Calvin ... My Hero

There are very few cartoonists who deserve the genius label. Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes, is one.

GOP Announces New Scheme to Cut the Deficit

In order to lower Social Security and Medicare costs, House Republicans have submitted proposed legislation that would order the immigration authorities to start deporting retired people instead of illegals. Their rationale -- hard to dispute, I’m afraid – is that seniors are easier to catch, and will not remember how to get back home.

See you on the bus.

I wonder where we’re going.

What we need now is a modern day TR to step up.

Let's see, now. Who might agree with Teddy?

Cain? Uh ... no.
Paul? Hardly.
Newt? No.
Santorum? Nope.
Bachmann? Oh, puh-leeze!
Mitt? No.
Perry? You're kidding, right?
Hmmm ...
Pretty pathetic bunch, isn't it!

An ideologue, by any other name, would smell the same.

A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled across my name in a comment appearing on a politically-oriented web site. The writer referred to me in a dismissive manner as “a liberal ideologue”.

May I say, for the record, he is not only wrong, he has no idea what a liberal is. In fact, “liberal” and “ideologue” are contradictory terms.

We liberals are open to all new ideas and can just as easily as not decide that some new initiative would better be provided by the private sector than by government. But an ideologue will reject any idea that doesn’t conform to his ideology.


Example: Grover Norquist. He’s the sweetheart who says his goal is to shrink the size of government down to where it’s small enough to drown in the bathtub.

And he’s the guy who intimidated every single Republican in the U.S. House into signing his No-tax Pledge and swears that he will work to defeat any of them who might violate that pledge. In other words, according to Grover, there is no circumstance whatsoever that could justify any new tax on any segment of our society.

Now that, folks, is an ideologue!

Four Years Later, the Republicans Still Don’t Get It.

For months now, we’ve been getting both live and recorded telephone calls at home on behalf of Republican candidates and causes.

I suppose, some time back, I probably fired off an email in response to some outrageous statement made on a right-wing web site and the diabolical bastards peddled my phone number to Republican consulting firms. That’ll teach me.

Recently, many of the calls are on behalf of Herman Cain and his recorded messages are pegged at about 8.5 on the 10-point intensity scale. No wonder the man could sell pizzas.

Mike Huckabee calls occasionally, but his tone is reasonable, almost cajoling, as he explains how the country is headed straight to Hell (capital H) unless we all embrace the values he personally holds dear. I don’t think he’s still running, so I guess he’s just using up the rest of the money he raised when he was. I suppose there's no sense doing any actual good with it.

A call yesterday was from the College Republicans and the recorded male voice fairly quivered with outrage as he described how this great country of ours is being slowly, methodically and deliberately destroyed. He identified the arch villain responsible for that as “Barack ... Hussein ... Obama”. Lest anyone miss the implication, there was heavy emphasis on the “Hussein”.

Really, guys … four years ago, that was a contemptible tactic. Today it’s just stupid.