Tom the Dancing Bug by Ruben Bolling for September 19, 2009
Transcript:
the final option berlin, germany. nazi: mein fuehrer! we are surround! hitler: my plan... my beautiful plan has failed! april 30, 1945. nazi: yes, you will never see realized your dream of global domin... hitler: nein dummkopf! that was a smokescreen for my real objective! smack nazi: i'm sorry -- you lament that you could not complete the unspeakable horror of genocide... hitler: nein! i'm talking real evil here! oop: you mean... hitler: ja! my ultimate goal has always been... universal health care in the u.s.a.! oop: noo! hitler: health coverage for every citizen! regulation of insurance companies! perhaps even... a public option! nazi: diabolical!! fuehrer, the soviets are upon us! hitler: luckily, i had my scientists develop a back-up plan! scientist: come! it is time. so! we will remove your brain, put it in a deep freeze, transport it to a remote island for, say, 16 years... and then transplant it into an african american baby born in honolulu! hitler: it's so simple! next the boy from hawaii!
aardvarkseyes about 15 years ago
Brilliant!
Donaldo Premium Member about 15 years ago
Dumb-ass Americans scared of what the rest of the world enjoys. Spot on, Ruben.
Kingoswald Premium Member about 15 years ago
Clever of Old Adolf to fake that Hawaiian birth certificate and those newspaper notices too. Thank God for Orly Taitz or we might never have found out! LOL
Charles Brobst Premium Member about 15 years ago
NOW can I go see the doctor?
BillyGerwitz about 15 years ago
This is so fabulous!
3hourtour Premium Member about 15 years ago
you didn’t think the companies would go down without a fight,but yeah,stupid Ameicans.There is more evil with capitalism then socialism.America isn’t even based on it.But on democracy.People don’t want to think for themselves..that’s evilism
babka Premium Member about 15 years ago
ya wohl, baby!
lewisbower about 15 years ago
And now you know the rest of the story. This is Paul Harvey, signing out
Nighthawks Premium Member about 15 years ago
hey, not one comment defending the status quo!—-surely some dumb@ss, socialism screaming, gun toting jerkoff will jump in here with some defense of keeping the health care big shots in between you and your doctor……and the health insurance rates good ‘n’ high, cause that’s the ‘merkin way—profits above all
mrsullenbeauty about 15 years ago
Achtung, baby.
Srover about 15 years ago
We should spread this around the internet as further proof.
Ushindi about 15 years ago
Every “true” American knows that torture, warrantless wiretapping, snooping in our library records, holding citizens indefinitely without charge with no access to attorneys or family, and starting wars just because we want to is perfectly acceptable government behavior - hey, if you don’t have anything to hide, you don’t have to worry, right? But our government meddling in health care? We must fight this insidious shadow of socialism creeping over the land! (Or is it totalinarianism? Or fascism? Well, it must be one of those isms anyway.) Bunch of liberal commie pinkos that hate America.
(Just thought I would throw in that last part)
leighyah about 15 years ago
it amazes me that with the enormous amount of people out of work in this country right now - and consequently most are without health care - that we still have such a large and loud group howling against universal health care. i thought for sure that with all of the white collar job loss that enough of the “i’m not using MY money to help those without” set were now in that “those without” set that the haughtiness and “above it all” attitude would have been attenuated by a touch of the abject fear that those of us who live in that black hole of no health care, kids, illness, and lack of hope. sorry about the rant.
WWWexler about 15 years ago
Is this supposed to be funny?
Hitler’s genocidal extermination of Jews, “gypsies”, homosexuals, and anyone else deemed to be inferior or undesirable was one of the most tragic and painful atrocities in the world’s history of inhumanity we have visited upon ourselves. An estimated 6 million people were rounded up, imprisoned, starved, gassed, and incinerated in crematoriums across Germany and other infamous locations. Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Chełmno, Drancy, Janowska, Majdanek, Maly Trostenets, Struthof, Alderney, Ohrdruf, Sajmiste, Sobibór, Treblinka, Warsaw; these are names of some of the 15,000 extermination and concentration camps that the Nazis created to make the Aryan race pure.
During WWII, an estimated 68 to 72 million people lost their lives in the effort to end Hitler’s plan to purify the white race and establish a 1000 year fascist regime. American military deaths were a tiny fraction of the total, less than 1%, yet still represented half a million people, meaning that virtually every person in this country lost an immediate family member, a relative, friend, or acquaintance.
The specter of Nazism and government death panels has resurfaced in the national debate over health insurance reform. How ironic. The US is the only industrialized nation in the world that does not have national health care in some form. Our medical outcomes reflect this failure. We spend more than twice as much per capita on medical care than the next nearest big spender, yet we rate 37th in the world for overall health. Many of our medical statistics put us below Third World countries. Our economic system and the network of faceless, nameless insurance company deniers in cubicles all over the nation function as de facto death panels.
The US has been working on a national health care plan since it was first proposed by Teddy Roosevelt. A new study just released shows that more people die from lack of health insurance than from car accidents and murder. Having an estimated 40 million with no insurance coverage and millions more with poor insurance plans that exclude critical care or have very low annual caps is a national embarrassment.
Of the many stupid excuses to not fix this problem, any comparison to Hitler and the Nazis extermination of 6 million Jews is the most ignorant, disingenuous, inaccurate, and just plain deceitful of them all. Anyone who actually believes this argument is a fool. Anyone who promulgates it is either attempting to derail the debate with fear or is branding themselves as ignorant and anti-American. It is anti-American to spread known lies during a policy debate, and it is certainly discernible from information that is publicly available that none of the plans being discussed have anything to do with extermination. Instead, they are attempting to solve a crisis situation which is threatening to destroy America’s ability to compete while insurance companies and their fat cats deny care to paying policyholders and take our money to their bank.
The health insurance system takes billions of dollars that could be used to treat sick people out of the system as profit. Profit never treated a sick child, never gave an elderly person another day in a nursing home, never did anything except turn the filthy rich into the obscenely rich. Now whether or not you believe that this is a moral outrage is moot as you are entitled to your own opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts, and there are no Nazis to be found in this discussion. If you are seeing Nazis in these plans, then you ought to be seeking the advice of a reputable psychiatrist or perhaps your minister, priest, or rabbi. The problem is inside your head, not in the bills before Congress.
-Wexler
leighyah about 15 years ago
wexler - i think that was the point of the strip… to show the utter rediculousness in the arguments against universal health care in this country. thank you though for he reminders of what true tyranny and totalitarianism looks like. shalom
RonBerg13 Premium Member about 15 years ago
If you think health care is expensive now, wait until it is ‘free’.
(I do agree with Wexler - References to Hitler should not have been used like this in this strip. In fact, Hitler should not be used in any modern comic strip.)
edgeways about 15 years ago
Hitler was pretty d##ned awful, full stop. But, we give it too much power over our lives and thoughts if we tip-toe around him and make the subject verboten to approach in any way other than dread seriousness. What happened in Germany was not the fault of one man, but of many many people. Hitler was just the man who was allowed to have his inner most anxieties and fears writ large with no constraints. He had a lot on enablers. He was not unique.
Can we not also poke fun at Ghengas Kahn? He caused a lot of suffering.
People need to get over their Hitler obsessions.
WWWexler about 15 years ago
Edgeways,
If the focus of the humor were Hitler that would be one thing. Examples of Hitler humor are the film “The Producers”, the TV series “Hogan’s Heroes”, etc.
But that’s not what the strip is doing. It is raising the argument that Obama is like Hitler.
Some have pointed out that the cartoonist was simply making fun of people who are calling Obama Hitler. If that’s so, then the humor needs to be a shade less subtle than it is.
The way that this came to my attention was that an Obama hating skag sent this cartoon to my wife.
-Wexler
LordChris about 15 years ago
Wexler, I don’t know if you follow much of politics that occurred after 1945. If you do, then you should be painfully aware of the loud contingent of conservatives who claim Obama is facist, Nazi, socialist, etc. Feel free to read the Village Voice’s Running Scared blog’s regular round-up of conservative bloggers for a large dose of the aforementioned claims.
Ruben is making fun of that. It doesn’t need to be less subtle. It’s not really subtle to begin with. It’s not Ruben’s job to hold everyone’s hand. He’s here to make comics and jokes. If your wife’s friend is such a God bleeep idiot that he took this comic literally, then it’s not Ruben’s fault, it’s the idiot’s fault. Maybe he should stop being an idiot.
edgeways about 15 years ago
the fact that the forwarder so completely mis-read it says more to the level of cluelessness of that “Obama hating skag” then this comic. When Ruben criticizes Obama, the criticism comes from a much more progressive view point (wanting him to move faster and more decisive on issues for example).
This is completely directed at mocking the birthers, deathers and all related ilk.
pschearer Premium Member about 15 years ago
How disgusting that the fact that America is not like the socialist nations of the world is used as an argument in favor of socialism in America.
drtom01 about 15 years ago
After going thru the insurance company “death panel” that denied my benefits I am ready for a public option. I really don’t give a dam* if it is socialist or anything else conservatives want to spin it with. I do not want an insurance comopany to decide if it is more profitable for them to keep me alive. The truly disgusting thing is that of the G-20 nations meeting we wre dead last behind all of them in providing health care to our citizens.
nakke about 15 years ago
@Wexler: it makes me happy inside to think that somebody took this comic literally. Literally as in “yes! he totally got it right! obama = hitler!”
Randy B Premium Member about 15 years ago
Yes, we’ve all heard that Obama is Hitler. And Stalin.
Is this what it takes for you to be happy with your political convictions? If you can convince yourself that Obama = Hitler, then it’s easy to decide that literally ANY action is warranted to oppose him. But then, you’d be wrong.
lewisbower about 15 years ago
Why do you invest your money? Profit. How do you make more profit? Take risks.
A drug company spends millions on a drug that doesn’t pan out. Too bad!
A drug company spends millions on a drug that makes them profit? Capitalism.
Magnaut about 15 years ago
THE HONOLULU PART MAY BE WRONG,,,,A TROJAN HORSE
LHuffman3386 about 15 years ago
I read and then reread it hoping to find the sarcasm. If you really think this was funny don’t quit your day job.
grim509 about 15 years ago
I find it even more depressing that many of the folks who cry foul when President Obama is compared to Hitler, are the same folks who spent the last 8 years comparing former President Bush to Hitler, and vice versa.
Partisan politics as usual I guess…
Btw… I was not a Bush supporter, nor am I an Obama supporter…