Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Since I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that the vast majority of this country is dumber than a sack of hammers, perhaps this will be on the level the public can understand:
Probably not, because, as we all know, Bill Clinton got a blowjob.
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[…] No Republican president has balanced a budget in close to 40 years. I can’t remember which budget that would have been, but it was some time during the Nixon administration. Ford didn’t do it. Reagan didn’t do it. George H.W. Bush didn’t do it. And George W. Bush didn’t do it. Since 1980, Republicans Reagan, Bush, and Bush have had 20 opportunities to preside over a balanced budget and have not managed it once. For Reagan, I’ve been told that the Democratic Congress was the problem all 8 years. For Bush the Elder, again, it was those darn Democrats. When Clinton presided over balanced budgets, then it was because of the Republican Congress. But when Bush the Younger had a Republican Congress to work with, deficits hit record highs. It’s time to face the fact that, with Republican administrations, budget deficits are not the exception, they are an iron-clad rule. […]
[…] Courtesy of John Cole over at Balloon Juice: Since I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that the vast majority of this country is dumber than a sack of hammers, perhaps this will be on the level the public can understand: […]
[…] via. […]
Presidents sign the bills that control the economy.
Via John Cole, this editorial cartoon (original source – Steve Greenberg):Of course this is too blunt to be accurate. There is the additional guilty party, the Congress. It’s more reasonable to suggest that their guiltier, but the nature of our…
[…] Shamelessly stolen from John Cole, who has a question for you all. […]
[…] First seen at Balloon Juice RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL Write a comment […]
[…] 16 September 2008 · No Comments […]
[…] Thers explains why Sarah Palin is a fiscal conservative (and you’re not), and John Cole brings back a favorite cartoon to illustrate how to identify a fiscal conservative. […]
[…] […]
A.Political
My friends, we’re all screwed here in North America if your ConJob McCain gets elected and our ConJob neo-conservative Harper gets elected up here.
I’m heading to Europe if this happens, my friends.
Carnacki
Clinton got a blow job? Maybe some of those other guys should have gotten a blow job too. Then they could have got a phallic looking surplus arrow going up as well.
Zifnab25
That’s just a trick the lie-brul media likes to play on you, John. Little did you know, but the budget surplus under Clinton was the direct result of the hard work and brilliant fiscal policies enacted by Reagen and Bush Sr that brought us out of the economic collapse caused by Jimmy Carter.
And all of this mess is the inevitable result of entitlement programs designed by Roosevelt and Johnson. If we’d just waste less of our money on infrastructure, welfare, and earmark spending we could devote more of it to war and tax cuts, and we could bring our country back to the economic peak we saw on Wednesday, October 23rd 1929.
jcricket
I thought the real problem was that Clinton and his wife had their associates killed? I’m so confused. No, seriously, along the same lines as the cartoon is this editorial
So far conservatives act like they always have a “get out of jail free” card in their pockets (because they do). Any failures can be blamed on liberals, or circumstances, but never conservatives. If the American public starts actually holding Republicans even 1% accountable for their actions, they’ll be tossed out of office faster than you can say “Wasilla”
jcricket
Who’s to say we haven’t just achieved that, judging by the ongoing market meltdown caused by the last 8+ years of financial shenanigans combined with ever-loosening regulations.
The Grand Panjandrum
But … but … but, he IS A liberal. That should be enough.
And Barack Hussein Obama the inter-racial child of an African man, and a white mother from Kansas, who got a scholarship to attend college is an elitist. You see its all good. Everything is right in the world, so to speak.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
I just learned from Rudy Giuliani on MTP that it’s all Obama’s fault for McCain’s constant lying…if Obama had just agreed to do whatever McCain wanted, like joint town hall appearances, McCain would have never been forced to lie.
Bill H
John, John, John, You still don’t get it. Americans do not care about the defecit.
1. They care about tax cuts. About tax cuts for the rich because they aren’t rich now, but the “Great American Dream” is to become rich, and so some day they may be one of the rich bastards who are receiving the tax cuts and so when they are one of the rich ones they don’t want to have their taxes raised and what happens while they are still poor is irrelevant because they are living the “Great American Dream” and not in the present.
2. They care about “National Security” which means they want somebody who promises to bomb the shit out of anybody who even looks crosswise at us or even says ugly things to any nation that is “Christion” like us and is therefor friendly to us, and declare war on and invade any nation that is Muslim and therefor hates us. We are only fighting two wars right now, and we are winning one and losing the other, and they want someone who will fight three wars and win all three of them.
3. They want a government that is all about “virtue” so all this science shit goes away and that all babies get born because the population is far too low and the climate of the earth is far too cool at the moment. Polar bears are hampering our drilling efforts, so we need to melt the ice cap that they depend on and leth them all drown, because once the ice is gone we can more easily get at all that lovely oil that is underneath where the ice used to be.
Sorry for the long response, John, but you keep harping about this silly-ass defecit.
vishnu schizt
No shit, oh man…really? I guess when Saint Ronny said deficits don’t matter he was really saying “deficits don’t matter” kinda like saying, well we really don’t give a fat fuck. We are republicans and while most of the public has been bullshitted into thinking we do care, well sorry fuckheads we really don’t. You see the republicans only governing philosophy is very simple. It is this:
I WIN, YOU LOSE, SO FUCK OFF.
Simple really let’s apply republican governing philosophy to some common situations:
1. lose your job? Tough shit pal, plenty of jobs in China.
2. Pregnant at 16 cause you couldn’t get birth control pills? fuck you, you should have made better choices.
3. School out of money and falling apart? eat shit asshole, why should I pay for your education?.
4.Streets falling apart? Blow me, I just bought a new Range Rover who needs good streets?
5. Got a good education, experience and want to work in government? Give me a fucking break….
So simple. You fucking hippies talk about simplifying your lives, we republicans have been doing it since 1980.
Dreggas
Well according to the Right the only reason there was a budget surplus under Clinton was because there was a republican congress. Of course now that argument falls apart but that’s their story.
dave
I’m waiting for St. Johnny to play the last card: resigning his Senate seat in a mavericky gesture to let the voters know he’s running a full time, sincere campaign. It’s a win-win for him…if he’s elected, fine, it worked. If he loses, life in the Senate won’t be much fun for any Pug anyway, and he could nail down a nice wingnut welfare sinecure at AEI, Cato, or the Manhattan Institute, where he can continue to speak out in his own, inimitable, honorable style.
Martin
Applying wingnut logic to the situation, that would mean that Bill got $500B for that blowjob. Blowjobs therefore mean huge budget surpluses. No wonder so many Republicans are toe-tapping in mens rooms… they’re not gay, they’re just trying to balance the budget and the cops keep fucking up the effort. Damn you airport security!!!
Davis X. Machina
Dole did the resign-and-run thing, but Napolitano’s a Democrat, and the GOPartei needs all the R-Senators they can get — it’s going to be touch-and-go with a filibuster-proof majority.
Mitch McConnell would have him cut up and stuffed in a barrel and dumped in the East River if McCain resigned his seat….
iluvsummr
I still don’t know why more attention hasn’t been paid to this:
I hope the Obama campaign figures out a way to distill this information for low-information voters who stand to benefit the most economically but tend to vote as social conservatives. There must be a way to tie their personal economic prosperity with some of the values they hold dear (the way I see it, people tend to become more reasonable about social issues when they are better off economically).
Cervantes
Is it worth pointing out that John McCain is an adulterer?
b-psycho
Dave: …why would Cato want McCain? Most of them hate him.
magisterludi
As far as leaving America- I’m afraid the brain-drain started a while ago.
Education and gravitas have become liabilities in American culture.
If McCain wins the Dark Ages we’re in now will be even darker.
Doug
IOKIYAARPOW
Juan del Llano
Jesus, I’ve been talking about emigrating for decades. Done lots of research. Turns out that you essentially have to buy your way in, no matter where you want to go, because not a country in the world is yearning for American immigrants. My conclusion is that it’s impossible to leave unless you’re rich already.
The reason this ticks me off is that people who say, “if such-and-such, I’m LEAVING” obviously don’t know the half of it and may convince others to hope for a happy life in fill-in-the-blank instead of actually voting. We can’t frigging leave, there’s no place to go, this is fucking IT. End of story.
The Moar You Know
Finally someone here understands what we’re truly up against. Folks, it’s not the Republicans that are the problem. They’re just taking advantage of a pre-existing situation.
It’s a willfully ignorant American public that is the problem.
low-tech cyclist
Broder was pontificating in this morning’s column about the next President having to deal with next year’s “record” $500B deficit. My response:
JoAnne Martinson
Anyone who’s still talking about a liberal press should stop sending notes from his cave. With the likes of Brit Hume and David Gregory as only 2 examples, you can only think the media is liberal if you choose to.
anomar
Well, dumber than rocks is what I say, and I’ve taught them for 38 years. There are plenty of smart people in America, they just aren’t the majority. That damn elite. Shoot ’em, I say and be done with it.
If we lose, I will want to leave, keep swearing I will, but it is easier said than done as Juan above points out.
I have a better chance than most because I have a Ph.D., but I am dumb as rocks when it comes to anything but English even though I tried my whole life. I probably have an actual organic problem.
And I can’t drag my 89 year old mother out of the country. So I am stuck until she leaves this planet.
Actually, I’d like to leave the planet. Beam me up, Scotty.
We are in for the roughest times you all. The roughest.
Hurray for democracy. Thud.
Morty
Slightly off the point…but why is the a toon of HRH Prince Charles at the top of this post?
dave
b-psycho:
Okay, maybe not Cato, but definitely the Hoover Institute. If they’ll have Thomas Sowell, they’ll have anyone.
Mark2100
Just an FYI on the emigrating thing – if you do leave the country Congress passed a law in June that prevents you from taking any money or assets with you.
Juan del Llano Says:
Jesus, I’ve been talking about emigrating for decades. Done lots of research. Turns out that you essentially have to buy your way in, no matter where you want to go, because not a country in the world is yearning for American immigrants. My conclusion is that it’s impossible to leave unless you’re rich already.
The reason this ticks me off is that people who say, “if such-and-such, I’m LEAVING” obviously don’t know the half of it and may convince others to hope for a happy life in fill-in-the-blank instead of actually voting. We can’t frigging leave, there’s no place to go, this is fucking IT. End of story.
September 14th, 2008 at 11:58 am
Stlinquirer
I think, I say, I say, I think you mean as sharp as a sack of wet mice.
e.g., see Foghorn Leghorn, here, on Sarah Palin
Liz
Not sure if anyone else has bothered explaining this yet, but the mention of the blow job is sarcastic. The meaning is, “Sure, we had a huge surplus, but who cares, Clinton was a bad man because he got a blowjob”.
It’s a comment on how we care more about his little affair than we do about what he actually did for us as a whole.
limbaugh's pilonidal cyst
Hmmm….Clinton gets blow jobs and leads us through 8 years of prosperity and job growth, leaving a healthy surplus for his successor. Somehow, even though the mental process is urp-inducing, I can’t imagine St. Ronald or Bushes 41 and 43 being similarly favored over their terms of office (and if you’re wondering what I had to endure to reach that conclusion, try to picture Babs Bush and George H. W., umm,…..’scuze me, brb).
[whew]
That’s better, anyway, my point being that maybe oral sex and economic and financial performance are positively correllated. Might be worth a dissertation.
Garrowolf
What I’m surprised more people aren’t focusing on is that McCain was a part of the Keating Five and was convicted of selling votes. He is a criminal!
Personally think that if you have your finger on the button then you should get your own harem! They need to be very relaxed!
JMPerkins
Great cartoon, thank you stumbleupon and Balloon-juice.
@Zifnab25 I get your sarcasm. But history isn’t really known except for whatever factoids that people like to bandy about to support their own preconceived notions.
I would say the congress has more power over the defecit, but for most of the Bush Presidency there has been a ‘fiscally conservative’ congress to support their ‘fiscally conservative’ president.
Still, most elections in the US are won by 1)A white guy 2)Whoever raises the most money or 3) Whoever is tallest. Obama has two out of three! We have a chance!
CarpeNoctu
ALL politicians are, by nature, corrupt. Why? Because ONLY the corrupt actively seek positions of such power.
What then is the difference between the parties?
At least the Dems wear a condom when they’ve got you bent over their desk… The Reps don’t even admit they’re screwing you!
Bill.C
Obama is a mack daddy! Give the man a chance and he might pimp your economy back out of the black
Blackatk
Our government is powering the fiat system of currency that we use. MONEY DOES NOT EXIST WITHOUT DEBT! Everytime someone takes out a lone, it creates two things: Debt and the imaginary money that the bank makes out of thin air.
Debt in our system is actually good in some respects, but in the long-run it will lead to economic disaster!
obsesses
i’m writing from outside the US, and many of us can’t believe that american looks likely to vote in another corrupt, crazy, ignorant leader. and after the last one reeked havoc for 8 years at home – and abroad!
from a distance it seems that the electorate falls for whatever personality tricks are pulled during an election. there hardly seems to be much thought about what the rest of the term will be like?
we would be happy to leave you guys to it. but what’s upsetting is many people – without the vote – abroad also get so negatively affected.
encourage everyone you can to think beyond the election!
yet another jeff
The thing is, that’s always been the only way you can think the media is liberal.
gex
Why the condescension, John? You were on board with this line of attack for almost 80% of that strip.
seeker6079
gex, I don’t think it’s condescending to call somebody out on being stupid when they act stupidly and revel in being stupid. Perhaps John should have said “dumber than a bag of hammers and god they love it that way”, but I doubt that you’d find that better.
The simple fact is that vast, vast swathes of the American public believe things that aren’t true, rate belief above knowledge, are actively hostile to facts that undermine their pre-established views and are bitter towards people who actually know what they’re talking about, (they’re “elitists” don’t you know). When a certain group of people revel in being ignorant and, in many different ways advocate ignorance as a superior option then the bag o’ hammers remark is not condescending. It’s understated.
Don
Even in this Clinton was better. Blowjobs as birth control are highly effective and they’re good for the economy – employment for dry cleaners.
seeker6079
low-tech cyclist:
Isn’t part of the problem with the measuring the Bush deficits is that the cost of the wars are not counted in them? The numbers you give are Potemkin numbers.
http://www.reason.com/news/printer/125438.html
limbaugh's pilonidal cyst
The stork brings babies but a swallow never does.
Uncle B
All show and no substance – not a new accusation is it? We turn our noses up at bio-diesels, and fail to realize, in the very near future we will not be able to afford bus fare. The Republicans have seen the books and are using and old man and a menopausal woman to throw the election. They will leave poor Obama holding the bag for their debauchery over the last 8 years! They are not fools, they have filled their pockets and will now exit, stage left, and live in Dubai in luxury while we at home play the blame game and Obama tries to tell the truth to a public that wants a scapegoat to blame for their woes.
Intelitary Milligence
That surplus came from selling our land to China under the auspices of UNESCO and phony conservancies.
get real
I love conservatives, just like some here have stated… Anything good a democrat did was because of the foresight of republicans years before. Anything bad republicans do is because of democrats actions years ago. Just like whats happening now? The bush admin is writing so many hot checks to keep this economy floating that they will all come due on the next man in office. Clearly when someone steps in office and all these bad checks show up it will be their fault (if it’s a liberal) if not we’ll keep writing bad checks like there is no tomorrow and blame it on clinton when the money runs out. It was so nice having a media where only the conservative points were put forth. Now there is a liberal bias because they don’t have the %100 media control. Neocons are a joke.
David
Reading all this posts and watching documentaries from Netflix like:
End of Suburbia
Maxed Out
A Crude Awakening
Who Killed the Electric Car?
This is What Democracy Looks Like
The Oil Factor
In Debt We Trust
The Corporation
and reading books like
The Assault on Reason by Al Gore
Fiasco by Thomas Ricks
Blackwater by Jeremy Scahill
any Al Franken book
reading books and watching these films has convinced me that we are headed for some incredibly difficult times. I know many of you already are aware of this so I do not need to discuss the energy crisis, global warming, and the poorly informed voting electorate. . .
but we must not give up. While the masses remain willfully ignorant, there are many people who like to see them stay that way, and we must convince people with what reason they have that we are all heading for a cliff (or that we may have already jumped off that cliff many years ago).
I expect in our lifetimes for the energy crisis (and the reality that renewable energy can not provide the current life-styles we enjoy) will result in our food production systems falling short of being able to feed probably something like 2/3’s of the planet.
Learn to grow food, learn some carpentry skills, and prepare yourself for realities that currently no politician has the courage to tell you are coming in the next 40 years.
Unless that is there is a sudden culture shift in the next 10 years that makes us stop quibbling over partisan politics and issues entirely irrelevant to the problems we face.
Stash
The reason so many right wing christian fools keep voting in politicians who keep screwing them royally is indeed they are dumber than a sack of hammers. We are going the way of the soviet union. The fall will be hard.
Politicsource
What I keep finding myself asking is: why?
Why do so many Americans so fiercely resist ideas that challenge them? Why has winning any given day’s argument become so much more important than seeking truth and common ground? Why do people willfully and stubbornly dismiss logic and reason in order to avoid having to step outside of their tiny realms of comfort and familiarity?
Insular divisiveness has become an American pastime, which is a real shame, because there’s a lot of greatness in our country. In many ways, we’re way off track; then again, I know a number of people doing really good things every day.
What would help is if we made a collective effort to identify ourselves as Americans before we call ourselves Democrats, Republicans, Independents, liberals, conservatives, etc. I know it sounds small. But you can’t very well win the game if you think everyone else is on a different team.
Saucy McFoodlefist
I’ll buy that
Saucy McFoodlefist, Professional, was a grand old man from Pollokshields, with eyes of pale blue irradiated with dark blue—the loveliest eyes I’ve seen. In the time before becoming a professional, Saucy McFoodlefist led a wild, vagabond-like life spiced by absinthe and hashish. Saucy McFoodlefist, Professional, Libertine, was never married. His chief reasoning for never binding his destiny to another was that “a beautiful woman without a mind of her own leaves her lover with no resource after he had physically enjoyed her charms.”
Later in life, Saucy McFoodlefist again returned to his pre-Professional ways. In Saucy McFoodlefist’s view, “deceiving a fool is an exploit worthy of an intelligent man,” and most of his professional life was spent in this fashion.
In the view of the Earl of Rochester, “The only things about which Saucy McFoodlefist, Professional knows nothing are those which he believes himself to be expert: the rules of the dance, the French language, good taste, the way of the world, savoir vivre. It is only his comedies which are not funny, only his philosophical works which lack philosophy—all the rest are filled with it; there is always something weighty, new, piquant, profound. He is a well of knowledge”
Dr. Flammond
By Ralph R. Reiland
Monday, September 29, 2008
The roots of today’s mortgage-based financial crisis can be traced back to the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which Jimmy Carter signed in 1977. Seeking to address complaints from anti-poverty activists and housing advocates about banks allegedly discriminating against minority borrowers and “redlining” inner-city neighborhoods, the CRA decreed that banks had “an affirmative obligation” to meet the credit needs of victims of discrimination in borrowing.
To add a government stick to the process, the CRA decreed that federal banking regulators would consider how well banks were doing in meeting the goal of more multiculturalism in loaning when considering requests by banks to open new branches or to merge.
A good “CRA rating” was earned by way of increasing loans in poor neighborhoods. Conversely, lenders with low ratings could be fined.
The Fed, for instance, warned banks that failure to comply with government guidelines regarding the delivery of “equal credit” could subject them to “civil liability for actual or punitive damages in individual or class actions, with liability for punitive damages being as much as $10,000 in individual actions and the lesser of $500,000 or 1 percent of the creditor’s net worth in class actions.”
However well-intentioned in terms of delivering “economic justice,” this push for more government-directed social engineering produced a widespread weakening of long-established industry standards for credit worthiness.
Led by Congressional Democrats, this policy of replacing private and decentralized decision-making with a system of centrally-delivered rewards and punishments was basically a one-party effort. Republicans, it seems, were more aware of the unintended consequences that flow from government interference in the market.
As Investor’s Business Daily recently put it, succinctly and correctly: “Over the past 30 years, Democrats, along with a handful of Republicans, have demonized lenders as racist and passed regulation after regulation pressuring them to make more loans to unqualified borrowers in the name of diversity.”
The march toward the eventual financial meltdown picked up speed during the Clinton administration via an increased lowering of loan standards in order to expand minority borrowing.
The result was widely praised. “It’s one of the hidden success stories of the Clinton era,” wrote Ronald Brownstein in May 1999 in the Los Angeles Times. “In the great housing boom of the 1990s, black and Latino homeownership has surged to the highest level ever recorded. The number of African-Americans owning their own homes is now increasing nearly three times as fast as the number of whites; the number of Latino homeowners is growing nearly five times as fast as that of whites.”
In 2000, Howard Husock reported in City Journal that the “Clinton Treasury Department’s 1995 regulations made getting a satisfactory CRA rating much harder. There would be no more A’s for effort. Only results — specific loans, specific levels of service — would count.”
The “specific levels of service” referred to how well banks were responding to complaints, including complaints from advocacy groups that were in the business of complaining.
“By intervening — even just threatening to intervene — in the CRA review process, left-wing nonprofit groups have been able to gain control over eye-popping pools of bank capital, which they in turn parcel out to individual low-income mortgage seekers,” reported Husock. “A radical group called ACORN Housing has a $760 million commitment from The Bank of New York.”
In addition to setting the stage for giving money for mortgage payouts to ACORN and other lending amateurs, CRA authorized those organizations to collect fees from the banks for their “marketing” of loans.
“The Senate Banking Committee has estimated that, as a result of CRA, $9.5 billion so far has gone to pay for services and salaries of the nonprofit groups involved,” reported Husock.
There’s big money, in short, in “nonprofit” activism — and upward mobility. A guy carries a sign advocating “Change” in front of a bank and the government turns him into a salaried protester, credit analyst and dispenser of mortgage money.
“The changes came as radical ‘housing rights’ groups led by ACORN lobbied for such loans,” reports Investor’s Business Daily, regarding the Clinton era. “ACORN at the time was represented by a young public-interest lawyer in Chicago by the name of Barack Obama.”
Ralph R. Reiland is an associate professor of economics at Robert Morris University and a local restaurateur. He can be reached at [email protected].
…contrary to keyens, when govt. interferes in markets, the effects may take decades to feel. And the end result may be the opposite of what is intended…no matter how noble the cause.
Chris Kemble
Forgot to include Jimmy Carter and his Democratic Congress that got the ball rolling by engineering the greatest depression since the 1920s and a doubling of the national deficit in only four year, or that in every other case Congress was controlled by the opposite party. You might want to dig a little deeper than cartoon propaganda.
Rob Gilbert
Such a surplus occurred during the Clinton Administration because the Fed, under Allan Greenspan, credited at a very low interest rate. Such easy credit pumping into the economy created a financial bubble, which eventually, as they all do, deflated, resulting in the inflation, debt, and financial turmoil we face today. This isn’t to side with the alternative party, as both parties insists on enabling a system in which a central bank profits by lending to a government that needs to finance its unlimited size and scope.
Bill
You are all so smart.
Just remember if you go left or right you will end up in the same spot in the end.
whatda
I think we’re pretty much screwed either way. All politicians are sellouts & corrupt. Time for a revolution! lol
nc
Just stumbled in. I seem to agree with the politics here, and I don’t wanna rain on your parade, but did you get permission to post this cartoon here? This guy’s stuff is not in the public domain.
-a fellow artist sensitive to these issues
Greg Udell
I have to agree with Whatda. Politicians are the problem as well as citizens who have turned the party system into this game of my team is better than yours. Politicians love it because we fight amongst each other and they keep getting away with not representing the people.
It’s gotten so bad it’s hard to talk to these people or show them that the candidate that they voted for did something wrong. It’s a problem when voters refuse to see the wrong that their party does. Corrupt politicians should be blamed on the voters.
-dan z-
Well, what is your liberal theory now that Obamanation is well on his way to creating the largest deficit ever known on the planet?
-dan z-