Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for August 30, 2012

Wish the media would spend more time looking at what he is going to do to Medicare. 

Why can’t he be more like his father ? George Romney was an open honest man and a great politician – to say nothing of being representative of what a TRUE Republican should be. And oh yeah, he released 10 years of his back taxes. What’s Mutt got to hide ?

Hope your birth certificate is valid and your passport is up-to-date. Oh yeah, and you speak English.

Suppose Romney staves off the media long enough to win. Will he THEN release the tax returns?

No, Pi. If that happened he’d pardon himself.

This strip is depressing me.

I’m impressed all over again at how DUMB BD is. Boopsie too. How can they have such a smart, insightful, child, Sam?

Really? What about 2004?

I can’t believe that people are so gullible that they believe all that left-wing blather, either. Or blather of any other political stripe. There’s plenty of blather to go around. Republicans don’t have a monopoly on blather.

measured words when there is nothing to say

Sensible people are fooled by their party’s blather because they know they don’t mean what they say, but do mean well. They are horrified by the other party’s blather because they think they do mean it, and believe they mean ill. There are left-wing loonies in the Democratic party who would, if they could, institute policies that might wreck the country. There are right-wing loonies in the Republican party who would, if they could, institute policies that might wreck the country. Now, the question is, which party is most dominated by its lunatic fringe? By its no-holds-barred, take-no-prisoners, show-no-mercy, no-compromise-no-retreat, in-your-face faction? Well?

Why would any intelligent person be a Democrat or Republican? Do any of you believe that of all the people capable of running this country Obama or Romney are our best choices. Same goes for Congress.

Is it just me or has this RNC convention been more about moronic rhetoric and no introduction of their plans to govern if elected. I guess Mitt must think all he has to do is press that easy button?

It’s just you. Romney has provided considerably more detail about what he intends to do if elected than then-Senator Obama did four years ago, with his slogan-heavy/content-light campaign of “Hope and Change” and “Yes, We Can!” Not that that’s a terribly difficult benchmark to surpass, of course.

As soon as one criticizes the right, along come those who insist on false equivalency, in order to make themselves feel better. Trouble is, the “they do it on both sides” rationale isn’t always fair, or even factually based.Romney has provided more info about what he wants to do? Really? It would seem that he has given far more different answers, as in changing his positions, that is certain. Most recently, he has stated he doesn’t agree with the GOP platform on abortion. GOP platform makes no exceptions, even for rape or incest. Reversible Mittens now says he would make those exceptions. His VP would not allow those exceptions, saying rape is just another form of conception. It certainly isn’t viewed quite that way by a rape victim.

What exactly does ‘middle class’ mean in the US? I get the impression it means ‘ordinary working people’, including blue-collar workers? In the UK it means you are not one of the gentry with titles who own large parts of the countryside, but equally you are not ‘working class’.

Middle class in the UK includes all the professions, managerial jobs in business etc. Working class is all manual work, generally including skilled manual work. At least, that is the simple version: Viscount Linley is a relative of the Queen and therefore upper class; otherwise, as a carpenter, you could argue that he was working class…

Bush created an enormous hole for us to climb out of. Obama has made gains to help us get out of that hole, but we have a ways to go. Turning back to the trickle down economic theory of the past will not make this happen. It will only make things worse. Far worse.

What is Mitt hiding in his returns? It must be something terrible. Obama can’t make the IRS show him his returns, that would be a clear violation of law. If he had nothing to hide, I’m sure he would want us to see them, as has been the case with all other modern candidates for the presidency.

As if Obama had any compunctions about violating the law when it serves his interests to do so.

Who was that governor woman who kept speaking a different language?. They all start by telling how poor they once were. Damn what happened to Randolph Scott.

….we had that 2000 -2006. Didn’t work so well. And don’t forget: THEY HAVE THE SUPREME COURT TOO!

The point is that neither Obama, nor I, nor you, nor anyone other than Romney, can show his returns, and he refuses to do so, even though all other modern day presidential candidates have certainly shown more than 2 years of their returns.

And we don’t know if Romney violated tax law or not, BECAUSE HE WON’T SHOW US HIS RETURNS!

It takes about 6 years of a president’s 2 terms to really see what their policies are really doing – by then it is too late to vote him out. We had all of these problems in 2008, and they have been getting worse – they have to run their course. American business is ready to invest now, they just want to know which flavor of politics it will be before they spend the money.

It will just be – it doesn’t matter who is at the helm.

Did anyone see else see where Romney has 0% support among African Americans? The most amazing part is that the poll had a margin of error of + or 1-3%- so maybe Romney has managed to find a wormhole of -1-3%!

There was an interesting incident at the RNC where a black CNN news woman had peanuts thrown at her and someone said this is the way we feed the animals. The thrower was ejected after the incident. Predictably, now some GOP are saying that it didn’t happen…

There are two kinds of republicans. Those that are rich, white, and male. And those that are fools.

We can talk these issues to death, but in the long run it is going to come down to one thing and one thing, only. We get the type of government that we deserve. We are the ELECTORATE. We, collectively, decide how the country will be governed. We vote the individuals into, or out of, office.The operative word folks is VOTE ! If we do not excercise this right than we have abrogated ALL OUR RIGHTS. Don’t complain about your city council, your school board, your board of supervisors, let alone your Governor, Senator, or your President, if you did not get out and vote.

African Americans are voting for color, not content of character.

At least Romney’s retort is truthful…thanks, GT!

‘African Americans are voting for color, not content of character.’Spoken like a true racist. And you probably don’t understand why.

Anyone who says that all of any group does something is a racist or at least a bigot. Especially when they’re absolutely wrong.

I’m voting long before November 2. We have early voting in Georgia. I like to vote on the second day of early voting. The first day gets some traffic, but very few people show up on the second day. Oh by the way, Mitt is still laughing at you. And some people say he doesn’t have a sense of humor.

Is it that nervous, uncomfortable laugh he has when he knows he’s lying, but does it anyway?

Guard SGT, it’s really a shame you don’t actually know the presidents name. And how is someone who is legally elected an usurper?

He may or may not have done something illegal. Considering how little he wants to share his returns, it would appear that he has at least taken advantage of some very unfair loopholes on his taxes and he is afraid of being exposed for this. That much is rather obvious, unless you are extremely naive.

The IRS offered amnesty to people with hidden offshore accounts in 2009, I believe. If he took advantage of that, he would no longer be a felon, but would have been prior to that time. He would get the 30% of the vote that is Republican, but no more.

Truth? What is truth? The other night Pontius and I were discussing that very question, while sampling some new wine in old bottles. We ran out of wine before we got to facts.

And it’s well known that the emptiest bottles make the most noise.

George W. Bush and Mitt Romney. Proof that sequels are never as good as the originals.

Remember, we are still only in the midst of the GOP convention. I am pretty uninspired at this point as well.

It would be nice to have more information on Obama. Most of his life remains a mystery.

Not nearly the mystery that Romney is…Maybe you should do a little research on Obama. But we’re not allowed to inquire into Romney’s business, governorship, taxes, faith, anything that might shine a light on him.

Well said.

Just talk to them…well, the ones around here are really dumb.It’s a pity I’m honest, they would buy a bridge…

rightisright = GuardSGT?

DFTT, DRTT. Now a new rule of thumb: STT = Skip The Troll.

Still afraid to release your returns, coward? What kind of presidential nominee fears his own tax returns? Your father is pissed!

I just saw part of a movie on tv to be shown at the RNC. It said in 1968, France was a dangerous place for an 18 year old to be. Oh really? I’ll have to tell my big bro that, since when he was 19 he was sent to Vietnam! I know my bro would have traded places with Romney in a heartbeat! I know everyone didn’t go to Vietnam who was that age at that time, but this seems a clumsy attempt to distract from the fact that he didn’t go to Vietnam, though he did support the Vietnam War, and most Republicans did support the war.

“Liberal kool aid drinkers do not see the possibility of good from the right and ignore the evil from the left.”πJoadtom = “the blind leading the blind”? Or at least those who Joadtom thinks of as the blind.

STT

STT

STT

^ Oops! I see people already answered this above . . .

I heard on NPR today that 86% of Mormons are saying they are voting for Romney.

No, 0 is a lot less than 14%, so it is not really about the same, though not many Mormons seem to be for Obama.

I don’t know what he is hiding, but I am sure he is hiding something. If he had tax records that he was not feeling badly about, even if he was not proud of them, surely he would have shown us his returns.

Maybe, but I’m not so sure. Tax laws, for many people, are like speed limits…it’s not so much whether you technically break the law or not, but whether you do so in a way that will get you pulled over. That applies to both accountants and clients.

Dirty Harry is expected to show up at the RNC tonight. Maybe they are looking to spice things up a little. Clint is not my cup of tea but I know he has lots of fans. I’ll take George Clooney any day. Should be interesting to see what Willard has to say. Lyin’ Ryan was incredibly fact free last night. He distorted many things and just outright lied about a lot of stuff. He said that Obama was responsible for a GM plant going out of business, before Obama was in office. He talked about how much it has helped his family to have medicare, yet he wants to change medicare as we know it. He said that Obama was the reason we the US lost its good credit rating, when it was the GOP who held up the government so that it had to be shut down instead of passing a budget, causing the credit downgrade. Unbelievable speech.

Hey— it was Ryan’s speech, go back and read it. He was blaming Obama for a GM plant being shut down. Obama wasn’t even in office when that happened. Ryan should have known this, it was in his district.

Yeah Corzak, doesn’t everybody have piles of $ stashed away in an offshore account? Why wasn’t this amnesty available to you?

BD, why, why after all your military misadventures do you continue to embrace chickenhawks?

Lyin’ Ryan had to do a little political two-step today when confronted with the font of misinformation in his speech. True to weasel form, he slipped and slid with neither admitting or denying anything. What a class act !I think Biden is a bit of a dolt and certainly a loose-mouthed canon. But, I will take him any day over a follower of someone (Ayn Rand ) who claimed " Civilization is the process of setting man free from men. " and who arrogantly believes that " Great men can’t be ruled. "

The middle class has been shrinking almost continually since Reagan. We had a little respite during the Clinton Presidency. From 2000-2007, almost all gains in GNP went to the top income bracket. Since then, the uber-wealthy have done just fine. The rest of us, not so much.

I don’t think more income tax cuts for people who earn their living off of financial deal making is going to put more people to work, and that the focal point of Romney’s agenda.

I see the possibility of good from the right. I just don’t see many people on the right who are interested in doing anything that would be helpful.I’ll start with Obamacare. The health care reform that we know as Obamacare started as a conservative answer to the liberal Single Payer goal.I think the Republicans could have helped make Obamacare a better, more cost effective plan. They refused to take part in any deal with Obama because the stated goal of the Republicans in Congress was to make Obama a one term President. In 10 years, the GOP will be portraying themselves as the protectors of Obamacare, the same way they pretend to be protectors of Medicare today.

The 2009 special tax amnesty Romney took advantage of was only open to ~4500 Americans, a fraction of even the 0.1%. Specifically, it related to 4500 Americans using accounts with the Swiss bank UBS to evade US taxes, which came to the attention of the IRS when a whistleblowing UBS employee notified the IRS of the existence of the accounts – UBS in turn was prosecuted, forced to give up the names, and fined a stunning $780 million, which tells you something of the value of the money that was being hidden from US taxes in those accounts.

In turn, rather than the substantial expense and difficulty of prosecuting 4000+ of the nation’s wealthiest citizens one by one, the IRS declared a one time amnesty for the Americans on the list (and generally) to declare their capital gains on the interest on those UBS accounts, and pay the relevant tax on the interest gains only of those accounts. That would not be the full tax owing, by a long shot, since the account holders would also have to pay the taxes on the principal amount as well if it came as investment income (which it almost certainly would be), but again, it would have been very difficult for the IRS short of prosecution, and the cooperation of foreign banks and authorities to determine how said Americans’ money was sourced, and ended up in offshore accounts (usually as income from foreign business holdings of Americans – for which they still owe Uncle Sam tax).

In turn, we can surmise that Mittens was part of that tax amnesty because his 2010 return references a Swiss UBS account, though no tax was paid on it – presumably because it was no longer being actively used to hide or funnel foreign income; however, because the IRS would know about its existence from the tax amnesty of the prior year, he needed to include it on his return. Missing from the 2010 return that Mittens released was the required supplementary form relating to that account – which might have revealed much more about what was previously transacted on that account. Nevertheless, we actually have a pretty clear picture that Mittens got caught hiding mucho moolah from the IRS, and that he took advantage of the tax amnesty program to declare an account which his tax people could surmise would be one of the ones the IRS had been made aware of. We would be insanely naive, however, to think that this would be the only hidden offshore income of the Romney’s – because no sane tax advisors would let their client put all their eggs in one basket, and because it can be reasonably surmised that the Romney’s have substantial, unaccounted for income from foreign businesses. Something else that releasing more tax returns might shed a lot of light on – and which could further expose Romney to both voter backlash, even with the GOP core (who tend to value fair, if not equal contributions by all – and patriotism, which its hard to say pouring millions into foreign investments over American ones is good sign of), as well as possible legal repercussions, that, needless to say, would torpedo any run for the White House.

Just the facts, ma’am.

Weeeell, maybe, but whatta ya gunna do when a guillotine gets stuck partway down?

Just because something is legal does not mean it is either honorable, or decent, or right. And then there have been things honorable, decent, and right that were illegal. Just because something is wrong, does not mean that is should be illegal.

The law is a blunt instrument, the conscience should be sharper.

I am watching Clint and he is stuttering and sputtering so much that it makes me sad. Pretending that he is talking to the prez. I’m glad the Dems have a much bigger crowd of super talented people. Should be a much better party at Charlotte. An angry old white guy is what they could come up with at Tampa. What a surprise.

Hey, all you Reeps out there: THE ROMNEY’S ARE USING TELEPROMPTERS! I guess that makes them Democrats?

Happiness is finding a note tucked under a windshield wiper asking God to bless me. I don’t know if it was for my Obama/Biden bumper stickers; my “God Bless Everyone, No Exceptions;”or my DEMCRAT license plate.

…and this has specifically WHAT to do with today’s strip??