What Would It Take For A President to Say “The State of the Union Ain’t Very Strong”?

I mean seriously, what WOULD it take for the President to start out, “The State of the Union isn’t very strong”? Massive depression? Naw, even Herbert Hoover said the SOTU was strong. Open rebellion? I bet even Abe Lincoln said the state of the union was strong. And it was, if you didn’t count the 11 states that up and left when he was elected. Perhaps alien invasion? “Let me remind you, you still have two out of three branches of the federal government and that ain’t bad,” as the President said in MARS ATTACKS. Actual unemployment and underemployment is around 20%, we’re in debt up to our yinyangs to China because of a double recession during the Bush presidency, two wars that we shouldn’t have been in in the first place, tax cuts for the people who didn’t need them and a massive bailout of banks that had been holding a craps game with our money, credit card companies charging 30% interest, 30 million people without health insurance, BUT–The State of the Union is strong.
We did get one moment of high comedy tho–thanks to Chris Matthews of MSNBC. Forgot he was black for an hour, Chris? Way to GO! Only one month into 2010 and you already have the gaffe of the year! But wait–maybe you can outdo yourself–you have 11 more months to do it in!
President Obama gave himself a number of pats on the back, waved his finger at the right side of the aisle and outlined an ambitious agenda to get us back on track–well, not all that ambitious, there were a lot of half-measures–i.e., we need to increase jobs, but we need to keep the budget under control, so hey, let’s just do a little of both. He pointed the finger at the Bush administration for getting us into this mess more forcefully than he had since…his inauguration. You told Justice Roberts where to get off (and Stephen Colbert brought up a great point about how Roberts is willing to overturn precedent if he has only two dissents to do it on–and just where WERE Scalia and Thomas last night anway?). And he wants to see things on his desk! Well, Barry, let’s hope that you tell people exactly what you want on your desk this time around the calendar and that you knock some heads together to do it.
The problem is that we’ve heard all this before and we haven’t seen enough action on it. As my hookers say in the cartoon, you’re good at oral, now let’s see a little bump and thrust. You told us bank presidents weren’t going to get away with things and then you turn around and let them get away without showing up for their meeting with you. LEAD! Stop taking things off the table before you start negotiating. Get rid of your bad advisers. Rely more on Joe Biden than on Rahm Emanuel–Emanuel’s been advising you to give away the farm for nominal victories but Biden knows where the bodies are buried. Get rid of the financial cronies and slap around those bank presidents like you did the auto manufacturers. And for god’s sake, stop going on expensive dates with Michele while your middle class is going down with the ship–at least look like you have a bit of empathy. You said you’d rather be a good one-term president than a poor two-term one. Well, we don’t want you to be a good one-term president–we thought we were voting for a GREAT president. So stop futzing around and be what you promised.

Carrie Prejean to donate tapes as educational aid!

Readers, I have never been one to minimize the importance of self love. In fact, I’d say there was no one in the world I had more respect for than myself…and I will even respect myself in the morning, which is one of the advantages of a dissociative personality. It goes without saying that if you don’t love yourself, you cannot love anyone else, so I won’t say it, no matter how hard I force myself.
Woody Allen explained in Love and Death that the reason he was such a great lover was because he practiced so much when he was alone. Which brings me to my next topic. It seems the Extramadura region of Spain has developed a program to educate young teens in the practice of “self love”. And by “self love,” they don’t mean “positive thinking,” although it is claimed the practice will certainly perk up your self-esteem, along with certain other parts of your anatomy! Although the BBC article doesn’t mention it, I’m sure two of the reasons for touching on this topic are that it will reduce teen pregnancies and slow the spread of STDs, not to mention that it will serve in later years to maintain prostate health. After all–aren’t we talking about the safest sex there is? And you don’t even mind if your partner is unfaithful–more power to it! What I want to know is–does it take more than one class to explain it? Are there be special techniques which must be explained and explored? Use of magazines and the internet? Perhaps an advanced class on “self love à deux”? What about lab sessions? And just what will the homework be like?
Naturally, the Catholic Church and conservative political groups in Spain have exploded over this immoral class, spewing heated pronouncements about the dire effects of using those body parts for fun instead of producing babies. No one, as far as I can tell, has suggested that perhaps if priests had practiced more self love, there would be fewer altar boys with problems sitting down. Perhaps nuns would be less likely to bring out the old yardstick after a few self confidence sessions.
Which brings us to our favorite model of morality and former beauty pageant queen, Carrie Prejean. Carrie, you will remember, is so honest that she felt she had to state her convictions at the Miss California pageant that gay marriage is sinful and immoral because it says so in the Bible. Carrie is not prejudiced against gay people–some of her best friends, including her hairdresser, are gay and she’s heartbroken that so many nice people are going to burn in hell for the rest of eternity. And she is honest–after all, she owned up about her boob job after California pageant officials demanded she repay them for it for breaching her contract. Having your own boobs filling out a bathing suit is so passé–only in California would you be judged honest by admitting you had a boob job when the evidence is right out in front of you–sort of like Sean Hannity admitting his production staff doctored the tapes of the other week’s Michele Bachmann Tea Party only after he’d been caught by Jon Stewart (and then tried to explain that it was inadvertent–as if you could accidentally mix up tapes from one day with coverage of an event almost two months before–obviously they’d both been shot on the same VHS cassette).
Now, Miss Prejean has argued vehemently that the Bible says NOTHING against having a boob job–my suspicion is that it never occurred to Moses since silicone hadn’t been invented, although he might have thought it violated the false witness commandment in that Carrie’s boobs were bearing false witness against themselves–and so Carrie counter-sued the Pageant, only to drop everything when, what to my wondering eyes should appear, it became known that Carrie had made a little sex tape for her then boyfriend–nothing too serious, just a spot of driving Miss Daisy–not even a threesome or girl-girl action! She settled quickly and, when she thought the old lecher was asking her about it, she nearly walked off the set of Larry King during an interview. Suffice it to say, she said that making that tape was the worst decision she ever made in her life. Not counting the other 7 tapes she made, which must have been the seven other worst mistakes in her life. Or the 30 topless mistakes she also sent him.
Now you may think this is just a tempest in a teapot, and you’d be right! After all, I have nothing against pretty naked girls (darn it!) and if any wants to send me any pics or videos of herself, please, go right ahead–just send me an email. I promise it will NEVER get out of my hands–so to speak. But I also think that Carrie should offer some amends for having diddled the skittle about her lily-white honesty quotient. If just to provide us with the moral example we so obviously need from her. Therefore, I call upon her to send her tapes to Extramadura to serve as study aids! And let THAT be a lesson to them!

Congratulations on the Health Care Bill–99 and 54/100 % Pure. Republican Blogosphere: You Traitor, Cao!

Back when I was a kid, good sportsmanship was something you expected of everyone in the game. The losers were supposed to take their loss without whining or rancor, the winners weren’t supposed to **** them up the ***. That hasn’t been the Republican way for some time now. Good sportsmanship is something to be demanded … of the OTHER guy. Remember the Bush years? The Republicans said, “We won–deal with it”. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, are the Republicans dealing with it in the good sportsman-like manner they expected of the Democrats? If you call doing everything in your power to try to make the winners regret being alive–I guess you could say they are! Remember how they called the Democrats obstructionist for not rubberstamping 100% of Bush’s judicial appointees without question? I think the Democrats had held up maybe a dozen out of over 100 appointments. HORRORS! How can we get anything done with these bullies holding up ALL our appointments! But twe sure are getting models of cooperation NOW!
Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the Democratic Party are to be congratulated on passing SOME kind of Health Care Reform. It’s nowhere near perfect–we are told that it is to be a platform for more improvements–but frankly, since none of it is going to take effect until 2013 and it won’t be fully operational until 2019, I don’t really see how any substantial improvements are going to be made for another 10 years. After all, we’ll have to give it a chance, first. In the meantime, the health insurance companies and pharmaceutical industry have five years to squeeze every nickel out of the American people so hard, Thomas Jefferson will get acne scars–and if the credit card companies are any indication, we’ll be seeing rate hikes and deductible rises the second the Senate passes its own bill–provided a Senate bill DOES get passed.
Will Rogers once said, “I don’t belong to an organized political party–I’m a Democrat.” Considering how much Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have had to fight their own party members to get this one thing done that everyone in the country said was REALLY REALLY important, I suspect even old Will would be surprised at how dysfunctional the Democrats are today. I mean, with a 50 seat majority, how this bill managed to get passed by only 5 votes–if three people had changed votes, it would have failed–it just boggles the mind. They even had to tack anti-abortion idiocy on it to make sure they got even those five votes. WTF does abortion have to do with it???
Back to the Republicans–despite claiming NOT to be the party of NO, their strategy was to present a unified block of negativity in an effort to make Health Care Reform an epic fail for the Obama team. They needn’t have bothered–the Democrats were doing fine on that score alone. But, after the bill had gotten the requisite 218 votes, one lone Republican–Joseph Cao from a mostly Democratic district in Louisiana–decided to cast a Yea. Minority Leader Cantor stormed from the chambers and a torrent of invective was let loose by the right wing blogosphere and Twitterati. TRAITOR! HOW NOW, MAO CAO? You’d think that Republicans were the only true Americans and that taking away profits from the parasitical health insurance companies was unAmerican! On that note, don’t think it hasn’t gone unnoticed that Cao emigrated from Vietnam and only “became” an American citizen instead of being born here. He isn’t “a real American”. He’s a “gook” who should go back to Vietnam–if he likes COMMUNISM that much. My personal favorite was calling him “cat-eater”–HA! everyone knows the Vietnamese outlawed cat-eating a few years ago to cure the rat problem! Michelle Malkin asked rhetorically what Obama gave him to change his vote and said he was bought cheap by the promise of help for Katrina victims–who as we all know don’t deserve it (IRONY ALERT). And of course, impeachment threats and promises that he will lose his seat next election season the unsavory mix. I’m not sure Cao was quite ready for it all. BTW-how much have we heard about any of this? Not a thing unless you were looking for it, not just from the MSM, but not even the liberal blogs have been paying it much attention –has it reached the point when Republicans do something so completely racist and partisan, it’s no longer news?
Anyway, I wouldn’t be patting myself on the back for having crafted a bipartisan bill. Like I say in the title, 99 and 54/100s per cent pure Democratic vote does not equal bi-partisan in anyone’s books. The best you can say is that it wasn’t unanimously rejected by Republicans, thanks to Joseph Cao. Alas, he may not be in Congress more than another year.
On to the Senate!

And Another Thing–Why Are All These Books About Jews Anyway?

Conservapedia–the online encyclopedia that shows you the RIGHT way to think about things!–has come up with a new project: the translation of a CONSERVATIVE Holy Bible! Even though conservative preachers have been going great guns with that old perennial, the King James translation, Conservapedia has decided that it is much too liberal. After all, those Jacobeans who hung severed heads of criminals on prison gates were just too bleeding heart (bleeding heads don’t count). Convinced that not only have certain passages been mistranslated, but that the original texts contained politically correct interpolations, they have asked readers to help in retranslating the Bible to illustrate conservative principles. After all, it shouldn’t take too long–there’s only about 8000 verses, that could take one person only a year–think how fast it could be done with lots of people. They will also be editing the text to weed out suspicious passages, like “Father, forgive them…” Forget about–give away all your goods and follow me–obviously a later interpolation. The New Testament will probably get cut to about a page and a half but you can be sure we’re gonna get that old story about the “Eye of the Needle” gate to show that rich people really CAN get into heaven.
Now granted some recent translations have taken pains to introduce PC language–but nobody likes these translations anyway–up until the late 20th century, translators took pains to produce translations of greater and greater literal accuracy. Words change over a couple of thousand years–some Biblical vocabulary has shifted meaning and there are other words that nobody knows WTF they meant in the first place! So every translation and retranslation was intent on correcting errors made by the LAST translators because nobody speaks ancient Greek and ancient Hebrew anymore. There are entire SCHOOLS devoted to Biblical criticism–that’s right, I mean YOU, Tübingen! So where TF do these guys come off thinking they can figure out what the Bible really means and WTF is really in it? One of their justifications is “Well, Thomas Jefferson did the same thing and everyone knows what kind of bleeding heart liberal HE was.” Oooo, oooo, oooo, oooo, oooo! Got me THERE! Well, Thomas Jefferson only did that with the Gospels and he wasn’t attempting to thrust it down anyone’s throats, but was just doing it for his own intellectual curiosity, not a political screed. But I forgot–the editors of Conservapedia have opinions, not intellectual curiosity.
NONETHELESS, in a spirit of co-operation, We have decided to lend Conservapedia a hand and deliver our own conservative version of a short passage. Conservapedia is free to include this passage (as long as they footnote an attribution to Greg Uchrin, Intravenous Caffeine LOL):

The Eight Beatitudes

And Jesus said:
“Blessed are the poor in mental capacity, for they shall cast votes…
“Blessed are the mean, for they shall possess everything…
“Blessed are they who mourn, for the inheritance tax shall be abolished…
“Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice, for theirs is the hand on the switch…
“Blessed are the merciless interrogators, for they shall be called patriots and let off scot free…
“Blessed are the pure of blood, for they shall be called white folks…
“Blessed are the Peacemakers, for they shall shoot six…
“Blessed are those who reap incredible profits from astute political contributions, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.”

(For additional info, see Conservatizing the Bible. And check out TheColbertReport for instructions on how YOU can help add Stephen Colbert to the Conservative Bible )

ABOUT MEH

Cartoons and text by Greg Uchrin (aka Gregorius alexandrinus), with the able assistance of Fred and Bert Squirrel, with special appearances by George Dymme. Published Mondays and Thursdays.

SEARCH

Search for:

CALENDAR

March 2010

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
« Feb
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	31

NOTE ON COMMENTS

To leave a comment, click on the comment link at the end of the Posted on line under the title of the desired post. You do not have to be registered to leave a comment, but comments will be subject to editorial discretion--that means, no spam, no links to hate or p0|2n sites, and words that will get this site removed from strict SafeSearch queries will be replaced by @#$%.

SUBSCRIBE TO INTRAVENOUS CAFFEINE

Be There! Do That! Buy The T-Shirt!

Available at http://253056.spreadshirt.com/

Sends Us Lotses of Muneyz

No, seriously, send money. These squirrels demand pe-CAWNS!

Highlighted events

No events to show

SEE MY OLDER CARTOONS AT

VISITORS

Dissatisfied customers since 2003
(includes Hail Dubyus!)


Caffeine Suckers Since 2009