Recent Comments

1. over 15 years ago on Candorville

   Pschearer, when I hear conservatives on Fox News and Republican Congressmen constantly repeating “socialized medicine,” it strikes me as anachronistic fear-mongering. And that’s what yesterday and today have captured.

   The reason it’s fear-mongering: we’ve got plenty of socialism already. Some of it’s efficient, some of it isn’t. Medicare is socialist. Medicare is incredibly efficient. It wastes some money but it’s a lot less than what the private system wastes. The military is also socialist. The military is incredibly INefficient and incredibly wasteful, even John McCain believes that. But being “socialist” isn’t the problem, being wasteful is the problem.

   The reason Medicare is efficient and the military isn’t is because it’s socially acceptable to reign in Medicare practices, but most of us want the government to give the military whatever the military says it needs. When our leaders go after waste in Medicare, people consider them to be responsible pragmatists. But when our leaders go after waste in the Pentagon, their opponents attack them as being unpatriotic and anti-military.

   Calling it “socialized medicine” is fear-mongering meant to scare people into opposing something that may or may not work efficiently, because it skates over the efficiency debate in favor of focusing on ideology.

   And I think the point of the cartoon is that not only is it fear-mongering, but it isn’t as effective a tactic as it was a generation or so ago. I think it’s saying red-scare warnings of “socialism” won’t stir up a reflexive revulsion among today’s younger voters who grew up after the Cold War ended. Especially since “socialized medicine” DOES work in pretty much every other Western country (many of which have higher life expectancies than we do). I’ve heard a handful of horror stories about people in Canada who’ve been on waiting lists (always said as if that doesn’t happen here too), but if you ask pretty much any Canadian if they’d rather have our system, the answer would probably be “hell no.”

   The thing about Archie, he was often right when he described what was happening in the country, but he was always wrong to be so fearful about it. He was always letting ideology get in the way.

2. over 15 years ago on Candorville

   “Just because Obama is taking the biggest steps toward government take-over of health care since LBJ, that’s not socialist?”

   I don’t think that’s the issue, I think the issue is “SO WHAT if it’s socialist?” Last I heard, plenty of countries that are doing better than us have a lot of socialist programs. WE have socialist programs like Medicare, and seniors love their Medicare. It works.

3. over 15 years ago on Candorville

   I think it’s to the mainstream media’s credit that they print a comic like Candorville that’s so critical of the mainstream media.

   It really is like the MSM’s trying their best to amplify the smallest critiques of everyone. They’re like the kid on the playground chanting “fight! fight! fight!” I got the sense the last couple days, when they were camped out at the Holocaust Museum, that they were secretly hoping they could catch some more shooting. I know that’s cynical, but it’s the impression I got.

   As for Sotomayor, the reason this hasn’t become as huge a scandal as the GOP and the Media might hope for is that “there’s no there there.” The GOP’s combed through fifteen years of her rulings, and they’ve come up with exactly ONE ruling that seems to illustrate the “bigot” caricature they’re trying to draw. And even that one ruling, people seem to find understandable.

   She’s so getting confirmed. But the GOP’s going to keep harping on this until they find something else to be fake outraged about (e.g. Letterman telling the world’s 1 millionth “Promiscuous Palin Daughter” joke).

4. over 15 years ago on Candorville

   That’s right, Spirit 42, and Dilbert should skip the office stuff & go back to being funny, Cathy should skip the women’s issues & go back to being funny, and Watch Your Head should skip the college stuff & go back to being funny.

   It’s a political strip!

   But I think it’s to its credit that the non-political part of it is just as interesting. That’s a failing of some other political strips I could mention, when they’re not about politics, they’re not about anything.

5. over 15 years ago on Candorville

   “Risitas,” the cartoon’s “ign’ant” is correct. The apostrophe replaces the excised letters “o” and “r” so its correct placement is AFTER the first “n”, not before it.

6. over 15 years ago on Candorville

   “Ye Gads! I’m sure he would have preferred having his fingernails pulled out!”…………………………………………………………

   I’m assuming that’s supposed to be clever? Why don’t you go back in time and say that to the face of the American prisoner of war who testified at the Tokyo War Crimes trial about how the Japanese waterboarded him up to half a dozen times every day?

7. over 15 years ago on Candorville

   You mean last week?

8. over 15 years ago on Candorville

   ROFL: “I’ve been looking at this Lemont Brown guy’s tweeter for months.”

   This is a meta gag if I’ve ever seen one.

9. over 15 years ago on Candorville

   I spit out my cereal.

10. over 15 years ago on Candorville

    Lemont likes hats. Maybe if he didn’t have so many hats, he wouldn’t have so much debt?