Tom the Dancing Bug by Ruben Bolling for March 09, 2018

I think he is using VHS in place of the coal industry the fossil fuel industry or the steel worker and aluminum industry. Something that is 19th century industries as opposed to things that show ld be supported, like solar panels. This is a poor family like so many of us are these last year and months and progressing to homelessness and joblessness and bankruptcy due to the price gouging of Big Pharma and Medical insurance. These days when the poor can’t afford to visit Drs while , the middle class who also can’t afford to pay insurance bills. This is wrong, we have become a 2nd class country.

Wonderfully inappropriate juxtaposition of disparate situations!

The Rump also wants to save the whaling industry.

I’m getting all my digital media transferred to VHS

But…But…But…what about the buggy whip and gramophone makers???

Years ago, I saw a news report and this guy said the same about steel, his great grand pappy was a steel mill worker, his grand pappy was a steel mill worker, his pappy was a steel mill worker and by god he was gonna be a steel mill worker!! When I realized my plant wouldn’t last, I went to night school and became a programmer, screw great grand pappy.

I worked in a can factory years ago; the steel we cut up from Germany and Japan was 1st class; the US steel got about 30% rejection – just crap. Problem? The ownership class hadn’t updated US mills in over 100 years.

Now the mills are closed; does anyone think the Orange Blivet’s tariff will convince his golfing buddies to invest in reopening them?

There is no true quality in VHS. It is magnetic dust in plastic. Regina disks have holes in a steel disk that will last forever.

It isn’t just the new taxes on imported VHS and DVD, it is Cohn’s surprise resignation that is the real risk. Very few people work in VHS-producing industries in the US, so the upside to media protectionism is tiny. But all of us consume media on VHS and DVD, these are’t a particularly significant share of the overall American economy. The core risk here is that without a disciplined policy process or knowledgeable advisers, Trump is left to rely on his own instincts on this subject, which are strangely unsound. His view is that trade wars are good for the US “good, and easy to win” because we currently run a trade deficit. To say he doesn’t understand trade policy correctly sounds almost redundant, as he doesn’t appear to understand any aspect of federal policy correctly. A critical difference with trade is that a protectionist viewpoint is something Trump has clung to strongly over the years even as much of the rest of his political “thinking” has evolved. The first year of America’s experiment in electing a president who had no idea what he’s doing could have gone worse, but the second year is off to a rocky start so far. And the current trends are not encouraging.

Emperor tRUMP is truly a 20th Century president. Trouble is….we’re well into the 21st Century !

Manufacturing in the U.S.A. has gone the way of the Dodo, and no amount of populist posturing is going to bring it back !

In order to " MAKE AMERICA GREAT. AGAIN ", Corporate U.S.A. will have to spend billions of dollars retooling and rebuilding American manufacturing. The Federal government will need to spend trillions of dollars to repair and reinvent the infrastructure that would facilitate an American manufacturing renaissance.

Do you really think that’s going to happen ?

Tariffs and tax breaks for the very wealthy don’t work and are sadly the type of Trumpian 20th Century thinking that will, in this 21st Century global economy, send the U.S. to the bottom of the competitive pile.

The ones who are suffering – and will continue to suffer – are the very people who naively elected tRump in the hopes of going back to future.

You can’t resurrect an idealized past that’s never coming back.

Good parable Mr. Bolling !

I am amazed no one has commented yet on who “sponsored” this spot. It was the Committee to Have the Government Pick Winners and Losers. I seem to recall many Republicans making the argument that that is not what government should do. Let the free market decide. Therefore, by definition, is not protectionism a rejection of the free market? Of course, most normal Republicans (whatever that is) are opposed to the new tariffs but they would support them in a heartbeat if they would work rather than wreck the economy.

I used to say VHS wasn’t that good anyway, and was dismissed as a Beta Male.

I’ve heard that they have free porn on the internet.

If Trump regulated that, the VHS industry would bounce back, right?

VHS, hell! Stop the War on the vacuum tube industry!

Excellent analogy in today’s strip. Problem is, it’s not just Trump. I know plenty of politicians on both sides of the aisle, Democrats and Republicans alike, who work so myopically to save some dying industry, thereby hurting tons more jobs in developing industries and retarding our nation’s progress. Even President Obama, despite all his accomplishments, was gung-ho on “clean coal”. Politicians on both the left and the right care about nothing more than serving whatever special interest bribes them with the largest campaign contribution.

And remember: Be Kind, Rewind President T Rump!

Good old Nerrex. Nerrex: Humans are Meat and We Will Exploit that Meat™

There’s a line in Tennessee Ernie Ford’s, “16 Tons,” about having to sell his soul to the company store. In the old days, mining companies would set up towns for their workers complete with stores that would overcharge, keeping their workers in debt and on the hook to keep working for the mining companies. I guess a kind of Stockholm Syndrome set in and was passed down in the families to present day where the workers are unable to come to grips with the mining companies and coal-supporting politicians being in cahoots to continue to screw them over on wages, pensions, safety, etc. Just about with any other job, if people with them complained, they would be told to work harder, take classes, find another line of work but not coal.