FUND RAISING

Michele Bachmann thought that the founding fathers ended slavery in America in their lifetime, thus eliminating the need for the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation. Despite such gaps in her knowledge of American history, the congresswoman is a formidable fund raiser. In the first 90 days of this year she raised over $2 million for her campaign for the oval office. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney raised $1.8 million in the same period. Bachmann raised $13.5 million for her 2010 campaign for her seat in Congress. This is the most money ever raised for a campaign for election to the House of Representatives.

Barack Obama has done pretty well in fund raising also. He collected $750 million in his campaign for the White House. He is expected to raise well over $100 million in the first six months of this year. One fund raiser includes a $35,800-a-plate dinner in San Francisco.

Where does that leave former presidential candidate Dr. Carl Perrin? While Perrin has not yet committed to another run for office, he knows that to keep his options open, he must give some thought to campaign funds. Although Perrin was an outstanding candidate, he was not very good in raising money in his run for office. During his 2008 campaign he raised a couple of hundred dollars. Most of that came from supporters in Maine who cashed in returnable cans and bottles to help pay for his campaign.

Although a couple of hundred bucks doesn’t sound like much compared with politicians who raised hundreds of millions, Perrin insists he doesn’t need a lot of money for his campaign. Some say he is too cheap to pay for advertising, but the candidate relies on his blog to get his message out to the real people, the beer drinkers who appreciate his effort keep down the price of beer. Most of Perrin’s campaign funds were spent in fact on cheap beer for the candidate himself. He wanted the public to know that he really believed in the issue that formed the basis of his campaign.

Perrin is asking his supporters in Maine to start taking those cans and bottles to the redemption centers and send any contribution to "Perrin for President" headquarters in Auburn, Maine. He likes the idea of using a meal for a fund raiser. He is thinking about a luncheon of a peanut butter sandwich and a can of cheap beer for $4.90.

UNINVITED GUESTS

Former presidential candidate Dr. Carl Perrin understands how Tareq and Michaele Salahi feel. They are the couple who tried to wrangle an invitation to a formal White House dinner. When they didn’t get the invitation, they went anyway. Michaele bullshitted the Secret Service people by looking through her purse and saying she must have left the invitation in the car.

Perrin understands how they feel because he didn’t get any invitation to the dinner either. In fact he has never received an invitation to anything at the White House. This is despite the fact that he dropped out of the presidential race and urged his followers to vote for Barack Obama. He hoped that a grateful Obama would appoint him to some cushy post in his administration. But, no. No cushy post and no invitation to dinner. Not even an invitation to have a beer with the president.

If he had thought of it, Perrin might have tried to bullshit the Secret Service to get into the dinner. After all, he is no mean bullshitter himself. It’s too late now, of course. The Secret Service won’t fall for that trick again.

Dr. Perrin insists he is not bitter about being snubbed by the White House, but he points out there will be another election in three years. If he isn’t happy with the way things are going, he might run again. He will have learned from mistakes in the last campaign. That will make him a really formidable candidate.

SARAH ENVY

Dr. Carl Perrin admits that he is envious of Sarah Palin. With the help of a professional writer, she managed to grind out her book, Going Rogue, in four months. She received a seven-figure advance for the work, which was a best seller before it even came out in the bookstores. Right now she is on a book tour, where fans line up to see her and get an autographed copy of her book.

Going Rogue gets even with everyone who did her dirt during her vice presidential campaign: Katie Couric, John McCain’s staff, and the liberal media. There is widespread talk about Palin as the Republican candidate for president in the next election. Democrats are hoping that she will be the candidate. Despite her enthusiastic followers, most of the electorate consider her a poor choice for the presidency.

Dr. Perrin feels that all this is very well and good, but it seems unfair that Ms. Palin can dash off a book so easily, get such a big advance, and have the book become a best seller. Perrin’s book, My Run for the White House, has not even found a publisher yet. His book, which is made up from excerpts from this blog, is sure to be a best seller too, if any publisher had sense enough to take it. The next time you go to a bookstore, you might ask if they have My Run for the White House. If enough people ask, some publisher is sure to pick it up.

On a final note, this week’s Newsweek has a picture of Sarah wearing running shorts on its cover. She pretends to be upset by this, claiming that the picture is sexist. Be that as it may, the picture above left shows that the former governor of Alaska is not the only one who looks good in shorts.

PERRIN DEFENDS RUNNING MATE

Detractors have criticized Family Values candidate Dr Carl Perrin’s choice of running mate, Rosie Thibideau of Madawaska, ME. Yesterday Perrin came out with a strong defense of Thibideau.

While conceding that Ms Thibideau did not go to college, he pointed out that she earned a GED from Madawaska High School. Until her deadbeat husband abandoned her, she home schooled her three children. After that she was elected to the Madawaska School Board, where she served for two years. “She knows a lot more about education than a lot of college graduates,” the former English professor asserted.

Thibideau is a single mom, working as a mechanic to support her three children. Many Madawaskans insist, doggone it, that she is the best mechanic in town.

Living right on the border of Canada, Rosie has first-hand insights to foreign relations. In fact she has relatives in Canada. She even does a lot of her shopping in Canada, so she understands currency exchanges.

Her brother-in-law is a noncommissioned officer in the Maine National Guard, so she can get the straight dope from him about military matters.

“Is Rosie Thibideau ready to serve as president if the need arises?” Perrin asks rhetorically. “You betcha, she is,” he answers.

PERRIN NAMES VP

Family Values candidate Dr. Carl Perrin in a surprise move named his running mate this weekend. Rosie Thibideau, a former member of the Madawaska board of education agreed to run for the vice presidency along with Perrin. Although she is little known outside of her hometown in northern Maine, Perrin insists that she will be ready to serve on day one.

Although Ms. Thibideau does not have a college education, she did earn a GED from Madawaska High School two years after she dropped out, pregnant with her first child. “When I set my eyes on a goal,” she said, “I keep at it until I reach it.”

Though the vice presidential candidate did not earn a traditional high school diploma, she served for two years on the Madawaska board of education. It was a stormy time for her. Some of those secular humanists wanted to teach all that evolution stuff at the high school. Thibideau tried to force a ruling through the board that would require the teaching creationism along with evolution, but other members of the board kept voting her down. She ran for a second term in 2004 but was not reelected.

Rosie has rarely been out of Northern Maine, although she went to Portland a couple times, but she doesn’t care for big cities much. Perrin says that her experience in local politics is a lot more valuable than experience in Washington, because small towns are where real people live. She has a lot of insight into the military because her brother-in-law is a noncom in the Maine National Guard. She also knows a lot about foreign relations because she has lots of relatives in Canada.

Our reporter tried to interview Ms. Thibideau at her trailer just outside Madawaska, but she refused to talk to the press, because, she said, “journalists distort everything.”

UNBELIEVABLE TURNAROUND

Dr. Carl Perrin’s supporters are in deep shock. Just a little over a month ago he was still a candidate for the Democratic nomination. Now he is running as a conservative family values candidate. “How could he do that?” people are asking. “And how can he pretend to be a conservative?”

Perrin shrugs off such questions. “There has been no change in my position,” he insists. “My first consideration has always been to do what is in my own best interest. I gave the Democrats a chance to nominate me, and they went ahead and voted for that Obama guy.”

Perrin insists that his marriage record shows his family values. “Obama is still married to his first wife. McCain has been married only twice. I’ve been married three times. You learn a lot from being in three marriages. The insight I have picked up that way will help me when I become president.

“As the Family Values candidate, I will continue to push for government support for barley. This corn ethanol thing has done more harm than good. We need to keep the price of beer affordable for working men and women.”

WILL PERRIN BE OFFERED THE VICE PRESIDENTIAL SPOT?

When Hillary Clinton finally dropped out of the presidential race, people started talking about her as the vice presidential candidate. Naturally, Dr. Carl Perrin’s supporters are wondering the same about him.

Sources close to Perrin, however, tell us that he is not enthusiastic about the 2nd spot on the ticket. The only thing about the VP job that appeals to him is the salary. Although it is less than half of the presidential salary that he once hoped to earn, $186,000 seems pretty good to a man who struggled on a teacher’s pay for almost 50 years.

Actually, Perrin says, he would prefer a job that isn’t in the limelight so much. The VP has to do all the dirty work and then take the blame when anything goes wrong. Look at all the criticism of Dick Cheney. Perrin wouldn’t want that kind of negativity directed toward him.

Dr. Perrin would rather have a cabinet post. The salary is only $149,000, and it doesn’t include free government housing, but it wouldn’t require as much work. So he asks the VP search committee to leave him out, but remember him when they start to fill cabinet posts. President Obama might even want to create a new post just for Dr. Perrin, something like the Secretary of Cheap Beer.

PERRIN CHARGES SNEAK ATTACK

On the eve of the Ohio and Texas primaries, the vast right/left wing conspiracy unleashed a sneak attack on Democrat Dr. Carl Perrin. “They’ll do anything to stop me,” the candidate said. They know I’m the only Democrat who can look John McCain in the face and say, “Sonny boy, why don’t you leave these things to your elders?”

The attack is particularly insidious. Just a few days ago the public learned that “Surviving with Wolves” by Misha Defonseca, a memoir of surviving the holocaust and being adopted by wolves was fake. Not only was the story patently false, but Defonseca is not even Jewish. Then just a few days later, we learn that “Love and Consequences” by Margaret Jones, a memoir about growing up among street gangs in Los Angeles, is another fake. The author, whose real name is Margaret Seltzer, grew up in a well-to-do neighborhood and never did the things described in the so-called memoir.

Now people who are trying to destroy Carl Perrin’s run for the Democratic nomination are saying that he too has a phony memoir. The book in question is a grammar book called “Subject Meets Verb: A Love Story.” Perrin had the book printed and used it in his English classes at Casco Bay College in Portland, Maine. Trying to lift his book above the deadly dullness of the typical grammar book, Perrin invented some characters to use in examples in the book. The main characters are a Professor Aristotle Mongoose and his love, Miss Sweetcakes.”Mongoose and Miss Sweetcakes share a love for each other and for chocolate. The professor is described as being witty and having a “dapper mustache.” Perrin’s students always charged that Mongoose was a stand-in for Perrin himself.

It is true that Perrin never denied that charge, but he never claimed that “Subject Meets Verb” was a memoir. Now political opponents are claiming that the book is in fact a memoir and his students knew that. Political enemies further allege that Perrin was never in charge of the Chocolate Lab at Hedgehog College, and in fact never even taught at Hedgehog College. Perrin is very frustrated by these charges because they are true: He never taught at HC, but he insists that he never claimed to be Aristotle Mongoose. It is a classic dirty trick, to put a twist on the facts and distort the truth so that it no longer is true.