Friday, July 18, 2008

Cartoon for July 19

Disaster looms...but don't worry. Something will come up. It always has (except when it hasn't).

Posted by at

14 comments:

  1. AnonymousJuly 19, 2008 at 5:47 PM

    Ha,ha, Ted you too funny! Looking at my wallet it will be #3!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Aggie DudeJuly 19, 2008 at 9:32 PM

    Yep, and we're certainly not even taking that first step, Ted.

    #6 is obviously the most likely...tomorrow we will have more of the same...just...more of it.

    I just had a steak so rare it was still bleeding....maybe I'll get E. Coli

    ReplyDelete
  3. Susan StarkJuly 20, 2008 at 8:12 AM

    I'm rootin' fer famine, because then we'll all have an excuse to shoplift.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Aggie DudeJuly 20, 2008 at 11:13 AM

    I have to give Rall credit for the famine bit, because the issue won't be a lack of food, but who owns the food and who has a right to auction it to the highest bidder. In fact, famines are almost never about a lack of food.

    However, most farmers in the United States are so deep in debt that they technically (legally, on paper, whatever your word is going to be) don't own the food coming out of the ground. Just like contract "poultry growers" who own all the facilities (the sunk cost, where all the risk is) but not the birds. Those farmers would be arrested for stealing the birds to feed their own families, let alone yours (theft of corporate profits, breach of contract, whatever legal term one wants to use to justify plowing human lives and communities into the ground).

    The funny thing is that we scoff at feudal societies in other places, but at the end of the day, American farmers are increasingly corporate serfs, or outright wage laborers with no connection to the 'products' they are 'manufacturing.'

    Know your local farmers, support them, and don't believe that the price at Wal-Mart is the true price of food. Like with "the troops," supporting farmers actually entails DOING SOMETHING, not just SAYING things and putting magnetic ribbons on your car.

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousJuly 20, 2008 at 4:33 PM

    Steal this food! Was'nt that a book? But not from the corner store...if you can find one.

    ReplyDelete
  6. EdwardJuly 20, 2008 at 8:35 PM

    Aggie,
    Why would the farmers want to own the food? The point of having a farm is to sell the food. They are growing food that is under contract to be sold. When the farmers turn down their government subsidies, I'll begin to feel sorry for them.

    ReplyDelete
  7. peejay3July 20, 2008 at 8:56 PM

    there ain't no other way; one must go to this site – or the onion – to find the truth.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Aggie DudeJuly 21, 2008 at 6:26 AM

    Edward, I really doubt that you actually know a lot of farmers personally, or you wouldn't make that statement.

    Yes, farm subsidies have contributed a great deal to the problem. In fact, like corporate welfare (and unlike welfare to individuals) they represent the worst theoretical aspects of government welfare programming, the fallout of which conservatives routinely use to attack individuals in poverty who would use welfare.

    It's a nasty bait and switch. Lastly, if you're concerned about farm subsidies, it's VERY easy to do your research and find out which party and which politicians do the most supporting of that system.

    Lastly, it isn't the public subsidizing of agriculture that bothers me, but the set of incentives for individual producers that the subsidy system lays out.

    As an individual who is very fond of eating, I am completely in favor of protectionist trade policy and subsidies for agriculture. Pardon my language, but F*ck free trade when it comes to food! There's a reason Europeans and Americans have achieved a lasting (though currently under pressure) system of food security, and it simply is not the "free market" that did it. There are excesses and there are problems, but like the military I think the threshold for tolerance of those excesses and problems is better than the alternative.

    I would rather us have the military of the 80s than the military of Donald Rumsfeld, though I know Ted will probably crucify me for saying that, and rightly so.

    Just as an aside, you probably don't want to toe the line with me about agriculture, though you're welcome to try.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Thomas DaultonJuly 21, 2008 at 10:02 AM

    Holee crap, easily one of the best Rall comics in a decade, and in my opinion that's really saying something. Crystal clear enough that maybe even some Republicans will get the point. Naahhhhhh, I'm daydreaming.

    ReplyDelete
  10. EdwardJuly 21, 2008 at 9:16 PM

    Aggie,
    Thanks for trying to put my in my place by daring to go toe to toe with you. I'm not one of your students that you how have a power fetish with.

    You did not refute one thing I said.

    I never said anything about a military from the 80's.

    I agree with you, the Republican party is filled with non-conservatives.

    Out.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Aggie DudeJuly 22, 2008 at 6:56 AM

    I'm not treating you as a student, I don't teach agricultural policy, I work with agricultural policy as part of my job.

    I didn't refute what you said, you didn't say very much. The 80s military comment was an analogy to the reality that whenever a need is sufficiently great for all people in society (for example, rich people eat food too) we find that the supposed "laws" of free market capitalism just get ignored.

    The whole free trade/free market bullshit argument is an ideological argument which is sparingly used to hose disadvantaged people under the guise of meritocracy.

    I did address what you said, and I addressed your well established positions; you just missed it. . That's not my fault, so don't ridicule me.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Aggie DudeJuly 22, 2008 at 7:46 AM

    "I'm not one of your students that you how have a power fetish with."

    BTW, Edward, this is demeaning and insulting, and you have no bases to make such a statement.

    ReplyDelete
  13. AnonymousJuly 23, 2008 at 4:58 PM

    Dude, don't get your shorts in a bunch! Sheeesh! We're proud of you and, what you say is hard to refute. But did'nt you mean McDonald Rumsfelds military?

    ReplyDelete
  14. Aggie DudeJuly 24, 2008 at 5:58 AM

    McDonald Rumsfeld, that's funny!

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)