you answer the old question, are you better off than last year? How about 4 years ago? In the words of an old country song ,“Who are you gonna blame this time”?

Why do you inject race into this discussion?

What are you talking about? For instance, what is the antecedent of the pronoun “it” in “It is a collection…”?

Here’s your post; “Only a few louts? Seventy-two percent of African-American babies are born into fatherless families. Why are they fatherless? Because the would-be fathers know what would happen to the mothers’ assistance checks if they married them. Exactly what are they called if not “louts”?” I guess African-American is not a racial designation?

Some linguists (Longaker, for example) would say that “it is raining” is an “ambient” verb — in logical terms, it has zero arguments (whereas an intransitive verb has one argument, a transitive verb has two arguments, and a ditransitive verb has three arguments). In PRO-drop languages, such as Latin or Ancient Greek, the verb appears with no expressed subject at all, but in English we don’t allow a verb without a subject, so we insert the dummy subject “it” or “there” with an ambient verb. Not the same situation at all. bhninke’s “it” needs an antecedent.

If race isn’t relevant, why did you mention it? I didn’t bring it up, you did.

If I were to say, “Seventy-two percent of Catholics on welfare are alcoholics”, a reasonable person might suppose that I’m making a statement about Catholics. When you say, “Seventy-two percent of African-American babies are born into fatherless families”, I think it’s reasonable to suppose that you’re saying something about African-Americans. If race is irrelevant to your comment, why mention it? If you are just making a point about louts on welfare, you can do that without mentioning race.

Like the oil companies, right?

I. I’m not a liberal.2. That’s not what I said.

The true “recipient class”: GE, Lockheed Martin, Tobacco farmers, Ethanol producers, Cargill, ADM, Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Conoco, Raytheon, Burlington Northern/Santa Fe, PG& E, SCE, Pacific Power, Monsanto, Ford, GM, Chrysler, Grumman, Electric Boat Company, Boeing, Colt, H & K, Smith and Wesson, well, just start to look at the top 500 corporations, including “financials” like B of A, or those controlling tariff regulations like Wal Mart, and you’ve got a hit on the real “class”.

Is the purpose of Government to do the most it can, for the most people, with the Money that it Has? or Is the purpose of Government to protect the opulent rich from the masses?

Are we are brother’s and sister’s keeper? or put here only for our own self interest?

Third choices…anyone?

Everybody wants stuff but the one percent have gotten 95 percent of the gains since the economy started to turn around. I suspect that Mr. Ramirez who I regard as a stooge for the Koch brothers and their billionaire cronies means the rest of us who have not benefited from the recovery.