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Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for July 04, 2010
Transcript:
Malia: Seen Daddy? Michelle: He's shaving. Malia: Not again! Daddy? Barack: I'm shaving, Malia. Be out in a minute. Malia: Daddy, have you plugged the hole yet? Barack: Well, Malia, it's not quite... Sasha: Dad! Have you ended the wars yet? Malia: Hey! I'm talking to Daddy! Barack: Yes, hold on, Sasha. Now, Malia, with respect to the hole... Malia: What about the economy? Have you fixed that yet? Sasha: The economy? Who cares about the stinky economy? Barack: Girls, I really have to get... Malia: How about the deficit? You promised! Sasha: I want to know if he fixed the hole! Michelle: Barack? Did you fix the schools like I asked? Barack: Hey! Everyone out! Malia: Chill, Dad - you'll get gray hair. Sasha: Eww! He's bleeding!
TheSoundDefense over 14 years ago
Joe, do you just get off on nitpicking people over the dumbest things? Two comics in a row I see you doing this.
cdhaley over 14 years ago
This is how the president who wanted to bring us all together celebrates the 4th?
Ps. Some of those who reply below miss GTās point. BHO is our leader, in the White House where heāmore than either of his two immediate predecessorsābelongs on our nationās birthday.
Deo gratias.
POPPA1956 over 14 years ago
Reminds me of an old joke. Q: Do they have Fourth of July in England? A: Of course, silly. They have July fourth everywhere they have July. Happy Independence Day Joe! Happy Fourth of July to the rest of you.
Of course, Joe, you know the Declaration was not signed on the Fourth of July, donāt you?
Hugh B. Hayve over 14 years ago
LOL, perfect analogy of how the American public views itās President. Great job GB! Happy 4th to all my Yank homies!
Kingoswald Premium Member over 14 years ago
Yeah. A fallible human being with a great family. Happy Independence Day, Mr. President.
thirdguy over 14 years ago
To all our service people overseas, who might also be shaving under less than ideal circumstances, Happy 4th of July, May God bless you, and bring you home safely.
Brer_Rabbit10 over 14 years ago
Thank you, Thirdguy. A truly awesome sentiment.
cfimeiatpap over 14 years ago
The time has come Said a young man to his bride The train waits outside And though I leave You know Iāll keep you by my side She holds on a final time Soldierās gone to war Told her heās cominā home Soldierās gone to war Heās gonna be a hero in his hometown, lord She stands alone On a platform lookinā sad He waves through a pane of glass And though she hopes He will be cominā home at last Her heart knows whatās gonna pass Soldier has gone to war Donāt know it, but he aināt cominā home no more Soldier has gone to war Heās gonna be known as a hero in his hometown, lord Soldierās gone to war Told her heās cominā home Soldier has gone to war Heās gonna be known as a hero in his hometown, lord The paper falls to the floor from a trembling hand The words they burn to the soul And though she cries, she doesnāt really understand The worldās gone so cold Soldier went to war Told her heād be cominā home Soldier went to war Gonna be a big hero in his hometown, lord And the stories tell of bravery, yeah He was golden as the sun Well he fought for you and he fought for me, yeah And he died for everyone Stories of a hero Stories of a hero Well it seems as though the world aināt changed It goes on and on for years When men must die to be called brave To earn respect among their peers Stories of a hero Stories of a hero
Frank Marino & Mahogany Rush
lewisbower over 14 years ago
TIGGER Canāt help but agree and GT didnāt show half the broken promises.
JOE Happy Independence Day from one vet to another. May we all be grateful for the sacrifices freely given by those who never returned. You and me have the freedom to disagree. I guarantee we will.
celeconecca over 14 years ago
Today is actually Maliaās 12th birthday - saw it in the paper today.
kehren2 over 14 years ago
If I may, I believe the point is less that Pres. Obama himself has not fixed these things than that he and the Congress together have not fixed these things. He, after all, is not the federal government.
Happy Fourth, everyone!
poohbear8192 over 14 years ago
(begin sarcasm) I know what we need and I donāt know why we never thought of it before.
We need a president that does everything he or she says she or he will do and do it immediately regardless of petty interference by powerless entities such as congress and the supreme court.
We need a president that will do what every single person in the U.S. wants a president to do. We need a president to overcome the silly fact that the country is divided against it self. We need a president that will make all our differences disappear overnight and not disappoint any of us.
I just donāt understand why such a simple solution hasnāt been applied sooner. (end sarcasm)
Horace_manoor.
I declare now and forever.
YOU DO NOT EXIST AND YOU NEVER DID!
There! That solves that problem!
Oh, and BTW, horace, I deeply admire your avatar, it fits you precisely.
And Joe. Happy Indeefourthance day.
Happy Fourth to all others.
dougdash over 14 years ago
He probably cut himself while shaving, and he already has gray hairs.
Letās see: No previous mangerial/executive experience; a poor voting record as a U.S. Senator; Heās perfect for the job of POTUS!
Now, if we could have you provide us with copies of your long-form birth certificate, school records and travel recordsā¦
NoBrandName over 14 years ago
Iām surprised no nitpicker has yet pointed out that today is NOT Independence Day, but the anniversary of it.
billdi Premium Member over 14 years ago
letās see āObama inherited two wars, an economy ruined by the previous administration and Wall Street., a polarized electorate fanned by the just- say-no party that has refused to engage in even a modicum of cooperation, collaboration and decency, and btw itās his fault that BP was criminally negligent and incompetent.
imo it is way past time that a certain moronic segment gets over the fact that a Democrat and a black man was elected president. let it go so we can get back to being āwe the peopleā¦ā and solving problems rather than obsessing about birth certificates.
jaws2049 Premium Member over 14 years ago
So much to do and so little timeā¦go for it anywayā¦if anyone canā¦you can at least tryā¦ But letās get real and look at who did the damage that needs to be undoneā¦Happy Fourth George! and I donāt mean Washingtonā¦
myming over 14 years ago
We need a president that will do what every single person in the U.S. wants a president to do. We need a president to overcome the silly fact that the country is divided against it self. We need a president that will make all our differences disappear overnight and not disappoint any of us
that is a nice thought IF everyone could agree on how to go about ACHIEVING itā¦
usfellers over 14 years ago
Hi Joe. Happy Independence Day to you and all American friends from Australia.
I wonder who used the āFrancisā avatar as a cowardās way of hiding their usual name on Gocomics. Their current name sums up how they must really feel about themselves. Flagged.
cdhaley over 14 years ago
@fbjsr
Would you vote for someone who ran for president while admitting s/he was afraid problems might come up for which s/he had no answer?
You and the āangry electorateā sound like the presidentās daughter, except that where she is shocked to see him bleed, you gloat over any sign of impotence.
But as Hugh B. notes above, Americans love to run down their president, even on the 4th of July. Itās our perennial return to adolescence and we get a thrill out of reaffirming our ungovernable INDEPENDENCE with fireworks, teabags, and amnesia.
corzak over 14 years ago
From 2001 to 2008, whenever I bemoaned about the ditch our country was being driven into ā¦ my Republicans friends said āItās Clintonās fault. He was a sleeze bag.ā
Dapperdan61 Premium Member over 14 years ago
No pressure, though I noticed Obama has gotten a lot grayer since he took office a mere 18 months ago
poohbear8192 over 14 years ago
My silly fictitious president is the president that the detractors are measuring Obama against. The constant RANT is that heās not perfect, therefore heās terrible.
I have inserted sarcasm marks in my first comment.
quanticobaby over 14 years ago
Thank you, cfimeiatpap, for the poetry. Beautiful and sad at the same time.
And I like the comic, regardless of my political party.
AKHenderson Premium Member over 14 years ago
The 2000s economy:
The dot-com bubble was nobodyās fault politically. It represented the normal series of events for an infant industry - nobodyās done it before, a lot of people give it a try, only a few figure out how to do it right.
9/11 sent the economy reeling. The destruction of the WTC and the cost of the wars drove up deficits - which started to recede after 2004, but exploded in 2008.
The āblame Bushā kneejerk reaction assumes that the root causes of the mortgage and mortgage-backed securities collapse started during Bushās administration. Two key causes go back further: to fuel a housing bubble, Greenspan lowered interests drastically and Democrats insanely expanded the availability of mortgages to people who couldnāt afford them.
An overly inflated housing market requires lenders to seek new capital sources - thus a mortgage-backed securities bubble. The money for the bad mortgages had to come from somewhere.
When mortgages sank, the securities sank. The regulators werenāt sure how to value those securities in the first place - by default the they were valued way downward. Financial institutions sank because on they fell below their fractional reserves minimum - mark-to-market rules hit them with the equivalent of a margin call.
Everyone should have seen what was coming when the mortgage lenders were caving. As soon as Bear Sterns was threatened, Congress should have imposed emergency mark-to-market changes to keep institutions afloat while fixing the systemic problems. But no - they let the well go uncapped, and Bear Sterns disappeared.
Instead of addressing root causes, Bush and the Democrats and a few key GOP moderates threw borrowed money at the problem. The toxic assets still havenāt been cleaned up.
cdhaley over 14 years ago
Like Sasha, you want to talk about the āstinky economy,ā AKHāeven though your metaphor of cleaning up toxic assets shows your mind is on Maliaās question about āthe hole.ā
Without metaphor, readers ought to understand that the bad mortgages have all been bought up (some $2-3 trillion) by our wonderful Fed, acting through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. So the banks now have strong balance sheets again thanks to the suckers (us taxpayers) who took the nasty stuff from their hands.
The suckers include you and me, fbjsr. Much easier to demonize one party or another than to own up to our ultimate responsibility for the actions of Congress, which yet again has declined to reform the banking system.
I doubt that nobets/stebon (below)āwho misreads GTās stripācan name his congressman. He seems to be one of those pathetic rednecks made sick by the beauty of miscegeny.
lewisbower over 14 years ago
Why do people call our beloved leader black? In a lot of states, they can prove) the mother but not the father. Therefore a childās Race box matches his motherās race.Can anyone prove his father? Oops, DNA testing wasnāt around when most of us were born,
SuperGriz over 14 years ago
http://tinyurl.com/26vwunx
cdhaley over 14 years ago
Because Obama decided to call himself black on the census box, Lew. He could have ticked the āwhiteā box too, and he repeatedly recalls his white grandfather Stanley Dunham. But he reveals in his books that his fatherās character (not just his DNA) shaped his own, even though Obama last saw his father when he was only eleven.
Obama likes to call himself a āmuttā; thatās his way of mocking our racist categories, which must seem bizarre to our increasingly miscegenist population.
Ps. The Kos article is pretty good, SuperGriz, and itās pertinent to July 4 if not to GTās strip. The gun rights group arenāt usually historians, or theyād have discovered Machiavelliās Discourses by now. And neither they nor Americans as a whole realize that our Bill of Rights was based on the 1689 Bill of Rights.
RinaFarina over 14 years ago
Now donāt anybody tell me that todayās strip isnāt bang-on! Everybody wants him to fix it all, right away! I love Trudeauās sense of humour!
RinaFarina over 14 years ago
Iām sure I posted a comment, but it seems to have disappeared. Also, I flagged two comments, but they got unflagged. To flag them again, I had to do each one twice. Whatās going on?
Maybe my politics are too left-wing for you all? Altho I shouldnāt use the word āleft-wingā, because Iām using it in the sense it had thirty years ago, which has now completely changed.
AKHenderson Premium Member over 14 years ago
Most activists arenāt historians, period. The gun rights folks seem to have enough of āem to register a lot of Google hits on ānra 1689 Bill of Rights.ā
Re Discourses: - you must have this in mind:
āFrom this we plainly see the folly and imprudence of demanding a thing, and saying beforehand that it is intended to be used for evil; and that one should never show oneās intentions, but endeavor to obtain oneās desires anyhow. For it is enough to ask a man to give up his arms, without telling him that you intend killing him with them; after you have the arms in hand, then you can do your will with them.ā
http://volokh.com/posts/1169860054.shtml
I think the gun rights folks understand the principle, even if theyāre not familiar with Machiavelliās translation of Livy. But making a sound bite of it is bad PR, however true it may be. āThe gun grabbers are out to get usā is a tougher sell to an American audience than, say, the idea that disarming citizens makes them more vulnerable to private-sector criminals.
alviebird over 14 years ago
Name calling. Not gonna go there.
There is only one good(?) thing I can say about Obama. He ran on the promise of undefined change.
He certainly kept that promise.
Donaldo Premium Member over 14 years ago
Sadly the economy is un-fixable, for Obama or for anybody else.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usnationaldebt
pbarnrob over 14 years ago
^Keep in mind that change is scary to many people.
Put the frog in the pot of cold water, and warm him up gradually, and the little guy will enjoy the jacuzzi until he goes to sleep and gets cooked.
Gradual change isnāt quite as scary, but getting some of these things fixed before too many of us die needs to be quicker. Itās a huge job, and the gray hair is one symptom of just how big it is.
corzak over 14 years ago
AKHenderson , youāre review of the causes of the āgreat recessionā are generally accurate ā¦ but you forget to mention that from 1995-2006 the Republicans controlled both House and Senate, and from 2001-2008 the White House - and did nothing about the the housing bubble or Fannie Mae either.
Thereās plenty of blame for everyone - from the Fed Chairman to unethical accountants to brokers and agents pushing, pushing loans ā¦ to the guy in the street who bought a house he knew he couldnāt afford.