228 Comments

I look forward to your cartoons and captions every week. We need some humor, for sure!

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Judith--He needs to let up on the orange guy, he'll develop a complex of some sort that might led to the formation of a rudimentary form of intelligence, then where would we be?

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THE ENEMY INSURRECTIONIST ARE AT THE GATE, DEFEAT TREASONOUS , TERRORIST, AND CON REPUBLICONS EVERYWHERE AND JAIL CORRUPT AND TRAITOR RTRUMP AND CRONIES.THE ENEMY INSURRECTIONIST ARE AT THE GATE, DEFEAT TREASONOUS , TERRORIST, AND CON REPUBLICONS EVERYWHERE AND JAIL CORRUPT AND TRAITOR RTRUMP AND CRONIES. VOTE DEMOCRATIC , AND RESTORE DEMOCRACY.

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Dec 31Edited
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THE ENEMY INSURRECTIONIST ARE AT THE GATE, DEFEAT TREASONOUS , TERRORIST, AND CON REPUBLICONS EVERYWHERE AND JAIL CORRUPT AND TRAITOR RTRUMP AND CRONIES.THE ENEMY INSURRECTIONIST ARE AT THE GATE, DEFEAT TREASONOUS , TERRORIST, AND CON REPUBLICONS EVERYWHERE AND JAIL CORRUPT AND TRAITOR RTRUMP AND CRONIES. VOTE DEMOCRATIC , AND RESTORE DEMOCRACY.

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Dec 31Edited

A critique of an article in a serious Russian scientific journal regarding declining population and birth rate in Russia:

-RUSSIAN SENATORS DECLARE WAR ON REPTILOIDS! (NOT A JOKE!):

https://www.youtube.com/live/akZI_eaw1SM?si=jkhbPoLe38FoElyg

Much insight into the thrust of what's happening here in light of what's happening there, particularly if the МАГАт Яepuблиkan$ catch wind of it!

A good follow-on consideration:

- WHAT IS POSTMODERNISM?:

https://youtu.be/Zw1ucZEqQ78?si=eoL3Ubjcl2y3cC2U

Put in perspective with current events. the conclusion is chilling.

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Just celebrated Christmas and New Years yesterday (because of scheduling problems) so since I am still in a festive mood I wanted to thank this community for the welcoming companionship that you have no idea that you have given me. I hope that you all stay safe and healthy and enjoy your festivities and look forward to communicating with you in 2024.

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Make a New Years toast to each of the images Robert has created and you will have no more worries concerning the future.

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wut a silly . .Hic . .idea . .

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John--Yes but it's a sobering idea--

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Until you wake up and are hung over!

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Laurie--I learned my lesson in Nassau when I was in college.

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Bet you had some fun before you learned it though!?

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Laurie--My fellow traveler did, in fact he had so much fun I had to walk the streets of Nassau until all hours of the morning because there was a stupid "Do not disturb" sign hanging from the doorknob to my room.

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It wasn't really your room then! 😕

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Donald - while I have never had a drink in my life I just might take your advice!

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Anon--That would make for one Happy New Year.

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Like something The (where's that damn flask) Ghouli would do . .not allowed access to The Crazy Meeting in The Offal Office . .

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Donald - I am pretty sure that I wouldn’t remember a damn thing once I regained consciousness in the hospital! Cheers to you.

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Anon-- The same to you and yours.

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Hahaha

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Thanks and Happy New Year to all.

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If I was a Republican this would represent 52 ways to leave your lover.

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where's that rolling laughing emoji when you need it?

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Ax--It's the thought that counts.

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Donald, can you name some of those ways? The song is in my head now, and I need it to bloom new lyrics...

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You just slip out the back, Jack

Make a new plan, Stan

You don't need to be coy, Roy

Just get yourself free

Hop on the bus, Gus

You don't need to discuss much

Just drop off the key, Lee

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vote at the booth, Ruth...

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Lovee

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While an apt comic representation, the one image I searched for was the sinking of the Senate reconciliation package (the social infrastructure piece) while its two detractors rowed away. I note this particular image because, aside from the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act, which Manchin and Sinema also singularly sank, I expect the loss of the former largely explains why the 60% living precariously from paycheck to paycheck, wherein family income typically only is sustained by more people working longer hours, while still weighted down by mortgage debt, credit card debt, car payments, and the like are not responsive to repeated recitations of the Administration’s accomplishments.

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I have derived:

Conservative = "I don't care about you; I care about me."

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I think it's more like:

Libertarian: I don't care about you; I care about me.

Conservative: I care about making you into my image and adopting my world view -- which is the right one. Always.

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What do you call a libertarian conservative?

I call them a MAGAt.

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Republicans only care about their wallet, nothing else matters. Money, Greed, and Evil to get it.

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I seem to remember that a certain historical personage said, “Love of money is the root of all evil.”

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That really says it all. I like the term progressive! We need to be a progressive country!

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I would prefer neosocialism. (See? The Left is so far under that my software hasn't been taught to recognize the word: neosocialism. It wants me to correct the spelling. Progressive is a term that just papers over liberalism, because two generations ago the Republicans began using "liberal" as a smear, an insult. Liberalism is the philosophy, developed over several centuries and named in the 1820s by the Spanish "Liberales", who wanted for Spain what America had just devised. Historians call us a "Liberal Democracy." But Progressives are namby-pambies because they're afraid to call liberalism what it is—the foundation of the American Constitution. And, liberalism is dead center. I'm a neosocialist because it's further left of center, and currently, our society is in a tug-of-war. We need the power to arise from the Left, and we've all got to pull really hard this coming year. Yea, Bernie. Talk and yell, but vote for Biden anyway. He's the last serious man.

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Didn’t Bernie’s strong showing in 2020 push Biden to the left a little? Of course, there will be no meaningful primary election this year for the Dems. Who, if anyone, will be able to push Biden toward neosocialism?

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Conservative is a long way to spell GREED. Conservative=what's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine also.

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Yes, you don't do an honest hard-day's work if you make a million dollars a year, you take advantage of others to get ahead. Lie, Cheat, and Steal.

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Long live Robert Reich (and his cartoons)! And best wishes for 2024.

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Thank you! Year of my birth version; God, getting very old!

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My wife's too. I'm not a boomer, but I was much older then, I'm younger than that now....

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You sound like a Byrds song, "My Back Pages" IIRC.

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Dylan Not to become my enemy....Trump '24 theme...civil commitment blues. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xRCbdFrSSc

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Oh, and yes, like several Byrds hits, it was written by Bob Dylan, whose singing I'm not a fan of, but whose writing I am.

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Nobel Prize winner.

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I love that one. Thanks!

This had one of the shortest runs on the Billboard chart of a Top 5 song due to being widely banned for supposedly making fun of mental illness.

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IMHO odds are even that the DC Circuit will dismiss Trump's immunity appeal in about 10 days and Trump has 2 civil suits in NY which may be another opportunity to decompensate in open court. Engoron had the opportunity and blew it.

Interlocutory appeals: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24245907-american-oversight-amicus-brief-in-support-of-dismissal-for-lack-of-jurisdiction-us-v-donald-trump

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Dylan

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Yes, it's written by Dylan, but the hit version of this song (& the only one I've heard) is by the Byrds, who do a great job on it.

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Jaime Ramirez : The Byrds do it very nicely, But I first heard it from Bob Dylan. I'm a boomer, so that's how it is. Transistor radio on my pillow 😴 against the rules late at night. Dylan, and most music banned in the place where I lived. Don't want to awaken the 'heat'!

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Daniel--That sounds so familiar, My Back Pages rings a bell.

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Yes, when I present my ID card to the young cashiers at points of sale when buying alcohol, I advise them that I’m younger than my photo ID suggests. Zero of them tell me, “Oh yeah, that Dylan was a clever guy.” Youth is wasted on young people.

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Stan--I was always told it went; "Youth is wasted on the young."

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In other words, 2023 was another chaotic year of living dangerously; For America that is...:)

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And it will only become worse, as there will be more and more and more uneducated. When we are totally outnumbered, then it is over.

We learned in college Sociology (1980), that the uneducated have more children than the educated. Typically, children of the uneducated will not be sent to college, thus there will be more and more uneducated.

Ultimately, there will come a time when there will be more uneducated people in America than educated.

Forty years later I find we are at this juncture, when 50% of the voters think bully Trump is presidential material, and they cannot recognize he is mentally ill.

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They don't recognize that *they are ignorant. That is called Dunning Kruger effect

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Yes, that is a problem.

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How do you explain the fact that the percentage of Americans with college degrees continues to increase every year and is at the highest level in our country's history? I am assuming that college degree == educated. Seems to imply the opposite of what you are saying. I think that Trump's support is related to the huge growth in right wing media (Fox, etc.) in the last 40 years. Trump is a hero to these media people.

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College degrees are not universal nor do they imply independent critical thinking. I have direct experience of a 4yr accounting degree holder who passed her bible verse memorization classes but couldn’t reconcile a statement to save her soul. We have lawyers who are taught law through the filter of the Bible. Note our Supreme Court. Every institution built in the past 100 years is crumbling, so whatever’s next can emerge. Water what you want to grow folks.

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In one of those funny stories by P.G. Woodhouse, Bertie Wooster reports that the only good academic grade he ever received was for having memorized a passage from the Bible.

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You're not accounting for WHY people now go to college. It's not for intellectual enrichment and an all-around education that will teach you how to think. It's basically for job training: which program of courses will allow me to make the most $$ when I graduate? People have been told for decades that the way to increase life-time earnings is to have a college degree. And so inevitably that is translated into college=job security and higher standard of living.

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There are MORE uneducated than educated.

I don't know where you are from, but college admissions have been DOWN for some time, an all-time low now.

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Based on graphs on the Internet of percentage of Americans with a college degree. Agree that we may be heading in the opposite direction for recent college admissions. With more people having college degrees now than in the past, you would think that more people would see through Trump's BS now than they would have in the past.

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Thanks for the link! My experience is that the "poorly educated" get their "facts" mainly from right wing media, and this is one of the main reasons they love Trump and don't like Biden. They don't have the educational background to see through the lies told them by the right wing media machine. But I don't agree with those who call them "stupid".

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More people with degrees does not mean more than half the total population of people.

I doubt what you say is correct.

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I agree. Internet says about 38% have college degrees. Less than half.

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Drumpf is a hero to them because they’re dishonest.

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Educated people have generally been a minority. As products of the public school system, my husband and I were able to raise our standard of living substantially beyond that of our growing up years. Education enabled us to take advantage of opportunities that would have been unattainable had we not graduated from a public high school and graduated from public universities. The extremists in our state regularly harass our public university system and refuse to adequately fund our public schools. Then they funnel money to charter school companies or segregation academies.

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And when all of them vote for maga reps who cut aid to ukraine their ( also uneducated) children will get to go fight and die in europe. A repeat of the 40’s ..

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I gotcha, however, that will never happen, as we'd be in direct conflict with Russia and that leads to nuclear war.

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Exactly the point.. our boys and girls will be fighting alongside the boys and girls of the nato countries if we fail to see to it that the Ukraine prevails…we are talking less than 5% of our defense budget to seriously degrade russian military capability and at the same time getting use out of nearly expired munitions and boosting jobs here to produce new weaponry for our use.. all this a big win for a very small cost to us and the blood of our children and grandchildren..

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This site holds some wonderous personalities housed within some really great people. Happy New to everyone. Hopefully, some of the ideas we have discussed here will find their way into being, and if nothing else give President Biden the reassurance that we all appreciate everything he has done for this country. Happy New Year to everyone, even if I did say a few things that were a bit out there. Be safe.

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Happy New Year to all..:)

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. . . and to all a good fright.

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This group, in scroll form, would make nice wall art for my den!

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You should turn these into T-Shirts. I bet they’d sell like hotcakes! How about a shower curtain? Thanks for a year of Reich.

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Bob from your comment yesterday on the Klatch it sounds like you are reading Prequel. I am too and can relate to your wanting to not go on.. what a mess that was how Berlin was able to get so deep into our system.. ugg

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If you were unlucky enough to have traveled through Trump's gut, images of Robert's humor are etched on the walls of his intestinal track. Giving the Orange Guy a reason to have cramps.

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Happy New Year to you Donald you are on of the wonderous personalities in this site. I like your "Far Side" humour mixed in with some to the point straight talk.

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Jacko--It only took me 74 years to find the things you pointed to, thanks, Happy New Year to you and yours as well.

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So that explains the notorious odor associated with Mr. Lard-A-Mago?

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Dalatias--A cross between nitrogenous and methane, if the guy would take up smoking our troubles would be over.

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Good observation. I've never seen a photo of him around an open flame or lighted cigarette. :-)

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Thank you for your sage analyses, informed commentary, and inspirational captionless cartoons and thanks to this community for providing additional context, further information and questions, and captions that capture the humor (often of cruel situations) without inflicting more cruelty.

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Scrolling down the page, I was wondering how such a brilliant cartoon....er...economist got all these cartoons on one page in such good order? Then I see that Emmett Tjen helped out. People like Emmett sure make the current world as we know it go 'round. I was also admiring how great a cartoonist Dr. Reich is...notwithstanding some of the other critiques by "experts" below. I look forward to the Sunday cartoons, and also the spot on commentary and views on this blog. Happy New Year to all.

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A Happy New Year to you as well and may the forces of good win!

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Thank-you for your work! Let’s continue doing our part towards a happy 2024!

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