Not Recovering Fast Enough? Maybe You Need More Poison

Here we are on the cusp of the Democratic Convention and the party’s response to a fusillade of Paul Ryan’s fabrications, Mitt Romney’s adequacy and Clint Eastwood’s – um – cryptopathological improvisational admission of the GOP’s intellectual bankruptcy – but that’s not the most recent strategic mystery the Romney-Ryan campaign has engaged in – their latest is to ask “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”  The answer might surprise them.

Earlier, the Romney campaign unleashed a blizzard of ads with actors portraying real Americans who had voted for Obama in 2008 but had grown disappointed in the rate of how their lives were getting better.  The premise, apparently, is to reach out to people with this mindset that if they weren’t happy with Obama, it’s about time to give someone with the exact opposite approach the reins for a while.  That it’s brought to you by the people who’ve tried to arrest the president’s progress at every turn is supposed to be conveniently forgotten.

But back to whether you were better off now than you were four years ago – it follows the same trope of Mitt’s that we all wanted to change things, but President Obama’s change just didn’t happen as fast as Romney’s would.  As though Mitt Romney’s focus has been on giving Americans affordable healthcare, cleaning up the banking mess, saving GM and Chrysler and getting us out of Iraq and Afghanistan but that he’s got a better plan for getting all that done.  It’s like saying, “You barely escaped this mugger who accosted you as you were walking through a dark alley – and even though you fought him off, you might not be running away from him fast enough.  Maybe you should just go back there and give him your wallet.  I’m the mugger and I approve this message.”

It’s puzzling to think the Romney campaign thinks Obama voters are so credulous that they think the only difference between Obama and Romney is one of degree – but even Paul Ryan made that point in his speech before the RNC last week when he compared Obama voters to kids getting tattoos because they thought it was cool.  And it’s not unusual to hear Obama portrayed as a dangerous America-hating radical hellbent on experimenting with our economy using tricks he found on the back of a box of Stalin-Os and his supporters as a coalition of the greedy, the lazy and hopelessly idealistic dupes.  So how does Team Romney hope to appeal to this caricature of a group of befuddled losers?  Oh, right – lie to them.

Not that they’re happy about it – but hey, if these are stupid, self-interested dupes who fall for a pack of lies in the first place, why should the GOP tie one hand behind its back by not making shit up when it was to their advantage?   Unfortunately for them, though, this perceived demographic simply doesn’t exist – people lived through the economic collapse of 2007 and know exactly what caused it.  Many lost houses, jobs and their cherished way of life – and sneering at them as though they were kids disappointed with the latest cool Android app is likely to blow up in Team Romney’s face.

Taiwan Buddhists Celebrate Gay Wedding, US Republicans Celebrate Monoculture

In recent news, the nation of Taiwan celebrated its first Buddhist gay marriage on Saturday, further pushing the relatively liberal East Asian nation into recognizing the sanctity of same-sex unions.  While the ceremony is not legally binding, participants, including the brides Fish Huang and YouYa-Ting and Buddhist master Shih chau-hui, said that it was time to overcome the social stigma of homosexuality and for the government to acknowledge the validity of same-sex unions.

Not to be outdone, the Mitt Romney presidential campaign also announced the very same day that Romney was “celebrating monoculture” by choosing pale libertarian and mathematically illiterate Wisconsin representative Paul Ryan as his vice presidential running mate.  In a speech before a large, obsolete hulk that served to project America’s destructive power, Ryan said that “At this point in time it’s critical for us as Republicans to celebrate our monocultural diversity.” The USS Wisconsin was also used as  a backdrop.

Noting that even though both candidates are wealthy white males, Ryan said their widely different backgrounds exemplified their party’s demographic richness.  “Mitt Romney was born a child of privilege and feels a deep sense of entitlement, while I was raised in difficult circumstances and matured to renounce every government program that helped my mother keep our family’s heads above water, and am now longing to project my own shame and self-flagellation upon a grateful nation.  How much different could you possibly get?”

Before setting out on a bus trip of swing states, the pair of candidates, dressed in matching faux-casual checkered oxfords and blazers, promised to unite their budget plans into a unified whole.  “I was impressed with Congressman Ryan’s ability to put forward a budget that envisions a burgeoning black market for human kidneys as a source of sales tax revenue,” said Romney, “and wanted to marry it to my concepts that tax cuts and wars pay for themselves.  So look out, Iran,” he added, as the pair laughed and laughed.

Big Government Goes to Mars

Fresh from his oppression of millions of Godfearing chicken-loving Americans, President Obama is on the cusp of outsourcing his big-government solutions farther afield than ever – this time to the planet Mars.

As though any possible microorganisms didn’t have it hard enough ekeing out a living on that arid, irradiated and atmospherically minimal wasteland, in the wee hours of Monday morning Zulu time, a robotic rover 100 times larger than anything ever sent to wander across the surface of the red planet will engage in an unprecedentedly Rube-Goldbergesque landing procedure to drop a one-ton monstrosity onto a heretofore pristine desert (hypocrite much, Mr. No-Drilling-in-ANWR?)

Yet rather than do something useful like fracking, this elaborate government behemoth will wander around aimlessly, attempting to collect geological information and add to our scientific knowledge, a practice that has fallen into disrepute ever since it led to the preposterous conclusion that the earth is some billions of years older than the Bible says.

Criticism of the quixotic endeavor has already begun, as NRA President Wayne Lapierre has accused the administration of attempting to find life on other planets in order to take away their guns, and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio claiming that any life found on Mars could not actually have been born there. While voicing his suspicions about Martian life’s origins, he said he regretfully would not be sending any members of his posse to the planet any time soon to investigate personally, owing to the fourth planet’s evident lack of “LBBs – luaus, brothels and bars.”

And the Romney campaign weighed in with its own lamentation that the Curiosity mission’s so-called “Seven Minutes of Terror” as it descended to the Gale Crater meant not only that “Americans are now less safe, but also that Governor Romney feels the exploration of space is an activity the Constitution clearly leaves up to the states.”

Nevertheless, if the extremely complicated and risky mission turns out to be a success, all the above sources said that they were prepared to say that going ahead with the mission was “an obvious no-brainer” and that credit really belonged to the Bush-era underfunding of the space program.

Mitt Romney Denounces Olympics, Olympic Spirit after Opening Ceremony

Pay no attention to the curtain behind the man.

In a private press briefing leaked after he arrived in Tel Aviv, Republican presidential candidate and former commissioner of the 2002 Winter Olympics kicked the dust of London and Salt Lake City off his feet as he delivered a stinging denunciation of the Olympics and the Olympic spirit.

“I’ve been in business,” said the former CEO of Bain Capital, “and this is not the way an Olympic Games makes money – celebrating nationalized healthcare that doesn’t even create jobs, and returns no profits to its investors even if the sick patient happens to live,” he said, shrugging and smiling disdainfully.  “I mean, are we just going to reward people for making poor genetic choices?  That wouldn’t happen in private enterprise, I can tell you that.”

But even as Governor Romney had previously expressed misgivings about the preparation for the 2012 summer games, he went even further and criticized the entire ethos behind the games.  “This coming together in peace and harmony in the spirit of friendly competition – it causes confusion and uncertainty and is, I think, bad for markets.  Who are you going to be afraid of if the North Koreans and the Cubans and the Iranians, of all people, are able to play soccer without blowing themselves up at the press conference beforehand?”

Romney also suggested that other nations’ athletes beating US athletes undermined the idea of American exceptionalism.  “It’s a false idea that suggests we’re not ready to lead – and frankly it seems a bit like insubordination.”

Asked, in a desperate attempt to change the subject, how he was enjoying his time in Israel, Mr. Romney responded, “I’m grateful to the signers of the Balfour Declaration for giving my people a homeland, even though we already have Utah.  But if I ever fire my tailor or my diamond guy, you can bet I’ll be calling the Jews.”

Earthbound Explorers Prepare for Vacuum of Space, Void of AM Radio

The six explorers faced a roomful of reporters, answering questions with steadied calm that soothed the tension before the beginning of a journey that some called an important lesson in living without benefit of the normal ties to civilization and sanity that we take for granted, and that others called a sheerly mad stunt.

"I am very happy to be part of this project," said Diego Urbina, the Colombian-Italian and most extrovert member of the crew.

And yet the brave adventurers knew they were embarking on a mission from which not all of them might return: to spend 520 days locked in a chamber with only food, water and AM radio to sustain them. Then, to prolonged cheering, the astronauts of the mind closed the portal to their isolation chamber with its giant wire exercise wheel, its monotonous routine of dishes to wash and beds to make, tubes of dreary, tiresome homogenized pork produts to consume, and endless hours of hysterical crises to digest unbuffered by factual content or coworkers with access to the BBC’s website.

“Anything could happen,” gushed chief engineer Romulus Morrison. “Personally I’m betting that halfway through the experiment the crew will believe Mexico has invaded America and that President Obama surrendered immediately, that the rich have fled to a cloud city hovering above Dubai, and that most of the world ekes out a Mad Max style existence selling dietary supplements and cheap jewelry to each other on eBay. By that time, they’ll have forgotten that their capsule is in a warehouse in Russia and they’ll actually refuse to come back to Earth.”

As they entered the interconnected modules that would be their home for a year and a half, all six adventurers must surely have thought of their ill-fated predecessor, the Beck 500. Confined for the same amount of time listening only to Glenn Beck, the surviving members of that expedition have yet to sufficiently remaster the art of human speech to describe their horrific descent into madness – the only testament to their ordeal is a silent but utterly unapproachable pile of diapers fashioned out of handmade Gadsden flags. And the mute remains of their deceased comrades, found floating in a wine sauce seasoned with tarragon and basil. A wine sauce.

Those Who Can't Do Teach

Bristol Palin has just signed with a representation agency to give speeches about abstinence for $15,000-$30,000 a pop. Presumably she's for it, although it's hard to imagine why -- if she had practiced it nobody would care who she was right now. So it's sort of like hearing a lecture on the value of hard work by a guy who won the lottery right before his trust fund dried up.

Not that Bristol doesn't deserve a chance to influence young impressionable minds about how they ought to work hard and stay in school -- leave the unprotected sex to the girls whose moms can put them on the lecture circuit: that's a lesson little girls can't hear too soon or too often. And in the maelstrom of confusing messages kids get exposed to now, what harm could one horribly unfortunate example do on top of all the others? Nothing that'll make the papers.

No, the real tragedy of Bristol Palin parlaying her lack of attentiveness in health class on the day they were slipping the condom over the banana into a shameless speaking career is that somewhere out there Michael Brown is kicking himself for not having failed enough. You know you're doing something wrong when an anchorman won't even refrain from correcting you out of politeness. Some people have the touch for turning idiocy into gold and some just don't. But fear not -- Mike Brown will say something stupid at the next colossal screw-up as well, just as surely as hopping on one leg after intercourse prevents pregnancy.

Remedial Re-Education Camp Is Filling Up Quick

It truly saddens our new socialist overlords when the citizenry doesn't even seem to be trying. Come on, people -- how hard can it be to copy a picture? Then again, it probably occurs to our overlords that half of freakin' Texas flies its flag upside-down. And as they silently calculate how many times a day they might have to differentiate sarcasm from ignorance, they also realize that some sort of aspirin subsidy might be in order.

We Hold These Untruths To Be Self-Evident

One of the interesting attributes of the Tea Party crowd in Richmond yesterday was the Founding Father worship, possibly an offshoot of Confucianism based on the premise that the framers of the Constitution spoke to us directly in aphorisms suitable for printing on t-shirts and scrawling on patriotically-themed hand signs. Ultimately the Tea Partiers hope to collect a sufficient number of aphorisms so that every situation, from the humdrum to the critical, from the personal to the national, can be governed by reference to the most appropriate Founding Witticism.

Of course in building any collection, it’s essential to discard the inauthentic. Take the one in the picture above: “The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.” And while it seems practically made for our very time and situation, maybe that’s because its first appearance in print was in 1986 and it has never shown up in any of Jefferson’s known writing.

It’s rather fortunate that Jefferson didn’t say it, really, as talk of earning one’s living through the sweat of one’s brow falls a little flat when the speaker owns hundreds of human beings who cook his food, make his bed, tend his crops, keep his stables and – almost certainly – sleep with him and bear his children.

Another quotation was indeed correctly attributed to Jefferson: “Never spend your money before you have it.” But the man who wrote this advice died in such debt that he was unable to free his slaves due to his inability to pay off the loans he had taken out against them – though it would still be good advice even if every person who passed it on died woefully broke. That it’s too general to be of much practical value while also being annoyingly unworkable only adds to its charm.

Anyway, the assemblage of the Jeffersonian hadith seems well underway, if beset by a few questionable sentiments and confused by occasional gaping chasms between his statements and his ideals. On the bright side, beating the plowshare of Jefferson’s profligacy into the sword of a fiscal conservative will seem like a piece of cake compared to the effort that’ll be required to turn him into a Christian.

So How’s He Recovering, Then?

I’ve heard you can supposedly reverse homosexuality and even get your virginity back, but this is a new one – Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota has proclaimed April to be Abortion Recovery Month. Now on first impression, the very name connotes ghastly images of fetuses being fished out of a dumpster somewhere – obviously the kind of holiday that could only be thought up by a male pro-lifer, the kind of idiot who thinks babies are produced the way it was portrayed in 1950s movies, after about fifteen minutes of a man pacing outside a delivery room door while smoking a cigar. I mean, what could these sick bastards possibly want with your old abortions?

But wait – it’s not that at all. Apparently Abortion Recovery Month is designed to honor all the abortion recovery programs in the state of Minnesota – which must surely have no other concern than for the mental and physical well-being of patients who have undergone abortions, right?

Well probably not. Just like those Crisis Pregnancy Centers that promise objective compassionate assistance to young pregnant women and then do everything they can to cajole, terrify and guilt-trip them into carrying their pregnancies to term, the abortion recovery counseling programs I Googled seem like religious rackets with a pro-life agenda, sometimes in the open and sometimes not so obvious.

Worst of all, they certainly doesn’t seem to be offering real counseling. If a therapist were to say to me, “In America we have a big drug problem, and we don’t realize it’s because of abortion,” I’d conclude that person was in more need of help than I was, starting with what constitutes a provable statement and what doesn’t. But these same counseling organizations offer certificates in abortion counseling after nothing more than a fraction of a semester of completely religious training.

Maybe Pawlenty’s proclamation really does honor some few souls out there who specialize in helping women get over the emotional trauma of abortion – and they doubtless deserve recognition. But right now the field seems dominated by proselytizing vultures who, with no actual secular training, descend on hurt and confused young women intending on converting them to faithful guilt-ridden tithing machines who can be counted on to vote against letting anyone else have the choice they felt was necessary at the time. And those charlatans don’t need recognition, because their reward is in heaven – whatever simpleminded, dogmatic, shrill millstone of a heaven happens to take them.

Republican Leaders Charge: Obama Met with People Who Want Our President to Fail

Shortly after the conclusion of the combative healthcare summit today, GOP leaders assembled for a press conference to assert that they had overwhelming evidence that President Obama had recently met with an organization that wants our president to fail.

"We wouldn't be here announcing this if our concerns weren't serious," intoned Senate Minority Leader John Boehner, whose color-coded political threat tan was at the critical level.

"The fact of the matter," added House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, "is that President Obama has now gone far beyond his egregious apologies to the rest of the world for things Americans should be proud of, like torture and The New Adventures of Old Christine. He is now actively consorting with factions within our own country who are right now plotting the downfall of the current government. We know, and we have the commemorative cocktail napkins to prove it," he said, waving what appeared to be an embossed bevnap.

"While it pains us to level such grave charges," continued Boehner, "Mr. Obama knows what he needs to do in order to set things right with the American people. A comprehensive program of tax cuts and tort reform should be an important first step in rectifying the serious damage done to our great nation."

Cantor chimed in, "And some tickets to the Britney Spears concert wouldn't hurt either."

Talking To Your Children about Scott Brown Winning the Massachusetts Special Election

We live in troubled, frightening times – our world seems on the brink of disaster, millions of people fall prey to random unimaginable horrors, pernicious exploitative evils, and the ravages of unscrupulous deceptive leaders while the forces for good are scattered, tied into moral knots or lulled into complacency. And that’s before they turn off Glenn Beck and have to deal with the real world.

And we all know that just recently a terrible disaster hit us seemingly out of nowhere. And while it hurts us all, sometimes the most vulnerable are the ones who get the least attention – our children. Because they can’t easily make heads or tails of momentous events, they tend to be more easily frightened and more likely to feel helpless. Worst of all, when young ones are emotionally scarred, they tend to compensate by taking on odd beliefs or practices that make them feel in control of the world – things like arson, self-mutilation or reading the works of Ayn Rand.

So for confused children – and parents just as confused about what to tell their children – here are a few sample lines of thought parents might use to help their children make sense of a frightening situation. You may need to substitute your own specific examples. And where possums aren’t common, armadilloes or even capybara will do just as well.

“Look, Che and Evita, calm down. Mommy and Daddy didn’t mean for you to see CNN call the race. Not that we didn’t think Martha wasn’t gonna get creamed – I mean, we hoped that she would honor Ted Kennedy’s legacy by fighting for the seat instead of accepting it the way a dowager empress accepts the gift of a chewed-up skink from her favorite cat – but when we considered the possibilities over the pre-dinner bong hit, Daddy thought he’d at least be well into his post-prandial coma before ol’ Mondale McKerry went tits-up in the koi pond.

“Alas, it was not to be – she put up a fight that made George McClellan look like Sigourney Weaver in Alien – and not those sequels where it was all body counts and teeth dripping with acid – I’m talking about the original Alien where the giant space cockroach never dies and you think when the ship finally reaches earth Sigourney and the alien are going to be clinging to the outside of it, slamming the hatchway door on each others’ fingers. But she finally kills the damn thing anyway, through sheer guts and perseverance and inner strength – in exactly the same way that Martha Coakley did not hit the giant puff pastry of this election right out of the park.

“But what we want you to know is that even though bad things happen sometimes, the world is still full of good people doing good things. And we can trust most people most of the time – in fact, some of the poorest people are the most trustworthy. Like remember when Mommy told you that if you get lost, to ask the nearest homeless person for help because you can’t trust clowns, priests or people in BMWs? It’s just like that. So don’t lose your faith in human goodness is what I’m saying. But feel free to ditch your faith in a complacent Boston aristocrat who sends her chauffeur out to shake voters’ hands at the mall or who thinks popular appeal is an ironically named entry in the regatta.

“Most importantly, keep your eyes open. We know what happens to people who steer calmly onward into disaster – James Cameron makes horribly expensive, overwrought soap operas about them and you have to spend three hours listening to Celine Dion. And then you say mean, petty things about Leonardo DiCaprio when his lifeless corpsicle is bobbing around in the Atlantic and you have a fight instead of getting laid. The next thing you know, you’re on the street corner holding a misspelled sign about death panels when your HMO won’t even pay to have someone look at that weird blue mole on your arm. Now be a good girl and fix Daddy a gin and tonic – and slice the lime lengthwise this time, not in itty bitty pieces like yesterday.”

War on Christmas Over -- RNC Surrenders

Good news, everybody -- the War on Christmas 2009 seems to be over. You might think that after retail boycotts and even attempted legislation (Sorry, Rep. Brown, your bill might be considered after the recess, ha ha) that the advocates of mentioning Christmas in every other sentence had carried the day. After all, we're a Christian nation whose Constitution is based on the Ten Commandments, and it was likely Jesus himself who came up with the bicameral legislature (although the three-fifths compromise was clearly the work of the devil, or at least ACORN).

But no -- I recently received this in my inbox from the Republican National Committee -- entitled Holiday Greetings from the RNC, it doesn't even mention Christmas -- the very day it was sent.



Clearly this means that the Republicans have finally given in to that perfidious godless secular minority who are hell-bent on dooming our citizens to a lifetime of casual, meaningless sex, rampant drug use and evolution -- or else they never really bought into the seething rhetoric of the Torquemada wing of the Republican Party, but just used them to spur on the masses who respond to knee-jerk sentimentality that lacks any basis in the tenets of liberal democracy.

Either way it doesn't look good for the party that routinely appeals to family values and religiosity as some sort of evidence of its ability to lead -- they're either acknowledging that they've lost or that they're dragging their base along in a cynical ploy for their loyalty.

So anyway, I'll be anxiously awaiting the AFA boycott and the calling-out by Bill O'Reilly.

Happiness Is Being Snowed in with Two Gallons of Apple Cider and a Bottle of Jack Daniels

A little nor'easter blew up from the gulf coast today, and smacked into some cold air coming in from the north and we ended up with tons of snow that started falling around 5:30. By 11:30 I wandered outside and took some pictures. The streetlights, swirling snow, softened contours and the snowfall's luminous reflectivity made the familiar landscape fun to look at again.

There were tons of accidents on the road. Sirens blared on Semmes for most of the time I was outside. So stay off the damn road if you don't need to be driving around. Walk to the convenience store for your six-pack. On your walk back you can contemplate those mottled gray cylinders revolving on the rack of greasy rollers under the heatlamp. By the time you get home you will be aching to start on that novel you always swore you would write.




The wind was a howling
And the snow was outrageous
Okay maybe the wind wasn't so bad
But what do I know -- I'm excavating
A pyramid in Alaska.

Lightness on lightness
Covers the trees and chassis --
Rust melts under snow.

Plastic Chemicals "Feminise Boys," Britify Spelling

A study has just shown that certain types of plastic can cause feminine behavior in boys who are exposed to them in the womb. This leads to a number of disturbing questions – for instance, are our E. Coli infested meats and vegetables now so dangerous that mothers have taken to eating plastic instead?

The alarm only increases when you see the type of plastic these women have been eating: Phthalates. Why, just one look at that word and you can’t help but wonder why anyone thought something that starts with four consecutive consonants could possibly be safe for human consumption. I mean, look at that damn thing – it’s a veritable Burmese tiger trap of a word, bristling with danger between its beginning and the safety of the vowels beyond. Pronouncing it could only be the act of a madman, so no wonder that prolonged exposure could leave young boys unwilling to play with trucks and guns, causing them to sit instead in contemplation of the cruelty of the universe.

The study (which, frankly, doesn’t seem that impressive) was published in the International Journal of Andrology, which I imagine looks something like this illustration below:

Maybe other studies will confirm that exposure in the womb causes boys to roughhouse less. The pharmaceutical industry might embrace these results as a more dangerous alternative to Ritalin with far more unforseeable long-term side-effects. Already several major players are believed to be doing research on creating problems that this behavior-altering form of industrial waste could be a cure for. When the brilliant minds who brought us restless leg syndrome catch the scent of a winning idea, you never know where they’ll end up.

As Ye Have Done unto the Least of These, My Children...

It's going to take a long time before our part of the civilized world is as equal and prosperous as it has always promised to be. But at least -- and finally -- the person in charge knows what's important.

Secret of Jesus' Name Revealed -- the H Stands for Humanity

The Baffling Argument of the Week award goes to Justice Antonin Scalia, who last Wednesday argued, in a separation of church and state case involving a cross on Federal land, that the Christian embodiment of Jesus' death and resurrection isn't a religious symbol but actually a commonly-recognized symbol for "dead person under here:"

Justice Antonin Scalia disagreed. "It's erected as a war memorial. I assume it is erected in honor of all the war dead." Eliasberg objected. "I have been in Jewish cemeteries. There is never a cross on a tombstone of a Jew," he said.

Scalia shot back angrily, "I don't think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead that the cross honors are the Christian war dead. I think that's an outrageous conclusion."

Well sure -- Jesus did allegedly die for all mankind (humankind, even, if we're going to get all PC and declare the inerrant word of The LORD some sort of living document) even though not everybody (i.e. communists, terrorists, The Dixie Chicks) are exactly delighted with the gesture. Who else would throw such pearls before swine?

Okay, maybe Brahma would, since many Hindus consider their religion to be universal as well (hey, you -- put the hamburger down -- your new secret religion demands it).

So, Justice Scalia -- try one of these on for size. Brahma might not have died for your sins, but hey -- He considers you one of his own. Which is a lot more than most of sane society is willing to do.

Muslim Monster Deity to Terrify Nation's Children on First Day of School

Families across America are up in arms today over news that President Obama, Marxist Demon-Lord and Bearer of the All-Seeing Eye, will commence the Indoctrination of the Innocents at an unprecedentedly early date, addressing the nation’s last great hope on the very first day of school.

Wailing mothers beat their breasts in public, sobbing together over the cruel fate that was to befall their sons and daughters, exhorted by a foreign-born absolute monarch to help him rip America from its very foundations by studying hard and setting goals.

Stylus Newington from Hialeah FL summed up his plight as he stood by the side of Interstate 95 in his pajamas, talking frantically on his cell phone while several children, the seed of his loins, bearers of his lineage and his pride and joy, peered anxiously out the windows of his Ford Explorer. “At this point I don’t know what I can do to keep ‘em from brainwashing my children by talking to ‘em on the teevee. I’m currently wavering between jumping off a cliff with them Okinawa-style or just selling ‘em into prostitution and hoping for the best.”

Protestations from the White House that the president was merely going to urge America’s children to strive to do great things and use his own life story as an example seemed to fall on unsympathetic ears. Wynona Mulligan, in the midst of refueling her Hummer H-3 before heading for the hills, gestured to the three children and two Wiemerauners asleep in the back. “If Obama’s rhetoric infects my children and little Placenta, Pikachu and Palin2012 become socialists, I – I won’t know what to do,” she confessed in a breathy sob.

Several counties have already announced they will be seceding from the Union for the duration of President Obama’s speech in order to avoid being sent to internment camps for refusing to broadcast the terrifying epistle. “It seems like an extreme step to take,” said Harper Burnside, superintendent of Pomade County, Illinois, “especially since we have to vote to rejoin the union after the speech is over, and with this bunch you never know. But it’s a chance we’ll have to take if we want to keep the next generation from being enslaved with universal healthcare and such.”

Throughout the nation the usual good spirits of the long holiday weekend have been ruined by the anticipation of the demise of freedom as we know it. A suburban couple who refused to be identified stood in front of their house and displayed to us a cooler that had, on past Labor Day weekends, brimmed over with ground beef, t-bone steaks, bratwursts and giant turkey legs. Today, instead, fish heads and gristle swam in a solution of ice, squid ink and blood – a dinner of penance and gnashing of teeth. They held each other, cold in their simple burlap shifts, and cried.

"The Dream Shall Never Die."

Late last night Senator Ted Kennedy died of cancer. While his career in the Senate was illustrious and his personal failings and hardships are well-known, his dream of the last decades of his life remains unfulfilled: that every American should have the benefits of the greatest healthcare system in the world without regard to their income or their station in life.

Right now we stand on the cusp of fulfilling that dream – a dream that would make America a more equitable nation where opportunity is not constantly overshadowed by the specter of crushing debt – or worse, life cut short – due to a person’s station in life or his bank balance when confronted with the awful choice of having expensive medical care or going without.

One of Kennedy’s great friends is Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, who co-wrote the above tribute to his friend and colleague. And yet Senator Hatch stands on the opposite side of Kennedy in the struggle for health care equality, still determined to thwart the ideal that all Americans should have access to the benefits of modern medicine that every member of Congress enjoys.

So here’s what I’m asking: Go to Senator Hatch’s YouTube page where he posted this song. Leave a polite and respectful comment urging Senator Hatch to fulfill Ted Kennedy’s legacy by voting for healthcare reform that would make the best of our national healthcare available to all. Please don’t argue with the folks who will disagree with you – this is Senator Hatch’s page and his personal tribute to his departed friend, and it wouldn’t be right to tarnish that. But one of the most ardent opponents of healthcare reform needs to hear our voices.

There’s no guarantee that it will change his vote. But if Senator Hatch hears our voices it will make it harder for him to vote against it, knowing he’ll be choking down the will of the people and forsaking a chance to make this land’s opportunity available to all of its citizens equally. And what a tribute it would be to see his friend’s dream realized.

Obama, Harper, Calderón Announce Socialist Monarchy, Ban Texas

The three leaders of North America got together in Guadalajara today and, in a surprising move, suspended their nations’ constitutions and announced the formation of a socialist monarchy to be called Weedfarmgodblessamericacokedoutviolenceistan. The three co-kings then crowned themselves in a brief ceremony before appearing before the press in a hall decorated with their likenesses. Stephen Harper was portrayed as a crusading knight with some sort of implement – a rudimentary prosthesis? A primitive plumber’s helper? – across his knees to symbolize, one supposes, the primitive, Dark-Ages technology and state-of-nature brutality of your typical socialist regime, to which we can all look forward.

President Obama chose for his likeness a barely-clad Roman gladiator, wearing nothing but a few leather straps and a shortsword, and with a seemingly transparent left leg through which his femur, patella and tibia are clearly visible. It was not explained whether this was some sort of Muslim, neo-pagan or Masonic imagery, and the cowed press was too busy suppressing the truth about the president’s birth certificate to be bothered to ask.

And Mexican President Felipe Calderón, in perhaps the most audacious self-portrayal of the three, had himself represented as a shimmering luminescence that seemed to fill the hall with its Platonic idealization of the narcoterrorist corrupt socialist failed state.

As Harper explained during the Q&A session, “We just sat down and looked at each other and said, ‘You know, the time is right – let’s strike while the iron is hot.’ And so we just threw away the script and decided to unite in the name of long lines, labyrinthine bureaucracy, and driving the sick and the old to the depths of despair.”

“Now we each have different ways of achieving this,” boomed the resonant tenor of President Obama. “But the important thing is that we all learn from each other, so that we can build an enslaved populace with careful appreciation of the needs of each individual. Thus the Canadians can be lulled into a state of indifference with BC bud, curling and free doctor’s visits. The Mexicans can have a fiesta of maquilladoros, crappy beer and illiteracy. And we Americans can slowly numb ourselves with the rich blessings of pork rinds, pro wrestling and the Michael Jackson death investigation.”

At this point Mexican President Felipe Calderón said something, but as a citizen of GodBlessAmericastan, I haven’t bothered to learn a word of his native tongue, which I am pretty sure is not called Mexican. Let’s just say it sounded like he ordered every damn thing off the menu at El Rio Grande and move on.

And in another surprise move, the three monarchs announced that Texas was going to be expelled from North America. “Socialism, as we know,” explained King Barack I, “comes from the Greek term for surrender to the weak. For too long the rugged individualism of the great state of Texas – embodied by such larger-than-life heroes as Ronald Reagan, John Wayne and Antonio López de Santa Anna – has stood in the way of the success of the poor and lazy. We just couldn’t compete. But we would like Texas to know that we wish it nothing but the best, and know Texas will have nothing but success in its future endeavors. And we hear the Middle East is nice this time of year.”

It Was 48 Years Ago Today

Happy Birthday, President Barack Obama. In honor of the day your first birth certificate was forged in some rudimentary hut in the wilds of the Rift Valley, I hereby present this family portait of the formidable forces of Truth and Justice arrayed against you.

Go easy on them, okay?