Intravenous Caffeine

Totally Unfair and Completely Unbalanced

An Anniversary Nobody Really Cheered About

Well, at least we kept Peoria from being nuked by Saddam Hussein...

Please Note: the Anniversary Cake is Yellow

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.

ANNOY YOUR FRIENDS! CONFOUND YOUR ENEMIES! PRESS ONE OF THESE BUTTONS--OR ELSE!
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Vote Early, Vote Often, but VOTE!

Legislature Approved Voter Fraud

Need I say WHICH legislatures?


It’s going to be a tougher election than it should be. Tough voter ID laws have been enacted in far too many states specifically designed to make it tough for “brown” people, poor people and college students to vote. Two important states, Ohio and Florida, have precipitously cut back their early voting hours. And the United States is still filled with idiots who think Barack Obama is an atheist Muslim born in Kenya.

Mitt Romney SHOULD lose. After all, his entire plan for the country is to bankrupt it and all citizens with incomes less than a million a year and then sell it off to China. That’s his M.O. You’d think people would have caught on to it. Certainly not the Fox News-watching crowd–you know, the ones who didn’t know how big Hurricane Sandy had gotten and when they DID hear, thought: “Good–it’s time for them America-hating New Yorkers to suffer like the rest of us.”

Chris Christie got thrown under the bus for actually deigning to appear with President Obama as they toured the devastation in New Jersey. The GOP better hope the bus doesn’t overturn–Christie is a big bump in the road.

So on Tuesday, as one commentator said, America gets the choice of turning back the clock–by fifty years. Let’s hope that we as a nation are not THAT INSANE. You liberals thinking you won’t vote because you are mad at Obama for not closing Gitmo, not getting universal health and waging war by remote control–think of the alternative. Now go out and vote.

THIS WEEK, yours truly will be in the Artists Alley at ANIMEUSA in Washington DC. Anyone who is an animefan and is going to the con, please drop by my table! I’ll also be giving panels on inking your comics and how to plan your manga. And, in connection with this, I inaugurate my new Facebook Fanpage. LIKE it and get news about my other artworks as they are produced and get progress reports on my graphic novel HANAKO-SAN, now being storyboarded.

Have a good week and VOTE. See you soon.

Please to remember the 5th of November, gunpowder treason and plot,
I see no reason why gunpowder treason ever should be forgot…

A penny for the old Guy!

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My Goodness, How will I pack all of my things in that time…

There is a difference between an immediate closing and signing the order for closing immediately

There is a difference between an immediate closing and signing the order for closing immediately


I have to go with Jon Stewart on this one, it’s not like they have a lot of stuff to pack. While Darth Cheney has called these the “worst of the worst”, we know that most of these guys were poor schmucks caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hell, has Cheney ever been right about this situation? Or any other? Sorry Dick, it was my fault for getting near the line while you were wildly blasting your shotgun at some birds.

There are still innocent men in Guantanamo, innocent men who’ve languished in the place of America’s shame since 2002. Many have been tortured, many subjected to humiliating treatment, unable to contact their families, refused the right to defend themselves against unspecified charges. Granted there are men who plotted against the US; but because there are so many innocents, they should be brought to federal prisons, veritable country clubs compared to this concentration camp, as soon as possible. The records and evidence–if there is any–can come over later. Juridical triage should be performed to determine which prisoners are most likely innocent, and get them the hell HOME. Before a year.

Please.

ANNOY YOUR FRIENDS! CONFOUND YOUR ENEMIES! PRESS ONE OF THESE BUTTONS--OR ELSE!
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