Bed Sore

Now that Thanksgiving is over, it's time to get down to the serious matter of cleaning up all the leftovers.

By which we don't mean turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie.

Rather, we're talking about all of the political "leftovers" from earlier in the year... and the year before that...and the year before that. Like the failure to control government spending, the failure to establish any realistic energy policies, the failure to make America's strength known to either her allies or enemies, and the abject failure to seriously address our nation's unemployment crisis.

The thing about leftovers is that they get less and less appealing the older they get... and the leftovers cited above are absolutely ancient.

Although Washington traditionally does even less than usual (as hard as that is to imagine) between Thanksgiving and the new year, we'd be delighted if the politicians actually decided to celebrate the fact that they're employed by doing their jobs for a change.

Because after awhile, leftovers really start to stink. Which is why when next November rolls around, we'll definitely be throwing some things out.
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Axe Not What Your Country Can Do For You

Thanksgiving Day is almost upon us. A very special, uniquely American day in which millions of people will join together to give thanks for the fact that election day is finally less than a year away.

Also among the thankful is the Whitehouse turkey (no, no - the one with feathers) who actually did receive an official pardon from Mr. Obama, and has now been offered a job in the liquor industry...just like the president's Uncle Omar, who presumably has not been invited to the Whitehouse feast and will probably have to split a frozen TV dinner with Aunt Zeituni.

In the president's official Thanksgiving proclamation, he reminds us that the original feast "honored the Wampanoag for generously extending their knowledge of local game and agriculture to the Pilgrims," a fact which is more sleep-inducing than the amount of tryptophan contained in an entire Butterball. He then goes on to say that this is an occasion to "renew our gratitude to all American Indians and Alaska Natives."

We're not sure what the Alaskan Natives had to do with Thanksgiving, considering that they've only been Americans two years longer than Barack Obama...but perhaps they're responsible for those frozen TV dinners we mentioned before.

In any event, the president also goes on to perfunctorily offer thanks to "our men and women in uniform...each other and to God" (in that order).

But apparently wishing to save expensive proclamation-grade ink, the president gives no thanks whatsoever to the 1% of taxpayers who pay 36% of the government's bills...thereby putting food on the table every day for the 45 million people who find themselves on foodstamps in the Obamaconomy.

Still, and in all sincerity, we have much to be grateful for in this wonderful country...and it can only do us all good to put politics aside on Thursday and take time to think about our blessings and to humbly give thanks.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours from Hope n' Change Cartoons.

And be sure to save room for the delicious "Lockbox Pumpkin Pie" you've been promised!
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Craptonite

With the hours ticking down to a precious few, it's becoming increasingly likely that the SuperDuperCommittee to which Barack Obama passed his fiscal leadership responsibilities is about to present us all with a special Thanksgiving sentiment: "Get stuffed!"

Because almost no one is predicting that the members of the supercommittee are about to strike a deal (and even if they did, the amount they're debating is only about 10% of what any truly serious reform would require).

Of course, this isn't exactly wildly surprising. When they had a supermajority, the Democrats didn't even bother to create or offer budgets. Obama created one which was so repugnant and unrealistic (actually raising spending in virtually every area) that it wasn't supported by even a single Democrat's vote.

In this absence of leadership, Barack Obama created a "Debt Reduction Commission" which was supposed to get everything figured out. But they didn't, and such good suggestions as they had (and there were quite a few) were quickly buried out of sight by Obama in much the same way that a cat scrapes kitty litter over anything it finds offensive.

Then (and by "then," we mean when the Tea Party came to Washington in 2010) came talk of a possible Balanced Budget Amendment - which Obama promptly shot down, saying that it was ridiculous to think that we'd need to amend the Constitution just to get legislators "to do their jobs."

Which is why it was puzzling that the president subsequently gave those very jobs to his new "Supercommittee" which would find $1.2 trillion in cuts...or else a "trigger" would go off, automatically cutting the money from budgets - with half the hit coming out of our nation's military financing. An outcome which seems almost unavoidable at this point...and one which will come as great news to those who would like to see America's military might diminished (including the commander in chief).

Meanwhile, businesses and employment are in the dumper, despairing over the fact that they'll seemingly never have a secure idea of the financial future to base their planning on - and such uncertainty is unacceptable.

But at Hope n' Change, we think they're missing the bigger picture. After all, since the day of Obama's election there hasn't been one single sincere effort to cut spending, encourage business, or balance the budget. So there's really no "uncertainty" at all; businessmen can confidently assume that everything will get worse for the foreseeable future, and make their hiring plans accordingly!

What's that? Oh yes - they already are.

One is a mythic being from another planet who has powers far greater than other men,
has a closely guarded secret identity, and fights enemies in comic book fashion.

The other one is Superman.
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