10) Presidential motorcade drives from White House to Capitol with left turn signal on the whole way
9) Instead of Rev Rick Warren, convocation delivered by McCain's former schoolmate, Moses
8) Celebratory "early bird" Inaugural feast held at Picadilly Cafeteria
7) New VP Palin derides Army 21-gun salute howitzers as "pansy-ass pea-shooters"
6) Instead of Chief Justice Roberts, swearing-in conducted by Matlock
5) Capitol Rotunda appropriated as daycare center for 73 Palin kids
4) As soon as Bushes leave White House, the thermostat goes up to 78, and a creepy Ben-Gay smell permeates the building
3) All Inaugural Balls end by 7:30 PM
2) Instead of Aretha Franklin belting out "My Country Tis of Thee," Andrews Sisters are reincarnated to sing "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy (of Company B)"
1) First words after the oath? "You 2.5 million people get the hell of my Mall!"

(as if there would be 2.5 million people in attendance)

If you recall, there was an election two weeks ago tonight.  In it--in case you've forgotten--Barack Obama was elected

to the Presidency.  There were several barriers broken that night.  Obama was the first African-American elected President.  He also represents the same thing JFK did in his time, the passing of the torch from one generation to the next.  Perhaps most importantly, his election puts a ssssmokin' hot woman in the White House as well.  As this appreciative essay points out:

First lady got back

I'm a black woman who never thought I'd see a powerful, beautiful female with a body like mine in the White House. Then I saw Michelle Obama -- and her booty!

(The whole, lovely story here, from Salon.com)

(I got this from Open Salon;  it cracked me up)

Focus on the Family: Rapture Preparedness Pamphlet

First off, I should explain that I divide the December 25th holiday into two components: Christmas and X-mas.  The Christmas part is a very simple thing: a simple celebration of hope and good cheer in the darkest part of the winter.  X-mas is the brash, noisy, flashing, stressful, gift-buying, relative-seeing, mandatory party-attending stuff that drives me crazy.  X-mas is about enforced fun and cordiality and commerce.  Christmas is Forrest Gump setting out running across America; X-mas is the whole circus it had evolved into when he stopped.

Late on Christmas Eve, X-mas always seems to grind to a halt.  The stores finally close.  People get home to their friends and families.  They go to quiet, beautiful Christmas Eve services, or even just stay in, eating and drinking tasty beverages, talking, maybe watching "It's a Wonderful Life," or the 24-hour marathon of "A Christmas Story." A sense of peace falls, blanketing like fresh new snow after all the chaos.

That's kind of how I feel tonight.  The election is tomorrow.  Less than 23 hours from now, the polls will close in the Eastern Time Zone.  In just over 24 hours, they'll close on the west coast.  After that, it will all be done except for the crying. 

This election season has been going on for well over a year--like X-mas, it seems to start earlier and earlier each time.  A year ago, the pundits were wondering if even Rudy Giuliani (remember him? The presumptive Republican nominee a year ago?) could stand in the way of Hillary Rodham Clinton's coronation.  This whole cycle has felt like five glue-sniffing cats in a sack: lots of howling and spitting and clawing. 

But tonight, I feel like I feel on Christmas Eve.  Typically, I drive down to my parents' house Christmas Eve night.  The roads are hardly empty, but people don't seem as crazed as they would've been earlier.  I play the radio, and I sing along with Christmas songs on the radio.  I love the sadness in "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," the tight harmonies in "Silver Bells" and "We Three Kings," the flat-out crooning of "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts)" or "White Christmas."

I get to my parents' house, and it's always beautiful.  It smells of fresh baked breads and cookies, and shimmers in lights.  I come inside, and my family is at church.  I wrap my presents, and stick them under the tree.  Then I make a sandwich, sit down, and watch "It's a Wonderful Life"  They come home from church.  We hug and say hi.  Then they change clothes, and we all sit down with our hot chocolate or Diet Pepsi or whatever, and we chat.  We open a present before bedtime--or we open all of them.  My brother and I stay up late, just talking about stuff...

Bottom line, it's a peaceful ritual.  All of the chaos, the travel and present-buying, the planning and working and coordinating--all the X-mas crap--is behind us.  It's just Christmas, lovely calm Christmas.

I feel that way about the election.  It's been vicious and stressful and ugly for the past year.  Tonight, I feel like I do Christmas Eve.  Tomorrow, most tv and radio stations will stop running political ads.  Those Americans who haven't already--and who are so inclined--will go out to the polls and vote.  Many of us have voted early, either by mail or by going to an early voting center.  I sat down last Friday and filled out my mail-in ballot.  I signed it and gave it to Ann Marie to mail for me.  (She's good luck--she moved a hurricane by betting on it, so I figured it wouldn't hurt)  My vote is cast, along with millions of others.

Tomorrow, again, it will all be over but the crying.  The Incumbent was elected twice by ridiculously small margins, margins that came down to one state, and infinitessimal percentages.  I hope this election carries a mandate, something clear cut, like Nixon in 1972 or Reagan in 1984.  (Mondale's people were done crying by Thanksgiving, while Gore's still are eight years later)

I've written seriously about this election, and I've mocked it.  On this last night, election eve 2008, I'm going to leave you with three little thoughts:

1.  I'm sorry if I scared anyone unduly with my last post.  I'm glad you kept reading till you realised it was satire.
2. A great quote from Chris Rock:  “President Bush has fucked everything up so much, he’s even made it hard for a white man to become president!"
3. No matter whom you support, please vote.  While I haven't been especially thrilled by the last two elections' outcomes, what really saddened me was how few people actually voted.  Take the time, punch the ballot, get the sticker.
   

That's it.  It's late Christmas Eve.  All the shopping and mayhem are done.  The final ads will be over soon.  It's time to make a sandwich, get a nice hot beverage, and relax. 

And as soon as the election is done, you may begin your 7 weeks of X-mas shopping. 

I voted for John McCain. Oh,  yah.  And there's lots of reasons why.  Didja know that if Obama is elected, he's gonna make it mandatory for all our kids to study muslin in school? Yup.  He's going to ban white bread altogether.  He's going to make it so pickup trucks and American flags are illegal too.  He's gonna make football be all two-hand touch because he's such a wuss, he doesn't like tackle.  He's going to require abortions for our school kids.  Right there in the school.  And he says that's because he's gonna make the schools teach our kids how to have sex.  The Hollywood elite heathens will come right into the classroom and make our kids have sex.  Right there on the desks! And he's going to ban Christmas lights because they offend his Muslin friends and the Jewish elite cabal that runs the media and banks and stuff.  And wait till you try and have Thanksgiving with him in control.  He's going to have the government give lots of money so that scientists use aborted white baby tissue for that stem cell nonesense, and develop turkeys that are all dark meat.  You try explaining to granny Crawford that she has to have dark meat.  And the word "giblets" will be banned, too.  He's gonna call them "differentially abled specialist parts." Yup.  And he'll raise taxes on everything.  He'll raise taxes so high you'll have to get a second job, because under Obama, your taxes will be 110% of your income.  And he's going to increase aid to France, just because they hate America.  And he'll pull us out of Iraq, and apologize for us having been there.  And he'll take American oil, and sell it to the A-rabs, who will sell it back to us at double the price.  It's because Obama is really a Muslin, or whatever.  And he's a Jew, too.  And an illegal Mexican immigrant on his white gramma's side.  Oh, speaking of which, he's already working on a law to make us let illegal immigrants sleep in our houses.  Yep.  Imagine some drug-running, commonist illegal alien--like some sweaty grimy sunburned Dr Spock or whatever--sleeping on those nice sheets Granny McElvary got on sale after last Christmas.  And they'll get the good beds.  Little Julie will have to sleep on an air mattress because some illegal alien is sleeping in her nice princess bed.  And Obama is going to sign a formal declaration of surrender to every country in the world.  His first day, that's what he's going to do.  Just surrender to everybody.  And he's going to make the National League use the designated hitter rule, and you can say good-bye to country music.  He's gonna have Willie Nelson arrested, and take all his marijuana and give it to first graders.   Know what else? He's gonna ban dogs! He says Bull Connor used dogs during one of the riots the blacks had, so he's gonna ban them.  No more dogs.  Except for food.  He's gonna have all kinds of illegal immigrants living here that eat dogs, so he'll raise dogs just so they can eat them.  I don't know about you, but I don't want to have some nasty, God-hating, commonist, illegal, drug-using alien who's caught the gay and the aids and who knows what else, sleeping on gramma's good sheets, eating Sparky, trying to touch Julie and her brother's private parts, while reading that Coriander or whatever their heathen muslin Jewish bible is, while I'm out working three jobs just to pay my taxes so that second graders can get abortions in school. 

And that's what Obama would do.  That's why I'm voting for somebody sane, like John McCain and that nice Sarah Palin. 

Paid political ad paid for by Dumb Obama's Unamerican Character Has Everyone Bad Already Gaining Strength, a political action committee.  D.O.U.C.H.E.B.A.G.S. is solely responsible for the content of this post, although damn skippy John McCain would approve.

(Please, dear God, let this thing END!! (and no, I did NOT vote for the Penguin and the Ice Princess))

This is why I don't watch this show.

Other than the P.J. O'Rourke selections, I can't speak to the veracity of these quotes, but they're pretty wise.

I got this in an e-mail, so forgive the odd fonts, etc.

'If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed.'
        -Mark Twain

Suppose you were an idiot.  And suppose you were a member of Congress....But then I repeat myself.
             -Mark Twain

I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.  

TO: Candidate _________
FR: Vetting experts
DT: 10 August, 2008
RE: Presumptive VP nominee

There's no way you can choose this guy to be your VP.  The tabloids and the opposition party will crucify him based on the following potential scandals:

1.  He's never held a real job.  Seriously, he's like a Kennedy or something.  His biological dad wrote a very popular book, and all this guy has done is travel around from speaking gig to speaking gig. 
   
2. There's a HUGE potential scandal regarding his family.  It's widely known that his mother was already pregnant when she married his "father," and he makes it worse by throwing his biological dad's name around.  Worse yet, his parents both admit that another man sired the candidate.  These people are worse than Tom and Roseanne Arnold when they both married that one girl.  
3. Also re: birth and family, we can't get a solid answer on which month or year he was born.
4. He hangs out with prostitutes--remember Elliot Spitzer?--and although there's no proof money has exchanged hands, there's huge potential for embarrassment. 
   
5. He's repeatedly and flagrantly practiced medicine without a license. 
   
6. He's proven to be an enemy of commerce, even physically trashing one financial institution.
7. His friends are apparently alcoholics.  Sources describe one wedding party as having "unlimited wine," all provided by the candidate.
   
8. He once spent a month's vacation hanging out in the desert with--according to some people--the devil himself. 
   
9. His friend once attacked another man and cut off an ear.  The candidate somehow hushed up the affair.
   
10. I think this whole "friend of the poor" thing will be exploited when it comes out that his father's house has many mansions.  You can't have it both ways.  Don't brag to poor people about your rich daddy's house.  You sound like a total hypocrite.
11. He's really annoyed the major religions.
12. Worse yet, he's Jewish.  Remember 2000? How Lieberman killed Gore's electability in the South? The South won't vote for a Jewish VP candidate.
    
13. Even worse yet, he travels everywhere with a posse of 12 men.  There's no hard evidence he's gay, but appearances are everything in this election.  Gay or hookers--they're both political death.
14. The Incumbent says this guy's a friend of his.  Dubaya's endorsement is another instant kiss of death.
15. He has a beard, for crying out loud.  Do you remember the last president to have a beard? Of course not.  It was Benjamin freakin' Harrison in 1888.  His beard didn't get reelected either.  Find somebody who doesn't look like an Allman Brothers Band roadie.
16. His popularity goes in fits and starts.  He came into this one town a hero on Sunday, and they completely turned on him before Friday.  He's inflammatory, and he really pisses some people off.
17. We can only find one recorded election where he was a candidate, and he lost to a murderer. 
    
18. He has lots of really strange, sometimes violent fringe groups claiming him as their inspiration.
19. Though admittedly a popular and charismatic speaker, the guy sometimes speaks in riddles and metaphors that have multiple interpretations. 
    
20. As if that weren't enough, his middle initial seems to be H, but nobody knows what it stands for.
    
21. Oh yeah: he's never been seen wearing an American flag pin, either. 
    

FINAL ANALYSIS: Lose this guy.  He's unelectable.

I hope I didn't offend anyone, but my point is this: Jesus Christ Himself couldn't get elected today. Within two days of John McCain naming Sarah Palin to the ticket, I had e-mails from my right-wing people praising her for being better than Obama, and I had e-mails from my left-wing people denouncing her for being worse than Bush.  Whether she'd be a suitable VP, I don't know.  I do know that it doesn't have anything to do with her daughter being knocked-up, although I'd call that a strike against her beloved "abstinence only" sex-ed curriculum. 

Isn't this damn election over yet?   

 

Oh, the humanity!

Today, voters in Texas and Ohio head to the polls to decide "the entire fate of the republic," or some such noise, and what happens? The biggest cover-up since Watergate.

There has been so much coverage of these two primaries in the "mainstream" media the past few weeks, that we as a people have lost sight of what's truly important.  Silly political questions abound: will Hillary Clinton's race for the White House end tonight? Speaking of race, will Texans and Ohioans choose Barack Obama? Will either of the Democratic hopefuls be able to defeat Civil War veteran Republican nominee, John McCain? Really, is any of this truly important? Certainly, one has to wonder whether it's worth all the wasted paper, ink, and electrons the media have devoted to this non-story.

Thank God for entertainmentwise.com and their selfless, steadfast journalistic tenacity in finally uncovering what's truly important: Hollywood starlets are wandering around braless.  The shocking headline:

Braless Celebrities!

Entertainmentwise brings you the fallout...

Oh, and what horrific fallout there is! Does it really matter that tonight's election results could decide who picks the next batch of Supreme Court justices, while Oscar-winner Gwyneth Paltrow's little golden globes are rattling around unchecked? What difference can a President really make, when Britney's twins are jiggling unhindered? Or, if political wags are concerned about race so damn much, why don't the networks quit pandering to Obama, and note that Tyra Banks' breasts (ed. note: really, lovely breasts!) are peeking through her top?

I'm no prude, certainly.  I've been a fan of breasts my entire life, but it eludes me how we as a populace spend so much time worrying about some dumb election when true danger is poking through thin cotton, staring us right in our faces. 

Again, thank God for the last bastion of newsgathering integrity: entertainmentwise.com.  Sure, some "experts" might point out that this isn't a big deal.  In the spirit of full disclosure, I should admit that approximately 100% of the women I've been involved with shucked off their mammary minders as soon as they got home from work/school/prison, etc.  Some of them have even dared leave the home with their breasts unharnessed, just like these starlets.  But let's face it: none of my exes--past, present, or future--have had truly important, newsworthy breasts.  How many people have worried over Paris and Britney's boobs while they had their recent battles with jail, addiction, and insanity? Those breasts not only represent our entertainment future, but they've been prayed for millions of times by good, caring Americans the world over.  What happened to glamor and class? Sure, when you see Goldie Hawn and Lindsay Lohan, you realize that it's possible for a 62 year-old woman to look good, but do they have to display their fossilized udders for everyone to see?

Cynics might point out that there's nothing really new here (ed. note: the breasts might be new, but the idea isn't).  Think about it.  Britney's bare pudendum was more photographed than the recent lunar eclipse, and Paris Hilton has certainly given us more gynecologically complete views into her heiressness than a simple swimsuit nipple-slip.  Uma? Two words: Dangerous Liaisons.  Rose McGowan had to be revealing to be noticed alongside Marilyn Manson, and Lindsay Lohan just posed starkers for the AARP magazine, or whomever.  Lord knows, most of the breasts in question are either A) small enough not to hurt anyone (Gwyneth Paltrow), or B) almost entirely constructed of recyclable, space-age polymers (damn near everyone else).   Either way, "support" isn't really an issue.

This nation has depended on Hollywood to be a harbinger of taste and decorum, showing us how to dress and behave.  When stars like Sharon Stone, Teri Polo, and Drew Carey are walking around braless, how can we hope to survive, regardless of our next President?

Full disclosure: the author of this piece is a big fan of all breasts, from A to D, and he fully supports (npi) a woman's right to choose bralessness.  (Encourages, even)