Cagle Cartoons

The future is always a dystopia and the past is always better than this mess we live in right now. That's if literature has any ability to tell us about ourselves. Stories about the future: Forewarning. Stories about the good ol' days: Heartening. Somewhere in our collective unconscious we believe there was a golden era of innocence and irresistible quaintness. The present is far from that -- so the future has to be worse. Most likely involving robots ... emoting and plotting their revenge.

The future scares us and we wish it could be more like it used to be. Therefore we freak out about change and demand tradition because it connects us to this proverbial Garden of Eden in our minds.

America's senior citizens deserve to enjoy their golden years in security rather than be faced with the uncertainty of having their beloved Medicare benefits yanked away thanks to provisions within the Democratic Party's darling, Obamacare.

Mathematicians Congressional Democrats are not. Democrats failed to inform seniors nearly half of Obamacare's cost would be funded initially by taking more than $500 billion from Medicare. When this information was made public, Democrats promised the cost-shifting would not in any way lead to benefit cuts. In addition, they were told Obamacare would reduce the deficit and were told everyone could keep their doctors. If Democrats genuinely believed what they were saying, they obviously failed to factor into their quirky calculations that pesky little fact that Medicare reimbursement cuts to doctors would send them packing in droves, making it a bit tricky to use the same doctor if he or she no longer treats Medicare patients.

"The mind of a bigot," wrote Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., "is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour upon it, the more it will contract." In other words, bigots tend to shrink in size and weight the closer they get to the truth. This appears to be the case with one such bigot who happens to be the founder of the "It Gets Better" project -- an organization endorsed by the Obama administration created to provide encouragement to bullied lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender teens."

The organization's founder, Dan Savage, seems to have become the very thing he fights against. Recently speaking about bullying before a group of teenage journalists, Savage went on an anti-Bible rant and said "We can learn to ignore the bulls--t in the Bible about gay people," and then called the teens that walked out of the lecture in protest, "pansy-as-es."

Young Americans received unwelcome news this week when an April 23 AP report found 53.6 percent of college graduates under the age of 25 are jobless or underemployed, and there is little hope for improvement in the near future.

This news is grim for young Americans as well as an administration in reelection mode.

President Obama attempted to dull the pain young Americans are feeling when he recently told a group of college students in Florida he "wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth" then went on to blame the mess we're in on capitalism. He described capitalism as a "broken down theory."

The chant during the OJ trial was, "if the glove don't fit then vote to acquit." In the Trayvon Martin killing the legal system should focus on the wounds of George Zimmerman. Now that the bloody photographs of the back of George Zimmerman's head has been released, we must ask, why was he charged with second-degree murder?

These photos are clear evidence George Zimmerman was acting in self-defense, and according to Florida law, Zimmerman had a right to protect himself that tragic night.

In politics, truth-telling can get you into trouble, even if you stumble upon it by accident. Just ask Rep. Allen West, R-Fla.

West is feeling the heat for a pregnant pause he took during a town hall meeting after he was asked "What percentage of the American legislature do you think are card-carrying Marxists or International Socialists?"

"It's a good question," West responded, "I believe there's [sic] about 78 to 81 members of the Democrat Party who are members of the Communist Party. (Long pause) "They don't actually hide. It's called the Congressional Progressive Caucus." The left became unhinged.

Obviously West touched a nerve; before long, members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) drafted their response: "Calling fellow Members of Congress 'Communists' is reminiscent of the days when Joe McCarthy divided Americans with name-calling and modern-day witch hunts that don't advance policies to benefit people's lives..."