Recent Comments

1. almost 6 years ago on Tom the Dancing Bug

   All of which is a take on Earl “Mad Man” Muntz, a figure from the 1940’s through the 60’s. The largest used car dealer in the US in the 1940s…. the first < $100 TV sold… Built the first recognizable sports car in the US…. invented the modern car stereo… and had the crazy man salesman shtick down to a Tee. Go look him up.

2. over 6 years ago on Bloom County 2019

   Our President eight years ago had actually read, and taken the time to understand, the United States Constitution. It’s a novel idea, to be sure.

3. over 6 years ago on Bloom County 2019

   We’re “United Statesians”, not “Americans”.

4. over 6 years ago on Candorville

   It was the day the Soviet Union closed up shop.

5. almost 7 years ago on Pearls Before Swine

   Always remember: better a person repeatedly accused of child molestation and removed from being a judge TWICE for spitting on the Constitution…. than a Democrat. Be sure to remember to lick the floor at Vladimir Putin’s feet today.

6. about 7 years ago on Doonesbury

   What an enjoyable revision of American history, although it’s shorter and more accurate to call it “lies by omission”, and writing things a reasonably intelligent middle school student can spot the gaps in.

   I love the “Twenty years of Democratic nightmares” from 1932 to 1952, because as we all know the 1929 Stock Market crash was caused by Democrats despite the Republicans controlling the White House and Congress since 1920, and by 1932 Hoover and Mellon had everything back ship-shape and booming again. Of course FDR and the Democrats had absolutely nothing to do with the economic recovery, or with beating Germany, Japan, and Italy. The Marshall Plan was an utter failure in preventing a Communist takeover of Western Europe, and the Berlin Airlift was just stupid. And consistent with Republican inability to win a real war (except for beating up crippled countries like Spain and Iraq) since 1865, and you know the Republicans would have stood idly by while North Korea overran South Korea.

   We’ll also ignore how the Republicans controlled the White House for all but sixteen of the seventy-two years between 1860 and 1932, and controlled Congress for most of that time as well, but somehow never passed any civil rights legislation after Lincoln died.

   But the modern Republican Party has read only three books: They use Mein Kampf for inspiration, 1984 as an instruction manual, and Atlas Shrugged when they masturbate.

7. about 7 years ago on Doonesbury

   Of course, you mean: The victory of the liberal, progressive North against the conservative South and its Satanic endorsement and defense to the death of human slavery. This was a bunch of “Christians” basing an economy on kidnapping, rape, murder, torture, the destruction of families, and theft on a scale that would have embarrassed Stalin. The labels “Republican” and “Democratic” are pretty meaningless after 150-odd years, especially since the parties switched positions in the 1930s. The Southern Strategy to court old-line Democrat bigots in the South fueled Nixon’s victories in 1968 and 1972. Abraham Lincoln today would proudly be a Democrat, and aghast and ashamed of how far his party had sunk.

8. almost 8 years ago on Luann

   As Robert Burns almost said: “The best-planned lays of mice and men/oft go astray…”

9. almost 8 years ago on Rudy Park

   Frame 3: No, or at best partially true given Stalin’s moves. Stalin was already coldly breaking agreements made at Yalta and earlier negotiations before FDR died on April 12, 1945, and FDR stated his dismay at this before his death. Truman was very blunt with Molotov about this, and Molotov sputtered “he’d never been spoken to like this before”; Truman replied “live up to your agreements, and you won’t be spoken to this way”. Ask Poland about their free elections in 1945. Ask Greece or Turkey how close they were to being in the Warsaw Pact by force instead of NATO by choice. Ask East Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956, or Czechoslovakia in 1968 how great the Warsaw Pact was. I don’t recall when Truman threatened to nuke the USSR, but it’s been ten years since I read the David McCullough bio of him, and I’ll admit the possibility exists. If the threat of such kept Stalin from attacking the West for the four crucial years after Germany surrendered, I’m with Truman and Churchill here.

   Frame 3: pants smoldering.

   Surely a PoliSci major knows all this. I admit Rudy ain’t the strongest coffee in the line of pots, but readers might get the wrong idea here. Beats me what point that show is trying to make, but Rudy at least has the Internet in front of him; he ought to be able to look all this up!

10. almost 8 years ago on Rudy Park

    Frame 2: The Japanese were acting like a nation of pirates, and pirates aren’t prone to civil negotiations. Ask anyone in China, Hong Kong, or the Philippines about how their occupation was, and you’ll quickly learn why the Japanese needed to be stopped.

    Frame 2: Japan was never officially trying to surrender when the bombs were dropped; it would have been easy enough to let the entire world know they were trying to via something called “radio”. The Swiss and Swedish Embassies were also available since both countries were neutral. This never happened until after both bombs were dropped and the Soviets declared war. Japan had refused the Potsdam Declaration demanding its surrender by either ignoring it completely, or “with studied contempt”, depending on which translation of the Japanese word used in its response was used by the Allies. Pardon us if after four years of nasty, bloodthirsty fighting which began with a sneak attack, we chose the less charitable translation.

    Hiroshima was August 6th, 1945. The Soviet Union declared war on Japan August 8, 1945. Nagasaki was August 9, 1945. The Japanese got on the horn on August 14, 1945. Frame 2 is “pants on fire”.

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