Tom the Dancing Bug by Ruben Bolling for November 05, 2010

This is what the average comic strip reader wants out of Ruben Bolling every week. Forget those other features! To the average comic strip reader, this is no longer “Tom the Dancing Bug”, it’s “Lucky Ducky”.

And yet, they probably don’t get Super Fun Pak Comix.

Lucky Ducky: “Okay! I’m off to read my Super Fun Pak Comix!” Hollingsworth Hound: “GRRR!! LUCKY DUCKY!!! $%!$@$”

So remember, kids! Socialism is GOOD for America!

No, socialism is good for big corporations because it eliminates the competition that would keep them in line.

The biggest corporation, of course, being the Federal Government itself.

Yes, competition WOULD keep them in line if they didn’t rig by passing secret contracts and eliminating it!

Doug, if you can’t tell the difference between government (the guys with the bombers and tanks and taxes) and corporations (the guys with the factories and goods and payrolls), you shouldn’t be commenting on economics.

The brand of socialism that pretends that corporations are independent of the government is called fascism, or as Mussolini called it, the “corporate state”. The idea was created by nationalist socialists to try to distinguish themselves from the communist socialists, but they all believe government should be running everything. They only differ whether dissidents should be sent to Auschwitz or Siberia.

^ I’m sorry, pschearer, but your relationship with reality is long gone if you think that any policy from the last two years comes close to either of the political systems you’re describing.

Socialist? Fascist? Maybe you should think about taking it down a notch for America.

For me, this strip clarifies–taxes down, profits up, disturbing unemployment “soft,” deficit down, stock market up–and it makes an assertion–the well off, the comfortable hate the Democrats and make these false claims with some mobilization of latent American racial hostility; and the strip asks why. And then the strip offers one answer, to wit, that many among the well off hate humanity–meaning that which is humane–even hating beans, so called, for a duck, so-called. Each of us might ask: what is in in us, in ordinary Americans that makes us vulnerable–to paid-for stories that lure us into opposition against our own interests and opposition to the welfare of those we love?

sfiller - this is what astounds me (a british observer). I really don’t understand the hatred of the healthcare reform, and much less so the Nazi comparisons for Obama. Strikes me as the product of ignorant people listening to lies and agenda pedalled by Glenn Beck etc. Most of the voter dissatisfaction appears to be with the state in which Bush left the economy - did you really expect it to be fixed instantly?

Chikuku - a badger is a large rodent. Although I do agree, good comic today :)

Think about it…Our school system is VERY socialistic So, down with our school system… Really, Socalisn isn’t all bad

pschearer reminds me of the late and unlamented Joe-Allen Doty, only in the sense that neither one ever let facts get in the way of beliefs - “the world is flat because I think it is…”

Republicans won’t be happy until most of us are starving in the streets.

Boy, I sure get on you Lefties’ nerves!. I guess that’s to be expected when defending American values against people who have been propagandized all their lives by opposite principles.

JAD is dead? I was wondering what happened to him. Good riddance.

pschearer thinks anything to the Left of “Every man for himself” is socialism, and he thinks that and “Take whatever you can grab” are the founding ideals of the United States. You see, instead of the Bible, he has Ayn Rand.

“’Do unto others as I would have them do unto me?’ But that would imply that the well-being of others is of equal importance to mine. As a Superior Being, I have an absolute Natural Right to either exploit or disregard the Lower Orders. ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal?’ Who said that, Karl Marx? ‘Promote the General Welfare?’ Show me where it says that in the Constitution!”

The country is as prosperous as its poorest members, not its richest. “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.” E Pluribus Unum. Even the fundamental metaphor of Fascism, the fascis, instructs that a bundle of rods is harder to break than an equal number of rods individually.

pschearer, looks like you missed Bolling’s joke once again. He is making fun of people like you who scream in terror of socialism without cause. Calling something socialism repeatedly doesn’t make it so.

Actually corporations both make guns and tanks and have fighters that go out and kill people XO for example. If you want an example from the past think Pinkerton Detective Agency. The government also has payrolls is one of the largest employers and even provides services and always has.

Still that has nothing to do with the fact that every thing the second man says is correct and can be easily verified online.

The big corporations have been working together against their own workers and customers for 30 years, and the 2008 collapse was the result. The government has some responsibility to the whole population, and that’s why thy corporations hate it, and the media they own are training the rest of us to hate it.

^-Oh, much more than 30 years, but certainly these have shown the rest of us a flat income, while the top few percent have been doing quite nicely, thanks.

I keep thinking that there’s an obvious connection between Prescott Bush, the aborted FDR coup, and Gen. Smedley Butler (all that in the ’30s), and their more recent attempts to opt out of ‘civilization’ entirely. It’ll be a big surprise when their air, water, and salads become just as polluted as the rest of ours.

@Pschearer, see the definition of Fascism for a clue. When the corporations own the government, we’re there.

I fear for our Republic, since The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.

WOW

Thanks, pbarnrob, for the Wiki reference. I thought it was an excellent analysis of fascism in all its aspects. But in its broad-ranging discussion, economics was not central, and economic theory is the context of my comments.

Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises, the greatest economist you’ve probably never heard of, is the source of my claim that fascism is a fraudulent variety of socialism, invented for the purpose of distinguishing themselves from communism, even though both, practiced consistently, end up as totalitarian dictatorships.

So this doesn’t apply to America? Not true. The fact we haven’t gone down the same route as dozens of other countries – yet – doesn’t mean the principles of collectivism and statism that lead to full-blown socialism aren’t at work in the U.S. For over a century they have been gravitationally tugging us ever closer to a fully government-managed economy.

But like the famous frog in the slowly heated pot, most people don’t see what’s happening to them. But Obama has turned up the heat a little too much, and a great many Americans are becoming aware of the socialist trend and are protesting against it. It remains to be seen how effective the protest is and how long it lasts.