Summer Breakage

Readers - I'm making a few changes in the publishing schedule here for the summer and basically throttling things back a notch. Oh, I'm not disappearing (unless I'm dragged kicking and screaming into a black helicopter), but I'll be publishing cartoons only on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (although I may make occasional exceptions for jaw-dropping, dumbfounding idiocy or breaking news).

And I won't be doing the weekend "vault" cartoon updates for now...though you can certainly peruse all of the old cartoons in the archives (they're searchable by keyword, you know. Though if you enter "Obama" you'll get about 700 hits).

I'm glad to say that the reasons for this temporary slowdown are all of the "good news" variety. My dedication to the strip (and readers!) hasn't diminished, nor has my contempt for the Left. But there are a variety of other exciting projects and opportunities I'm working on (some political, some not) that are heating up to the extent that I need to make a little more time for them, at least on a short-term basis. And summer seemed like a good time to do it, before we get into the real bareknuckle (or brass knuckle?) days of Campaign 2012.

So enjoy your weekend, thank you deeply for your support and loyalty, and I'll see you back here on Monday!

-Stilton Jarlsberg
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Crass Warfare

Yesterday, Barack Hussein Obama finally commented publicly on the debt ceiling impasse and demonstrated his gift for bipartisan outreach by saying that Republicans want to "compromise your kids' safety so some corporate-jet owner can get a tax break."

The president went on to say that there's nothing "radical" about his plan to dramatically raise taxes on "millionaires and billionaires," except for perhaps the part where he somehow defines people - and small businesses - who earn a couple hundred thousand dollars a year as "billionaires." You know, like when his billionaire wife was (ahem) "earning" $322,000 a year working in "community affairs" for a hospital.

Rather than cut any real spending, the president and Democrats are insisting on dramatic tax increases on oil companies (yeah, that'll bring those gas prices down!), small business owners, and evil venture capitalists who risk their own money investing in new American businesses hoping to make a profit (the bastards!)

And what will happen if taxes aren't raised? According to Mr. Obama, college scholarships will end, no one will get warnings of tornadoes or hurricanes, medical research (especially for children's diseases!) will grind to a halt, there will be no more food safety inspections, senior citizens will live under bridges holding pitiful signs saying "No dentures - will work for applesauce," and blind orphans won't get tickets to the circus.

All because of the Evil Rich and their GOP puppets.

Mr. Obama clearly is trying to inspire class hatred...and perhaps class warfare... in hopes of calling the GOP's bluff about not allowing tax hikes. Which is why, more than ever, Hope n' Change hopes that the GOP is not bluffing and will allow the debt ceiling to go unraised if the Left won't get serious about spending reductions.

If America defaults on its debts, the politicians will have no choice but to make serious and painful cutbacks. Because as long as they do have a choice, venal political hacks like Barack Obama will always choose ugly and divisive demagoguery over responsibility.

According to the president, if evil billionaires continue to get tax breaks,
poor people will be forced to feed their children kitten smoothies.
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Hazardous Dooty

America was made just a little bit safer recently, when TSA airport screeners decided to look for explosives in the soiled adult diaper of a 95-year-old female leukemia patient.

Granted, Islamic radicals want to hide their bombs in the last places you'd ever want to look, but even they've presumably got their limits. Although to be fair, if any terrorist did place a bomb inside a 95-year-old woman's diaper, he'd probably be enthusiastic about volunteering for suicide-vest duty just to get the image of something that looked a lot like Willie Nelson out of his head.

But seriously, how hard would it be for the TSA to check records before a flight and determine that an old woman, sick and on her way to a nursing home after living her entire life in this country, is no threat? Assuming, of course, that her wheelchair isn't being pushed by a new attendant named Mohammed Hussein Death To America Mohammed.

At some point, political correctness needs to be put aside so that our limited security resources can be focused on those who are most likely to be genuine threats. But will that day ever come?

Depends.

In the event of hearings over the TSA incident,
Democrat Senator Al Franken has agreed to recuse himself.
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Playing Doctor

To find out why more and more primary care physicians are closing their practices due to government intrusiveness, the Obama administration has created a new program to get more intrusive.

With Obamacare set to dump 30 million new Medicare/Medicaid patients into the system, the government is desperately racing to find out why doctors don't want to see patients on whom they lose money.

To solve this baffling riddle, the Obama administration is creating a bureau of taxpayer-funded "secret shoppers" who will pose as patients and call doctors in nine states. They'll call each doctor twice - once asking if the doctor takes new patients with private insurance and once asking if the doctor takes new patients on government plans. If there's a discrepancy in who they'll take, the doctors will presumably be taken to Guantanamo Bay for waterboarding, which is said to be nearly as torturous as medical boarding.

Government officials claim that the data collected will only be for information purposes. But if they wanted accurate information, then they wouldn't be telling the New York Times to spread the story before any phonecalls are made. Instead, it seems more likely that the Obamacare Czars desperately want the story well-publicized to intimidate physicians... and help conceal the growing doctor shortage from the public until it's too late.

Meaning that Obama's "secret shoppers" may not have real illnesses...but they do represent a governmental sickness from which our medical system may never recover.

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Ceiling Whacks

Following the collapse of Joe Biden's debt-ceiling negotiations, and the collapse of the budget-balancing "Gang of Six," and the collapse of Obama's "Deficit Reduction Commission," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is demanding a place at the table in the critical Boehner-Obama debt ceiling negotiations and threatens that unless she is allowed to participate, she will cage the Cowardly Lion, disassemble the Tin Woodsman, set fire to the Scarecrow, and kill Dorothy.

And her little dog, too!

Pelosi, who made a point of keeping Republicans miles away from any negotiations relating to Obamacare while House Majority Leader, suddenly seems to feel that bipartisanship is more appealing than it used to be. And she is resentful that she wasn't allowed to participate in April's emergency negotiations to keep the government funded...which was caused by Pelosi's failure to pass, or even propose, an operating budget while she was in charge.

If allowed to participate, perhaps Ms. Pelosi will again share her insights on her 2007 "Pay As You Go" initiative, which she swore all Democrats under her leadership would follow "so that our children and grandchildren are not saddled with mountains of debt."

After which, of course, she went on the greatest deficit spending spree in history.

So frankly, we don't know why Nancy Pelosi needs to be at the debt talks when she is already so well-represented by the debt itself.
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HnC Vault: The Sniff Test

Originally posted November 4, 2009


Despite the urgent need for more troops in Afghanistan, Barack Obama insisted on delaying any decision until the results of the Afghan election were in. But now, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs says "I think the decision will be made in the coming weeks." And because "thinking" it will happen wasn't lame enough, Gibbs emphasized that the decision "may" get made... which leaves open the possibility that it may not.

The timetable for a decision is not artificial: the longer the president stalls, the lower morale plunges in the armed forces, the more soldiers die, and the less likely that there will be time for additional troops to be trained and deployed effectively.

This president, who enjoyed great political success by simply voting "present" on many issues as a senator in Illinois, needs to learn that this isn't an option when it comes to presidential decisions. Ironically, he told re-elected Afghan president Karzai that when it comes to showing leadership "the proof is not going to be in words, it's going to be in deeds." In this, he's entirely right - and his lack of deeds clearly shows that Obama is unfit for the critical job of Commander in Chief.

Update 6/26/11

Our presence (and soon to be absence) in Afghanistan has been very much in the news this week, with Barack Obama stating that he's pulling out all-important troops over the objections of his generals.

And just how did those extra troops get there in the first place? General Stanley McChrystal...the commander and lead strategist for Afghanistan at the time...issued a report saying that 40,000 additional troops were urgently needed to avoid "total mission failure." This was issued in a report because the president had only talked with McChrystal once...and the president was pressed into acting on it because the document was leaked to the press before being suppressed.

So what did Obama do then? Diddly-squat. He postponed making the decision for months (enjoying vacations and golf outings along the way). When public outrage grew, he arranged a quick nighttime photo-op in which he saluted a single flag-draped coffin to show how "seriously" he took making any decision. On a side note, there were multiple flag-draped coffins at the airport where Obama brought his photographers... but all but one of the military families refused to give permission to the president to use their dead as cheap political props.

After months of stalling, Obama finally agreed to send in additional troops - albeit fewer than requested...and simultaneously announced a timetable for pulling them out again, victorious or not. Apparently "Military Strategy 101" wasn't taught at Harvard.

The new troops made a huge difference. But to consolidate their victories, they need to stay in place through the critical fighting season coming in late 2012. But that's not going to happen.

They'll be gone by September...just in time to look good for the 2012 elections. And of course, the consequences of their withdrawal won't occur until after the elections...which, like the lives of soldiers and the cause of freedom, is of no interest to Barack Hussein Obama at all.
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