Lester & Charlie Present

Posts Tagged ‘Guns’

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Cartoonists Against Gun Violence

In Study Break, Video on April 23, 2013 at 9:52 am

Demand Action

What happens when more than 20 of America’s funniest cartoonists get together? They make a very serious public service announcement demanding action against gun violence.

This PSA was directed by Lester & Charlie’s supportive friend, Peggy Stern. Voices were provided by Lester & Charlie’s less-supportive friends, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Julianne Moore.

Show them you agree that it is time for action – and show Congress your support in protecting the next generation. All you have to do it give it a watch – and share it if you can.

Big numbers scare Congress more than bullets.

For more ways to get involved: DemandAction.org

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The Week in Politics

In Study Break on January 19, 2013 at 3:43 pm

This week, New York State and President Obama fueled the paranoia of paranoid gun nuts on the national political stage, and Dear Abby died at the age of 94 – leaving those nuts with no one to advise them on the politics of daily life.

The New York Times published some of her best letters, which we’ve plagiarized below:

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Dear Abby: My wife sleeps in the raw. Then she showers, brushes her teeth and fixes our breakfast — still in the buff. We’re newlyweds and there are just the two of us, so I suppose there’s really nothing wrong with it. What do you think? — Ed

Dear Ed: It’s O.K. with me. But tell her to put on an apron when she’s frying bacon.

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Dear Abby: I have always wanted to have my family history traced, but I can’t afford to spend a lot of money to do it. Have you any suggestions? — M. J. B. in Oakland, Calif.

Dear M. J. B.: Yes. Run for a public office.

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Dear Abby: Are birth control pills deductible? — Bertie

Dear Bertie: Only if they don’t work.

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Dear Abby: Our son married a girl when he was in the service. They were married in February and she had an 8 1/2-pound baby girl in August. She said the baby was premature. Can an 8 1/2-pound baby be this premature? — Wanting to Know

Dear Wanting: The baby was on time. The wedding was late. Forget it.

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Dear Abby: Two men who claim to be father and adopted son just bought an old mansion across the street and fixed it up. We notice a very suspicious mixture of company coming and going at all hours — blacks, whites, Orientals, women who look like men and men who look like women. This has always been considered one of the finest sections of San Francisco, and these weirdos are giving it a bad name. How can we improve the neighborhood? — Nob Hill Residents

Dear Residents: You could move.

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The Week in Politics

In Study Break on December 15, 2012 at 12:00 pm

Hindsight is supposed to be 20/20.


April 1999 - two teenage schoolboys shot and killed 12 schoolmates and a teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, before killing themselves.

July 1999 – a stock exchange trader in Atlanta, Georgia, killed 12 people including his wife and two children before taking his own life.

September 1999 - a gunman opened fire at a prayer service in Fort Worth, Texas, killing six people before committing suicide.

October 2002 - a series of sniper-style shootings occurred in Washington DC, leaving 10 dead.

August 2003 - in Chicago, a laid-off worker shot and killed six of his former workmates.

November 2004 - in Birchwood, Wisconsin, a hunter killed six other hunters and wounded two others after an argument with them.

March 2005 – a man opened fire at a church service in Brookfield, Wisconsin, killing seven people.

October 2006 – a truck driver killed five schoolgirls and seriously wounded six others in a school in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania before taking his own life.

April 2007 - student Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed 32 people and wounded 15 others at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, before shooting himself, making it the deadliest mass shooting in the United States after 2000.

August 2007 - Three Delaware State University students were shot and killed in “execution style” by a 28-year-old and two 15-year-old boys. A fourth student was shot and stabbed.

December 2007 - a 20-year-old man killed nine people and injured five others in a shopping center in Omaha, Nebraska.

December 2007 - a woman and her boyfriend shot dead six members of her family on Christmas Eve in Carnation, Washington.

February 2008 – a shooter who is still at large tied up and shot six women at a suburban clothing store in Chicago, leaving five of them dead and the remaining one injured.

February 2008 – a man opened fire in a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois, killing five students and wounding 16 others before laying down his weapon and surrendering.

September 2008 - a mentally ill man who was released from jail one month earlier shot eight people in Alger, Washington, leaving six of them dead and the rest two wounded.

December 2008 - a man dressed in a Santa Claus suit opened fire at a family Christmas party in Covina, California, then set fire on the house and killed himself. Police later found nine people dead in the debris of the house.

March 2009 - a 28-year-old laid-off worker opened fire while driving a car through several towns in Alabama, killing 10 people.

March 2009 – a heavily armed gunman shot dead eight people, many of them elderly and sick people, in a private-owned nursing home in North Carolina.

March 2009 - six people were shot dead in a high-grade apartment building in Santa Clara, California.

April 2009 – a man shot dead 13 people at a civic center in Binghamton, New York.

July 2009 - Six people, including one student, were shot in a drive-by shooting at a community rally on the campus of Texas Southern University, Houston.

November 2009 - U.S. army psychologist Major Nidal Hasan opened fire at a military base in Fort Hood, Texas, leaving 13 dead and 42 others wounded.

February 2010 – A professor opened fire 50 minutes into at a Biological Sciences Department faculty meeting at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, killing three colleagues and wounding three others.

January 2011 – a gunman opened fire at a public gathering outside a grocery in Tucson, Arizona, killing six people including a 9-year-old girl and wounding at least 12 others. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was severely injured with a gunshot to the head.

April 2 – A gunman kills seven people and wounds three in a shooting rampage at a Christian college in Oakland.

July 20 – A masked gunman kills 12 people and wounds 58 when he opens fire on moviegoers at a showing of the Batman film “The Dark Knight Rises” in Aurora, a suburb of Denver, Colorado.

Aug. 5 – A gunman kills six people during Sunday services at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, before he is shot dead by a police officer.

Aug. 24 – Two people are killed and eight wounded in a shooting outside the landmark Empire State Building in New York City at the height of the tourist season.

Sept. 27 – A disgruntled former employee kills five people and takes his own life in a shooting rampage at a Minneapolis sign company from which he had been fired.

Oct. 21 – Three people are killed in a Milwaukee area spa including the estranged wife of the suspected gunman, who then killed himself.

Dec. 14 – A shooter opens fire at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, killing 27 people including children.

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The GOP Time Machine: Racial Profiling

In GOP Time Machine on July 5, 2012 at 9:37 am

Republicans are calling for a return to the 1950s, but what does that mean? As a public service, Lester & Charlie are doing the homework so that you don’t have to.

In this report: Racial Profiling!

Watch more of the GOP Time Machine Series here!

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99.44% Pure

In Poll on March 8, 2012 at 12:02 pm

This Week’s Poll!

What does it mean to be a Republican these days? It’s an excellent question, given that, just this week, conservative columnist David Brooks published a piece in the New York Times urging mainstream Republicans to wrestle their party’s identity back from right-wing extremists. Alas, mere hours later, Senator Olympia Snowe, one of the last of the GOP’s once-powerful moderates, quit out of utter frustration with being constantly told to toe the far-right party line.

So it seems that a “true Republican” these days is an extremist. That might explain the rise of Rick Santorum, who, post-Super Tuesday, seems poised to take the 2012 GOP nomination fight all the way to the convention. The Republican electorate seems split between those who want to see Obama defeated and those who are hellbent on nominating a conservative purist. Poor Mitt Romney, the only one who anyone thinks has any chance of beating Obama in the general election, is now so desperate to show his ultra-conservative credentials that he offers only the lamest of rebukes to his woman-hating employee Rush Limbaugh. “It’s not the language I would have used,” Romney said in response to Limbaugh’s calling a woman who uses birth control pills a “slut.” (On the House floor this week, Illinois Rep. Luis Gutierrez wondered if Mitt would have preferred the term “Lady of the Evening.”)

And so all of this brings us to Laurens County in South Carolina. The good folks there have decided that, if you want to be on the GOP primary ballot, you gotta make a couple of promises. 28 of them, including promises to never again look at pornography, to get married only once (and to someone of the opposite sex), to be eternally faithful to that person, oppose abortion in all circumstances and to uphold the right to have guns — or, as the pledge states, “all kinds of guns.”

Laurens County’s pledge has us confused. OK, so clearly they’re not duped by Mitt’s desperate dives to the right. But couldn’t they just vote for Rick Santorum? In seeing the need for this new “purity pledge,” are they saying that they think even THAT lunatic isn’t conservative enough? Sheesh. How much more conservative can you get? Let’s say you’re a GOP candidate trying to get on the ballot in Laurens County. What else would you have to do to prove that you’re a true conservative? What do YOU think?

Have a private comment that you wouldn’t mind seeing broadcast to an international audience in the next Lester & Charlie Newsletter? Leave it here!

Want to find out what people said? Subscribe to the Lester & Charlie Newsletter!

And now, check out this week’s featured video:

MAKE YOUR OWN SEA MONKEYS!

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The GOP Time Machine: A Gun in Every Toy Box

In GOP Time Machine on January 12, 2012 at 6:40 pm

Republicans are calling for a return to the 1950s, but what does that mean? As a public service, Lester & Charlie are doing the homework so that you don’t have to.

In this report: A gun in every toy box!

Watch more of the GOP Time Machine Series here!

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It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

In Study Break on December 5, 2011 at 9:00 am

As if Black Friday wasn’t scary enough, Arizona’s Scottsdale Gun Club decided to shock us into the holiday spirit. For $5, children of the gun club’s members posed with a loaded Santa. Not the average drunk kind that might occupy your local department store, but an armed one with an AK-47.

And the kids got to hold firearms while on Santa’s lap, too. Talk about a bang for your buck! We thought you might enjoy a couple “shots” of the delighted, pistol-packing tots:

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You Can’t Touch That!

In Poll on November 19, 2011 at 10:35 am

This Week’s Poll

In case you had heard something to the contrary, we feel the urgent need to inform you that the United States Congress has been busy. You already know that they’ve spent valuable time on an inane debate about re-affirming our national motto, “In Corporations God We Trust.” And then, to enhance the nutritional value of school lunches, they declared that pizza is a vegetable.

But there’s new legislation that the GOP-controlled house has considered just as important. And, true to the GOP mantra, it’s about states’ rights.

What’s that? You thought the GOP was defending states’ rights? Why no. It turns out the GOP only cares about states’ rights when it furthers their psychotic agenda. To prove it, the House passed legislation that repeals any state’s right to enforce its laws about concealed weapons on interstate travelers. The bill asserts that California and New York (to name just two examples) have no business enforcing gun-control laws if they infringe on the rights of someone from, say, Utah, to traipse around Brooklyn or San Fran with a concealed weapon licensed by a state with notoriously lax gun-control laws. See, states’ rights can go to hell if a vote jeopardizes a Congressperson’s standing with the NRA.

This is lunacy. Over 200,000 people have gotten concealed-gun permits from Utah — without even living there. Other states, with much larger populations and very different gun issues, are being told by Congress that they must conform, that weaker gun laws from other states are superior. So much for states’ rights. We happen to believe in a strong federal government, but we also think that, if you support the right of states to govern themselves, it’s asinine to cherry-pick what they can decide and what they can’t.

The GOP is notoriously smug. Surely they won’t stop at this. As long as they’re getting away with (we’ll say it) murder, what will they do next? What’s the next thing they’ll allow you to carry concealed across state lines? What do YOU think?

Have a private comment that you wouldn’t mind seeing broadcast to an international audience in the next Lester & Charlie Newsletter? Leave it here!

Want to find out what people said? Subscribe to the Lester & Charlie Newsletter!

Before you leave, don’t forget to check out this week’s featured video:

What You (still) Don’t Know about Herman Cain