Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for September 19, 2010

Oh, Ben Quayle. Mr. “Barack Obama. Is the WORST. President. In history.” Kind of an odd stance from the son of “I didn’t live in this century” Quayle.

Hunting Qualye without a poetic license is against the journalist law!!!! oh, wait, that’s poetical liceness.

Like shooting fish in a barrel with the Quayles…

What is it with the GOP and that kind of featherbrained pol? Quayle, Shrub, Palin, they all seem like they’re a few feathers shy of a pillow, don’t they?

Maybe Ben will hook up with one of the Palin daughters. It could be, like a dynasty & stuff.

I especially like the way that the feathers look like, oh, I dunno; snails or something in the second panel.

And some kind of odd flying ordnance in the fifth.

The funny thing is that if a Democratic pol’s dumb as a rock, no one particularly defends him.

If a Republican pol’s dumb as a rock, the right wing lunkheads leap up and down and scream “Family values!” at the top of their lungs.

Dan was fun, but every VP is fun, with the possible exception of Spirro and Dick. To think the current one still has 26 mouths, er months to go.

Not to defend Quayle [he truly was a lightweight], but we’ve all demonstrated a less than stellar command of the language at times. I’d sure hate to have a microphone shoved in my face every time I opened my mouth.

Not to defend politicians, sandfan, but it’s their job to have a microphone shoved in their face every time they open their mouth. If they can’t handle that, then they need to go out and get a REAL job, instead of collecting their Welfare checks.

Old joke redux. Q: How can you tell when a politician is lying? A: His (Her) lips are moving. Enjoy the election process, kids!

Lewreader, how can you say that Spiro Agnew was no fun? His way with words made him the comic (or something) relief of the Nixon administration. Who could forget “pusillanimous pussyfooters”? Or “nattering nabobs of negativism”?

I don’t doubt Agnew used a speechwriter to come up with those things – I was impressed that he could deliver them. With obvious relish, too. :)

Who do you suppose Bush paid to come up with all his gems.

If Biden were a Republican, with the number of gaffs he’s made GT and comedians would chew him up and spit him out.

Plus the plagiarism would be constantly brought up.

Besides attacking Murphy Brown as his claim to fame in protecting the United States, what else did he do? Oh that’s right, . .NOTHING! Rather than trot out the Quayle comedians GT simply has to look to our current crop of idiots, the Palins as they dance their way into our living rooms while keeping us safe from the Russians (watching them from the back porch). Stupidity is not held to time, there is always a prime example available.

PLease don’t forget some of those from the left. Biden, Reid & Pelosi. They all have had some less then brillant comments.

It’s not JUST that Quayle screwed up his words on a regular basis. His actions were also extremely bizarre. At the same time, we are all only human, but some of us are a bit more capable than others in the word department.

In reviving the old disparagement of Republicans as intellectual lightweights, GT does seem to be trying to deflect criticism of the president’s policies by reminding us of Obama’s mental superiority. (Yes, I know this is what stebon/nobets is forever reiterating.)

Instead of pretending Obama’s opponents are straw (or feather) men, GT ought to look at the “bitterness” that Obama deplored in 2008 and that Trudeau himself has satirized. Christine O’Donnell isn’t reducible to a Palin doll—-although O’Donnell admits she’s dabbled in witchcraft. See Maureen Dowd’s piece about Obama’s haplessness vis-a-vis the Tea Partiers:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/opinion/19dowd.html?hp

Ps. Do any of you remember this joke by (I think) Dick Gregory?

“Why did Dan Quayle flunk his physical exam?”

“Because when he saw the question, ‘Any handicaps?’ he wrote down ‘four strokes.’”

why is it no one picked up that it Mark - Not Matt. Also why hasn’t GT gone after the Bell politicians. They make Tammany Hall look like pikers. A microcosm of the bigger picture he normally goes after.

In case everyone’s forgotten, the white feather was an old symbol of cowardice which Trudeau originally trotted out to represent Quayle for avoiding service in Vietnam. The hypocrisy of this is obvious when you consider the many thousands of Lefties who did exactly the same (many of them still growing weed and selling leather goods in the nooks and crannies of British Columbia).

And there is no excuse to recycle the same symbol for Ben Quayle. That’s just unjust.

Yes, Dan Quayle was a lightweight; in fact, he was an embarrassment to the GOP and the nation since he was selected just to have a youthful face on the ticket. I don’t know enough about Ben Quayle to have an opinion yet, but I sure won’t be forming one based on a slanted cartoon.

(BTW, I do not condemn anyone who avoided the draft which was immoral. A free country doesn’t have to enslave its citizens to protect itself.)

@pschearer

A free country doesn’t enslave its citizens, but as Machiavelli points out, a citizenry who rely on mercenaries for protection will eventually become slaves to their protectors.

At what point will our “volunteer army” turn into mercenaries? When recruitment slumps even though we’re at war?

(By the way, the Dan feather who corrects the Ben feather has mangled his own words in the fourth panel. Should be “The apple didn’t fall far from the tree.” Dan mixes up proof of paternity with a father being crushed by his child falling on him.)

@MiepR; Is that an owl I see before me? or just an avatar that is a bit fuzzy.

Or is it a turtle??!!

“This country could use more fine men like Quayle”

ROFLMAO!

We had one, G W Bush.

Palin Drome: Why would anyone quote Machiavelli approvingly? The draft is still slavery. Who else would you quote? Jefferson Davis?

What does “mercenary” mean here anyway? That they get paid? As if anyone joins the military to get rich.

The only real issue is freedom, and it is a tragedy that Americans have slid so far from it.

Machiavelli was very perceptive.

@pschearer

(1) Who gets rich working for the military? Any Blackwater mercenary.

(2) Who would quote Machiavelli with approval? Someone who has read not just his tongue-in-cheek treatment of tyranny in The Prince but also his masterly demonstration, in his Discourses on Livy, that democracy (the Roman republic) is the most enduring form of government. During the Republic (500-43 B.C.E.), ordinary Roman (male) citizens had the opportunity to better their station in life through military service.

Got to agree with PALIN on this one. If your only exposure to Machiavelli was Eng 101, I would advise that you might have been misled by draft dodging professors. One must remember the political condition of Italy when he wrote. Why the US Senate is more civil.

Wow, the right repeats its nonsense about the left being the draft dodgers while Bush trots out his flight suit earned in the safety of NG of the 60’s and the rest of th folks running on the right wing never saw a gun except to shoot a rabbit. Or the old guy hunting quail with them from their limo. And then they swift boat actual guys who put themselves in harms way. Yeah, why I don’t vote Repub. VOL 1

They’re both pathetic and you are so right on freeholder.

Ben Quayle gets a smaller feather to show that he is the son of Dan, the larger feather. Pretty obvious to me.

But has anyone seen or heard from Quayle père lately? He hasn’t done much stumping for his son, unless he’s been ‘incognitoe’…

Daddy recently sponsored a fund raiser at his gated community home in Arizona - hoping among other things to get publicity. The only problem was the gatekeeper wouldn’t let the press in. So the press interviewed the pro-Hulburd protesters outside the gate. Guess who got all the publicity?

ginny, I’ll bet the press wouldn’t have contributed anything to the fund raiser anyway.

Sycophants? ..and that would refer to the 54% of the electorate who voted for him? Naw, you’re not out on the fringe….

Oh, and the approval rating is 46% and rising. He’s four points higher at this point in his presidency than Reagan or Clinton at the same point. Needless to say, they were both re-elected.

LOL Moment!