Friday Funnies

The truth about ObamaCare

Henry Payne | July 24, 2009

Comments

|7.24.09 @ 7:06AM|#

The sacred tradition of Friday Funnies being lame continues. Nice that you can count on something in this topsy-turvy world!

In this case, may I point out that a large part of the essence of actual HUMOR is the element of surprise. Pointing out the obvious with a painfully obvious analogy/cultural reference is yawn-inducing.

But I, too, am pointing out the obvious. Does that qualify as meta-obvious?

Art-P.O.G.|7.24.09 @ 7:51AM|#

I actually rather enjoyed that one. I'm seriously wondering if it's better than normal or if my expectations have just been sufficiently lowered (it's hard to be as funny as, say, Arrested Development in this format, anyway).

kilroy|7.24.09 @ 7:56AM|#

Meh.

Y_SO_SRS|7.24.09 @ 8:04AM|#

I just lost the game.

H
A
H
A
H
A
H
!

SRS, U LUZ 2!

Cabeza de Vaca|7.24.09 @ 8:05AM|#

Better than usual.

Untermensch|7.24.09 @ 8:18AM|#

Nowhere near as interesting as last weeks, despite all the statements about "EPIC fail" last week. At least last week's wasn't utterly predictable.

|7.24.09 @ 8:22AM|#

eh, too obvious

|7.24.09 @ 8:24AM|#

This was Paynefully bad.

robert|7.24.09 @ 8:27AM|#

that's what she said

|7.24.09 @ 8:54AM|#

Someday, someway, you will pay for that domo.

Rhywun|7.24.09 @ 8:58AM|#

Not bad. It's an editorial--it's not *supposed* to be funny.

|7.24.09 @ 9:00AM|#

I don't get it. Upside-down soldiers want to climb inside the stomachs of big toy horses?

|7.24.09 @ 9:07AM|#

Not-David,

I thinking the horse is pooping soldiers.

robc|7.24.09 @ 9:08AM|#

I found this one funny. Not because of the obvious theme, but just the guy popping out upside down made me chuckle.

The drawing was good, even if the idea was a bit lame.

|7.24.09 @ 9:09AM|#

Or maybe giving Cesarean birth to soldiers. My Trojan horse anatomy is a little shaky.

|7.24.09 @ 9:15AM|#

Not funny
Highly relevant
Poor artwork

Grade: D

|7.24.09 @ 9:23AM|#

Speaking of healthcare, Peggy Noonan actually made sense today. I wonder if maybe they have upped her meds. She says:

The third point is largely unspoken but I suspect gives some people real pause. We are living in a time in which educated people who are at the top of American life feel they have the right to make very public criticisms of . . . let's call it the private, pleasurable but health-related choices of others. They shame smokers and the overweight. Drinking will be next. Mr. Obama's own choice for surgeon general has come under criticism as too heavy.

Only a generation ago such criticisms would have been considered rude and unacceptable. But they are part of the ugly, chafing price of having the government in something: Suddenly it can make big and very personal demands on you. Those who live in a way that isn't sufficiently healthy "cost us money" and "drive up premiums." Mr. Obama himself said something like it in his press conference, when he spoke of a person who might not buy health insurance. If he gets hit by a bus, "the rest of us have to pay for it."

Under a national health-care plan we might be hearing that a lot. You don't exercise, you smoke, you drink, you eat too much, and "the rest of us have to pay for it."

It is a new opportunity for new class professionals (an old phrase that should make a comeback) to shame others, which appears to be one of their hobbies. (It may even be one of their addictions. Let's stage an intervention.) Every time I hear Kathleen Sebelius talk about "transitioning" from "treating disease" to "preventing disease," I start thinking of how they'll use this as an excuse to judge, shame and intrude.

So this might be an unarticulated public fear: When everyone pays for the same health-care system, the overseers will feel more and more a right to tell you how to live, which simple joys are allowed and which are not.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203517304574306533556532364.html

I love the addiction line.

Fist of Etiquette|7.24.09 @ 9:33AM|#

The horse should be made of plexiglass.

Warty|7.24.09 @ 9:45AM|#

If he was going to go with a horse theme, he should have been clever and worked in a Catherine the Great bestiality joke.

kilroy|7.24.09 @ 9:46AM|#

Or at least make the horse well-hung.

|7.24.09 @ 10:10AM|#

Not even original. The Trojan Horse analogy has been used all over the media.

Epic. Fail.

smartass sob|7.24.09 @ 10:31AM|#

Horse apples coming out the rear end of the horse and labeled Socialized Medicine with a caption to the effect that even a Trojan Horse can't smuggle in horseshit might have been funnier.

|7.24.09 @ 10:32AM|#

At least it was immediately recognizable (to those of us born before 1975, anyway) as the Trojan Horse.

That's worth *something* I'd say. Like a "gentleman's C-minus".

|7.24.09 @ 10:33AM|#

I thought it was good enough that I'd come in here and see a ton of "wow, really good, I'm surprised! Keep it up!" or, at least, a ton of "better than usual" kinda comments.

It's got a historical (CLASSICAL!!!) reference, it's making a decent point, and the upside-down guy is funny as these things go.

You people.

+|7.24.09 @ 10:44AM|#

I would have had the soldier saying, "Are we there yet?" but otherwise a good effort.
B+

|7.24.09 @ 10:58AM|#

This is some Friedmanesque stuff. First, you have "socialized medicine" represented as the spear-wielding KKK teat of the Trojan horse.....

comrade|7.24.09 @ 11:05AM|#

It's an editorial--it's not *supposed* to be funny.

Think this through. What's not supposed to be funny?

|7.24.09 @ 11:09AM|#

Paging Baked Penguin-

Here's my idea: Obama, in a soda fountain waitrress' uniform, offering up a giant, steaming bowl of dogshit, with whipped cream and a cherry on top (crushed nuts optional).

|7.24.09 @ 11:23AM|#

I give this one a healthy B- or c+. the dunce cap made me chuckle.

Guy_Smiley|7.24.09 @ 11:24AM|#

Again, I submit for your approval, my alternative comic.

|7.24.09 @ 11:27AM|#

P Brooks: Hard to draw that without it "reading" as chocolate ice cream. You'd have to put a label on it, like those clunkier editorial cartoons of generations ago.

I'd give this a B as Friday Funnies go, but a C as judged against editorial cartoons in general.

|7.24.09 @ 11:35AM|#

Maybe you could put the dog in the background, licking his ass, and saying, "Whoo! I feel sooo much better! I'm *never* eating roadkill again."

JB|7.24.09 @ 12:05PM|#

Haha! Love the lead-in picture with just Obama's name. He's such a joke that now just seeing his name is funny.

What a loser.

anarch|7.24.09 @ 12:54PM|#

Totally racist, of course.

Art-P.O.G.|7.24.09 @ 1:14PM|#

anarch,

of course.

Paul|7.24.09 @ 1:51PM|#

I thought this was pretty good.

Rhywun|7.24.09 @ 2:10PM|#

What's not supposed to be funny?

The humor in a political cartoon is secondary to the point trying to be made.

|7.24.09 @ 2:20PM|#

But they are part of the ugly, chafing price of having the government in something: Suddenly it can make big and very personal demands on you.

No shit, Peggy. Where ya been all these years?

|7.24.09 @ 2:22PM|#

re: judge, shame and intrude....

What's that thing they always say about conservatives who may not be totally on board with the whole....being gay, or a ho, is awesome, not a choice, shouldn't be judged, is not shameful and we have no right to intrude on the way anyone conducts their sexual lifestyle?

mark|7.25.09 @ 9:09PM|#

being gay, or a ho, is [sometimes] awesome, [usually] not a choice, shouldn't be judged [by the law], is [often] not shameful and we have no right to intrude on the way anyone conducts their sexual lifestyle?

Conservatives are coming around to that.

Libertarian Romantic Ideal|7.27.09 @ 2:38AM|#

Many centralist liberals are having to go out of their way to make the case that a universal single payer plan, like the Canadian or U.K. health plan, is not on the table, and they are correct.

From this, they then claim that Team Obama is not proposing "Socialized Medicine" Again, they are correct - Obama has said explicitly and repeatedly he his not advocating "socialized medicine."

But what are we getting really?

The clearest straightforward definition of "socialized medicine" is: when the government controls medical resources and socializes the costs.

This is the metric and benchmark by which to measure then current health care proposal.

Notice that under this definition, it is irrelevant whether we describe medical resources (e.g., hospitals, employees) as "public" or "private." What matters-what determines real as opposed to nominal ownership-is who controls the resources. The particular decisions that government makes about those resources are likewise irrelevant (in terms of a definition).

It matters not whether the government is stingy about medical spending (as in Canada's Medicare system, the British National Health Service, or the U.S. Medicaid program) or obscenely lavish (as in the U.S. Medicare program). What matters is who decides. By that definition, America's health sector is close to more than half socialized. Government purchases 46 percent of all medical care.

See "Health Care Reform | "Fixing What's Broken" or "Socialized Medicine?:"

http://libertarianromanticideal.com/?p=63

Nate|10.1.09 @ 9:45AM|#

He should have been riding the horse