(IVCAFF News) Wayne LaPierre addressed members of the Houston NRA on Saturday, sparking the usual liberal controversy, but generating cries of “Remember the Alamo” accompanied by six-gun shots fired into the air.

“I was inspired by last week’s piece in Intravenous Caffeine. What else could better protect you against unknown bombing suspects who’d probably already left the scene? If I were in Boston, I’d put my faith in my trusty Peacemaker to make sure that no suspicious characters approached or fled from me.

“Police lockdown? Northerners cowering in fear! How would you know that that knock on the door was a real Boston policeman unless you had your piece by your side to make sure you could return fire. How would you defend yourself from marauding bands of looters climbing into your windows? That’s what “stand your ground laws” were made for. Of course, Bostonians would have felt more secure with more guns!”

After the meeting, LaPierre was assisted back into his straitjacket by attendants before being driven by ambulance back to the facility.

NOTE TO STEPHEN COLBERT:
Dear Stephen, this is Greg. I know you’re talking about me, I’ve heard you on your program. I let it go the first time, but now it’s just too much. Do I have to say it again? It’s over. Over. Must I get that restraining order?
Yours alwaysnever again,
Greg

• “Life Among the Nobililty: The Swing” by Gregonard…

Well, Barrie Antoinette–excuse me, President Barry Obama, delivered his proposal for a budget and yes, indeed-y, there was the much hated-by-the-constituency-but-loved-by-Wall-Street “chained CPI”. According to one writer, Barry has called the Republican bluff–they have said they will brook no tax increases unless something is done about “entitlements”–you know, the money you’re entitled to because, well, you GAVE it to the Fed to invest throughout your working career! Well, the Prez has proposed chained CPI–the cost of living mal-adjustment that assumes that if you can’t afford steak, you’ll buy chicken and everything is still jake. Or if you can’t afford Chicken of the Sea, you’ll buy canned skipjack mackerel. And if you can’t afford canned mackerel, you’ll just go to Friskies.

The theory is that the Republicans will be so scared of losing their seats that they will do anything to avoid agreeing to this proposal. Except for one thing–who’s REALLY gonna get the blame for this? Why, the guy who proposed it, of course. President Obama. You know, the guy who DOESN’T HAVE TO RUN FOR ELECTION AGAIN?

Why all this “save Social Security” nonsense when it is solvent for the next 30 years? Why all this “entitlement reform” bullshit when Social Security has nothing to do with the budget? For that, we have to go back eight years (and actually more) to when President BUSH proposed “privatizing Social Security.” That’s right, this one has a long history–and the reason for privatizing SS was? So the money boys, the banks, the oligarchy, the plutocracy, could get their hands on that money and drain it from our senior citizens faster than any drug addict by stealing your Grandma’s Social Security check.

But wait–how does the chained CPI do THAT? Remember back then–the seniors, the AARP, everybody and their brother decided that the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) was good enough to keep them going so please do not do us the favor of letting us make bad investments, please. So the money boys–whom Barack Obama is as beholden to as any Republican, any blue dog Democrat, hell, almost every “progressive” Democrat as well–said to themselves, “If the COLA is good enough, then let’s screw the COLA. Then they’ll be clamoring to let us invest the money for them.”

And that, kiddies, is how the sky turned blue. So remember, when Grandma, when Ma and Pa, when YOU start having to eat catfood, it wasn’t just Congress, it wasn’t just Obama…

It was the banks, too big to fail, too big to jail, who wanted your money.

“Allons enfants de la Patrie, le jour de gloire est arrivé!”

Greg Uchrin is a satirist, cartoonist and professional cynic in Alexandria VA. This diary is cross-posted to his blog Intravenous Caffeine, the post-Bush era successor to HAIL DUBYUS.

• Is that yellow cake I see on the floor?

Last week, we saw the passing of the 10th Anniversary of the Iraq war—ooops, excuse me, Congress never declared war, so, ummmm, what do we call it?

When the airplanes struck the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, somewhere amid the horror of what I was seeing rose an additional realization, “Oh, my God, we’ve just had our Reichstag Fire.” I could see with horrifying clarity that this would be the defining moment that turned the United States from its democratic principles to something totally antithetical to the dreams of our nation’s Fathers. We have resisted the impulse of creating concentration camps for Moslems–we incarcerated many, but mostly exiled them for visa transgressions. We have created gulags where we gathered a mostly hapless group of alleged terrorists whose major crime seems to have been being in the wrong place at the wrong time when the wrong person wanted to collect a reward. We HAVE built massive PRISONS, but these are privately run camps to provide slave labor and corporate profit and anyone can enter. We passed the grossly obscene “Patriot” act through which almost any crime can be considered to be an act of terrorism–when the need arises.

Our incursion into Afghanistan almost looked legitimate. We claimed the head of, what was his name, Osama bin Laden? Yes, he was there, later on he claimed credit for “9/11″, which our government was already doing within minutes of the tower falls–since it had pointedly ignored the warnings from the intelligence community of terrorist actions inside the US. He was there, but the Taliban government had the nerve to ask for evidence before they would consider handing him over. So like a western posse, we went in and cleaned up the corruption in Rock Ridge and hunted down bin Laden until we were just yards from his hiding place in the mountains when…

Wait, what? The real danger is from Iraq? The country which had been under UN sanctions for a decade? Whose dictator, Saddam Hussein, couldn’t even afford to buy shoes for his army? HE had weapons of mass destruction? Yes, we had the ominous YELLOW CAKE requests–which turned out to be forgeries. We had George Bush and Tony Blair smirking their way into war. We had Dick Cheney and Condi Rice promising us mushroom clouds of doom if nothing was done immediately. We had a mountain of evidence that Colin Powell presented at the UN. I remember listening to him and being absolutely convinced by the man’s sense of sincerity… until the next morning, when I realized that all that evidence had no context. That if you believed it was something bad it was, but those conversations about hiding things could have just as easily been hiding the porn when the inspectors arrived.

And so we went off and destroyed a country within weeks. Killed several thousand Americans and maimed 10s of thousands. Killed 100s of thousands Iraqis and destroyed the infrastructure of the country. Wasted around two trillion dollars (when asked about the loss of a trillion dollars from the Pentagon budgets, Donald Rumsfeld remarked, “I’ll have to look into that,” and didn’t) which the Tea Party is now trying to collect from the poorest among us. For which sinful errors of judgment or outright acts of war-mongering for profit no one has been held accountable.

Many of us felt powerless to do anything to stop it. Only after the deed was done did I decide that I could do a political cartoon series against these criminals. I was scared too–protesting the war COULD have been considered an act of terrorism according to the Patriot Act.

HAPPY F$%^&*G ANNIVERSARY.

Greg Uchrin is a satirist, cartoonist and professional cynic in Alexandria VA. This diary is cross-posted to his blog Intravenous Caffeine, the post-Bush era successor to HAIL DUBYUS.

• On the table again–tip–invest in Mars, Nestle and Colgate-Palmolive–that’s right, they make most of the cat food

Senator Rob Portman has announced that he no longer supports chained CPI as a means of saving Social Security. Ohio’s junior senator said that his change of heart came from a personal discovery.

“I found out over the weekend,” Portman explained, “that my parents are old. I did not realize that they were on Social Security.”

Portman recently changed his stance on gay marriage about a year after his son came out. “I would have changed my stance sooner, but I had been hoping that Mitt Romney would tap me for his VP running mate. Fat chance–that asshole suggested we send my son to Tuvalu until the election was over. Tuvalu? That place is under 2 feet of water these days!”

“I always believed that all old people had socked it away and were taken endless Royal Caribbean cruises in their twilight years. And then when they couldn’t get on the boats anymore without vomiting, it was the fiscally responsible thing for their children to loot their bank accounts and put them into a home so they’d be covered 100% by Medicare and Medicaid.”

“But the parent-child relationship doesn’t exist for most Republicans. After mating, the female lays 1000 eggs and after spawning, the young eat each other to ensure survival of the greediest. They never know their mother, let alone who their father is. What happens to the mating pair with no children to put them into the nursing home? They’re left to fend for themselves. And I’ve seen a recently made study that shows that at the present rate of inflation, the price of filet mignon today will be the price of Companion cat food in five years time.”

Senator Portman added, “If this passes, I’d invest in Mars, Nestle and Colgate-Palmolive. Pet food stocks are sure to go through the roof.”
_________

Too late to do anything with: Run on the banks in Cyprus over the weekend? Only seeing news about it now that the European stocks have been affected? Tut-tut, America, that’s a little country–it’ll never happen here…

Greg Uchrin is a satirist, cartoonist and professional cynic in Alexandria VA. This diary is cross-posted to his blog Intravenous Caffeine, the post-Bush era successor to HAIL DUBYUS.

• When you’re the Supreme Court, you can definitely put one over on Fred C. Dobbs–’The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (revised)’

The latest battle in dismantling the 20th century is about to be lost in the Supreme Court. Maybe. We’ll soon find out. The Voting Rights Act–the law that forbids discrimination against voters based on race or color–not just black people, mind you, Asians, Hispanics, native Americans, Alaskans–is in danger of being overturned. There’s very little anyone can do about it. Justice Roberts makes snide and objectively false statements about there being more discrimination in Massachusetts than anywhere else. Nino Scalia calls protecting voting rights, a “racial entitlement.” OMG the E-word! Entitlements are bad–except when they benefit rich old white men. Hey Nino–Italians were a discriminated against minority as recently as the 1930s–and Sicilians were barely considered white men by substantial numbers of people in the US. Perhaps the “original intent” would mean that you only have to ensure the voting rights of 3/5 of the non-white population?

Among the other conservative four, Alito has been wisely keeping his mouth shut, but we know which way his tail blows in the wind. This leaves Clarence Thomas. OK Clarence. Is protecting the voting rights a racial entitlement? Just remember–if it is, you may never have made it to those robes. In fact, you may never have voted Republican. Or Democratic. We really want to see how you’re going to come down on this one.

Still, it could be a 5-4 one way or the other depending on which side of the bed Kennedy, the usual swing voter, got up this morning. But let’s hope that Roberts gets one of his “Do I really want my court to come off as the worst court since the Dred Scott Decision” moments. And maybe one or two others will be so disgusted at Scalia’s blatant bigotry.

And remember–race is the first step. Property ownership is the next.

“Hey, mister, can you stake a right to vote to a fellow American what’s down on his luck?”

Greg Uchrin is a satirist, cartoonist and professional cynic in Alexandria VA. This diary is cross-posted to his blog Intravenous Caffeine, the post-Bush era successor to HAIL DUBYUS.

A shoo-in for a Razzie for 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 …

Well, the Academy Awards were last night and, just in case the fright-wing had any doubts about the liberalness of Hollywood, Michele Obama was on hand to deliver the Best Picture Award to ARGO. I’m sure Rush et al will be making hay out of that for the next week.

Actually, the reason the FLOTUS was there was to present an award to a movie that celebrated one of the few times when the CIA got one right. With liberal dollops of help from Canada, eh? Hey, Ben Affleck! Canada says you didn’t give it enough credit–how aboot a big “I’m sore-ry.” Teehee–couldn’t resist twitting my Canadian relatives.

The BIG SERIOUS news tho is the dreaded SEQUESTER that is aboot–err, about–to descend upon the American people. Yes, that’s right, once again the American economy is about to be wrecked by the Tea Partiers who love America–unless a last-minute rescue worthy of THE PERILS OF PAULINE gets performed. Said last-minute rescue will naturally screw everyone in the United States except the 1% of the 1%–but that’s OK because the sequester will screw EVERYBODY and push us back into the Great Recession. Might as well save SOME people! Too bad it’s the ones who already have life rafts.

At this point, I almost wish the SEQUESTER gets performed. It will be the first time the Pentagon actually loses money and MAYBE, those damn tax-hating nincompoops will see what havoc their ideology shall wreak. But I don’t have any confidence in that. The one thing that invariably happens when you prove a true believer wrong to his face is that he will retrench and believe all the harder. Sort of like saying “I do believe in fairies” to save Tinkerbell, only screaming it.

In any case, yours truly had a great weekend at Katsucon last week. I didn’t get to see too many friends because the weekend was so good for sales, I did not dare leave the table for more than a few minutes at a time. I premiered a new work based on the HELL GIRL anime which my friend Charles Dunbar showcased in his “Dead Like Us/Remixed” presentation at the con. Thanks to Kevin and Peter of A Kawaii Boutique for their company and for taking care of my table when I needed a break. And thanks to all the cosplayers and artists who dropped by to say hi and especially the ones who bought something!

Greg Uchrin is a satirist, cartoonist and professional cynic in Alexandria VA. This diary is cross-posted to his blog Intravenous Caffeine, the post-Bush era successor to HAIL DUBYUS.

Okay, guys, time to prove just HOW OLD I AM again:

THE ROAD TO DYSTOPIA
To the tune of “The Road to Morocco”. Dystopia is pronounced Dis-TOPE-ya for the purposes of the song.
For those of you who are too young to have ever heard it, watch this Youtube video to get the tune:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_w3UG6C_Mo

We’re off on the Road to Dystopia!
Pushbuttons do not hurt our spines!
Where they’re goin’, where we’re goin’, how can we be sure?
Just keep on believing that our motives aren’t impure!

We’re off on the Road to Dystopia!
Watch out! There’s no end to the line!
I hear our target’s where they do the dance of the seven veils,
They won’t be doing it too long with rockets on their tails!

We certainly do get around!
Like endless wars in Orwell,
We’re Dystopia Bound!

We’re off on the Road to Dystopia!
Look out! Well, clear the way, ‘cuz HERE WE COME!
As long as they’re shot over there, we haven’t any cares!
We hope our next-door neighbors don’t say five-fold daily prayers!

We’re off on the Road to Dystopia!
Thinking just makes us go numb!
They told us they would never shoot them off on US soil.
Our government would never sell us second-rate SNAKE OIL!

We certainly do get around!
Like a Jimmy Cameron movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, we’re Dystopia Bound.
Or a comic book by Alan Moore that’s made into a superbudget movie that gets everybody wearing Guy Fawkes masks,
WE’RE DYSTOPIA BOUND!

No cartoon next Monday because *drumroll* this coming weekend I will be in Artist Alley at Katsucon 19, at the Gaylord in National Harbor, MD, so if you’re there, stop by and say hi–and perhaps buy a signed print or two. For those of you who CAN’T make it, go over to my Facebook fanpage and click on the LIKE button to get updates on this blog and on my other art that’s available at the conventions.

See you then. Intravenous Caffeine will be back in two weeks.

YESYESYES–I admit it–I was lipsyncing!!!
__________
Greg Uchrin is a satirist, cartoonist and professional cynic in Alexandria VA. This diary is cross-posted to his blog Intravenous Caffeine, the post-Bush era successor to HAIL DUBYUS.

• Senator Johnson doesn’t know his what from a hole in the ground?

Benghazi. We got caught with our pants down and four Americans were killed. Why? We didn’t know when it happened–except that we didn’t have enough security after Congress voted down the State Department request for more funds for security. Now everyone agrees it was al-Qaeda.
But the grandstanding goes on. First, the Republican Party, also known as Fox News, tried and tried and tried again to embarrass President Obama with it during the election. Why didn’t he know it was an orchestrated terrorist attack five minutes after it occurred? After all, the Bush Administration knew who committed the 9/11 attacks–they had all these memos they’d been ignoring since Georgie was in office. Evidently, they’ve never heard of the word “investigation” before. When you don’t know what happened, you have to spend a little time trying to find out what did. You don’t, say, blame it on Saddam Hussein when he had nothing to do with it, do you?

Well, that didn’t get any traction because nobody thought Mitt Romney would have any more of a clue (and probably less). But that hasn’t stopped the grandstanding. It rolled off Obama’s back, let’s see if we can land it on Hillary.

Ahhh, Hillary Clinton, don’t mess with her boys–she takes no prisoners. Her testimony delayed by a concussion and blood clot near the brain–which the noise machine tried to get people to believe was faked–she testified last week and wiped the floor with Senators Johnson and McCain. Poor Ron Johnson, not only was he smacked down by Hillary, but he tried to call her emotional response faked and got smacked down by Soledad O’Brien! McCain used his five minutes of “questioning” to be the querolous old man he’s become. Hillary smacked him down by smacking down Congress for NOT providing the security funds that were needed, effectively tossing the hot potato back at him.

That’s Republican obstructionism in a nutshell–prevent the Obama administration from doing something that needs getting done. Then, when the consequences of not getting it done come home to roost–blame it on Obama.

The right has gotten one win out of this–they forced the withdrawal of Susan Rice from consideration as the new Secretary of State so that John Kerry could be persuaded to withdraw from his seat in the Senate, a strategically bad move for the Democrats.

But what gets me in all this is that the one word the media uses consistently to describe Hillary Clinton is “polarizing”. A poll recently put her favorable rating at 65% and unfavorable rating at 29%–very close to the same percentage of people who consistently supported George Bush. In other words, Republicans. Republicans hate Hillary. Republicans hate Obama. The media intones that Obama is the most polarizing President in U.S. history. Why doesn’t the media get a clue? It’s the Republican party that is the polarizing element in America because they hate anyone who isn’t one of them. And these so-called patriots are going to cause the country they claim to love to crash and burn.

And what will they do? Blame it on somebody else.

Like usual.

Greg Uchrin is a satirist, cartoonist and professional cynic in Alexandria VA. This diary is cross-posted to his blog Intravenous Caffeine, the post-Bush era successor to HAIL DUBYUS.

• You should see the family going to church on Sunday…

Congratulations President Obama on the start of your second term. The first piece of advice I will give you for you to ignore is: Don’t negotiate with terrorists–stand your ground on the debt ceiling!

I pretty much ignored the Newton massacre before the end of last year–although I had plenty of ideas that my better half pronounced, “TOO SOON!” Fortunately, plenty of people–most of whom have guns–have kept the story alive–by their IDIOCY! It took several days before the NRA had gotten its collective head out of its nether orifice far enough to respond. The answer to gun violence in schools? MORE GUNS! Set up armed guards in every school building and school yard. I’m surprised David Keene didn’t add issuing kevlar vests to every student and teacher–perhaps because in Newton since the killer shot almost everyone execution style. But it’s definitely a thought.

It has been suggested before that teachers and principals be issued sidearms to keep the peace at the frontier–AKA nursery, grade, middle and high school. There’s some justification to this with kids being given handguns to come to class for safety. After all, the teachers should be allowed to return fire. You might argue that it would take far too long and cost far too much to train teachers how to handle a shootin’ iron. Nonsense, just sit them down for one of the AMC John Wayne/Clint Eastwood marathons and they’ll be ready! At least as ready as the three gun experts who managed to shoot themselves and a few other people by accident at gun shows this past weekend!

Larry Ward, founder of Gun Appreciation Day, held on the 19th, has persuasively argued that holding it just before Martin Luther King Jr. Day is something that Dr. King would have approved, if he hadn’t been assassinated. After all, if the African immigrants to America had been given the right to bear arms, there might not have been slavery. I’m sure the labor entrepeneurs who brought them over would have been happy to provide them with musket, balls and powder. And I do mean balls.

Now let me see. Armed guards are needed in schools. Guns are allowed in several state legislatures, but they already have armed guards. Several states allow guns in saloons–we’ll need armed guards there–and churches too. My question is, “Who’s going to pay for all these armed guards?” I’ve asked my local tea partiers who loudly said, “Not ME! You’d have to raise taxes to pay all those armed guards!” Well, there’s just one solution, which will appeal to the business owning crowd, I’m sure. Privatize the police forces! It only makes sense–people who don’t have any property don’t need it protected! Open up police services to be bought by the lowest bidder and allow private citizens to pay a yearly fee for police protection.

Now we don’t want to completely take protection away from people who can’t afford a yearly contract. They can obtain police services on a per incident basis at a modest rate. All major credit cards and Paypal accepted. Yessirree Bob! I’m sure that will be the most equitable solution. Just what the Founding Fathers envisioned!

Don’t forget to pack heat with lunch, dearees!

Greg Uchrin is a satirist, cartoonist and professional cynic in Alexandria VA. This diary is cross-posted to his blog Intravenous Caffeine, the post-Bush era successor to HAIL DUBYUS.

If you think this doesn’t make any sense, join the club…

Bill O’Reilly and the Faux News crowd are in the middle of their annual War On The War Against Christmas, dredging up every incident of Happy Holiday-ism they can find in an effort to show how anti-Christmas America has become. Bill also argued that Christianity isn’t a religion, but a philosophy. Not to say that a good Catholic boy like O’Reilly has a fundamental misunderstanding of either Christmas or Christianity, let’s take his statements at face value for a moment.

As the Spirit of Christmas Present says to Scrooge (in the Alastair Sim movie but not the book), “We Spirits of Christmas do not live but one day a year, we live the entire 365.” And what is that “spirit of Christmas”? Buying gifts? Setting up Nativity scenes? Randy office parties? Santa Claus? No, the true Christmas spirit is “Peace on earth, good will towards men.” It means not going to war unless you really have to. It means giving to those less fortunate. It means going the extra mile for your fellow man. Not just in December, but all January through November as well. Above all, it means ANYTHING but paying attention to Ayn Rand.

That’s the Christian philosophy in a nutshell, Bill. And your cohorts, the Republicans in the Senate, showed just how much true Christmas spirit they had when they turned down the UN treaty on the disabled. Never mind that John McCain endorsed it, George H. W. Bush endorsed it, Bob Dole was wheeled in from his deathbed (as Jon Stewart put it) to endorse it. Never mind that it was based on OUR OWN LAWS. The Republican bloc but a handful voted it down because it raised serious concerns about our sovereignty (all treaties do–that’s part of the reason we have them), it was a socialist plot from the hated UN, it was an attack on home schooling according to Paul Ryan, the idiot we were spared from having as Vice President a few weeks ago. But above all, because Barack Obama wanted it.

Nice going, guys–maybe you’d like a chance to repeal our own disability laws now. After all, building ramps might cut into corporate profits.

Oh. And Merry Christmas.

Happy Hanukah to all our Jewish friends (as they say on the news). We will be taking our winter hiatus after our annual HOLIDAY card next week.

Greg Uchrin is a satirist, cartoonist and professional cynic in Alexandria VA. This diary is cross-posted to his blog Intravenous Caffeine, the post-Bush era successor to HAIL DUBYUS.