Weekend Cartoons

Lots of thought-provoking cartoons to get to today, so I'll get right to them. As always, my thoughts are below selected cartoons.

Hope you are having a good weekend wherever you are, and that you're staying cool - it's downright oppressive here in Philadelphia today.

The current banking crisis reminds me in many ways of the S&L Crisis from the late 1980s and early 1990s, which ended up costing taxpayers about $125 billion. Except the current crisis is much worse, and many experts fear that we haven't hit bottom yet in the housing crisis. If not, I don't even want to know what bottom could be. One common thread through both crises, though, is a lack of regulation and oversight, both as a result of deregulation from Republican administrations. Don't take my word for it - look it up yourself.

I've no idea why the American people elect many Republicans who run on the idea that Government is the problem (another wonderful legacy of Reganomics), and once they get into government, they royally screw it up. It shouldn't be a mystery - anyone who thinks that government is the problem had ought not be put in charge of that government. Yet, we continue to elect these people, over and over.

I seriously get a kick out of people who are driving absurdly large SUVs, many of whom of complaining about the price of gas now. That's what they get for buying rolling monuments to themselves. Truckers, I have sympathy for; their livelihoods are being threatened. Moronic yuppies in the Hummers deserve the astronomical fuel bill they are getting.

...and probably more times if McSame gets elected. Of course, he even admitted last week that a 16-month withdraw plan is mostly acceptable. Like he had a choice - it's what Obama is proposing, and what's more the Iraqi government more or less endorsed Obama's plan last week.

Of course, McCain's 4,988,011th flip flop gets almost no press, but that's exactly what it was, a reversal. Anyone remember when McCain said we might be in Iraq for "100 years"? Yea, he's not saying that now.

I'll get to this story a bit later in a separate post, but it's another example of many dozens where the troops are getting royally screwed over by this administration (& Bush's Pentagon) - you know, the same administration that never misses an opportunity to pimp the hackneyed Support the Troops slogan. Both the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been waged with slogans. If the Bush administration is winning one war, it's the war on our language.

Wow, the taxpayer pays, again. Earlier this year it was Bear Stearns, and now Freddie and Fannie. When will it end. I don't have a problem with the feds bailing out both businesses (or at least throwing them a life line) - for economic stability, just about any expert you'll find says it's a must. Fine. But, when will Congress wake up and impose more regulations and rules on the mortgage industry? Until they do, the taxpayer is getting screwed. The only people making out in these types of deals where the feds bail out companies are the companies' investors. What a formula - If we do well, we win, & if we lose, the taxpayer pays anyway. Not bad work if you can get it.

I can't be the only one troubled by the FDA's lack of an ability to get to the bottom of the salmonella crisis. I love it that last week, the FDA lifted bans on tomatoes, without finding out the cause of the outbreak. Hmm, that's comforting. The people who hate America and really want to do us harm have got to be the dumbest mother ------- in all the world, because in many ways, the Bush administration has done a patently pathetic job in strengthening Homeland Security. Hey, we've got to pay for the tax cuts to Bush's benefactors, so there's that concern.

Talk about in the public interest. I don't think many of the people deep within the bowels of the Bush administration have ever muttered (or even thought about) that phrase very much.

I wonder how many farmers' lives were destroyed when the tomato ban was put into effect? What's more, they are undoubtedly going to need help. I wonder who will be paying for that? I wouldn't have any problem with it, provided the government had viable proof that the outbreak was coming from tomatoes. It didn't, and now we probably have thousands of farmers who are going to need federal aid.

It's incidents like this that severely damage my faith in our government. Maybe I should just say this government, meaning the people who are currently in power.

I posted this one because I think it's unadulterated bullshit. McCain got a free ride for at least three months, because the GOP race was over early. Now that he's getting some long-needed scrutiny, the press is in love with Obama. Whatever. I've spent so much time debunking this, I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on it anymore.

If I had a dollar for every negative story that has appeared about Obama (most of them from the Repube propaganda machines of The Drudge Report, Faux News and the GOP hate mongering radio talk show hosts), I could pay off the national deficit.

I'll never tire of saying it or writing it, but it was great fun watching McCain trying to do just about anything to get some media attention last week. McCain and his ilk of Lindsay Graham, Rudy 9iu1ian1 and Mitt Romney were all griping that Obama had never been to Iraq. Then, he goes, and all they do is whine. Again, you can't have it both ways, guys.

It's amazing that Bush is finally discovering the power of diplomacy, about 7 1/2 years too late. If he knew its power long ago, we might not even be in Iraq right now. Somehow, I think he would have found a "reason" to go to war, though.

The Bush energy policy = the Bush Iraq policy; they are both circling the bowl, ready to get sucked down the drain. And that's exactly where both belong.

Military tribunals definitely have their place - after all, the tribunals in Germany following World War II brought many of the Nazi leaders to justice. However, the way the Bush administration has elected to go about them, as secretly as possible, is against the spirit of openness that our form of government is based on. Then again, I don't expect much more from one of the most secretive administrations in U.S. history.

This cartoon, sadly, needs little explanation. As food and fuel costs continue to skyrocket, many people are using their credit cards to stay afloat, because they have no other choice. What's worse, things don't seem to be getting much better. The consumer price index in June increased 1.2 percent, the biggest one-month jump since 1982. It's little wonder the economy is the American public's biggest concern for the fall election.

It's little wonder that McCain, who has voted with Bush on an overwhelming majority of his Congressional votes, is All Iraq, all the time - any domestic issue discussion demonstrates just how hapless the candidate is. Hmm, yet another way McCain = Bush.

It's too bad we couldn't get it right the first time. Maybe we would have, had troops not been siphoned off for the unnecessary invasion of Iraq. I'm not a big conspiracy theorist (and they almost always annoy me), but I will go to my grave thinking that Bush and Co. let bin Laden go, because had they caught him, then the war's over, the boogeyman's gone, and domestic issues may very well have been on the front burner in the '04 election. And, had that been the case, President Kerry would be running for his second term this year.

I've seen lots of dumb cartoons poking fun at Al Gore, but I applaud him for his efforts. We might not get there in 10 years (actually, it would be one of the biggest miracles in the history of this country), but at least Gore is trying to give the green, renewable energy movement a much needed kick in the ass. God only knows, it needs it. I haven't heard many specifics from Obama (!), and McCain's brainchild is a $300 million battery. We can and we must do much better, period.

Isn't the one above the truth - Big Oil and the politicians they have in their pocket (and the media outlets, too), are playing off of the public's outrage at gasoline prices that have skyrocketed in the past few years by trying to get access to environmentally sensitive areas for more exploration. Or government had better not give it to them. My attitude is, IT'S OUR OIL, not Big Oil's.

And if the petroleum companies want access to this oil and Congress decides on it, the fee for drilling should be doubled. If these @!#$%&!!@% companies don't want to cut the price of gas, with record profits during the last 4-5 years, then the government should tax the piss out of them, or they will be denied access to the remote areas, without exception. (Oh yea, it's letter writing time!)