Intravenous Caffeine

Totally Unfair and Completely Unbalanced

FINALLY!

A tank leaves Iraq--a little bit more peace on earth.

Going home--now let's wind up Afghanistan

Four score minus 72 years ago–the length only SEEMS Lincolnian–eight, nearly nine years, to be exact, the United States armed forces gave up the hunt for bin Laden when only a football field away from his cave to go into Iraq and do–something. It was never too clear what that something was. It was supposed to be to disarm and save the world Saddam Hussein, the mad dictator who possessed thousands of WMDs in a country that had been under UN economic sanctions for over ten years. The world was treated to visions of mushroom clouds, dancing over their heads, if this action wasn’t taken. For some reason, the French, Russians and Chinese weren’t impressed. We focused our indignation on the French and named them “surrender monkeys,” and without imprimatur of UN resolutions, blitzkrieged our way to Baghdad.

Funny thing, turns out the French were right. No WMDs. That’s OK, they’re still surrender monkeys to the vast numbers of Americans who were convinced that Saddam Hussein was going to nuke their mall in days if we didn’t invade. Turns out the country was broke–that decade of economic sanctions had done its work. The troops who faced the American-led onslaught barely had shoes, let alone WMDs. The country was SO broke in fact, that Saddam Hussein was using his reputation for insanity and for once having WMDs to protect his country from being attacked by one of his neighbors! Talk about a strategy being too successful!

The war, we were told, would pay for itself. The oil that we’d get first crack at would lower the energy bills for the United States 10 times over. Hmmmm, I wonder how THAT worked out. Forty-five bucks to fill the tank of a Honda CIVIC??? We were also told the war would be so cheap that it wasn’t worth putting on the budget. Nearly a trillion dollars later we can chalk that up as another miscalculation.

Lives? Only about 5000 American, British and “coalition of the blackmailed”. But over 100,000 Iraqi lives. The wounded figures are far greater and the wounds they suffered are far more severe because we can save lives better than we can save limbs or protect heads from explosions. The number of Americans with PTSD number in the hundreds of thousands.

A little over 8 years ago, I began a cartoon series, Hail Dubyus! lampooning the Bush administration in the hope of being even a small voice of sanity. Like the WMDs, my influence was vastly over-rated 😀 When the Bush era finally ended and the new era of hope began, I changed the name of my cartoon. I was under no illusion that things would be immediately better. In some significant ways, they are. In others, we’re in worse shape than we were before, mostly due to Congressional obstruction and economic advisors whose loyalty to Wall Street has been greater than their concern for Main Street, a chief executive who thought that good faith negotiations were possible with people who have pledged themselves to his destruction, and a Supreme Court that thinks that while all men are created equal, dollar for dollar they’re not quite as equal as corporations. On top of that, as our troops finally leave Iraq in accordance with our word to the government that we set up, these same Congressional obstructionists ask if we shouldn’t stay there a little longer to better fulfill our goals.

WHAT GOALS?

I lift my voice in thanksgiving that some of our forces will be home for Christmas, Chanukah, Yule, Kwanzaa, Saturnalia, Solstice and whatever other year end celebrations they will be able to partake of without being shot at. Happiest of holidays for them and their families! My wish for the New Year is that soon we will be able to finish whatever it is we started in Afghanistan and bring those troops home as well. And so we shall be able to say ourselves, as GIR observed when Invader ZIM told him that he could now self-destruct:

FINALLY!

Happy Holidays to Everyone. We shall take a winter break until January 23 to have time to update the website and work on other projects and get fat on Christmas cookies.

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This just in from Moosylvania–Palin Skedaddles

Homage to Rocky and Bullwinkle--celebrating the resignation of moosekiller Palin--Boris Badenov saw the party in Alaska from his window-- with guest appearance by Invader Zim who opines that Palin is crazy like a moose, and Gir who put lipstick on a pig.

Palin is so upset she went out to sue a Moore--I mean shoot a moose

Something tells me that Sarah Palin’s dustup with Dave Letterman didn’t quite have the salutory effect she wanted it to have. Sure, she made the headlines–for looking like an idiot–and his ratings went up a couple of notches. The media can be just so mean to poor little Sarah. So taking the advice that “when the going gets tough, the tough get going,” she decided to quit being governor. I’m not sure that that is exactly what that saying was supposed to mean, but that’s the way Sarah saw it. After all, she wants to get down more to the lower 48 as the Alaskans call it to have a greater visibility on the national stage in preparation for her presidential run in 2012. She has a book deal with Rupert Murdoch and there’s speculation that Fox News would love to have her spreading innuendo about godless liberal socialist fascist Muslims. There’s also speculation that there may be more ethics probes on the way and more than a few people have suggested that perhaps there is a family matter that needs to be handled before it becomes an issue. I’m rather hoping that she’ll confess to being one of Mark Sanford’s earlier dalliances–you know, the ones that he claimed not to have crossed some undefined line in? Rumors all of it–Sarah just got BORED and when Sarah gets bored, she quits and leaves her mess behind for someone else to clean up. She’s done it before–quitting the chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. I wonder if she would have quit the Vice Presidency had McCain won? After all, being VPOTUS is supposed to be a terribly boring job–it was once famously described as not being worth a bucket of warm spit–only it wasn’t spit that was warm. That’s changed since Dick Cheney turned it into the actual power behind the throne, but Joe Biden seems intent on moving it back to its rightful place. Still, Bill Kristol thinks it might be a brilliant move–a certain sign that it is anything but. I’ll go with Karl Rove on this. Sarah, dear Sarah, what are you thinking? Of course, I’ve now become one of the bloggers she may be threatening to sue, like Shannyn Moore from the Huffington Post 🙂 Nice of her to make that threat on the 4th of July weekend, when we celebrate the freedoms of the United States–like freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
Today’s cartoon is an homage to Rocky and Bullwinkle. Back when I did my original Palin treatment, I’d planned on sticking Bullwinkle in it, but there just wasn’t enough room to do justice to the mighty moose. I obviously knew I would need to use him further on down the line 🙂 Invader Zim and Gir have joined the party celebrating Sarah’s resignation–after all, what could be better than a room with a moose if not a room with a herd of moose?

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