Hi, you’ve reached the McKay residence. We can’t come to the phone right now because we’re trying to bury our house in a giant pile of leaves for extra insulation. Please leave a message and we’ll call you back.
Beep!
Hello, I’m calling on behalf of John McCain for President, and the RNC, to let you know that Barack Obama is a greasy, lying, Molotov-cocktail-throwing shoe bomber sex pervert from Iran. If the Democrats take control of Washington, they will enact their radical left-wing agenda by bombing churches, parochial schools, and southern state capitals.
The liberal elite mainstream media is also not telling you that Barack Obama once listened to a Michael Jackson record, which means he associates with child molesters and --
Beep!
Wait! I wasn’t done. John McCain, on the other hand, is a cute and cuddly little ball of fun who promises to be your best pal. Just look at him – don’t you want to give him a great big hug? He’s like Elmo, only not as annoying. He promises to bomb only foreign capitals, and –
Beep!
Hi, Chuck, this is Ed from Black Death Oil Company. I just wanted to touch base about the delivery we made a few weeks ago, just before prices plummeted. Funny how that works, isn’t it, right before an election? The only thing lower than the price of oil right now is Bush’s approval rating! Oh, zing! Am I in the wrong profession, or what? Anyway, your payment is overdue, and –
Beep!
This is not a solicitation. This is an urgent business call. Please hold the line while we make you wait long enough to determine if you are enough of a sucker to fall for our scam.
Beep!
On November 4, vote for John McCain, a true reformer and maverick. John would never stand for vicious partisan attack ads that mark “politics as usual” in Washington.
Beep!
We’re offering a low introductory rate of just 2.999999 per cent to qualified –
Beep!
Barack Obama may be a smooth talker, but as everyone in “real America” understands, articulate people can’t be trusted. We can only believe people who speak in short, folksy sound bites that are easy to understand.
John McCain puts his country before politics. That’s why he chose the most qualified, mentally stable person available to be his Vice Presidential running mate, even though there were other, less-experienced candidates who could have helped him energize the base of the Republican Party and pick off votes from women.
Beep!
Mr. McKay, this is your local tax assessor calling. We’ve driven by your address three times, but we couldn’t find your house, only a giant pile of leaves. If you could please call –
Beep!
Christmas is under attack! Barack Obama and the liberal elite would have it stricken from our vocabulary! This is why it is not good enough for stores to start playing Christmas music in mid-October. If John McCain becomes President, you’ll hear nothing but “O Come All Ye Faithful” from August through January.
Beep!
Please continue to hold until our next available associate can assist you. If you start to wonder why we didn’t just call you when we had someone available, shake your head and remind yourself of the futility of trying to understand the marvelous and mysterious ways of capitalism.
Beep!
Acorn! Bill Ayers! Obama bin Laden! Terrorist! Your family will die! Stop this heinous –
Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!
End of messages.
I don’t negotiate with fear-mongers.
Showing posts with label McCain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label McCain. Show all posts
Friday, October 24, 2008
Friday, October 17, 2008
Electing History
Has anyone else noticed that the 2008 Presidential Election feels different than almost every other election in recent memory?
Normally, around this time, people look at the two candidates in front of them, and wonder what distant, swampy planet of anguish and confusion, teeming with drooling losers, jettisoned its two most incompetent stiffs to Earth, only to have them end up competing to become leader of our planet's wealthiest and most powerful collection of homo sapiens?
In 2004, for example, plenty of voters were not particularly impressed with W, since they round out he invaded Iraq under false pretenses, having doctored intelligence reports to substantiate his dumbfounding aggression.
But the electorate was still insecure enough to want a watered-down John Wayne in the White House instead of someone who, despite his real-life experience in foreign policy and warfare, is from Massachusetts.
Every four years, it seems voters shake their heads and wonder, “is this the best we can do?”
This year, would-be moderate voters actually seem to respect both candidates.
McCain has an honorable record of service and a reputation for doing the right thing instead of the most politically savvy thing.
Obama has a chance to make history by breaking a color barrier, and keeps drawing comparisons to John F. Kennedy. He has the charisma of Bill Clinton, with half the fat and almost none of the sleaziness.
Am I crazy, or are people feeling like no matter who wins, we could end up with a President who actually changes the course of American history?
Someone who will be remembered 100 years from now, and not just by 10th grade history teachers?
To find out, let's journey back in time and examine some of the most ground-breaking presidencies in our history, to see if we see any parallels.
Obviously, George Washington, who “could not tell a lie,” set the standard for all presidents to come. Too bad they all ignored that standard.
Thomas Jefferson doubled the size of our country through the Louisiana Purchase. Obama doubles the size of his campaign war chest every three days.
Andrew Jackson started the practice of appointing his friends to government jobs, rather than hiring based purely on a person's qualifications or experience. Sarah Palin tried to get her brother-in-law fired from his job as a state trooper.
Abraham Lincoln steered us through civil war and ended slavery, holding our divided country together with sheer will and guile. Barack Obama has nice teeth.
Theodore Roosevelt made a career out of championing “the little guy.” John McCain is a little guy (at 5'6”, he would be the second shortest president in history, after James Madison).
Franklin Roosevelt guided America through its most desperate period of personal and collective sacrifice, starting with the Great Depression and leading into the Second World War. Joe Biden was one of his closest advisors.
Richard Nixon became the first president to visit China, opening diplomatic relations. Sarah Palin can see China's next next door neighbor from her house.
Clearly, Americans have every reason to be optimistic that a new and exciting chapter of American history will soon be written, no matter what happens.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Chaos Reigns Over Our Broken Democracy
So John McCain doesn’t know how many houses he owns. Let me be the first liberal to offer this response: Who gives a donkey’s monkey?
You heard right, folks. I wouldn’t vote for McCain at gunpoint, but his response to this question does not bother me.
If you and your spouse took in almost $6 million a year, how long do you think it would take before you didn’t know how many houses you owned?
It’s called investing in real estate, people. And it’s a smart move, especially right now, and it’s even smarter if you pay someone else to handle your investments. No wonder McCain doesn’t know how many houses he owns.
It would be like asking me how many dinner plates are in the kitchen cabinet. My wife cares about that stuff; I just wash them.
Obama, who previously cast himself as a transcendent figure who would not lower himself to the filthy, immature squabbling of superficial “politics as usual,” lost my respect by jumping all over McCain for being “out of touch with ordinary Americans.”
I don’t know how many times I have to say it. As a certified Ordinary American, I don’t want the President of the United States to be like me.
I want the President to be brilliant, like a five-time Jeopardy champion, but also to have absurd amounts of courage, like an amateur kick boxer with engorged testicles.
And he should also have an advanced soul, like Ghandi; the type of person who is not attached to material possessions, and therefore doesn’t bother to count his money, his houses, or his menservants, because he is too busy correcting injustices and stuff like that.
In short, the less like me, the better.
Just when I was getting over this foolishness, I found out that conservative saboteurs have been all over Fox News and the Internet claiming that Barack Obama’s birth certificate is fake, and he wasn’t actually born a U.S. Citizen, which would make him ineligible to become President.
Yet another example of how modern journalism has become less concerned with facts than with raising a ruckus.
The Annenberg Foundation, a non-partisan media watchdog, got their hands on the actual birth certificate from the State of Hawaii (via some cloak-and-dagger nighttime raid?) and declared that it has all of the features required by the U.S. State Department to prove citizenship, including a raised seal, verifiable signature, and giant white-out stain.
The Annenberg people took close-up photos of the birth certificate and posted the on their website, www.factcheck.org, along with a borrowed image of a birth announcement from the Honolulu Advertiser from August of 1961, and video from a time travel expedition to Mrs. Obama’s hospital room for a live interview during the birth.
It still may not be enough to quell the conspiracy theorists.
At this point I’m just disgusted with the whole process. So my vote is going to the only candidate who suggested after Hurricane Katrina that federal officials should be arrested for negligent homicide, and who berated the Pentagon for pouring money into companies that support human trafficking and sex slavery.
That would be Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party.
I don’t expect her to win, of course, but we need strong third parties around to remind us that there are… you know… issues.
You heard right, folks. I wouldn’t vote for McCain at gunpoint, but his response to this question does not bother me.
If you and your spouse took in almost $6 million a year, how long do you think it would take before you didn’t know how many houses you owned?
It’s called investing in real estate, people. And it’s a smart move, especially right now, and it’s even smarter if you pay someone else to handle your investments. No wonder McCain doesn’t know how many houses he owns.
It would be like asking me how many dinner plates are in the kitchen cabinet. My wife cares about that stuff; I just wash them.
Obama, who previously cast himself as a transcendent figure who would not lower himself to the filthy, immature squabbling of superficial “politics as usual,” lost my respect by jumping all over McCain for being “out of touch with ordinary Americans.”
I don’t know how many times I have to say it. As a certified Ordinary American, I don’t want the President of the United States to be like me.
I want the President to be brilliant, like a five-time Jeopardy champion, but also to have absurd amounts of courage, like an amateur kick boxer with engorged testicles.
And he should also have an advanced soul, like Ghandi; the type of person who is not attached to material possessions, and therefore doesn’t bother to count his money, his houses, or his menservants, because he is too busy correcting injustices and stuff like that.
In short, the less like me, the better.
Just when I was getting over this foolishness, I found out that conservative saboteurs have been all over Fox News and the Internet claiming that Barack Obama’s birth certificate is fake, and he wasn’t actually born a U.S. Citizen, which would make him ineligible to become President.
Yet another example of how modern journalism has become less concerned with facts than with raising a ruckus.
The Annenberg Foundation, a non-partisan media watchdog, got their hands on the actual birth certificate from the State of Hawaii (via some cloak-and-dagger nighttime raid?) and declared that it has all of the features required by the U.S. State Department to prove citizenship, including a raised seal, verifiable signature, and giant white-out stain.
The Annenberg people took close-up photos of the birth certificate and posted the on their website, www.factcheck.org, along with a borrowed image of a birth announcement from the Honolulu Advertiser from August of 1961, and video from a time travel expedition to Mrs. Obama’s hospital room for a live interview during the birth.
It still may not be enough to quell the conspiracy theorists.
At this point I’m just disgusted with the whole process. So my vote is going to the only candidate who suggested after Hurricane Katrina that federal officials should be arrested for negligent homicide, and who berated the Pentagon for pouring money into companies that support human trafficking and sex slavery.
That would be Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party.
I don’t expect her to win, of course, but we need strong third parties around to remind us that there are… you know… issues.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Accountability: Making Us Stupider Since 2001
It’s “back to school time,” and we also have a major election approaching. Seems like a great time to take my car out on the Interstate and make sure its air bags are working properly.
Ha! Just kidding. I actually meant to say that it’s a great time to evaluate the political candidates’ views on education, if they have any.
Candidates haven’t said much about education, which is weird, because the Bush Administration has spent the last eight years pelting public schools with spitballs.
Take the No Child Left Behind Act, which requires teachers to be “highly qualified” in a specialty field.
Unfortunately, “education” does not qualify as a “specialty field.”
So in order to be designated as “highly qualified” to teach high school English, I needed extra coursework or a bachelor’s degree in English (no worries – I found one in the dumpster behind Pat’s Pizza).
The only problem: an English degree teaches one a lot about which objective case pronoun one should use in one’s hypothetical sentences, but it does nothing to help one figure out how to teach kids to read.
Far too many kids walk into high school classrooms barely able to read. I need to help them with the basics before they can tackle Shakespeare.
But the President would rather make sure I can write a 20-page term paper on Moby Dick at 3 a.m. on the day it’s due without spilling black coffee on my keyboard.
This is just one example of how politicians make educational decisions that look fabulous in the headlines, but in the actual classroom make about as much sense as shoveling snow with a copy of Sports Illustrated.
Another example is the amount of testing (known as “accountability”) required by NCLB. Nowadays, teachers have to demonstrate accountability every six or seven minutes, which tends to squelch creativity and innovation in the classroom.
If students are learning half as much as they used to, at least we’re accounting for that half.
So what do the leading candidates have to say?
Let’s begin with Maine’s U.S. Senate. The Collins campaign lists a bunch of accomplishments for education on its web site, including establishing a special fund for rural schools to meet NCLB requirements, and a $250 tax write-off for teachers who buy their own classroom supplies (muchas gracias).
She also got an “A” ranking from the National Education Association.
What a nerd!
Meanwhile, Tom Allen’s website lists a grand total of 1 (one) accomplishment for education, which was to “vote for” an increase in college student aid funding. The NEA also gave him an “A.”
Allen is obviously the better candidate. He is so smart that he can slack off and still pull out a good grade.
On the Presidential front, McCain says schools “must have the resources and management authority” to provide a decent education. Judging from his support of NCLB and voucher programs, his idea of providing “resources and management authority” is to yank money away from poor school districts and threaten to fire principals.
Obama would rather “support schools that need improvement, rather than punish them.” He does not say how he would accomplish this, but outlined 15 ages worth of ideas for early childhood education, recruiting teachers, and other boring stuff that could, you know, do something about all those illiterate high school students.
Incidentally, Obama also got an “A” from the NEA.
McCain got an “F.” Maybe if they’d given him a few more doses of “accountability,” he would have done better.
Ha! Just kidding. I actually meant to say that it’s a great time to evaluate the political candidates’ views on education, if they have any.
Candidates haven’t said much about education, which is weird, because the Bush Administration has spent the last eight years pelting public schools with spitballs.
Take the No Child Left Behind Act, which requires teachers to be “highly qualified” in a specialty field.
Unfortunately, “education” does not qualify as a “specialty field.”
So in order to be designated as “highly qualified” to teach high school English, I needed extra coursework or a bachelor’s degree in English (no worries – I found one in the dumpster behind Pat’s Pizza).
The only problem: an English degree teaches one a lot about which objective case pronoun one should use in one’s hypothetical sentences, but it does nothing to help one figure out how to teach kids to read.
Far too many kids walk into high school classrooms barely able to read. I need to help them with the basics before they can tackle Shakespeare.
But the President would rather make sure I can write a 20-page term paper on Moby Dick at 3 a.m. on the day it’s due without spilling black coffee on my keyboard.
This is just one example of how politicians make educational decisions that look fabulous in the headlines, but in the actual classroom make about as much sense as shoveling snow with a copy of Sports Illustrated.
Another example is the amount of testing (known as “accountability”) required by NCLB. Nowadays, teachers have to demonstrate accountability every six or seven minutes, which tends to squelch creativity and innovation in the classroom.
If students are learning half as much as they used to, at least we’re accounting for that half.
So what do the leading candidates have to say?
Let’s begin with Maine’s U.S. Senate. The Collins campaign lists a bunch of accomplishments for education on its web site, including establishing a special fund for rural schools to meet NCLB requirements, and a $250 tax write-off for teachers who buy their own classroom supplies (muchas gracias).
She also got an “A” ranking from the National Education Association.
What a nerd!
Meanwhile, Tom Allen’s website lists a grand total of 1 (one) accomplishment for education, which was to “vote for” an increase in college student aid funding. The NEA also gave him an “A.”
Allen is obviously the better candidate. He is so smart that he can slack off and still pull out a good grade.
On the Presidential front, McCain says schools “must have the resources and management authority” to provide a decent education. Judging from his support of NCLB and voucher programs, his idea of providing “resources and management authority” is to yank money away from poor school districts and threaten to fire principals.
Obama would rather “support schools that need improvement, rather than punish them.” He does not say how he would accomplish this, but outlined 15 ages worth of ideas for early childhood education, recruiting teachers, and other boring stuff that could, you know, do something about all those illiterate high school students.
Incidentally, Obama also got an “A” from the NEA.
McCain got an “F.” Maybe if they’d given him a few more doses of “accountability,” he would have done better.
Friday, August 10, 2007
G.O.P. Astrology
I have avoided writing about the war in this column because I'm supposed to be writing humor and there's very little about what's going on in Iraq that is funny.
But we have to be amused at how so many politicians, especially Republicans, have backpedaled and waffled in their support of the President.
The most plausible explanation for this, of course, is that Venus is in retrograde.
Venus, you may remember, is the second planet from the sun. If there were an Interstate Highway stretching from here to the sun, Venus would be the next exit, although you would likely run out of gas before you even got to the Lunar Rest Area.
Venus, with its murky atmosphere full of thick, poisonous gases (sort of like Worcester, Massachusetts), orbits in such a way that it appears to move away from Earth for a few weeks every 18 months or so. Of course, it's actually not moving away from Earth, it's just turning around so it can modestly change into its bell-bottoms and leisure suit in preparation for a night out with Motor Booty Affair.
Astrologists call this “Venus Retrograde,” and they say it is responsible for people stepping back, taking stock of their lives, and re-connecting with their values.
Apparently, this causes a lot of problems in relationships, as old, unresolved issues resurface and couples tend to lose communication skills, as evidenced by this recent conversation I had with my wife:
Wife: Honey, I know you work hard and have a lot on your mind, but would you please put away your cereal bowl when you finish with it? We're starting to attract ants.
Me: I want a divorce.
So this retrograde is the most likely explanation for the falling out between congressional Republicans, who have done some soul-searching and decided they would really like the war to end so they can get re-elected, and Bush, who, despite his best intentions, comes off as an oblivious, ego-maniacal nincompoop.
The only noteworthy Republican who has not flip-flopped on Iraq is Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a Presidential candidate who, near as I can figure, says and does what he thinks is right, even if the American People do look fat in that dress.
As a result, polls indicate he has about as much chance of being elected President as Minnesota's transportation commissioner.
A former Prisoner Of War during Vietnam, McCain continues to support the Iraq War, probably on the grounds that the United States has already exhausted its quota for inexplicably invading foreign nations and leaving the chaos-stricken locals to rebuild the charred remains of their infrastructure all by themselves.
Or perhaps McCain believes we still have something meaningful to accomplish in Iraq.
Maybe our nation's greatest legacy will be to create a viable and peaceful democracy in a region soaked in blood and ethnic hatred for thousands of years, and, in so doing, secure the American Dream for generations to come, and, more importantly, enable us to lay claim to enough oil to finally build that Interstate Highway to the Sun.
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