The Humor of Politics

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<p>I know - I promised that I would not participate in political threads. And this is not one as such… NO ISSUES, NO BASHING of one side or another.</p>

<p>Some of these quotes are well known, but still worth repeating. Let’s concentrate on the HUMOR of political sides:</p>

<p>Dave Barry:</p>

<p>The Democrats seem to be basically nicer people, but they have demonstrated time and again that they have the management skills of celery. They’re the kind of people who’d stop to help you change a flat, but would somehow manage to set your car on fire. I would be reluctant to entrust them with a Cuisinart, let alone the economy. The Republicans, on the other hand, would know how to fix your tire, but they wouldn’t bother to stop because they’d want to be on time for Ugly Pants Night at the country club.</p>

<p>G. K. Chesterton:</p>

<p>The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.</p>

<p>Christopher Bigsby and Malcolm Bradbury:</p>

<p>You know what they say: if God had been a Liberal, we wouldn’t have had the ten commandments. We’d have had the ten suggestions.</p>

<p>Ambrose Bierce:</p>

<p>Conservative: a statesman who is enamoured of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.</p>

<p>Mort Sahl:</p>

<p>Liberals feel unworthy of their possessions. Conservatives feel they deserve everything they’ve stolen.</p>

<p>P. J. O’Rourke:</p>

<p>The Democrats are the party of government activism, the party that says government can make you richer, smarter, taller, and get the chickweed out of your lawn. Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work, and then get elected and prove it.</p>

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<p>Funny – and with a grain of truth (sadly)!</p>

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<p>I like the last one best. :)</p>

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<p>Humor? I’m beginning to understand what happened last week.

Welcome to CC.
<a href=“http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/11/14/D8LCSROO0.html[/url][quote]”>http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/11/14/D8LCSROO0.html

Anyway, thank God for Speaker Pelosi and the folks who gave her to us.</p>

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<p>Andy Rooney:</p>

<pre><code>Democrats (I think to myself) are liberals who believe the people are basically good, but that they need government help to organize their lives. They believe in freedom so fervently that they think it should be compulsory. They believe that the poor and ignorant are victims of an unfair system and that their circumstances can be improved if we give them help. Republicans (I think to myself) are conservatives who think it would be best if we faced the fact that people are no damned good. They think that if we admit that we have selfish, acquisitive natures and then set out to get all we can for ourselves by working hard for it, that things will be better for everyone. They are not insensitive to the poor, but tend to think the poor are impoverished because they won’t work. They think there would be fewer of them to feel sorry for if the government did not encourage the proliferation of the least fit among us with welfare programs.
</code></pre>

<p>Robert Anton Wilson:</p>

<pre><code>It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea.
</code></pre>

<p>Wendy Kaminer:</p>

<pre><code>A liberal is a conservative who’s been arrested. A conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged.
</code></pre>

<p>George H. W. Bush:</p>

<pre><code>I’m conservative, but I’m not a nut about it.
</code></pre>

<p>John Kenneth Galbraith:</p>

<pre><code>The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
</code></pre>

<p>Leo C. Rosten:</p>

<pre><code>A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they’re dead.
</code></pre>

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<p>

</p>

<p>Thanks, a couple of my friends were trying to remember this quote just the other day!</p>

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<p>

</p>

<p>Hmm, didn’t stop me from being a liberal, but it did teach me something about the great divide between being black and white in this country.</p>

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<p>Driver, I think you should come up with an altar screen in triptych form: Pelosi on the left panel, Reid on the right, Hillary in the center.</p>

<p>===</p>

<p>Digi, here’s my own: </p>

<p>A man is drowning in a lake 25 feet from shore. A Democrat comes along, throws out 40 feet of rope, then gets distracted and drops his end and goes off and does something else. A Republican then comes along and throws the man 6 feet of rope and tells him to empower himself and swim for it. A Libertarian comes along and gives the man a useful lecture on how he should have taught himself to swim. A Green comes along, assesses the situation, reminds himself that population reduction is laudable and that the man’s thrashing about are raising his carbon footprint, and leaves.</p>

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<p>LOL TheDad!</p>

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<p>So Galbraith is saying conservatives are essentially un-Christian.</p>

<p>What are liberals then? With their dogma-like ‘selflessness’ I’d have to say they are most like Catholics.</p>

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<p>The lake story reminds me of the story of the cows. </p>

<p>DEMOCRAT: You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. You feel guilty for being successful. You vote people into office that put a tax on your cows, forcing you to sell one to raise money to pay the tax. The people you voted for then take the tax money, buy a cow and give it to your neighbor. You feel righteous. Barbara Streisand sings for you.</p>

<p>SOCIALIST: You have two cows. The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor. You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.</p>

<p>REPUBLICAN: You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. So?</p>

<p>COMMUNIST: You have two cows. The government seizes both and provides you with milk. You wait in line for hours to get it. It is expensive and sour.</p>

<p>CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE: You have two cows. You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.</p>

<p>DEMOCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE: You have two cows. The government taxes you to the point you have to sell both to support a man in a foreign country who has only one cow, which was a gift from your government.</p>

<p>BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE: You have two cows. The government takes them both, shoots one, milks the other, pays you for the milk and then pours the milk down the drain.</p>

<p>AMERICAN CORPORATION: (A personal favorite) You have two cows. You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one. You force the 2 cows to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when one cow drops dead. You spin an announcement to the analysts stating you have downsized and are reducing expenses. Your stock goes up.</p>

<p>FRENCH CORPORATION: You have two cows. You go on strike because you want three cows. You go to lunch. Life is good.</p>

<p>JAPANESE CORPORATION: You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains. Most are at the top of their class at cow school.</p>

<p>GERMAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You reengineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer, give excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour. Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.</p>

<p>RUSSIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You count them and learn you have five cows. You have some more vodka. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 12 cows. You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka. You produce your 10th, 5-year plan in the last 3 months. The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really have.</p>

<p>CANADIAN CORPORATION: The recent Green Paper, White Paper or whatever suggests that you actually have five cows. After 2 years of debate, an election, a leadership change, 2 budgets and a referendum you determine: One doesn’t like the other cows at all and wants them all to leave because they don’t understand the language. One keeps trying to tell the other cows how it really is but is ignored due to the fact they live in democratic society (see Socialist Cow). The really old cow keeps mumbling diatribe about getting together with the young inexperienced cow that just keeps on smiling while on a Jet Ski. Everyone gets so fed up with all the cows that they end up making the leader the one that speaks out of the side of its mouth.</p>

<p>from <a href=“http://www.sallgoodman.com/011218.htm[/url]”>http://www.sallgoodman.com/011218.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>mathmom - Some familiar good ones, but now with some new twists as well. The American Corporation is definitely my favorite.</p>

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<p><a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-QA9hjCz2s[/url]”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-QA9hjCz2s&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Great stuff, thanks for starting the thread. I like the French corporation myself. I am going to lunch now.</p>

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<p>digmedia:
You post a thread which finds “humor” only at the expense of Dems and then you demand “… NO ISSUES, NO BASHING of one side or another.” Oh please. Read your own post!</p>

<p>( :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile: Yeah, we’re laughing all right - laughing all the way to the Capitol. :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile: )</p>

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<p>I don’t know, went back and reread digs post and it seemed pretty bipartisan to me ;).</p>

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<p>I think that Digmedia has been a leading voice here for more civility and less bashing of either side and I understood his thread to be in that vein. I also suspect that he is blu-ish although I may be wrong…</p>

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<p>I think most of the posts lean toward conservative bashing, but I don’t care. I think it’s funny. :)</p>

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<p>weenie -</p>

<p><<<whoooosh>>> </whoooosh></p>

<p>Right over my head. </p>

<p>Huh…?</p>

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<p>Demoglad: a Form of Happiness for Democrats:
<a href=“http://www.sfgate.com/comics/fiore/[/url]”>http://www.sfgate.com/comics/fiore/&lt;/a&gt;
(11/15/06)</p>