Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for October 30, 2011

OWS has it all wrong! It is the 1% who should be protesting how bad they have it!

Fox, almost as good as the Bible.

I’m shocked, shocked. Trudeau should be ashamed of himself, mocking Fox News the way he does. Breaking their hearts. Isn’t there any way Fox could sue him for libel? In order to shut him up forever?

poverty is unacceptable in any society. fox news want our poor to become like bangladesh’s poor.

They hold us to such a high standard!

Roland comments on the “Lucky Duckies.”`(If you don’t know the significance of that term, look it up!)

“Who are these lucky duckies? They are the beneficiaries of tax policies that have expanded the personal exemption and standard deduction and targeted certain voter groups by introducing a welter of tax credits for things like child care and education. When these escape hatches are figured against income, the result is either a zero liability or a liability that represents a tiny percentage of income.” —“The Non-Taxpaying Class: Those lucky duckies!” The Wall Street Journal 20 November 2002

I never met a parrot yet that told me the truth!

Parrots neither lie nor tell the truth, they are parrots. They just repeat what they’ve heard, whether it makes sense or not. Can’t blame a tape recorder for what it says. You have to speak to those who operate it.

Hedley invokes jesus element to bolster his argument.The go to guy for the fox news base.Which are the 99%ers.

What the income tax was instituted a hundred years ago, it was (a) intended to replace the Federal excise tax on alcohol, as a step toward Prohibition, and was (b) intended to apply only to the wealthier segments of the population. In the last few years I have heard conservatives (a) complain that the income tax ought never to have been expanded to include the majority of Americans but ought to have remained as it was designed to be, a tax that only applied to the wealthy, and (b) complain that only the better off pay income tax and too many people are allowed to escape without paying it.

@DoughfootIncome tax was introduced in my country to cover war debts. They were supposed to be a temporary measure…yeh, right.

Anybody out there know how many million Fox News species of parrot exist:(a) in captivity?(b) in the wild?

And does anybody out there know how many Rush Limbaugh species of parrot exist:(a) in captivity?(b) in the wild?

I know there exists the “ditto head” species that repeats only what it hears from Rush Limbaugh. Still another species — the “Ann Coulter” species — only dittoes her. I’ve also heard there is yet another species that is capable of repeating Ann, Rush, and FN, all three. Psittacologists say it contradicts itself when they disagree, but doesn’t know it’s doing so.

Amazing, the rant on dishwashers and the rest are direct quotes from the Heritage Foundation research paper on poverty….so much easier to take as a cartoon.

This thread seems to have been hijacked by the radical fringe of the ornithological societies.

The “Pokerfaced” parrot species that repeats on this website just gave us an example. It said, “Has anybody noticed the explosion in the New York pigeon population lately?”

Question Series: Is it repeating Fox News? Rush Limbaugh? Ann Coulter? All three? Do cross-bred species speak bits and pieces from all three? Is any psittacologist studying this proliferation of species? I’d like to know if it’s native to the U.S.? Or is it an invasive species from, say, Never Never Land? Or maybe Mars? Anybody out there know?

The 1% don’t walk on the street—they have peasants lie down before them so they don’t soil their shoes.

Parrot, the reason that is done is because the Zucotti Park folks have been denied the use of megaphones. The repeating of speakers is done in order for people who aren’t within 5-6 feet of the speaker to hear the speech. The transmission method is fraught with peril, as anyone who has ever participated in a game of “Telephone” knows.

I had a student cite something they heard on FN in a paper last week. I told him I couldn’t accept it since FN has deemed science as unnecessary and bothersome since it deals with facts and logic.

I expect to be hearing from the FN attorneys soon.

Guns and The Bible, People use both to shoot down others or themselves.

Jesus was speaking of individual responsibility, not government coercion.

Sign seen @ OWSFOX News: Rich people paying rich people to tell middle class people to blame poor people."Now that’s a T-shirt I’d wear.

If the “poor” don’t have to pay federal income tax (about 47% of workers), why do they insist the rich (the 5% who pay 70% of the federal income taxes) don’t “pay their fair share”? Seems that Trudeau missed the point (again).

We do have it good. We didn’t have running water, indoor toilets or electricity at the farm in Arkansaw when I was a kid, and even now, I’ve got this computer and an old car, and plenty to eat…I’m VERY grateful.

I have government-built highways, there are wheelchair ramps at every corner, which I don’t need yet! and government-built internet, water I can trust at my sink!

Television…a few channels that are free…warm clothes,

AND I can read Doonesbury on the web…Hallelujah, I’m doing good. But the 1% and the twenty percent under them are thieves, and Fox is staffed by liars…and yes, there’s more and better I’d like to have, but you know, Koch and the boys have to steal, they can’t help it. Like Wall street, they can’t NOT do evil.

So what? I’m doing good, and as an old Green Beret, I can live simpler than a lot of people. And thank God America is waking up: OWS and the 99% prove that democracy is reborning!

GOTP delenda est…

I ban fox news. I block it on my cable box. I block fox local news. My local fox news even got the weather wrong. “there will be rain tomorrow.” NOPE. sunny and clear. I block fox business channel. Besides, who wants to listen to a conservative “news” network run by an old, aussie who hacks into phones.

Turn on your faucet. It must be white Kool-Aid.

Most of what makes our “poor” better off is an infrastructure that was built on the base philosophy of a Republican, Eisenhower, to create a sustainable, taxed, and better nation, where all contribute. Today, we’re seeing much of that falling apart because of a “tax me no more” culture that started in 1981, and while modified when disaster loomed by those early “Reaganominists”, the eight years of “Shrubenomics” totally busted the system, with wars, neglect, and ignorant (stupid) enslavement to a philosophy that was fraudulent, and well, criminal, but “decriminalized”.

Eisenhower built on the selflessness of the nation he saw in World War II. Reagan, Bush 41, and especially Bush 43/Cheney bowed to the selfishness of the draft dodgers, training film narrators, and “special” people of wealth and privilege. It’s not a terribly complicated issue.

Faux News, along with GBT himself and many commenters on this thread, confuse OWS with protests against poverty. That is not what OWS is about.The inequality OWS is protesting is the gap between those who made out like bandits in the unregulated financial sector, and the rest of the middle class, whose incomes have barely increased for a generation. Our American middle class has never taken the poor seriously as active citizens. We make our tax-free donations to charity on the understanding that the poor will not challenge our political hegemony over them.GBT and right-wing defenders of the status quo are mistaken when they offer to paint OWS as a lower-class or Marxist uprising. Historically, such uprisings inevitably fail because property owners get alarmed and demand that the state restore order.Aristotle pointed this out long ago. Uprisings by slaves and hired workers are easily suppressed. Revolutions cannot succeed without leadership from the aristocratic—-or, in America—-the middle class.OWS must provide that leadership. If they can extend their occupation of Wall Street to an all-out assault on the lobbying that has turned Congress into little more than a forum for corruption, then even the Teapartiers would join the revolution—-and Obama would become its leader.

Long-time posters to this site: Have you ever suspected this phenomenon: a person posts under one avatar and one screen name. This SAME PERSON will then post under a different avatar and different screen name an agreement with his/her previous post?

This phenomenon has been noticed and discussed on other website threads. And it may be happening on this one. Any input on how and why this is done? And any suspicions on whether it is happening on this one?

So when is GT going back to Trff Bmzklfrpz’s transition to the ranks of the 99 percent?

“Love thy neighbor as thyself” is from Leviticus 19:18.(Leviticus is part of the Jewish Bible—-the book known to Christians as the Old Testament.)

Interesting how the posters here all find fault with Fox News, which just so happens to be the most watched Cable News network out there. Meanwhile, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, etc. just keep LOSING audience share to Fox!

Your own sophistry is your insinuation that the 47% of workers who pay no Federal income tax don’t pay at least at least 15% in taxes to the Federal government in payroll taxes.

“Didn’t your 4th grade teacher tell you that sophistry doesn’t win arguments?” This is a null response to a null question.

I don’t know whether DMcQ draws a regular paycheck, but here are the figures from my last week’s pay statement (net income $1900):

Fed Withholding—-$168Fed FICA—-$76Fed OASD—-$209

Then the oligarchs or plutocrats would have to assume leadership by joining the 99%—-whereupon they’d cease to be oligarchs. OWS is firm on this point.

@Pi,Jesus’s words to the first Christians would apply today to individual sects (Catholics, Lutherans, Baptists) as well as to non-Christian communities (including Jews and Muslims).Our Constitution bars the government from taking any action that might be construed as sectarian. At the same time, it does require the government to safeguard the health and welfare of the people.That’s enough to justify the “big government” agencies that right-wing taxpayers want to dismantle: among them HUD, Education, HHS.It’s not really a religious or moral issue. It’s a principle of our political economy. That’s what makes Hedley and his Faux News dishonest: they recite the benefits our poor receive and pretend that the poor would enjoy these without any government. Imagine our impoverished citizens depending on Faux’s charity!

Ayn Rand gave herself an air of aristocratic superiority without taking on the aristocrat’s responsibility for the well-being of her inferiors.

“Jesus was speaking of individual responsibility, not government coercion.”

And if individuals were living up to this responsibility, there would be no need for government to step in and pick up the slack. (In the same sense, if Business and Industry were to act responsibly on their own initiative, there would be no need for consumer protection laws, workplace safety laws, environmental regulations, banking and finance regulations, etc.).

“It is too early for politicians to presume on our forgetting that the public good, the real welfare of the great body of the people, is the supreme object to be pursued; and that no form of government whatever has any other value than as it may be fitted for the attainment of this object.” — James Madison, Federalist Paper 45

PALIN DROME: I think that the Constitution with the Bill of Rights exists independently of Jesus’ sayings. One reason: Again, Jesus’ words are entirely voluntary, whereas the Constitution’s words are coercive.

I parrot what Obama says? Interesting, since I never listen to Obama. I guess he must be using telepathy.

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. […] Is there no other way the world may live?” – D. D. Eisenhower, April 16, 1953. Of course, the tax rates on the rich were much much higher in DDE’s day than they are today, and the rich weren’t nearly so rich nor society so unequal then as now, and Eisenhower heartily approved of spending public money on infrastructure, research, education, and for “those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed,” nor did he ever complain that the tax rates on the rich were too high, oppressive, and required that they pay more than “their fair share.” Can you imagine that? How many of you knew that Dwight Eisenhower was a Communist?

@pokerfacedparrot: There is an easy solution to the problem of too many pigeons (or if they have all decided to use your balcony as a home). Just find a tall skyscraper and put a suitable box on a ledge, way high up, one that falcons will like. It’s very easy – they want a shallow tray with pebbles a certain size, covering the bottom of the tray to a certain depth. (Not much research needed to find out the exact specs.) On a sheer side of the building, so it’s like a cliff in the wilds. Then just wait till they discover it.

It may take a year or so, but your problem will either disappear or at least be reduced to a manageable size.

Anybody care to comment on this analogy to politics?

@tigre1: Your comment is a breath of fresh air. Lies like the ones Hedley is telling leave me gasping for breath, because I just don’t know where to begin to argue against them.

What a pleasure to read something I can agree with! (I am not saying yours is the only such comment – just that it had a strong effect on me for the moment.)

Incidentally, speaking of pigeons, there are several families of hawks and falcons living in NYC today. So they must eat well. And their chicks.

My avatar shows some (white fluffy) peregrine falcon chicks, only a few days old, and part of a (red-brown) eggshell.

ALL: Congrats on having reached 100 comments already today! Post on!

“Sophistry” strikes me as a word that 4th graders wouldn’t know.

I don’t bother too much with commenting on everything I see that I disagree with. Life is too short. I prefer to emphasize what I agree with. I know it’s rare for people to hear something like that.

Funny. There are more people living under bridges and in alleys than in Eisenhower’s presidency, before the entitlement programs began. With these programs, we have lost the frontier mindset of total responsibility. NOT just responsibility for one’s self (which is hard for some to relate to), but RATHER that we are all in this together, and have a shared responsibility for our neighbor, our fellow man. I’m frankly more worried about the psychology of America than the entitlements – and I’m plenty worried about that. People will always need help – but not for the government to do it, it should always be a personal issue, a local issue. And a society that values selfishness cannot do it.

Randy (from yesterday):“How come actors, directors, athletes, and television personalities who earn hundreds of millions are exempt from the anger? Is it because they are on the correct side politically? Why aren’t they sharing their money with me?”

For what it’s worth, I think most of them are overpaid too. If it would bring ticket prices down, I would gladly cap their salaries, but if a movie, TV show, or sports team generates hundreds of millions in revenue I don’t mind that a good chunk of that goes to the people the audience actually wants to see.

..I agree…just leave me my cellphone,my HD Tv and a couple bucks for a McDouble and a cup of coffee and who needs health care,work,or self respect?…

@dtpi:

I think I had in mind something more literal than you are referring to. The year I mentioned was the time in the spring when the falcons look for a suitable nest (they don’t build their own) on which to lay eggs and raise the babies. Falcons eat only birds, and pigeons are a good size. So either the pigeons will be wiped out, or they will reach a balanced number while the falcons eat the excess.

Now that I think of it, my analogy is not exactly to the free market. It’s more to the idea of adding something (falcons) to the situation (too many pigeons) to make the result more in balance. I think (haven’t given it a lot of thought tho) that the free market goes the other way (in practice at least). Whereas the result of adding falcons to the situation is known to have the result I described.

We passed NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Act) a number of years ago. After I read some literature by people who though it would be a Bad Thing, I found I agreed with their arguments, so I took that attitude also. And guess what? We have free trade – except when we don’t. Americans protect whatever they want to protect, but protest if any other country tries to protect anything of its own.

It turned out exactly as had been predicted.

Actually, crows and ravens have that honor. But I would never have told my cockatoo that.

I’d like to point out that, while anyone can walk into an emergency room and get treatment, that is not comprehensive health care. Many people wind up needing expensive treatments because they could not get preventative (cheaper) care, while taxpayers foot the (now larger) bill. Aside from the economical aspect, that’s just criminal.

Finally someone really knows what they’re talking about, to our government hasn’t figured it out yet. Good Job

It’s strange…I’m living below the poverty line, and I’m definitely not destitute. I have a nice apartment, I can get food at the foodbank (which has been necessary working only part-time), my upstairs neighbor lets me mooch off his wi-fi, no-one regularly tries to bomb my neighborhood, and I have a college degree, which means I have a better shot at getting a job in this economy than a lot of other people.

And yet every time I ride the bus or go to any major shopping area, I see homeless people, many of them vets, whose lives suck. There are a lot of them. I’ve hung out and talked with homeless people a lot, and their lives are not really any better than a lot of poor people in 3rd world countries. Likewise, all the unlucky kids who get born in the ghettos and projects.

If my parents hadn’t been able to bail me out when I was short sometimes, “there but for the Grace of God” I might have gone.