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Policy

Friday Funnies

The truth about ObamaCare

Henry Payne | 7.24.2009 7:00 AM

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NEXT: What Time Is It?

Henry Payne
PolicyNanny StateObamacare
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  1. Some Chick from OH   16 years ago

    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?

  2. Art-P.O.G.   16 years ago

    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).

  3. kilroy   16 years ago

    Meh.

  4. Y_SO_SRS   16 years ago

    I just lost the game.

    H
    A
    H
    A
    H
    A
    H
    !

    SRS, U LUZ 2!

  5. Cabeza de Vaca   16 years ago

    Better than usual.

  6. Untermensch   16 years ago

    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. Bronwyn   16 years ago

    eh, too obvious

  8. domoarrigato   16 years ago

    This was Paynefully bad.

  9. robert   16 years ago

    that's what she said

  10. SugarFree   16 years ago

    Someday, someway, you will pay for that domo.

  11. Rhywun   16 years ago

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

  12. David (not that one)   16 years ago

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

  13. SugarFree   16 years ago

    Not-David,

    I thinking the horse is pooping soldiers.

  14. robc   16 years ago

    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.

  15. SugarFree   16 years ago

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

  16. Warren   16 years ago

    Not funny
    Highly relevant
    Poor artwork

    Grade: D

  17. John   16 years ago

    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.

  18. Fist of Etiquette   16 years ago

    The horse should be made of plexiglass.

  19. Warty   16 years ago

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

  20. kilroy   16 years ago

    Or at least make the horse well-hung.

  21. Enough About Palin   16 years ago

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

    Epic. Fail.

  22. smartass sob   16 years ago

    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.

  23. P Brooks   16 years ago

    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".

  24. Jaybird   16 years ago

    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.

  25. +   16 years ago

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

  26. Lamar   16 years ago

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

  27. comrade   16 years ago

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

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

  28. P Brooks   16 years ago

    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).

  29. troy   16 years ago

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

  30. Guy_Smiley   16 years ago

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

  31. PapayaSF   16 years ago

    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.

  32. P Brooks   16 years ago

    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."

  33. JB   16 years ago

    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.

  34. anarch   16 years ago

    Totally racist, of course.

  35. Art-P.O.G.   16 years ago

    anarch,

    of course.

  36. Paul   16 years ago

    I thought this was pretty good.

  37. Rhywun   16 years ago

    What's not supposed to be funny?

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

  38. R C Dean   16 years ago

    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?

  39. cold666pack   16 years ago

    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?

  40. mark   16 years ago

    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.

  41. Libertarian Romantic Ideal   16 years ago

    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

  42. Nate   16 years ago

    He should have been riding the horse

  43. abercrombie milano   15 years ago

    My only point is that if you take the Bible straight, as I'm sure many of Reasons readers do, you will see a lot of the Old Testament stuff as absolutely insane. Even some cursory knowledge of Hebrew and doing some mathematics and logic will tell you that you really won't get the full deal by just doing regular skill english reading for those books. In other words, there's more to the books of the Bible than most will ever grasp. I'm not concerned that Mr. Crumb will go to hell or anything crazy like that! It's just that he, like many types of religionists, seems to take it literally, take it straight...the Bible's books were not written by straight laced divinity students in 3 piece suits who white wash religious beliefs as if God made them with clothes on...the Bible's books were written by people with very different mindsets...in order to really get the Books of the Bible, you have to cultivate such a mindset, it's literally a labyrinth, that's no joke

  44. abercrombie milano   15 years ago

    My only point is that if you take the Bible straight, as I'm sure many of Reasons readers do, you will see a lot of the Old Testament stuff as absolutely insane. Even some cursory knowledge of Hebrew and doing some mathematics and logic will tell you that you really won't get the full deal by just doing regular skill english reading for those books. In other words, there's more to the books of the Bible than most will ever grasp.

  45. abercrombie milano   15 years ago

    My only point is that if you take the Bible straight, as I'm sure many of Reasons readers do, you will see a lot of the Old Testament stuff as absolutely insane.

  46. nike shox   14 years ago

    is good

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