Political Humor

Welcome everyone to the 2008 Political Humor Presidential Debate between independent candidates John Nobody and Don Lewis. Despite the fact that both men have great ideas for how to move this country forward neither has a remote shot at beating even Ralph Nader.
None the less we plod along.

Tonight’s questions for the candidates will be asked by Fiar and Les, our moderators. Fiar we begin with you…

Fiar: Don how do you plan to punish poor people for taking out loans they couldn’t afford to repay, thus leading to the current financial crisis?

Don: I think there has been enough talk about blame. Now is the time for us to come together as a nation. Rich and poor alike have a part to play in the American Experience. The poor are absolutely necessary to provide the bones, muscles and flesh of the glorious tapestry that is the United States. The rich should continue as they have always done and feast upon their fattened carcasses.

John: Unfortunately my opponent feels exploiting the poor is the way to go to get the economy moving again. He’s the type of person that when approached by a homeless person for spare change will ask “got change for a hundred?” Taxing the poor would be better because they pay nothing in taxes.

Don: Once again, we see the tax and spend mentality coming to the forefront in my opponents schemes. My “Eat the Poor” plan will furnish jobs for butchers, food service personnel, and I might add, create quality family dining time for the well to do. All without increasing the tax burden of the poor.

Les: John, what is the most vicious unsubstantiated rumor about your opponent that you plan to use in a smear campaign against him?

John: Where do I start? There are so many to choose from, but if I had to make a decision it would have to be that he once posed nude for Playgirl and it only sold 134 copies. Christ, Nancy Pelosi’s book sold more copies for crying out loud and she posed in a burka.

Don: My opponent once again is playing fast and loose with the facts. Playgirl has never sold more than 134 copies per issue. I mean, yuk! He also fails to point out that all the profits I received for this outstanding example of tasteful, neo-classical performance art was donated to the “Children Without Stock Portfolios” fund.

Fiar: Don Lewis, as President, you have been given the opportunity to significantly lower one tax, but there’s a catch, you have to first put a celebrity to death, who would you choose and why?

Don: I intend to nuke Hollywood and clear the National Debt.

John: As you can clearly see my opponent is taking the easy way out. How many times have we heard the ‘just nuke all the actors and everything will be puppies and rainbows’ talk. I also don’t need to remind you that the people that make nuclear weapons also contributed heavily to Don Lewis’ campaign as well as subsidized his trips to play castles and dragons on the weekends.

Who’s getting kickbacks for nuking all the actors?

[John points his thumb at Don Lewis]

That guy.

Les: John, Senator Obama has already designed his own Presidential Seal, what would yours look like?

John: I don’t know about my seal but I know what my opponent’s would be. I think this speaks highly of both his laissez-faire attitude and low intelligence level.

What Don worry?

Don: My opponent has chosen to associate me, in a disparaging manner, with an icon of the American free-market system; the symbol of a great magazine that has influenced budding politicians and nascent humor writers for many decades. Alfred E. Neuman represents the American ideals of hard work, the can-do spirit, and if I may be so bold; Matthew 6:34 which exhorts us “…don’t ever worry about tomorrow. After all, tomorrow will worry about itself.

My opponent may be comfortable spitting on America and the Bible. I never will.

John: My opponent is an atheist, practices bestiality and has underarms that smell like warm cabbage on the sidewalk in July.

Don: My opponent likes to donkey punch prostitutes who don’t take coupons.

Well that ends the 2008 Political Humor Presidential Debate and frankly, I am not sure who actually won but it wasn’t the voters. Good night America.
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Chris Cameron writes this weekly column every Thursday here at the home for political humor Radioactive Liberty. He also has his own form of funny at his humor blog Angry Seafood.

When he isn’t campaigning for President Don Lewis can be found at his humor blog It’s a Funny Thing.

Humor-Blogs.com has funny blogs you can vote on.

I haven’t done a links post in way too long. So, here goes.

* Our own Les James of Sideshow Mirrors has an interview with a demon at his humor and satire blog. Something seems vaguely familiar about that demon too.

* Iowahawk explains why A Vote For Obama is a Vote For Civility.

* Emperor Misha hammers home a lesson on free market economy in the way that only Misha can.

* JumpOut gives the most accurate biography of Barack Obama on the internet, and it’s a big internet.

* Diesel recounts his own experience in running a political campaign in A Vote for Me is Vote for Not The Other Guy.

* Greg Gutfeld offers up a Platefule of Hate.

* Why Isn’t Anyone Discussing The Positive Side Of The Looming Financial Meltdown? The Nose on Your Face Conservative Satire investigates.

* Frank J offers up some Advice for Palin on SNL.

That’s all the political humor links I have for now. If you feel you or anyone else has been unfairly omitted from this comprehensive listing, suck it up and stop acting like such a sissy. What are you, a Liberal?

Or you could just drop the link in the comments section.

I also heard some sort of rumor that there is a Presidential Debate of some sort or other on tonight. If you can verify this as accurate information, feel free to leave any pertinent information in the comments.

UPDATE: “Joe the plumber” will be on the Dom Giordano show (6pm-10pm Eastern) tonight (Thursday October 16, 2008) on WPHT Philadelphia. You can listen online by going to the CBS Radio page, and scrolling to the listen link for WPHT. I Think it is at the opening segment of the show.

Last night, at the University of Kentucky in Belmont, TN, Barack Obama and John McCain faced off in a town hall style Presidential debate. What you might not know is that as a Presidential candidate myself. I was there as well. Despite what Tom Brokaw said, these things are not spontaneous. They are scripted, rehearsed, and prerecorded.

The two other windbags wasted taxpayer time like they waste taxpayer money, and like in the real world, the regular guy got the shaft and ended up on the cutting room floor. Much like what happened in the Rick Warren Saddleback debacle.

Here are a few highlights from the debate.

McCain: I would order the secretary of the treasury to immediately buy up the bad home loan mortgages in America and renegotiate at the new value of those homes — at the diminished value of those homes and let people be able to make those — be able to make those payments and stay in their homes.

Fiar: Yay! Free houses for everyone! Isn’t Socialism great?

Obama: No, I am confident about the American economy. But we are going to have to have some leadership from Washington that not only sets out much better regulations for the financial system.

The problem is we still have a archaic, 20th-century regulatory system for 21st-century financial markets. We’re going to have to coordinate with other countries to make sure that whatever actions we take work.

But most importantly, we’re going to have to help ordinary families be able to stay in their homes, make sure that they can pay their bills,

Fiar: Make sure they can tie their shoes, get to bed on time. Where does personal responsibility come into the picture?

McCain: The point is — the point is that we can fix our economy. Americans’ workers are the best in the world. They’re the fundamental aspect of America’s economy.

They’re the most innovative. They’re the best — they’re most — have best — we’re the best exporters. We’re the best importers. They’re most effective. They are the best workers in the world.

Fiar: Did you switch bodies with Obama, Stuttering John?

Obama: Well, look, I understand your frustration and your cynicism, because while you’ve been carrying out your responsibilities — most of the people here, you’ve got a family budget. If less money is coming in, you end up making cuts. Maybe you don’t go out to dinner as much. Maybe you put off buying a new car.

That’s not what happens in Washington. And you’re right. There is a lot of blame to go around.

McCain: I have been a consistent reformer.

I have advocated and taken on the special interests, whether they be the big money people by reaching across the aisle and working with Sen. [Russ] Feingold [D-Wisconsin] on campaign finance reform, whether it being a variety of other issues, working with Sen. Lieberman on trying to address climate change.

I have a clear record of bipartisanship. The situation today cries out for bipartisanship. Sen. Obama has never taken on his leaders of his party on a single issue. And we need to reform.

Fiar: Yes, Senator McCain. We are all aware of your consistent record of voting in lockstep with the Democrat Party line, including your McCain-Feingold free speech infringement bill.

Brokaw: The three — health care, energy, and entitlement reform: Social Security and Medicare. In what order would you put them in terms of priorities?

McCain: I think you can work on all three at once, Tom. I think it’s very important that reform our entitlement programs.

My friends, we are not going to be able to provide the same benefit for present-day workers that we are going — that present-day retirees have today. We’re going to have to sit down across the table, Republican and Democrat, as we did in 1983 between Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill.

I know how to do that. I have a clear record of reaching across the aisle, whether it be Joe Lieberman or Russ Feingold or Ted Kennedy or others. That’s my clear record.

Fiar: Yes. You have already made it clear that you are zealously in line with the Democrats.

Obama: Sen. McCain likes to talk about earmarks a lot. And that’s important. I want to go line by line through every item in the federal budget and eliminate programs that don’t work and make sure that those that do work, work better and cheaper.

Fiar: Wait. Which one of you guys is the Democrat? Don’t tell me you’re both Democrats. Oh, and Obama. You might want to use the word “earmarks” little less often. It’s making the constituency giggle.

Brokaw: All right, gentlemen, I want to just remind you one more time about time. We’re going to have a larger deficit than the federal government does if we don’t get this under control here before too long.

Fiar: Don’t blame me Tom. My answers are short and to the point. I realize that just because I have two minutes, doesn’t mean that I have to use them. I don’t feel the need to run a deficit like my opponents.

McCain: I’m going to ask the American people to understand that there are some programs that we may have to eliminate.

I first proposed a long time ago that we would have to examine every agency and every bureaucracy of government. And we’re going to have to eliminate those that aren’t working.

Fiar: I agree. Let’s start by eliminating Congress.

Obama: I believe in the need for increased oil production. We’re going to have to explore new ways to get more oil, and that includes offshore drilling. It includes telling the oil companies, that currently have 68 million acres that they’re not using, that either you use them or you lose them.

We’re going to have to develop clean coal technology and safe ways to store nuclear energy.

Fiar: Okay. So you’re the Republican candidate, right?

McCain: And some of those programs may not grow as much as we would like for them to, but we can establish priorities with full transparency, with full knowledge of the American people, and full consultation, not done behind closed doors and shoving earmarks in the middle of the night into programs that we don’t even — sometimes we don’t even know about until months later.

Fiar: Don’t be stupid. Not a single one of you weasels works in the middle of the night.

Obama: Well, Tom, we’re going to have to take on entitlements and I think we’ve got to do it quickly. We’re going to have a lot of work to do, so I can’t guarantee that we’re going to do it in the next two years, but I’d like to do in the my first term as president.

McCain: Sure. Hey, I’ll answer the question. Look — look, it’s not that hard to fix Social Security, Tom. It’s just…

Obama: Well, I think it starts with Washington. We’ve got to show that we’ve got good habits, because if we’re running up trillion dollar debts that we’re passing on to the next generation, then a lot of people are going to think, “Well, you know what? There’s easy money out there.”

Fiar: Wait. You mean if we remove the ability to fail, then people might not have any consequences to their actions, and every time something goes wrong, they will look to Nanny Government for a handout? Interesting theory. It’s almost like I’ve said that before. How surreal.

McCain: Well, you know, nailing down Sen. Obama’s various tax proposals is like nailing Jell-O to the wall. There has been five or six of them and if you wait long enough, there will probably be another one.

But he wants to raise taxes. My friends, the last president to raise taxes during tough economic times was Herbert Hoover, and he practiced protectionism as well, which I’m sure we’ll get to at some point.

Fiar: Better watch it McCain. That sounded almost Conservative-y.

McCain: Sen. Obama has never taken on his party leaders on a single major issue. I’ve taken them on.

Fiar: You’ve never taken on his party leaders either.

McCain: I’m not too popular sometimes with my own party.

Fiar: Could that be because you always vote in lockstep with the Democrats? And what do you mean “sometimes?”

McCain: But when we can — when we have an issue that we may hand our children and our grandchildren a damaged planet, I have disagreed strongly with the Bush administration on this issue. I traveled all over the world looking at the effects of greenhouse gas emissions, Joe Lieberman and I.

Fiar: I agree. You are full of toxic gases. Stop damaging the planet!

Obama: But this is another example where I think it is important to look at the record. Sen. McCain and I actually agree on something. He said a while back that the big problem with energy is that for 30 years, politicians in Washington haven’t done anything.

Fiar: Which is why you make it a point to vote “present.”

Obama: What Sen. McCain doesn’t mention is he’s been there 26 of them. And during that time, he voted 23 times against alternative fuels, 23 times.

Fiar: And hardly a “present” vote amongst them.

Obama: I don’t understand how we ended up invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, while Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are setting up base camps and safe havens to train terrorists to attack us.

… We’re spending $10 billion a month in Iraq at a time when the Iraqis have a $79 billion surplus, $79 billion.

Fiar: I agree. It’s time for the Iraqis to pay their way.

Obama: Well, we may not always have national security issues at stake, but we have moral issues at stake. If we could have intervened effectively in the Holocaust, who among us would say that we had a moral obligation not to go in?

If we could’ve stopped Rwanda, surely, if we had the ability, that would be something that we would have to strongly consider and act. So when genocide is happening, when ethnic cleansing is happening somewhere around the world and we stand idly by, that diminishes us.

Fiar: Didn’t you just say you didn’t understand why we stopped a genocide in Iraq? Or des it only count when France and Russia agree with us?

McCain: The United States of America, Tom, is the greatest force for good, as I said. And we must do whatever we can to prevent genocide, whatever we can to prevent these terrible calamities that we have said never again.

Fiar: So you are the Republican?

Obama: And if we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then I think that we have to act and we will take them out. We will kill bin Laden; we will crush Al Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority.

Fiar: I agree with your policy of invading Pakistan to kill terrorists. Do they have oil too?

McCain: When you announce that you’re going to launch an attack into another country, it’s pretty obvious that you have the effect that it had in Pakistan: It turns public opinion against us.

Fiar: Public opinion? So you’re the Democrat candidate then?

Obama: Look, I — I want to be very clear about what I said. Nobody called for the invasion of Pakistan. Sen. McCain continues to repeat this.

Fiar: I liked you better when you wanted to invade Pakistan.

Obama: Now, Sen. McCain suggests that somehow, you know, I’m green behind the ears and, you know, I’m just spouting off, and he’s somber and responsible.

Fiar: You really need to stop with the ears. I’m laughing so hard I can’t breathe.

Obama: Sen. McCain, this is the guy who sang, “Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran,” who called for the annihilation of North Korea. That I don’t think is an example of “speaking softly.”

Fiar: I believe that we can do two things at once. We can invade Pakistan, and bomb Iran.

McCain: Not true. Not true. I have, obviously, supported those efforts that the United States had to go in militarily and I have opposed that I didn’t think so. I understand what it’s like to send young American’s in harm’s way. I say — I was joking with a veteran — I hate to even go into this. I was joking with an old veteran friend, who joked with me, about Iran.

Fiar: I liked you better when you wanted to bomb Iran.

McCain: We’ve got to show moral support for Georgia. We’ve got to show moral support for Ukraine. We’ve got to advocate for their membership in NATO.

Obama: But we can’t just provide moral support. We’ve got to provide moral support to the Poles and Estonia and Latvia and all of the nations that were former Soviet satellites. But we’ve also got to provide them with financial and concrete assistance to help rebuild their economies. Georgia in particular is now on the brink of enormous economic challenges.

Fiar: Tom, can you give me a hand here? Which one of these guys is the Republican? Obama, right?

Brokaw: This requires only a yes or a no. Ronald Reagan famously said that the Soviet Union was the evil empire. Do you think that Russia under Vladimir Putin is an evil empire?

Obama: I think they’ve engaged in an evil behavior and I think that it is important that we understand they’re not the old Soviet Union but they still have nationalist impulses that I think are very dangerous.

McCain: Maybe.

Fiar: What the F… Maybe? Maybe? To quote Red Foreman, You dumbass! Of course they are evil. It might not be the Soviet Union of old… Yet. But that is a big “yet.” If we don’t stop them, they will relive their glory days and more.

McCain: Depends on how we respond to Russia and it depends on a lot of things.

Fiar: Heh. You said “depends.” It’s funny because you’re old. And apparently either senile or stupid.

McCain: And our challenge right now is the Iranians continue on the path to acquiring nuclear weapons, and it’s a great threat. It’s not just a threat — threat to the state of Israel. It’s a threat to the stability of the entire Middle East.

Obama: We cannot allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon. It would be a game-changer in the region.

Fiar: So we can all agree to bomb Iran then?

Brokaw: What don’t you know and how will you learn it?

Obama: My wife, Michelle, is there and she could give you a much longer list than I do. And most of the time, I learn it by asking her.

McCain: I think what I don’t know is what all of us don’t know, and that’s what’s going to happen both here at home and abroad.

Fiar: I don’t know the difference between which one of these guys is the Republican and which is the Democrat.

Thank you, Sen. McCain. Thank you, Sen. Obama. Thank you Fiar. Good night, everyone, from Nashville.

I’m Fiar and I approve this political satire.