In the Dumbo alternative universe, the election of 2012 is reprise of the 1980 campaign when St. Dutch flummoxed Mr. Peanut in the second debate with his sardonic "There you go again" response to Mr. Peanut's assertions. And, in the current Dumbo fantasy, St. Dutch asked — in his closing statement to the viewing audience — "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" Big Love and the Big Doofus bleat that question in most of their campaign appearances. This blogger thought about himself in 2008 as contrasted with 2012 and his answer is "Hell, yes, 2012 is better than 2008!" Why? This blogger's checking account was in the hands of the Primary Reserve Fund — the nation's largest money market manager — in 2008. Unknown to this hapless blogger, the Primary Reserve Fund was heavily invested in Lehman Brothers and when Lehman Brothers sought protection in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the money market investors were toast. The Primary Reserve Fund "broke the buck" and notified clients that their invested funds were at risk. This blogger was notified that he could not write any checks unless he purchased overdraft insurance protection. Holy run on the banks! So, for a few months in 2008, there was uncertainty every time this blogger wrote a check. The account was solvent (on paper) but there were no guarantees that the funds hadn't evaporated in the Wall Street meltdown of 2008. Flash forward to 2012: earlier this month, this blogger was notified that he would no longer need to pay the premium for overdraft insurance. The funds in his checking account were deemed safe in September 2012. So, is this blogger better off in 2012 than in 2008? Hell, yes, and Big Love and Big Doofus are the a$$holes of the year. If this is (fair & balanced) whistling in a checking account graveyard, so be it.
[x This Modern World]
Further Gaffes
ByTom Tomorrow
[Dan Perkins is an editorial cartoonist better known by the pen name "Tom Tomorrow". His weekly comic strip, "This Modern World," which comments on current events from a strong liberal perspective, appears regularly in approximately 150 papers across the U.S., as well as on Daily Kos. The strip debuted in 1990 in SF Weekly.
Perkins, a long time resident of Brooklyn, New York, currently lives in Connecticut. He received the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Excellence in Journalism in both 1998 and 2002.
When he is not working on projects related to his comic strip, Perkins writes a daily political weblog, also entitled "This Modern World," which he began in December 2001.]
Copyright © 2012 Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins)
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Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves by Neil Sapper is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at sapper.blogspot.com. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available here.
Copyright © 2012 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves
