Sunday Funnies 140928

The Sunday Funnies phrase of the week is food for thought:

PHRASES

food for thought something that warrants serious consideration.
A Note, A Disclaimer, and  A Musical Interlude for readers with Nordic heritage:

1. You may think of this week's collection as a dietary supplement for your brain.
2. Most supplements should be avoided, and usually people should not eat micronutrients except people with clearly shown deficiency.[4] Those people should first consult a doctor.[5] An exception is vitamin D, which is recommended in Nordic countries[6]due to weak sunlight. (source: Wikipedia)
3. (Aquarius) Let The Sunshine In –The Fifth Dimension (from the musical, Hair)

1. The Case for Illiteracy

Here's a new argument Texas governor, Rick Perry, and his right-wing allies can use to justify their Ignorance is Better than Inconvenient Scientific Facts education policy.

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2. Forbidden Fruit

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3. Dietary Choice #1

This is the opposite of the serious dieter's two-handed push away from the dinner table.

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4. Cereal Killer

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5. Rover Discovers that the GOP's Strategy Handbook is Really a Cookbook

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6. An Honest Mistake

It was unfortunate for Herb that the zebras didn't have a better command of the English language. The "H" is silent, and so is Herb.

I'll be generous and give the cartoonist a pass for his breach of English pronunciation protocol, but only because it's a sight gag of a different stripe.

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7. Dietary Choice #2

Hey, I'll drink to that! Then again, maybe I won't.

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8. Peanut Allergy

This cartoon is a little nuts, but anaphylactic shock is nothing to sneeze at.

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9. A Non-Menu Entree

I've heard they sometimes come free of charge with coffee in the morning.

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10. Michigan Giacomo

Cartoon aficionados will understand and appreciate the title. For those who don't, I offer this alternate: The Hunger Games in Id.

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11. When Visions of Sugarplums Aren't Enough

No matter how your heart is grieving;
If you keep on believing,
The dream that you wish will come true. (lyrics from Disney's Cinderella)

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12. He's Biden His Time

Vice President Joe Biden is known for his verbal gaffes. Last week, however, he had a very bad week, even for him. You can read about it by clicking here.

Bonus: Here's a link to a top 10 list of Biden gaffes.  

The Last Bite: Biden's gaffes are epic, and he would be the first to laugh along with us at them. In contrast, there is absolutely nothing humorous or humane in the lying, self-righteous, war-mongering offerings of his immediate predecessor.

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Defeating Terrorism Abroad and at Home

If you have done so, I urge you to watch the video below in its entirety.

President Obama’s Address to the United Nations

The following comments apply specifically to the section that begins at or very near the 15:50 mark.

A thoughtful reader will recognize that the arguments President Obama makes are substantive and sane.

Those who hate President Obama will, of course, see this address as an opportunity to disregard the substance and wisdom and instead to attack him as a Muslim apologist. In so doing they will ignore the following inconvenient facts:

1. General Martin Dempsey made essentially the same argument when he addressed the Senate Armed Services Committee on September 16, saying: “ISIL will ultimately be defeated when their cloak of religious legitimacy is stripped away and the populations on which they have imposed themselves reject them.”
2. What Mr. Obama says about Muslim terrorists applies to all who hide behind religion to preach fear, hatred, and violence.
3. Just as ISIL perverts Islam to justify it's actions they pervert Christianity in order to justify their hatred. Both, of course, wish to wield absolute power over others.

President Obama's remarks challenge all people as individuals to confront and defeat the primary source and nurturer of terrorism -  ignorance based on hatred of the dreaded other.

Any lesser strategy is essentially the same as putting a used band-aid on a festering wound.

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Followup Article: Why Obama Is Planning To Use Religion To Fight ISIS.
Think Progress offers an excellent examination of Mr. Obama's strategy. It's short and worth reading.

Click here to read it.

A Grim American Fairy Tale

Once upon a time in a land called America, a company would produce a tangible product or provide a needed service and sell it in order to make a profit. In the process, many well-paying jobs were created for the population.

That is no longer the case.

Today, America's companies are bought and run by investment firms, which are not interested in what the companies produce or provide. Investment firms only care about what their newly purchased companies are projected to deliver to their stockholders either in the form of investment income when sold at a profit or in the form of tax write-offs when after they have been run into the ground and their assets liquidated.

Click here or on the title below to learn about the poster boy for the job creators who changed the American dream into a nightmare and America into to a land where good, middle class jobs have largely vanished.

Matt Taibbi Reveals How Romney Made His Fortune -- It Ain't Pretty, and He Shouldn't Be Proud of It

"Earned" is a very generous way to put it.

But wait! There's more.

America has been brainwashed into re-adopting Calvin Coolidge's disastrous "The business of America is business" mentality (AKA unfettered capitalism), and the consecration of Ronald Reagan's failed supply-side (AKA trickle-down) economic policy. As a result, the gap between the nations rich and poor has widened during what has been the biggest economic recovery since the Great Depression.

This cartoon illustrates just how wide that gap has become.

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Yes, once upon a time in America, a high school diploma was an entrance pass to a well-paid, factory or service job or to a technical school or a four-year college, graduation from which offered even more employment options. But those days and those job opportunities are now gone.

Thanks to the oligarchs, who like to call themselves the job creators, life is much simpler for an increasing number of high school and even college graduates. Their job opportunities now consist of (a) joining the military to fight and die in perpetual wars designed to protect the accumulated wealth of those who bought and sold their future, or (b) entering the work force to earn a minimum wage without benefits or any hope of achieving what was possible for their parents.

The beauty, simplicity, and fairness of the new economic order in America is this. With the exception of the offspring of the wealthiest families, graduates of all backgrounds wishing to enter the work force need only master a simple phrase: Do You Want Fries With That?

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Note: Although this is a grim tale, readers should not confuse it with the fairy tales collected and published by the Brothers Grimm save in one respect. The Brothers Grimm published stories full of violence and mayhem in order to teach civility to German children. Because so many Americans act like uncivilized children when it comes to electoral politics, I believe  they are in need of similar instruction.

Sunday Funnies 140921

The Sunday Funnies word of the week is vocation, and the related phrase is works for me:
vo-ca-tion |vōˈkā sh ən|nouna strong feeling of suitability for a particular career or occupation : not all of us have a vocation to be nurses or doctors.• a person's employment or main occupation, esp. regarded as particularly worthy and requiring great dedication : her vocation as a poet.• a trade or profession.ORIGIN late Middle English : from Old French, or from Latin vocatio(n-), from vocare ‘to call.’

(It) works for me.

Inf. It is fine with me. (With stress on works and me. The answer to a question implying Does it work for you?) Bob: Is it okay if I sign us up for the party? Sally: It works for me.Tom: Is Friday all right for the party? Bill: Works for me. Bob: It works for me too.

See also: work

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs. © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Two practical examples of works for me

1. The meeting time you proposed is not yet blocked out in my calendar.

Tuesday at 11? Works for me.

2. The joke you sent me may prove offensive or incomprehensible to persons from other geographical regions, but because I am from California, I find it funny.

A guy walks into a bar in Alabama and orders awhite wine. All the hillbillies sitting around the bar look up, expecting to see some pitiful Yankee from the north. The bartender says, “You ain’t from around here, are ya?” The guy says, “No, I’m from Canada.” The bartender says, “What do you do in Canada?”The guy says, “I’m a taxidermist.” The bartender says, “A taxidermist? What in tarnation is a taxidermist? Do you drive a taxi?” “No, a taxidermist doesn’t drive a taxi. I mount animals.” Thebartender grins and hollers, “It’s okay boys. He’s one of us.”

This week's word and related phrase open the door to a wide-ranging examination of what it means to be called into a line of work as well as the nature of the work to which one has been called.

1. When one's calling has been recalled...  

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2. A Congressional Jobs Program with Bipartisan Support

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3. Punditry for Fun and Profit (as seen on FOX "News")

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4. It helps to have a hand in the game.

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5. It may work for them, but it won't work for the rest of us.

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6. Is there a job performance penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct?

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7. A Job-Well-Done by the US Air Force (Works for me. Would that it were so.)

Oh! And, guys, try not to get too much sand in your shorts. It will make you even more cranky than you already are.

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8. Definitely the Right Man for the Job

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9. Do your job when your dog does its job. You'll be paid when you're called.

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10. American Healthcare Professionals' Inaction

Read that title again...carefully this time. Oh! And forget about working for a cure, we specialize in selling band-aids designed to mask the symptoms. That business model has a much bigger profit margin.

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11. A Show Business Career with Job Security

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12. Vocation? Success or failure often boils down to Location, Location, Location.

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Sunday Funnies 140914

The Sunday Funnies phrase of the week is current affairs:

cur-rent af-fairsplural nounevents of political or social interest and importance happening in the world at thepresent time.

Today we'll examine current affairs of all stripes: political, social, in combination, and even a few that have gone around and come back around again. With twenty comics and cartoons where twelve or a baker's dozen usually appear, I'm sure you'll agree that as affairs go, the past week offered quite a bit of currency.

You may also notice the absence of additional commentary this week as the selected items clearly speak for themselves.

Political Affairs:

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Social Affairs:

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Political-Social and Socio-Political Affairs:

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Recurrent Affairs (for those who read last week's Sunday Funnies)

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Link to Sourcehttp://www.gocomics.com/jeffstahler/2014/09/08/#mutable_1205157