2009? I’m outta here…

Three scenes--Obama foisting a knockoff Christmas gift on his daughter, Lloyd Blankfein wishing happy holidays as he drinks champagne and eats caviar, and Fred'n'Bert harvesting Christmas lights...

Man, I'm tired of this year

This is one year I’m glad to be leaving–hell, it’s a whole decade I’m glad is over. And what a decade–starting with the Supreme Court deciding that ANY President is better than the elected President when it’s too annoying to actually have a legally mandated recount, through 9/11, not capturing Osama bin Laden when he was less than a handful of football fields away, attacking Iraq because they might have horrible weapons while their army barely had shoes, setting up concentration camps to house interrogations fueled by torture, having the country’s transportation held hostage by the oil companies who were given carte blanche to raise prices anytime they saw fit, watching one of the great cities of the US be destroyed by storm and flooding due to inadequate levees built by the Army Corps of Engineers, having a damn over-a-year long Presidential race, electing the first black President who offered us a vision of hope while the economy tanked and then seeing those hopes tarnished by a first year in office that seemed like nothing less than more of the same BS we’d been through for the first nine years of the new millenium.
President Obama grades his performance as worth a solid B+, but if he were to be graded with regards to his success in the most important issues of his first year, tougher regulation of banking, staving off unemployment, delivering a health care reform that actually helps Americans, a C would be the best he could be given and then only from a professor who didn’t give out D’s. What Obama lacks is leadership. He’s an inspiring speaker, but in terms of actually getting things done, he’s been too focused on trying to reach a consensus with an opposition party that would say no if he said the sun rises in the east, and a renegade faction of his own party that is more intent on making sure their bread gets buttered rather than achieving something of value to the country. At times, it seems like Obama is not running the country but has delegated that task to Rahm Emanuel filling in as America’s Chief Operating Officer. We are on the verge of legislating a “health care reform” whose principle accomplishment is mandating that all Americans buy insurance from the same pack of parasites that has driven American health care into one of the worst in the world. Instead of taking the tough love route he took with the automobile companies, Obama has been mollycoddling the bank industry and not even blinking when he gets flipped the bird by the three CEOs who just couldn’t make the meeting he called. Not to mention an unemployment rate over 10% and a lackluster mortgage relief program that has failed to stem the rising tide of home foreclosures.
President Obama, the time to get tough was yesterday. You’d better make it one of your New Year’s resolutions or you’re going to find yourself with a hostile Republican-led Congress come next November. Stop thumbing your nose at the progressives who elected you because, if you think it was tough reaching across the aisle when you had a majority, just think how tough it will be when the people who want to impeach you for existing hold the reins.
So Goodbye 2009. I’m going to forget about politics for the next few weeks. May all my readers have happy holidays no matter what holidays they have to suffer through. Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, whatever you say for Kwanza, we’ve already passed Eid, Happy New Year, Gode Yule, blessed solstice and my personal choice, Sated Saturnalia–the holiday designed to offend EVERYONE. We’ll see you again on January 11.

ANNOY YOUR FRIENDS! CONFOUND YOUR ENEMIES! PRESS ONE OF THESE BUTTONS--OR ELSE!

Great, now I can solar power my refrigerator box…

A solar panel is used to heat a refrigerator box homeless shelter..

Now if we can afford the space heater ...

I am still recovering from my bout of whatever crud I have, though now it’s more had than have. I should really not be working at all, but it’s so near the end of the year and my Christmas break that I can’t see not keeping to schedule. In any case, my last cartoon of the year will be next Thursday’s, and I will begin again on the 11th of January.
President Obama did present his Main Street recovery plan, and I can only hope that this is just a warm-up to use up the moneys that were left over from the bank bailout. Seriously, falling to 10 percent unemployment from 10.2 is not a necessarily a sign that things have turned around, especially with so many underemployed. As Robert Reich said in HuffPo, the real October story wasn’t the dip in unemployment but the number of people who dropped out of the labor force. And Obama’s proposals are such a hodge-podge–a few initiatives to make it easier for small businesses to get loans–not that the banks have started making them yet since after they shored up their bottom lines, they paid themselves bonuses. Some green-incentive thingies–which, of course, mean you can AFFORD to go green before you can get any benefit from the incentives. And finally, $50 billion in infrastructure building–something that actually may produce some jobs.
The Republicans, on the other hand, have suddenly waxed wroth on the deficit–something that hardly mattered to them when George Bush was President. Paring down that deficit is more important than creating jobs. After all, the banks were saved, we’re already in recovery, right? Obama’s anemic jobs initiative can be seen as another one of his compromises, trying to spend just enough to stimulate employment while trying to please the Republicans by not spending too much and thus running the risk of not spending enough. Whether he spends enough or not, it won’t help matters before the end of ’09, a year that will be ended without engendering much nostalgia by its passing.

ANNOY YOUR FRIENDS! CONFOUND YOUR ENEMIES! PRESS ONE OF THESE BUTTONS--OR ELSE!

Happy Hallowe’en from the Cthulhu Group–your trusted name in finance

Mrs. Dymme mistakes the chthonic spawn of Cthulhu for children trick-or-treating as financial executives.

Ia? Shub-Niggurath? Is that Trick-or-Treat in a foreign language?

October is my favorite month because it has my two favorite holidays–my birthday, sometimes also known as Columbus Day (a day off AND presents, now that’s MY kind of holiday) and Hallowe’en. The end of October is fast approaching, the leaves have turned orange and started to fall, and the kids have started working on their costumes–unless they go to anime cons, and then they have costumes ready all year. But for some of us, Hallowe’en started last year and has continued on through the last 12 months–the bankers who destroyed the economy, told us that it would get worse if we didn’t give them nearly a trillion dollars to bail them out, and then proceeded to give themselves bonuses for doing such a great job. TRICK OR TREAT! Now, It wasn’t completely their fault, after all, we gave them the money And then said, “Oh, don’t bother to tell us how you’re going to spend it–we trust you to make the right decisions.” After all, look where your decisions have gotten us so far! With 20-20 hindsight, this lack of oversight was beyond doubt a true oversight that we should have had the foresight to forestall. But the Bush administration was still in charge and one thing you have to say about the Bush administration–when they were wrong–they made sure they were ABSOLUTELY WRONG. Not that things have changed that much with the Obama forces–our national treasury is still in the hands of Goldman-Sachs and the prospect of tougher regulation looks like it will go the way of single-payer health coverage–off the table before we even start. Instead, we’ve decided to ask these pirates if they pretty please with sugar on top, consider not acting like the total greedy bastards that they are.
But, isn’t it amazing how the real solutions get taken off the table so quickly–like impeaching Bush, which never even got to a vote because it had been taken off the table, and once the Democrats take something off the table, it’s like last month’s minutes at the cell phone company. Look at credit card reform–capping interest rates? That might make the credit card companies upset. Instead we forced them to “give notice” when they were going to gouge their customers–and then gave them enough of a grace period to institute loan shark rates before they had to even think of giving notice. Will we even be able to slap the wrists of the credit rating companies who issued fantasy ratings for the worthless securities that drove the economy into the dirt? No no no! those ratings are “opinions” and thus guarded by the First Amendment. The rating companies have no obligation to give an honest and truthful rating, according to their lawyers. If that’s true, why do we even have these ratings companies–why not just let everybody rate themselves and cut out the middleman! And on the health care front, the big question is whether the “public option” is going to be watered down as much as a strip’n'clip bourbon and water–or water and bourbon.
To add insult to injury, our old friend Joe Liebermann has announced that once again he will not vote with the Democrats but with the Republicans against the public option, demonstrating once again that his votes are not about what’s good for the country but what’s good for Joe Liebermann. I think he was jealous of all the attention Olympia Snowe was getting. Hey, they should all be getting upset about ME! Seriously, Democrats, I think it’s time you re-evaluated your relationship with this man. He promised to caucus with you, but cheats on you every chance he gets. If this was a marriage, you’d be consulting a divorce lawyer…a year ago when he supported the Republican Presidential nominee. I wanted to draw him today as an asshole (really–two cheeks with a hole in the crack) but since I don’t want to have to mark it “mature” I decided to do him as a slug amidst the chthonic spawn of Cthulhu instead

I think it’s an apt analogy considering what he votes for.
In any case, Happy Hallowe’en: kids, trick-or-treat safely and treaters, always buy extra of your favorite candy. Now I’ve got to go carve some pumpkins

ANNOY YOUR FRIENDS! CONFOUND YOUR ENEMIES! PRESS ONE OF THESE BUTTONS--OR ELSE!

Recovery is Underway–Quit the Bank Before They Cap Pay–Happy Days Are Here Again!

A patient is told by his doctor that he's on the road to recovery because his tapeworm is growing bigger....

What's the difference between a bank executive and a tapeworm? You can cure a tapeworm infection.

Oh yes, the Dow hit 10,000 and the GDP was up 3.2% last quarter. Time to Celebrate–the Great Recession is OVER. Happy Days are here again! The skies above are clear again–So let’s sing a song of cheer again–Happy days are here again!
What’s that? Your bank just closed? Oh, don’t worry, the FDIC will cover THAT. Oh, you didn’t have any money in it anyway? So, what do you have to worry about? You’ve been out of work for two years, your unemployment has run out and the only job you can find is part-time trash cleanup at McDonalds? Well, be thankful for Mickey D’s, some people don’t even have that. Oh, and your mortgage is being foreclosed and you’ve been evicted from your house and are living in your car. It could be worse! The repo man could be coming for your car! Oh, you park in different lots every night because of just that. Hey, not to worry, all that will be over soon! The Dow is up, the GDP is up, Happy Days are here again! Let’s Party like it was 1927! After all, we got our bonuses–and left our jobs before the government capped salaries! It doesn’t matter that the rise in GDP was because of tax break for new house buyers and the Cash for Clunkers program–we’ll worry about that NEXT quarter. Altogether shout it now–There’s no one who can doubt it now–So let’s tell the world about it now–Happy days are here again! So long sad times–Go long bad times–We are rid of you at last! Howdy gay times–Cloudy gray times–You are now a thing of the past! Your cares and troubles are gone–There’ll be no more from now on! Happy Days are here again! The skies above are clear again–So let’s sing a song of cheer again–Happy days are here again!

ANNOY YOUR FRIENDS! CONFOUND YOUR ENEMIES! PRESS ONE OF THESE BUTTONS--OR ELSE!