Happy Birthday Mr. President!

Where were you 48 years ago today? No. Seriously, where were you 48 years ago today? I know you keep throwing people off track by letting them think you may have been born in Kenya, but I know the truth. You're...

Canadian, eh?

The Canadians are coming! The Canadians are coming! God help us all the Canadians are coming!!!!! Impeach Obama now or we'll all be forced to care about hockey!!!

From the Latin, sarcasmus

Tomorrow is the inauguration of Barack Obama as The United States of America’s 44th President. Don’t feel bad if you didn’t know that, the whole deal hasn’t gotten a lot of publicity. The poor guy is taking office tomorrow, swearing on a Bible to uphold the constitution and it’s like no one has even noticed.

The press, usually so gung-ho to find a story and beat it to death, hasn’t muttered a single word about the day. I’ve yet to see a single commemorative item to mark the occasion. It’s like the election back in November never even happened.

It’s kind of sad really. Here this guy ran such a great campaign and won the presidency and now that’s he’s on the cusp of taking over, he’s being completely ignored. If only there were some kind of historical precedence being set here! If only Obama was the first left-handed president, or the first president from Illinois, but alas, Obama is as plain as unbuttered toast. Absolutely nothing sets him apart from all the others who have held the position.

And Obama’s constituents are the very definition of apathetic. He could wear bells all over his suit tomorrow and walk out there blowing a shrill whistle and I doubt anyone would take notice. It’s like the guy is invisible.

What’s worse is that we know nothing of what he’s been up to since the election. For all we know he could have been building a giant replica of himself using an old Lego set or catching flies with chopsticks. No one has said a word about what he’s been up to!

At least the guy doesn’t have any expectations following him into the job. I mean, he could take a four-year nap and no one would really notice. The country is in the best shape it’s ever been in and things are so good that no matter what he does things will be okay.

I just feel bad for the guy. Would it really kill us to come together and show the guy some love? Would it kill the great and powerful celebrities of our nation to make a fuss over him and help the guy out with a little self-esteem boost? Would it kill the newspapers, magazines and television shows to give the guy some props?

I, for one, happen to think that the inauguration of a new President is a big deal and would like to see just a bit of coverage. I wish they could find just one unique thing about him to help make the occasion a little more special. I wish people would just pay a little attention to what’s going on!

Sadly, I just don’t think we have it in us. We’re so broken up about the departure of President Bush that we’ve hardly even noticed the new guy. We’re so content with the pure awesomeness of the state of our union that we can’t find it in ourselves to get worked up over a change in leadership. Our economy is so stable; our foreign relations so tight, our domestic safety so complete that its hard to have much emotion regarding a new guy because there really isn’t anything for him to do.

Well, the mainstream press may not cover the inauguration and you’ll probably go the entire day without someone mentioning it to you, but as always, you can count on me to be here, ready to point the way to events you should be keeping your eyes on. So, take a moment tomorrow and enjoy the swearing in of our next President. Find something about the occasion worth getting excited about—even if you have to completely manufacture it. These things only happen every four years, so enjoy it while you can.
Here’s to inauguration day and to President Elect Barack Obama. You may be completely uninteresting and not newsworthy in any way, you may lack any kind of remarkability at all sir, but I am standing up and taking notice of the fact that you become President tomorrow, even if I, like the cheese, stand alone.

Palin Pranked

If you vote for McCain-Palin on Tuesday, and they win--then McCain dies in office, THIS, my friends, is YOUR President:

And I endorse...

Well, I think it’s time to officially endorse a candidate and I’m going to go ahead and endorse Barack Obama. Consider yourself endorsed by me Mr. Obama. And consider yourself special too, because this is the first time I’ve ever endorsed a Democrat candidate for President of the United States. That’s right. I’m one of those people. I voted for Bush, not once, but twice. I voted for Bob Dole and George Bush the elder as well. That said, I’m not a Republican. Actually, I’m a registered Democrat, but that’s because I live in Chicago and prefer that the pot holes in my neighborhood be repaired in a timely manner.

It’s easy to look back and cast ridicule at my voting record, but I’ve voted my conscience in every election and consider myself an informed voter. In my first foray into electing a President I voted for George Herbert Walker Bush, who I thought had been a pretty good President. Retrospectively, I wish he’d finished the job in Iraq—the mistake of not doing so really killed his son’s presidency. But, alas, Slick Billy Clinton won that election and like most presidents elected from the party of the mule, the economy thrived and the foreign relations and defense suffered.

Willy C ran for a second term against Mr. Viagra himself, Bob Dole, who was a nice enough guy and an honorable man—aside from pimping himself for erection meds, just wasn’t a match for the charisma of Clinton and in fairness to Bill, to say the economy was good under his presidency was an understatement of extreme proportions. Clinton made two big mistakes as it would turn out. The first was that he didn’t do enough to curb the rising threat of Islamic Fundamentalists. It was naïve, in retrospect, to assume that their anti-American hatred would never play itself out on our soil. They got more and more bold under Clinton’s presidency.

The second mistake was Al Gore. The party of the donkey could have forged a monopoly if Clinton had picked a Vice President who wasn’t equal parts robot, zombie and computer generated voice. Being a good leader is more than having a good policy, it’s inspiring others to follow. Al Gore is a smart man, but he couldn’t inspire a meth junkie to get high.

So, at the end of Clinton’s 8 years in the White House, after he worked wonders with the economy and stained a nice girl’s blue dress, I voted for Georgie the Moron. I didn’t like him as a candidate. I liked him better than Gore though. Al Gore just wasn’t a leader. Bush, like him or not, showed strength and leadership ability in that first election. It’s easy to ridicule a vote for Bush now. We know he’s a moron. That wasn’t always the perception of him though. To say so is revisionist history. In fact, after the attacks on 9/11, he was a strong, solid voice that calmed the nation and gave us resolve for what needed to be done in a brand new world.

His War on Terrorism was supported on both sides of the aisle. It’s important to remember that while he was the spearhead, on the whole, we as a country wanted to kick someone’s ass. That’s where things went awry for Georgie the Moron. Knowing that he was in over his head, he let people like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld run the country. It turned out that Georgie wasn’t such a good leader after all. And worse, he’d picked really bad people to rely upon to help him. I still judge Georgie to be a good man, I really do. I think he’s a poor judge of character though. I think he listed to the wrong people and the deeper they dragged him into the mud, the more he had to depend on them to not let him go.

But I get ahead of myself. He was running for re-election in 2004 against John Kerry, who I still do not believe is a good man. The Donkey’s really screwed up by not offering up a candidate that the American people could get behind in this election. Had they trotted someone, anyone credible out, I would have voted for them. Once again, Bush was in a “lesser of two evils” election. The last time, I judged him to be the lesser of two those to evils, this time, I chose the evil I knew over the evil I didn’t. I firmly stand behind my vote, knowing full well what a mess Bush made of things, because I think Kerry would have made a worse mess of them.

It turned out that the final four years of Bush were a nightmare. His first term, was ridiculed for decisions he made based on bad intelligence. We invaded Iraq because we thought they had Weapons of Mass Destruction. The thing that people tend to forget is that the intelligence was real and widely believed, even if it was false. Cheney and Rumsfeld didn’t need much of an excuse to declare war and in this, they had it.

He also was ridiculed for not anticipating the amount of time it would take to withdraw from Iraq. But he wasn’t the only one. Again, it’s easy to point the finger at him, but a few things happened that—though they could have been foreseen, were not. First, the people of Iraq didn’t play their part. This left us with a mess because their failure to get organized quickly allowed our many enemies in the area to use Iraq, a country to which they held no particular loyalty or ownership, as the battleground on which to fight the USA.

When your “military” depends on hijacking planes for an air force and suicide bomb-laden zodiacs as a navy, and the enemy does you a favor setting up shop with their Army and Marines at your neighbor’s house, you lick your chops and go pick a fight.

They did. I still think this clusterfuck saved the citizens of our country another attack on U.S. soil. I would still rather engage the enemy on Iraqi soil than in New York and Washington D.C. I don’t think it was planned that way, but that’s what happened.

A few years ago, it was thought that the central focus of this election would be immediate withdrawal from Iraq. It’s not. The reason for that is that both parties know that removal for removal’s sake is a danger to our country, our allies and the entire Middle East region. Both parties know that immediate withdrawal from Iraq is a bad idea. John Kerry planned to do just that. Four years later, it’s accepted that this strategy would have been a dangerous and disastrous one. People who criticize a second vote for Bush tend to overlook this fact.

You thought this was going to be an endorsement huh? Well, it is, but my reasons for voting for Obama are the result of the lessons I’ve learned from each of these previous elections in which I had the privilege to vote.

Here are few things I know about our government. It’s a bad idea for either party to be in charge for too long. More than 8 years of any party in charge is a dangerous thing. If the economy is great then there’s a good chance our foreign policy is messed up and vice versa. No matter how much prosperity we’ve had under an administration, giving either party more than eight years spells danger. It could be argued that more than four years is spells danger too.

I also think that more than 8 years of one party picking Supreme Court Justices is a bad thing. I think balance in that branch of government is essential. Those two reasons, of course, lead to a vote for the Democrat candidate in this election.

But those reasons, are really only tie breakers and I’d be lying if I said that it came down to tie breakers this time around. In this election, I don’t think it’s a battle of the lesser of two evils.

I’ve long admired John McCain, but I’m afraid that this campaign has painted an ugly portrait of him. Instead of running HIS campaign, he ran the campaign the elephant party wanted him to run. He’s been a puppet in much the same way that Bush has been. He hasn’t run the campaign of the “maverick” he has at times been throughout his political career. He’s made me think of him as a puppet and as dangerous. Still though, it may very well be that he’s running that campaign because the monetary support of the far right is the only way he stood a chance of getting elected. It may very well be that he chose Sarah Palin as a means of pandering to that money.

As much as I don’t want him to win, a part of me still thinks that once he had the presidency, he’d revert back to the John McCain I’d often admired throughout the years. But once again, I’m not casting this vote for the guy running against the guy I’m afraid of or worried about either. I don’t think the country will suffer from a McCain presidency. I’m not casting this vote out of fear of the candidate running against the one I support.

I’m voting for Barack Obama because while I’m not a fan of big government, I think that his plan for our country economically is the right one for us right now. The only place money trickled down under the rule of the elephant party was into the pockets of people who were already rich. It’s silly to assume that the giants of industry would do anything but be selfish. The distance between the rich and the middle class is vast, while the distance between the middle class and poor is much closer. It’s time for the bottom two thirds (and that’s not two thirds in terms of number of total people by the way) narrowed their respective gaps. That happens from the bottom up, not through trickling down.

I’m voting for Barack Obama because the state of health care in this country scares me. I think our neighbors to the north will tell you that universal health care, while having some advantages, is not the ideal either. Both candidates realize that a happy medium is needed. I tend to think Obama’s ideas favor someone of my age, income and social status.

I’m voting for Barack Obama because I’m tired of the elitist attitude of our foreign policy. I think the idea that we only sit down to talk with people that promise to do what we tell them to is the very antithesis of democratic. I think that the notion that sitting down with extremist leaders validates their cause is about as ludicrous as the idea that inviting a Santa Clause to the White House on Christmas validates his existence.

I think that the idea of John McCain’s about a League of Democracies does nothing but further separate the world instead of bringing it together. I think that you only pick sides before you play and in this case, play = war. I think that we have a body that’s supposed to bring the nations together and it’s called the United Nations. I think it’s corrupt, ineffectual and impotent. I think that has happened because of our reduced standing as a country in the eyes of the world. I think the world, as a whole, believes in the ability of Obama to make us respectable again.

I’m voting for Obama because I believe he listens to the people. I’m voting for him because I believe he is a leader. I’m voting for him because while he may be inexperienced, I think he can unite, galvanize and motivate our country. I’m voting for him because I judge him to be a good man, with common sense and integrity. I’m voting for him because I believe he is intelligent. I’m voting for him because he is well spoken and can effectively communicate, not only with his constituents, but with his peers in the governing of the world’s countries.

I’m voting for Obama because of a gut feeling that he is something special. I’m voting for him because I think he has a chance to be a once-in-a-lifetime type of leader, like Kennedy, Roosevelt, Lincoln and Washington before him. I’m voting for him because when it’s all said and done, when all the facts are weighed, personalities taken into consideration, past lessons of my voting life accounted for the summation of facts completed, I believe Barack Obama is the overwhelming right choice for our country.

So, with all this said, I will cast my vote for Barack Obama on Tuesday. Time will tell if my decision was right or wrong, but I’ve never cast a vote I regretted because I’ve never voted without reason—whether you agree with those reasons or not. This is the first time though, in any election, that I have been so adamant in my support of a candidate. I am voting for Barack Obama for President of the United States, and I urge those readers who are able, to cast their vote the same way.

The One Where I Fix America

It occurs to me that I’m always pointing my finger and rarely providing answers, so I thought I might take a few moments of time and go ahead and fix America. So, sit back, relax and enjoy ultimate solution to all of our problems.

Our problems aren’t really anything more than problems of perception. You see, we still think we’re a country that our founding fathers could take pride in, but the truth is that we haven’t been that in quite a long time. So, the first step in my solution is to give up the notion that we’re somehow above anything or anyone. We’re really not that good at all.

Problem number 1 is a problem of leadership and that is actually a fairly easy problem to solve. Al McGuire, the famous basketball coach once stated that world is run by C students and he’s absolutely right. The problem is that the pay for our leadership positions in this country can’t attract any of the really smart people. This is one of the perceptions you’ll have to overcome. The most intelligent of our countrymen are not making the noble sacrifice to spend their entire lives serving the better good. They’re busy making more money than they could ever use. We get stuck with leaders for whom the salary is one they aspire to earning.

Patriotism is a nice concept and all and sure, we all claim to be patriotic, but when just a miniscule portion of the population turns out to vote, that whole idea of patriotism goes out the window. We aren’t a country of patriots—unless you count a 2 week period of time after a war starts or a terrorist attack occurs. We’re a country of opportunists. Unless there is a specific benefit to us, we don’t do a damn thing.

So, the key is to pay our leaders such a ridiculous amount of money that the smartest among us would be crazy not to be involved in getting into politics. Let’s get rid of the C students we have running the country and get some damn scholars running the show! It seems kind of foolish to put someone only making $400,000 dollars a year in charge of a budget that’s in the billions. Let’s put someone who’s making millions of dollars a year in charge of things.

And not just the President, because you typically have to put in some time in the Senate or as a governor before you can become president, we should boost those salaries up too.

We can’t ignore that we’re a capitalist nation, and we can’t expect the kind of people who make millions of dollars a year to take a huge pay cut just so that our country can function properly. We’ve created this monster, now we have to pay it. That’s how things work around here. I’m not saying that capitalism is a bad thing, quite the opposite actually, but if we want to attract candidates who are actually intelligent, competent and motivated, we need to pay them their fair market value. And on top of a ridiculous salary, there should be an even more ridiculous bonus system in place. Reach a goal, keep a campaign promise, fix something that’s broken like health care and your salary just keeps going up, up, up.

Make the office of President one attractive to the people who really run the country, the captains of big business. Sure, they’ll have the interests of big business foremost in their minds, but this is another area where we have to give up our delusions because the fact of the matter is that our government already caters to big business more than it does to us. Let’s just stop pretending otherwise huh?

The other major change that needs to be made is that we have to make our government profitable. The only way we’ll ever see significant tax deductions and actually get to spend the money we earn is if the government—led now by A students—is able to earn it’s own money.

How will the government earn money you ask? Simple. Naming rights. We are nothing if not sheep that are easily manipulated by marketing and branding. Our stadiums, our sports teams, our television shows, it’s all brought to you by someone. The government is talked about on nightly news shows, on the internet, in the newspapers. The exposure of our government is huge! So why not make some money on that popularity?

Imagine the possibilities! Every time the president is mentioned, instead of just saying, President Washington, you’d have to say, President Washington, brought to you by Budweiser. Imagine the Coca-cola Senate and the Gillette House of Representatives. Imagine the revenue generated in war time if we changed the name of the Third Infantry Division to the Pepsi Infantry Division? The war would fund itself—and our soldiers could actually have the equipment they need!

And it doesn’t have to stop there! Think of all the federal holidays! Take a day off when General Electric presents Martin Luther King Jr Day! Take another day off when Chevy presents Christmas! Boeing presents Labor Day! Visa presents Independence Day! We have a ton of money available to us in advertising rights that we aren’t tapping into here! Sure, it’s true, it doesn’t look good when the politicians have corporate sponsorship, but again this is a matter of perception. They already have corporate sponsorship, we just choose not to acknowledge it and therefore we don’t get paid for it.

So, let’s stop pretending and start dressing our politicians like they’re NASCAR drivers! There’s money in it for us!

The way I figure it, once we have money and have smart people managing it, all the rest will fall into line. When the United States Marines as Presented by Blue Cross-Blue Shield invade some country, don’t fret over the rights and wrongs of war. Be happy that your country just made a mint that they can turn around and use to make healthcare affordable to everyone!

Look, the ideal isn’t to have a completely unethical nation, but to think that we’re anything other than that is just ignoring the obvious. So, let’s get off our high horse and truly embrace the way we’ve sold out. Let’s acknowledge that cash is king and put this country to work for ourselves. Here you go. This is a way to get smart people running the show and a way, to pay them and to make our government work without dipping into our own pockets.

It’s simple. It’s genius. You’re welcome. That is all.

The Great Debate

One of the most idiotic parts of the Presidential Debates, and let’s face it folks, there is a WHOLE LOT from which we can choose in this arena, is the post debate commentary.

Who won? Who lost? Who connected with the people? Who failed to make that connection? Who lied? Who told the truth? Which candidate advanced their platform the most?

The problem is that the news stations, in order to provide balanced coverage, bring in biased supporters of each candidate in equal numbers and after the debate they go to these talking heads who, very predictably tell us how their candidate won, the other lost and how it was a “clear cut win,” by their side.

The fact of the matter is that very rarely does anyone win a Presidential debate. It’s all just a joke (and it’s on you and I coincidentally). Each side ignores the questions asked, answers with their own rhetoric, buzz words and catch phrases on the subject they want to talk about and then claims victory.

Well I for one am tired of this, so I’d like to suggest a new format for all future debates. The debates will be held in three round competitions, there will be a scoring system and therefore an actual, clear cut winner and instead of respected news journalists moderating, we’ll get Ryan Seacrest to do host it and Randy, Simon and Paula to make commentary about the candidates after each round.

Round One is the Yay or Nay round. The candidates are strapped into chairs and asked questions to which they must provide YES or NO answers. For each failure to answer with either a direct YES or NO, the candidate will have a different soupy food item spilled on their head (a la Nickelodeon) and have points subtracted. The questions will be preselected and voted on by the American people as well. At the end of the round, the candidates get points based on how often their answers were in agreement with those of the people.

Round Two is the Truth or Dare round. The candidates (with any accumulated soupy food items still on them) are hooked up to a polygraph machine. Then they are asked the same questions as they were in round one only phrased differently. Instead of, “As President, will you raise taxes on the middle class?” as they’ll be asked in round one, in round two they’ll be asked, “In round one, you said you would never raise taxes on the middle class, were you just saying that to get elected?” At any time a candidate can refuse to answer a Truth or Dare question, but if he elects to not tell the Truth, he must perform a Dare of the other candidates choosing. One point will be awarded for every truthful answer as detected by the polygraph and one point for any successful dares completed.

Round Three is the Lightning Round. In this round, candidates will be asked a series of questions on their policies, stances and platform. The candidates will get exactly one minute per answer; going overtime will result in electroshock. What? You didn’t think the Lightning Round was all about fast answers did you? Electroshock will also be administered any time a candidate uses pre-formulated marketing phrases or buzz words, like “maverick” or “change,” as well. If, while answering the Lightning Round questions, a candidate chooses to shift the focus off of his answer by attacking his opponent, he will have a point subtracted and more gooey food dumped on him. Since there aren’t really “right or wrong” answers to opinion questions, points will be awarded for answers that a) actually pertain to the question asked, b) don’t involve an attack on the opponent, and c) don’t contain buzzwords and marketing slogans.

Essentially, this round isn’t about right and wrong as much as it is about succinct, intelligent, appropriate answers to the questions asked. This round will be especially shocking to the American people as no candidate has given an answer that qualifies in all three categories in the history of Presidential debates.

At the end of the three rounds, the scores will be tabulated, while the candidates are positioned in their bathing suits on the plank of a carnival dunk tank. Then Seacrest will look deeply into the camera and say, “The winner of this debate is…”

“…someone who’s name I’ll say after a word from our sponsors!” And he’ll cut to commercial for whichever corporate sponsor has bought our political system for the night, letting the candidates sweat it out. Then he’ll come back and make the announcement! The loser will be unceremoniously dumped into a tank full of sewer waste, while the winner will be hoisted from his dunk tank by an army of supermodels who give him a WWE-style championship belt. The song “Real American” will blare from the speakers and the debate winner will get 2 minutes of unfiltered trash talk, chest pounding and muscle posing before the debate is officially over.

It’s all so simple. The ratings would be through the roof. Interest would be piqued causing people to actually want to vote and once the elections were held, we’d have the President on tape giving specific answers to how he would handle things once in office and be able to call him on it if he didn’t.

I’m tired of tee-ball rule debates where “everybody wins.” I’m tired of debates filled with slander and rhetoric, buzzwords and catch phrases. I’m tired of the candidates attacking each other instead of answering questions. And I really miss seeing chocolate syrup dumped on people for giving wrong answers! And let’s face it, you can never go wrong with polygraph machines and electroshock!

It’s time to make our Presidential debates mean something again. It’s time for winners and losers, not posturing and primping. I have imparted my formula for the perfect debate on you America, do not waste it! That is all. God Bless America!