Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for November 16, 2012

Q: When a corporation is found guilty of multiple felonies (say BP, in the Gulf excrescence), who goes to jail?A: Nobody, ‘cause there’s nobody there! It’s immortal, so a long sentence means nothing; think about that…

I thought college was to educate ones self, not take on the world.God knows there are enough folks trying to do just that, now.

I’ll believe corporations are people when they start coming home from Afghanistan in body bags.

Wasn’t ATT given the “Death Penalty” by the Commerce Department a while back?I think getting ripped limb-from-limb counts, doesn’t it?(Even if some of them grew back)

I’ll believe corporations are people when Dr. Ron Paul delivers one in a hospital.

The 2 design colleges I teach at have both had massive layoffs and dropping student numbers, even though the industry’s on the upswing. I’m afraid the for profit model has not been sustainable. Pure capitalism has created a lot of people hampered under huge student loans, out of proportion with the industry incomes. I truly believe in giving people an education in something they’re passionate about and can make a living in, but there’s got to be a better way to do it.

I’ll believe corporations are people when the pregnant ones start getting maternity leave.

I’ll believe corporations are people when they start doin’ hard time for their hard crime.

I’ll believe corporations are people when the Supreme Court selects one to serve as President of the United States of America.

I’ll believe corporations are people when The Donald Trump fires all of ’em.

I’ll believe corporations are people when they start burnin’ in hell for their sins.

I’ll believe corporations are people when President Corporation has to show his birth certificate before the Tea Party corporations will believe he’s been legally elected.

I’ll believe corporations are people when the female ones receive equal pay for equal work and start smashing through their glass ceilings.

I’ll believe corporations are people when GE gets a mammogram.

I’ll believe corporations are people when they demonstrate on Wall Street and cops disperse them with billy clubs, tear gas, rubber bullets and fire hoses.

“I’ll believe corporations are people when they start coming home from Afghanistan in body bags.”#They do! Ever see a body bag returning from Afghanistan? It has the words – "Halliburton " stamped all over it!! Along with a very small plaque with the soldier’s name.

“Such a fool starting a rumor then seeing if it turns out to be true. Reminds me of 1984 where the narrator finally believed the lies told him.”Actually, reminds me of Fox.

When corporations assume all the rights of any “person”, and can vote in their workers’ place:.http://www.slowpokecomics.com/strips/corporate-vote.html

@SharuniboyRead your constitutional law. In Citizen’s United the SCOTUS did not reference to the 14th amendment which states that corporations are “persons” under certain circumstances. Instead they believed that corporations have 1st amendment rights (freedom of speech and, unfortunately, freedom to give as much money as they want to political parties). Giving 1st amendment rights to corporations creates socio-political problems which have been humorously satirized above.

Is a grocery store a person? No, it is a corporation, a business, not a person. My husband has a medical practice. Is it a person? No. It is a small corporation. If SCOTUS settles all these definitions, then why are we still talking about abortion? It is settled law, yes, but some are still not getting it. If they don’t want an abortion, they shouldn’t have one, and I am looking at you Doctor Desjarlais, member of Congress who is “pro-life” but had his mistress have an abortion and his wife had 2 of them. The law and those who write laws, don’t always seem to have a handle on these definitions.

“I incorporated myself to avoid the penalties of my actions!”

“The Supreme Court says corporations are people now.”

“Bugger.”

I see a vice-president’s job in his future.

BTW, I am a woman and I am not offended by DT’s GE and mammogram comment. Instead, I take his point, a corporation, such as GE, is not a person.

I had to laugh at Zipper starting the rumor then trying to capitalize on it. Sort of like the talking heads over at Faux Noise.

“I’m Jewish, and I find that comment offensive!”

It’s been deleted. And I apologize and regret it.

GOP = greedy old patricians

“… solvent … we are not nor is Europe.”

Germany is.

ROMNEY = Ransacking Our Money, Never Ever Yielding

Economically speaking, the simi-socialistic countries of Germany, Denmark and Sweden are better off than we are. Their big problem is their European Union tie to economic black holes such as Greece, Ireland and Spain.

How come the more socialistic country of Germany (with its huge economy and large population to care for) is far better off economically than the more capitalistic country of Greece?

This is kind of like a particular ‘news’ network that began a rumor that Romney would win, no?

We are tightly allied with Taiwan. A military attack on Taiwan is considered to be a military attack on us. China considers Taiwan to be a part of China and has vowed to take it back (remember Chiang Kai-shek). We are deeply indebted monetarily to China. Therefore,

Question: If China were to try to reclaim Taiwan by invading it militarily, would we BORROW money from China in order to FIGHT China and DEFEND our ally Taiwan?

How come the communist country of China (1.3 Billion-with-a-B people) is way better off economically than the capitalist country of America (330 Million-with-an-M people)?

Taylor Caldwell – how true! I understood the economics of war more from reading “The Balance Wheel” than any history class. Ditto Ken Follet.

@Lucy fur

“What fools you mortals be. You don’t have a realistic view of reality.”

*

Are you identifying the rest of us on this sight as mortal fools, but not yourself?

Taylor Caldwell is a novelist who does historical research to back up her fiction. Are you suggesting she has a “more realistic view of reality” than us mortal fools?

P.S. Love your screen name; we had an adorable kitty named Lucy , with beautiful tortoiseshell fur. It’s always nice to be reminded of her!

@ annieTypo time again; “sight” should be “site.”

“What fools you mortals be. You don’t have a realistic view of reality.”

While I don’t doubt your sincerity, I do think your case is weak, if not mistaken entirely. But I don’t want to overstate my case either. While China appears to be better off economically (due in part to it’s “planned economy” versus our “unrestrained free market capitalism”), as a whole unit, they still have many times more people in poverty than we do. Plus, we as people still have far more rights, though they appear to be shrinking more and more all the time.

Lucy Fur = Lucifer?

“China then simultaneously sends 100 ICBMs our way,”

I guess they’re SOL on getting any of their money back and heads will roll at the politburo. Through out history China has been the 800 lb gorilla that hasn’t been able to project much power beyond their border, in fact through out much of it’s history China has been consumed with just governing itself, just as it is now. China is a slow moving beast and we are agile enough to respond to it’s challenges. We are not helpless in our relations with China.

Welcome, everybody, welcome back to the wonderful world of the Cold War and MAD (mutually assured destruction).

Where’s Ronny RayGun now that we need ‘im? And where’s Gorby? They of Berlin Wall fame.

For that matter where’s Johnny-boy Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev? They of Cuban missile-crisis fame?

Where’s sanity any more? One thing’s certain: all of Bronco Bama’s unmanned drones put together are going to have no effect whatsoever in this kind of insanity.

Well, at least, Bronco Bama’s no Willard Mitchell Romney who might attack like a slavering pit bull. Iran first. Iran stops the Strait of Hormuz. Price of gas at the pump immediately skyrockets to between $50 and $100 per gallon. Iran gets missiles from China, who’s been getting Iran’s oil on the sly Vehicle lines for gas three times around the block. If you can even get gas at all. Since it’ll be rationed. Doctors get it. You don’t.

Mad for revenge, Willard attacks China. And WWIII starts this way.

At least Bronco’s not THAT insane. But I still don’t fully trust him.

PS. China’s fixin’ to project it’s power to the moon via advanced rocketry systems.

“Those Chinese solar researchers are the cream of an engineering crop that included an estimated 10,000 Ph.D. graduates last year. [2009. What is it now?] This spring 2011 the U.S. will graduate about 8,000 Ph.D. engineers, an estimated two-thirds of whom are not U.S. citizens. About 150,000 students who majored in engineering, computer science, information technology, and math will collect bachelor’s degrees. The Chinese government claims that in recent years the number in China has been well north of 500,000 [China 3.3 to U.S. 1] and rising fast; even if overstated, as some believe, the real number is much larger than America’s, and the quality of those graduates is improving.”

http://money.cnn.com/2010/07/29/news/international/china_engineering_grads.fortune/index.htm

Meanwhile our kids are watching vampire movies on their iPads, smokin’ good stuff and knowin’ each other biblically. And our generals are—. Well, you KNOW what our generals are doin’. Get caught doin’ that in China and yur head goes in the waste basket.

You can make a case for a nuclear threat assessment for all the nuclear members but I don’t see the Chinese at the top. That would go to the members who have show a willingness for a first strike. The threat of nuclear annihilation will always be in the back ground as long as rational states possess them. The calculus changes when they fall into the hands of the irrational types. Except for les anciens we’ve all lived our whole lives under the nuclear umbrella without incident, none of us knows what it’s like not to. Now that the bell has been rung, the tooth paste is out of the tube, the genie is out of the bottle and there is nothing we can do about it we need to learn everything there is to know on how to manage it, and until we do we’re just fighting the process.

Yes, many of the topmost members of the communist party in China seem to be corrupt. But somehow their educational system, at least in the vital math and sciences, seems to be working much better than ours. And because of their population numbers — China nearly 10 to U.S. 1 — they have the depth to beat us. At least in terms of boots on the ground. The standard of living in China is advancing quickly while ours is going south. Their economy is already the second largest in the world, after ours. We’ve gone to sleep.

Someday China is going to shock us awake.

If we can’t kick-butt kalashnikov-crazed insurgents in the desert ravines of poverty-stricken Afghanistan, famed as “the graveyard of empires”, how can we ever hope to kick-butt China in an Asian land war on the ground? Nor am I talkin’ ’bout nukes here.

Is China doing the rest of the world a favor with it’s One Child policy? What would their energy needs be without it and does the world owe them anything for it? Does it’s gender bias lead toward a more militarized demographic?

I think that one-child-per-fam math is pretty simple, FL. If it’s a boy you keep him. If it’s a girl you abort. Or expose. Keep begattin’ till you get a boy. Result: too many males who reach fighting age with no women to marry. Send ‘em off to war. Who cares? And if political pressure from the U.S. political rightwing forces Bronco to fight ’em, what does China care? We “support” our fighting dudes and dudettes almost to the point of worship. China will throw theirs into the fray by the millions. Only this time they won’t be armed with broomsticks as they were in Korea. Them there daze R gone forever. Nowadays China’s troops could be as hi-tech as ours.

And what did Vietnam do to our butt?

“U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, speaking at West Point, said last week that “Any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should have his head examined.” In saying this, Gates was repeating a dictum laid down by Douglas MacArthur after the Korean War, who urged the United States to avoid land wars in Asia. Given that the United States has fought four major land wars in Asia since World War II — Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq — none of which had ideal outcomes, it is useful to ask three questions: First, why is fighting a land war in Asia a bad idea? Second, why does the United States seem compelled to fight these wars? And third, what is the alternative that protects U.S. interests in Asia without large-scale military land wars?"

—George Friedman (founder, chief intelligence officer, financial overseer, and CEO, Stratfor corporation), “Never Fight a Land War in Asia”, March 1, 2011.

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110228-never-fight-land-war-asia

Good debate!My 2 cents . . . Chinese leadership has their hands full managing the 1.3 billion. The Taiping Rebellion never far from their minds. Foreign adventurism is effective in temporarily siphoning domestic discontent, but extremely dangerous. A tool used sporadically and with extreme caution.I lean towards FriscoLou on this one . . . there’s never been such a thing as a “Chinese jihad”. But times could be a’changin . . .

Person who FIRST got U.S. involved in:

Korea: Democratic Pres. H.S. Truman.

Vietnam: Republican Pres. D.D. Eisenhower.

Iraq I: Republican Pres. Geo. H.W. Bush.

Afghanistan: Republican Pres. Geo. W. Bush.

Iraq II: Republican Pres. Geo. W. Bush.

The Mao dynasty like all the previous dynasties is authoritarian and is consumed with domestic issues but because of it’s nature becomes brittle and fossilized, is unable to maintain control and is replaced by the next. These can last for hundreds of years though but I’m not sure the Mao Dynasty is that durable, their leadership is regressing. Just hope they’re not like Argentina, start a war just to change the subject.

China spends a fraction on defense compared to the US. We spend more than the top 17 or so countries combined. I think they modernize enough just to make us spend more. They’d be smart just to wear us out rather that fight us.

Traditionally, the Chinese have never been interested in conquering foreign lands. They prefer to sit, in exalted superiority, in their Middle Kingdom, and allow the barbarians to arrive and offer tribute.

Don’t forget Mao’s bloody revolution. And don’t forget the Chinese infusion into the Korean war. War is in Chinese blood just as much as it is in the blood of any race of Homo Sapiens on the planet. China has been too weak in modern times to wage war far from its borders. But it is getting stronger while we are getting weaker. The fact that we spend more on military might is almost beside the point. China could mobilize for war with us extremely rapidly. They are now economically stronger than ever before in their long history. Let’s not underestimate.