Let me get this straight. The government borrows $500 from the Chinese and gives it to me. I buy $500 worth of turnip twaddlers from the Chinese. The Chinese get their money back (from me) and are owed $500 from my government. I get turnip twaddlers.

I want to cry for my country. I really do.

So you give back a chunk of it. It would be hysterically funny if even for a tiny number of people the rebate kicks them into the AMT the following year and they wind up with a horrendous tax bill. That would be priceless.

First you made me laugh, then you made me cry. Quite a talent, that.

My professional tax preparer assures me that the money is a rebate on the taxes paid for 2007. It is not related in any way to anyone's 2008 taxes.

They are an advance on the refunds due to our grandchildren-- once they finish paying for the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, and whatever wars pop up in the interim.

Next week the new Blu-Ray turnip twaddlers come out, rendering all previous models obsolete.

"... the checks are an advance on next year's refunds, and most, if not all of the money, will be deducted from taxpayers' refunds in 12 months' time."

Likely, the amount + some %, if what you say is true; it'd then effectively be a loan, complete with it's own interest payment due at the same time as the payback.

Y'know, my father's side is Italian & I heard they did some... questionable... things some 70 years or so ago, none substantiated (of course).

This sounds way too familiar.

If I recall correctly, although I rarely see it mentioned, the checks are an advance on next year's refunds, and most, if not all of the money, will be deducted from taxpayers' refunds in 12 months' time.

So your 10% goes to charity, huh? I'd feel all warm and fuzzy for you, except that such "gifts" are only charity in so far as our ridiculous tax system is biased to favor "faith-based" nonsense rather than real solutions to poverty, suffering, etc. Check any major economic study of church charity and see just how little of your 10% goes to the "needy." It goes to pay for church infrastructure, salaries for church officials, and for outreach programs designed to make people feel sufficiently bad about themselves that they need to turn to someone for comfort. And guess who's there to provide that comfort? The church, with, of course, the collection plate right behind. Nice scam.

So, sure, you give a tad to the poor, but a lot less than someone who paid taxes on that money instead of writing it off. And your "stimulus" check is coming right out of the mouths of the needy (and your own pockets via interest on debt) just like everyone else.

Enjoy those bees!

It appears that Garry and his posse have ridden off into the sunset, leaving a counterfeit be-bop behind to blather (as beep-beep would) and misspell Garry's name (as boop-boop-be-doop would not have).

...are metric, so they only work with metric turnips with a left-hand thread. And they're decorated with lead paint.

The forced, scripted, ritualized, disingenuous humility and acceptance; the symbiotic mutual self-delusion; the shame-for-payoff; the denial; the play acting – all aesthetically distanced and effectively conveyed by a penguin in a comic strip.

And all shot to hell by a single trigger of the fears, arrested capacity for impulse control, and unresolved underlying unmet needs that never got worked on, that are safely evaded and distracted from one day at a time.

I’d have to say Mr. Breathed nailed not only the AA/NA scam, but a big piece of the American psyche as well.

...but all those turnip twaddlers that Opus bought are cheap Chinese knockoffs... so it's their economy we're stimulating.

As a entrepreneur who's cornered the market an turnip twaddlers , I deeply resent this cartoon. I'm tired of lefties making me laugh and scoring direct hits with satire.

Gary Owen? Pyrrho and Opus miss you too.

Doonsbury is talking about "Penultimate"...

What's that?

Mhellman has a good idea~; O, This:~?

Put castor wheels on a big turnip box?

The turnip box-wagon could save gas.

It could be insulated and be a home?

Later at old age? A cardboard coffin?

Use the right kind of Castors though.

There is a reddish-oily resin that beavers use, and another Castor bean that is a poison resin bean that grows a reddish plant that grows up to 12-feet tall. Caster Wheels are good for old Turnip Box Crates. Watch out! G.O.

~;

Pickles was the best Sunday Cartoon, IMHO.

Earl was told he looked like a bum. So what?

Bums who don't shave or bathe like junkie Opus stink.

Oh. Contempt for all the unbathed Grandpa's is not nice.

"These rebates are like taking a bucket of water out of the deep end of the pool and pouring into the shallow end, thinking the level is going to rise."

Yeah, but if enough people do it fast enough you can surf the wave from one end of the pool to the other.

These rebates are like taking a bucket of water out of the deep end of the pool and pouring into the shallow end, thinking the level is going to rise.

You have to admit this is pretty spot on: The way out of a massively credit-crunched economy is to Buy More Crap!

The other day, I heard one economist on the news express his fear that people might waste the rebate by paying off the crap that they already bought. Silly American people. They can't seem to get anything right these days.

So 10% is going to charity. How about you?

No comment?

> ...For that's all too clearly an analog turnip twaddler. No wonder so many Salonistas think he's passé.

Shows what you know. Most true aficionados of the turnip twaddler have gone back to analog for its rich tonal qualities and have utterly rejected the soulless digital versions available in mass market stores. This costs much, much more, of course -- but what's money when it comes to true turnip twaddling quality?