Ted Rall for February 03, 2010

bleeep do nothing politicians!

Meant to say, Dang do nothing worthless politicians!

He’s got a LONG way to go to catch Bush!

EVERYONE needs vacation, but there is such thing as too much [Bush]. If you do not take a break from your work you end up making poor decisions.

If you work 365 days a year with no holidays and no breaks and no mistakes, feel free to state otherwise.

I want him to catch bush right away….go barack go….the bail out we need….jump

@Jade,

maybe in terms of actual vacations that is true, but he has already played more rounds of golf in one year than W. did his whole two terms. It was in Harper’s Index.

Ted, how come your columns are always on Smirking Chimp before they are posted here?

Also, maybe you could do some cartoons with giant squid in them. You have done them in the past and they were funny. There is a giant squid invasion going on off the Pacific Coast right now:

http://tinyurl.com/ycnz85e

Good cartoon today – this Prez is getting really pathetic. It is going to be a challenge pretty soon to even do cartoons about him; it will be like shooting fish in a barrel, or squid in a barrell. I’m sure you will rise to the challenge though.

I promise not to regard Obama as the messiah if you promise not to consider him the devil. Why do we have to get so personal? (I am not claiming that the left never got personal about Bush and Cheney.) Those, on both sides, who spend their time and energy on personal attacks only demonstrate that they have no ideas worth stating.

The Cubs banner in the first panel is an especially nasty touch, since Obama is a South Sider and a White Sox fan. It’s like saying Curt Schilling roots for the Yankees.

@ Metzengerstein

Golf is a red herring, the only thing W did for the troops was give up playing golf. It doesn’t mean he didn’t spend time doing other nonsense like cutting brush or posting comments on Ted Rall’s strips. :-)

I really don’t care if he moved all executive offices to the ranch in TX as long as it meant he had developed a clear plan for Afghanistan, stayed out of Iraq and gotten aid to Katrina victims.

@ lonecat

I agree completely. I find the right’s claims of leftist politics from the president absurd. Someone [possibly David Corn] noted that this healthcare plan is more conservative than one Nixon introduced.

After the announcement of the Af/Pak plan David Corn of Mother Jones called Obama the most successful Republican President of the last 25 years. Granted Corn is left of me, but I’m still left of the Pres. There is LOTS of room on this side of the President’s policies.

Both House and Senate voted, so you are saying they were supposed to stay there and reconcile the two bills? Is that procedurally possible? Is that the President’s call?

Shouldn’t this anger be directed at a Congress more willing to campaign than govern? Or the “gang of six” who can shape all legislation, despite representing a COMBINED 3 percent of US population?

Dear killbill,

I agree that Obama is not very left, but on the other hand the Republican party has moved pretty far to the right. A few days ago I posted a note about the former Republican Senator Mac Mathias from Maryland, who died last week at the age of 87. He was among a now extinct species, probably killed off by (political) climate change – the liberal Republicans.

I am fascinated by the hatred some people have for Obama. What precisely brings on this reaction? Disagreement, fine, that’s what politics is made of, but why waste time on venom? It’s of no great matter that Bill Clinton was a self-centered fool, he was a better than average president (not that the standard is very high). What bothered me about Bush was not that he was a hypocritical lying idiot, it was his policies that were wrong. If he had been a hypocritical lying idiot who made good political decisions, then we would be better off.

The irrational hatred some people feel for Obama is undoubtedly partly because he’s smarter than they are, partly even because he’s thinner than they are – and partly, dare we say it, because he’s blacker than they are.

sirrom – you could well be right. If people are jealous of his intelligence, that would explain all the silly fuss some people make about the teleprompters – if he needs them it seems to cut him down to their size. Personally I like it that he’s smart. But smart is neither necessary nor sufficient. FDR was not the smartest guy in the world, but he was cunning, and that worked as well or better. Obama could be a combination of Einstein and Mother Teresa, but he has to govern. I think and hope that he’s got the character to figure this out, but he is certainly faced with the hardest political problems we’ve seen in a long time.

But I can’t stand it that he’s thinner than I am. The nerve!!

The 800-pound elephant (not necessarily a Republican one, either) is, unfortunately, race.

I picture Barry with a pina colada in one hand and a mike in the other singing “Didn’t we almost have it all?” in a karaoke bar while on vacation back in Hawaii.

Perhaps with an Alfred E. Neumann t-shirt with the immortal words “What, me worry?” emblazoned across his chest.

Yes, you could say I am cynical.

Re golf – my favorite Bush quote:

“I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers.”

His business out of the way, Bush barely paused for breath before saying, “Thank you. Now watch this drive.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43789-2002Aug4

Days spent on vacation during first year in office (factcheck.org):

W. Bush: 69 Reagan: 42 H.W. Bush: 40 Obama: 26 Clinton: 21 Carter: 19

That’s not counting trips to Camp David which is more like a scenic office space. But if you want to add in Camp David days:

W. Bush: 78 Obama: 27

How long until the first “Obama is worse than Carter” comment?

To some of us, everything Carter did just looks better and better. It was Reagan who put this country on the path to destruction.