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Tom the Dancing Bug: Hollingsworth Hound in "Starve the Beast!"

Ruben Bolling at 9:26 am Wed, Dec 8, 2010

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  • Not a Doktor

    BLOW IT ALL UP
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MduM0SCXlqM

  • johnofjack

    jeblucas: some people do want to ban libraries.

  • SnidelyWhiplash

    Why don’t small government crazies want to ban libraries?

    They do. A lot of libertarian/Randian types do, anyway.

  • John Napsterista

    Excellent as usual but wtf, no Wikileaks strip?? Did the State Dept. cc: FM on the PayPal memo?!! Man, it’s gonna be tough to wait a week for what I would consider to be the most highly anticipated TTDB of all time.

  • hab

    I first liked this comic when it was called “This Modern World” by Tom Tomorrow. Progressive comic paper tigers are comforting to read these days. When is he bringing back the penguin with punk sunglasses?

    • Ito Kagehisa

      http://thismodernworld.com/

  • Gypsy Chief

    Sara Robinson, writing in Campaign for America’s Future did a piece published on Nov. 11 titled “Starving the Beast: Ten Things You Can Do to Take America Back”. Her ‘beast’ is not government. It the MOTUs that run our lives. Banks that are too-big-to-fail for example. Good article. I read it to see which parts may be applicable as Fort Collins takes the first steps to become a Transition Town. My take: She should change the title if she decides to turn her blog entry into a book. More at
    http://kakoluri.com/2010/12/26/starving-the-beast-really/

    Thanks for the comic strip.

  • Mister44

    Wanting a smaller gov. doesn’t make one crazy.

    • Anonymous

      Expecting a smaller Government to regulate Big Business IS crazy. Small Government only benefits Big Business and the ownership society.

    • Ito Kagehisa

      Wanting a smaller gov. doesn’t make one crazy.

      That’s true, but believing the rich and entitled will ever give you one is pretty bonkers.

      Reagan, for example, increased the size of government more than any previous president – he massively increased spending, increased the number of federal regulation, and increased the number of government employees.

    • Nelson.C

      It doesn’t protect you from the crazy, either. Crazy is as crazy does.

      • Ugly Canuck

        That’s not crazy: this is crazy->

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zzq5X-p2C0Y

        Who needs protection from that?
        Man, that’s crazy.

  • Anonymous

    Nice to see somebody with the balls to call Reagan out.

    My children are being taught in school that Ronald Reagan was a national hero. Of course, they are also being taught that weapons are only owned by criminals, and that good little children always call the police if they see their parents smoking pot, and that America does not invade foreign countries without provocation.

    I’d like to dig the fucker up and burn his oil-sucking carcass for fuel, personally.

  • Anonymous

    Republicans promise to cut the deficit and shrink government. Have they ever done so? Even now they want to give a tax break to millionaires that will increase the deficit by $700 billion. Why do people vote for hypocrisy like that?

  • Anonymous

    Republicans are 100% corrupt.

    Democrats are “only” 95% corrupt.

    Vote Dem…

    I guess.

  • Anonymous

    Gotta disagree with the above comment there about libertarian/randian types wanting to “ban” libraries.

    well, on the face that comment doesn’t make too much sense, as it would be illogical for someone who wanted small government to then turnaround and demand the government ban libraries.

    but, taking your comment as a simple misstatement, I can assume you meant that some libertarians want an end to libraries as we know them. To this I’ll firstly say that not all libraries are public, although public school and university libraries do likely benefit from public funds (especially here in Canada).

    I don’t know who funds libraries in the US but here its generally city governments, which libertarians generally have less issues with than state/federal govts.

    But, even if we were to stipulate that a particularly anarchistic libertarian (and I won’t excuse myself from this definition) wanted to end all city, state/province and federal funding for public libraries, they could still continue to exist, likely funded as non-profit organisations or simply funded through large endowments, like most major private universities.

    However, it’s possible that we are at a point in technological history where the need for libraries is obsolete in light of the vast amount of free information available online. Historically, libraries represent a sort of elitist institution, where knowledge was only available to those who attended the institution of higher learning associated with the library, or who had the necessary connections for entry (eg. the library of congress). While I don’t know enough about the current state of libraries to suggest that they should be dismantled, the technological and information bubble which continues to expand at exponential rates suggests, to me at least, that maybe we’re living in a post-library world

  • sing it, baby

    Your revolution is over, Lucky Ducky. Condolences. The bums lost. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir.

  • StRevAlex

    “Tom the Dancing Bug.” I never tire of the rhetoric.

  • Monkeybaister

    The problem with starving the beast is cleaning up the corpse afterwards. It would be like trying to cleanup a beached whale carcass.

    • Antinous / Moderator

      Well, we’d better not try to blow up the beast then.

  • MrJM

    Tom Spurgeon: “Ruben Bolling’s cartoons are so amusing I almost forget they tend to be about the most depressing things in the world.”

  • MrJM

    I suspect that there’s some political message behind this piece.

    • jackm

      @MrJM = +1 Irony for you!

      Gotta love Tom the Dancing Bug. As the America’s empire gradually crumbles, he gets angrier and angrier. His steadily-decreasing subtlety is almost like a barometer for how much America has declined. By the time the middle class dries up in about 10 years or so, Tom will be screaming bitter diatribes in the street with a megaphone!

  • Rayonic

    “Starving the Beast” via tax cuts works just about as well as “Starving the Rich” via tax hikes. When did we elect all of these passive-aggressives?

  • jeblucas

    Why don’t small government crazies want to ban libraries? Tax dollars, spent on books, CDs, and HVAC so people can share copyrighted materials? You’d think they’d be protesting outside them, they appear to be such anathema.

    • Neon Tooth

      Some do: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/06/30/fox-news-advocates-s.html

    • MrsBug

      HUSH!! They’ll hear you!

    • tad604

      Some of them do, some of them do.

    • Anonymous

      They do! Check out: http://www.mackinac.org/7398 As a public library director, it’s not very funny.

    • Chris Tucker

      This particular Randroid equates being on a library waiting list for a popular film to “soviet bread line”.

      Even choicer bits of Randroid insanity can be found at the link.

      • normd

        That Rebirth of Reason article comparing Blockbuster to public libraries is interesting. Interesting because it is so completely skewed. Fundamental assumption being that an oversupply of crappy modern movies is more important than the comprehensive catalog a good library system is likely to carry. Looks like that article was from 2002. Amazing how things have changed.