HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS

Donald Trump has a curious way of making friends. According to him, Mexicans in the U.S. are murderers and rapists. John McCain is not a hero because he was captured. Anyway, McCain is a dummy. President Obama is incompetent. Karl Rove is a loser, as are his opponents in the contest for the Republican nomination.

Trump’s opponents are not just losers, but John Kasich is desperate, Rick Perry needs new glasses, and Lindsay Graham is a stiff. Trump said this as he gave out Graham’s phone number on television. Politicians can be bought. He gave a lot of money to Rand Paul as well as to the Clinton Foundation. Because of that gift, Hillary was forced to come to Donald’s wedding.

Reporters are a dishonest lot. Fox news anchor Chris Wallace is living in a dream world. Debate moderator Megyn Kelly asked him some tough questions because she was having her period. He has called women “fat pigs, slobs, and animals.”

Clearly Trump can charm the socks off anyone. If he keeps going, it won’t take long to alienate everyone who has missed his venom so far. 

SARAH IN 2012

Sarah Palin has already started her campaign for the presidency in 2012. She is going to spend the next four years visiting Africa and some other countries so she will know more about the outside world. Of course, as she will be the first to admit, she already knows a lot about Russia because she can see it from her kitchen window.

She has nothing but praise for John McCain, God bless him, for bringing her onto the national scene, and nothing but scorn for some of his aides. They tried to control everything she said or did and then leaked false stories to the press after McCain lost. “My rallies attracted more people than John’s did,” she said, “and his aides tried to blame it on me.”

“Barack Obama won the election,” she said, “but it won’t take too long for real Americans to get tired of a politician who pals around with terrorists. By 2012 the people will be ready for a candidate who really loves America. But I'm going to get some real pros to advise me, people like Dick Cheney and Karl Rove.”

PERRIN WITHDRAWS FROM THE RACE

In a stunning eleventh hour development, Family Values candidate Dr. Carl Perrin has withdrawn from the presidential election.

Perrin admitted that he had known for a long time that he didn’t have much chance to win the election. Why, then, bother even to withdraw at this late date?

“Although I knew I couldn’t win,” the candidate told our reporter, “I do have a big following. I was afraid that my supporters would draw votes away from Obama and throw the election to McCain and the moose lady.” I didn’t want to the American people what Ralph Nader did in 2000. I didn’t want to have that on my conscience.

“I want to thank all the people who supported my campaign, especially all those Mainers who raised money for me by picking up returnable cans and bottles. I hope I will be able to work with President Obama to keep cheap beer flowing to American men and women.

“I wish Obama well, and I have confidence that he will be an outstanding president. But if I am disappointed, I will be around for the next election. I will be only 82 in 2012. Don’t forget Konrad Adenauer was Chancellor of Germany until the age 87.”

SAVE US FROM McCAIN’S ECONOMIC PLAN

We talked with Maxine Pelletier of Westbrook, ME, a single working Mom. Ms Pelletier is a lifelong Republican who plans to vote for John McCain. The main reason for her voting decision, she says, is that Obama is going to raise taxes, and McCain isn’t. “We don’t need anymore taxes,” she says.

“You must be doing pretty well at your job waiting on table at the Westbrook Diner,” we said. "The taxes will be raised on people making over a quarter of a million dollars a year.”

She conceded that she wouldn’t come anyway near that much money, but there are other parts of McCain’s tax plan, she insisted.

“You mean like cutting the tax on capital gains. You must have done pretty well in the stock market.”

“Are you kidding?” she asked. “Where would I get money to put in the stock market? But I like what Senator McCain says about eliminating burdensome regulations on business?”

“The country wouldn’t be in the mess it is today if the Bush administration had applied more regulation on the4 housing and credit businesses.”

“Well, McCain is going to give us a $5,000 medical tax credit.”

“He’s also going to tax the cost of the medical insurance your company pays. It will end up costing you more for insurance.”

“Anyway, I trust his judgment.”:

“Sarah Palin.”

REPUBLICAN VICE PRESIDENTS

You have to hand it to those Republican presidents. Since Reagan they really know how to pick a vice president. George H W Bush chose Dan Quayle as his running mate. What better insurance could he have against assassination? Who would be wacky enough to try to murder Bush if that left Quayle in charge of the country? The guy isn’t smart enough to run a lemonade stand, to say nothing of the country.

Then Bush junior went dad one better in choosing Dick Cheney as his vice president. Anyone who hated Bush the younger enough to contemplate assassination would have to consider what the country would be like with Cheney at the helm in name as well as in deed.

We might have thought that this weird kind of assassination insurance was just something that the Bushes practiced, but John McCain evidently thinks it’s a great idea too. He chose a running mate who combines Quayle’s cluelessness with Cheney’s ruthlessness. God help the country if she ever had to replace the 72-year-old John McCain.

VEEP SARAH

Vice President Dick Cheney told reporters that Governor Sarah Palin has the instincts to make an excellent vice president. “Every time I had to get out of sight, I had to go to an undisclosed location, but Sarah hides in plain view. She gets up in front of huge crowds and wows them with snappy comments. She’s fine just as long as they keep the press away from her. Those nosey buggers from the media all want to dig into her background and ask embarrassing questions. No wonder John McCain wants to keep them away from her. They should have some respect for her privacy.”

Sarah Palin is a strong, independent woman, and we could all learn something from her. In her first 18 months on the job as governor of Alaska, she got a $60-a-day per diem allowance for the nights she spent at home rather than at the state’s capital. During that time she spent 300 nights at her house in Wasilla, earning some $18,000 just for staying home! Family Values candidate Dr. Carl Perrin has nothing but admiration for the Alaska governor. He would like to talk to her and find out more about that $60-a-day per diem. When he is elected, he plans to spend most of his time at home, and he wants to get $60 a day for sleeping in his own bed.

SARAH BARRACUDA

John McCain has shown excellent judgment in choosing a running mate who so eminently qualified to lead the nation in his place if the need should arise. While some people questioned Ms Palin’s expertise in foreign affairs, Cindy McCain pointed out that Alaska is our closest state to Russia! That is reassuring. I’m embarrassed that I didn’t see something that obvious myself.

Like McCain, Palin is against earmarks—unless they’re going to Alaska. As mayor of Wasilla, she gained $27 million from Washington for various local projects. She was against Senator Stevens’s “Bridge to Nowhere,” but that was after she supported it. She raised sales taxes to build a hockey rink in her town. Last June she said it was “God’s will” that Washington pay for a $30 billion gas pipeline in Alaska. She said that the war in Iraq was a “task from God.” It is really scary to think of someone who thinks like that with her hands in control of nuclear weapons.

She is really tough in fighting for what she believes in. She threatened to fire the Wasilla librarian who refused to go along with her desire to censor library books. She did fire the public safety commissioner when he refused to fire a state trooper, an ex-husband of Sarah’s sister.

With a little seasoning Sarah could become as skillful as Dick Cheney in getting things done her way. She’s a hunter, and a better shot than Cheney. As Fred Thompson said, “She’s the only nominee who knows how to field dress a moose.” Snicker at that if you want, but you never can tell when such a skill might come in handy for a vice president.

VICE PRESIDENTIAL PICKS

Obama picked a veteran senator to be his running mate. Joe Biden balances Obama’s perceived weaknesses, his limited experience, particularly in the area of foreign affairs.

McCain has chosen Sarah Palin. (Who?) You know, the governor of Alaska. Oh yeah. She certainly has lots of qualifications. Solid conservative credentials, making up for the doubts that the right wing might have about McCain himself. She has lots of experience in government, though not as much as Obama. She has been governor for less than two years. Before that she was mayor of Wasilla, a city of 7,000 people. Before that she was active in the PTA. That should take care of the people who suggest that Obama lacks experience to be commander-in-chief. The fact that she is a woman just might appeal to the Democratic women who are still bitter about Hillary Clinton’s failure to get the nomination.

We haven’t heard from Family Values candidate Dr. Carl Perrin for a while, but he has been working behind the scenes. The party didn’t have a regular convention or anything, but a group of supporters gathered with the candidate in the men’s room at the village clubhouse to toss a few ideas around.

One of the big issues of course was, who would be Perrin’s running mate? Insiders from the Perrin campaign would not even comment on whether or not a vice presidential candidate had been chosen. However, rumors have it that the wily former English professor will come out with a shocking choice, perhaps a transgendered person. Such a candidate should appeal to voters of both sexes as well as to gays, lesbians, and other transgenedered persons.

Perrin campaign manager Aristotle Mongoose told us, “You will just have to wait and see.”

OBAMA GOES TO BERLIN, GERMANY; MC CAIN GOES TO BERLIN, NH, AND PERRIN DRINKS GERMAN BEER

While Obama drew a huge crowd in Berlin, Germany, McCain attracted a handful of people in Berlin, New Hampshire. At the same time Family Values candidate Carl Perrin drank some German beer and felt he had participated.

Obama made a hit with French president Nicolas Sarkozy, Perrin went to West Paris, Maine, and no one even knew he was there. McCain, remembering Freedom Fries, was not sure whether it was politically useful to do anything French, went to a German restaurant in Columbus, Ohio.

McCain turned negative and charged unfairly that Obama would rather go to a gym than go to a hospital and visit wounded GIs. Perrin asserted that he talks to veterans every day. His retirement village is full of veterans of World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. He admits, though, that he would rather go to a bar than a hospital.

BIAS IN THE MAIN STREAM MEDIA

From the very beginning the press has shown favoritism to Senator Barack Obama. And it gets more pronounced every day. He goes to Iraq to build up his foreign policy credentials, and we see pictures of him in a helicopter with General Petraeus getting a tour of the area.

At the same time we get pictures of Senator John McCain in a golf cart with Daddy Bush in Kennebunkport, Maine. The Republican candidate has already been to Iraq umpteen times. We recall pictures of him in a flak jacket surrounded by a battalion of troops as he walked through a “safe” street in Baghdad.

The press doesn’t even cover the campaign of conservative Family Values candidate Dr. Carl Perrin. Had they been on the ball, they could have caught a picture of Perrin pedaling around his retirement village and his three-wheeler, saving gasoline and getting his exercise at once. The press has pretty much ignored Perrin, despite voters’interest in his cheap beer platform.

Both McCain and Perrin have moved to the right during this campaign. McCain took more conservative positions in order to appeal to the Republican base. Perrin, once a candidate for the Democratic nomination is now running in the Family Values party. The liberal bias of the press is well known, but maybe something more is at stake here. McCain and Perrin are both geezers. The main stream media seems more interested in following that young guy. People seem to forget: geezers vote, and they won’t forget that two prominent senior citizens have been ignored.

WHO’S THE BIGGEST FLIP-FLOPPER?

As we move toward the general election, the candidates are flip-flopping all over the place. A lot of people saw John McCain as a moderate who stayed away from some of the GOP’s most extreme positions. Now, in order to woo the party’s base, he has been moving toward the right. He opposed the Bush tax cuts when they came up. Now he says he wants to make them permanent. He once referred to the Evangelicals as “agents of intolerance.” Now he seeks their blessings.

Barack Obama has been called the most liberal member of the Senate. Now he seems to be moving toward the center. He vowed to concentrate on bringing the troops home from Iraq. Now he is “refining” his position on troop withdrawal. He voted to let the telecoms off the hook on issue of cooperating with the Bush administration’s spying on citizens.

To some people, the shifts of McCain and Obama are nothing compared to candidate Carl Perrin’s flip-flop. He tried to win the Democratic nomination. When he didn’t succeed, instead of throwing his considerable influence behind Senator Obama, Perrin entered the race as a conservative Family Values candidate. The man who ran as a liberal is now trying to get conservatives to vote for him.

Perrin insists, however, that he has not changed positions at all. He always thought that corn ethanol was a bad idea. He was always in favor of cheap beer, and he still is.

HELP FROM OUR FRIENDS

Senator McCain has admitted that he doesn’t know much about economics, so he enlisted the aid of a man who has a Ph. D. in the subject. Former senator Phil Gramm, now a vice chairman of UBS, promptly said that Americans have “become a nation of whiners.” That comment really helped McCain, who had to disavow the former senator’s unpolitical comment.

Barack Obama picked up some of the same sort of support from fellow Democrat, the Reverend Jesse Jackson. Jackson complained that Obama was “talking down” to black men when he said they should take responsibility for their children. That made the reverend so angry that he wanted to “cut Obama’s nuts off”! That doesn’t sound like a very Christian sentiment to us.

Family Values candidate Carl Perrin also has “friends” who are not being very helpful. Campaign volunteer Hercule Mendez evidently forgot that Perrin was running now as a conservative when he said, “Perrin has always been a liberal.” Perrin responded that he was liberal only in his devotion to family values.

PERRIN’S MILITARY SERVICE DOES NOT QUALIFY HIM FOR THE PRESIDENCY

When General Clark said that John McCain’s military service did not qualify him to be president, people were outraged. Now the same charges are being leveled at conservative Family Values candidate Carl Perrin.

We spoke to retired Master Sergeant “Stud” Adams, who said, “Yeah, I remember Perrin, that little pissant. He was one of them Yankees that was assigned to the Dixie Division during the Korean War. He was in my platoon, but before too long he got hisself assigned to the orderly room so he could sit on his ass all day while the rest of us were out training in the hot sun. Then he got hisself transferred to the personnel office and even made sergeant. He had a soft job, just sitting at a desk all day. When we would go home to Alabama, we would bring back some of the good ole white lightning. Perrin could make a good dent on that, but otherwise I can’t think of anything in his military service that would prepare him to president of the US of A.”

“Sergeant Adams,” Perrin grunted dismissively. ‘What the hell does he know about anything? I may have had an office job, but when the company took the physical fitness test after the end of training, ole ‘Stud’ didn’t pass, but I did. Not only that, but I earned an Expert Rifleman’s badge. I didn’t serve in a combat zone, but I did learn a few things in the army, and they will serve me well when I am president.”

We aren’t surprised that politicians are playing dirty games to try to knock Perrin out of the race. He is the only Independent candidate who has a chance of winning against the two major party candidates.

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.”

PERRIN REENTERS THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE!

Former Republican congressman from Georgia, Bob Barr, is running for president on the Libertarian ticket. That must be great news for John McCain, who is running against Barack Obama. Polls put McCain well behind Obama, even before factoring Barr into the equation.

Now in a stunning new development, another candidate is running on a conservative ticket. Former candidate Dr. Carl Perrin recently dropped out of the Democratic race, but our sources tell us that he will reenter as the candidate for the recently-formed Conservative Family Values Part. It will certainly be a hard sell for him to present himself as a family values man after a political career as a liberal. However, he says, “I’ve been married three times. How much more family oriented than that can you get?”

Some political analysts speculate that Perrin hopes to help Obama by pulling votes away from McCain. Voters who value McCain for his experience and maturity should really go ga-ga over Perrin, who is six years older and six years more experienced than the Arizona senator.

30 CENTS A DAY

With the price of everything, including food and gas, going up, I’ve had to cut back on all kinds of things. Luckily I can still afford to buy cheap beer, but I can no longer pay for a Starbucks latte. However, with Senator Clinton’s and Senator McCain’s new plan, things are about to change. These two senators want to suspend the federal tax on gasoline for the summer months. (They both have some really strange ideas about how to make up the shortfall in the overextended federal budget, but I don’t care about that kind of stuff. I just want to get the extra money that will be in my pocket when I don’t have to pay the gasoline tax.)

I stay up nights trying to decide what to do with all that extra money that I will have if Clinton-McCain plan passes. According to some estimates, the average driver will save about 30 cents a day. Wow! If I put that 30 cents aside each day, over a month it would come to—let’s see--$9.00! If I just add a little more that, then three times a month I could afford a Starbucks latte. Thank you, Hillary and John.

SAVE US FROM PANDERERS

Senator John McCain has come up with a wonderful idea. Why doesn’t the government suspend the federal tax on gasoline during the summer when people drive so much more? Senator Hillary Clinton climbed right aboard the gas tax holiday with her buddy John. The Arizona senator would make up for the loss of tax revenue from the general fund, which means it would not be made up. The New York senator would balance the money lost in the tax holiday by putting a windfall tax on the oil companies. This is a proposal that has already come before the senate and rejected.

Barack Obama doesn’t think dropping the tax during the summer months makes much sense, and it could even lead to higher gasoline costs. If people drive more and use more petroleum, the cost of gasoline could go up even further, negating the effect of the dropped tax. Furthermore, the tax money now goes for highway maintenance. The loss of funding for that would lead to a loss of thousands of construction jobs, just when we need to create jobs.

How much would the average family save if the gas tax is suspended from Memorial Day to Labor Day? According to a CNN article the average family would save about $2.35 every time they fill their tank. Congressional analysts,however, say that that means the average family would save about $30 over the summer. Well, whoop-te-do! I can see families sitting around discussing what they’re going to do with all that money.

Unfortunately, people will not see the false promise of McCain/Clinton scheme. Pretending to give something to everyday people, their plans will just drive up the price of gasoline, negating the “savings” which the two senators offer. They’ll repeat the false charges that Senator Obama is “out of touch” with common people, and they’ll go to the polls and vote for the panderers.

VAST RIGHT-WING CONSPIRACY?

What in the hell is going on? James Dobson, founder of the conservative Focus on Family, said “I would not vote for John McCain under any circumstances.” Rush Limbaugh said, “If McCain or Huckabee gets the nomination, it will destroy the GOP.” Ann Coulter said that she would vote for Hillary Clinton rather than John McCain. Are all these right wingers suddenly in favor of Hillary, or are they unwilling to forgive McCain for some of his moderate positions on various issues?

Perhaps the strangest semi-endorsement from the right wing for Mrs. Clinton comes from Richard Mellon Scaife. When she referred to a vast right-wing conspiracy during Bill Clinton’s administration, Scaife was the chief money man behind that conspiracy. He donated $1.8 million to the conservative American Spectator magazine to dig up dirt about Bill Clinton. Now Scaife’s paper, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, invites the New York Senator to come for an interview and Scaife sits in on the interview. He came away with a favorable impression of the Democratic candidate, saying that she “exhibited an impressive command of many of today’s most pressing domestic and international issues.” Her answers, “were thoughtful, well-stated and often dead on.” The billionaire agreed with the senator that the federal government had bungled Katrina. They also saw eye to eye on the need to pull our troops out of Iraq.

What are Scaife’s motives in all of this? Does he find her position on issues closer to his own than McCain’s positions? Or is he trying to promote her candidacy because he thinks she would be easier to defeat Barack Obama in the general election?

WHO’S TO BLAME?

What is behind the economic mess that the country is in? Senator John McCain, who admits, “The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should,” placed the blames squarely on the people who “bought homes they couldn’t afford.” He went on to say that federal assistance “must not reward people who were irresponsible at the expense of those who weren’t.”

Wait a minute! Who was responsible? Was it the Wall Street bankers like Bear Stearns whom the federal government is bailing out? Was it Bear Stearns stockholders, like chairman James E. Cayne, the value of whose company shares fell from $1 billion to a mere $61 million? Was it the politicians and lobbyists who tore down much of the regulations covering the finance industry? Was it the poor suckers who bought a home with money lent to him by a banker who supposed to check the buyer’s ability to repay?

The fact is, it doesn’t matter who is to blame. It’s a mess, and it concerns all of us. The problems in the housing/credit market touch every area of business and affect us all. Before it gets any worse, we had better do something about it.

Hillary Clinton compared John McCain to Herbert Hoover, the man who stood by and did nothing while the country slide into the worst depression it has ever seen. Even George Bush has done more than John McCain is willing to do.

DO REPUBLICANS HAVE A CLUE?

George Bush has been the most clueless president ever. After the UN declared that they had found no weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, George didn’t let facts or logic stand in his way of invading the country. Then nearly five years ago he flew onto the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln to stand in front of a banner that proclaimed “Mission Accomplished.”

We have become so used to Bush’s misstatements that we don’t bother anymore to ask if he is misinformed or lying. We just ignore what he says because for whatever reason, we no longer believe him. Unfortunately George Bush is not the only Republican who doesn’t know what he is talking about. Mike Huckabee, while running for the Republican nomination for president, revealed that he didn’t know where Afghanistan is. This almost five years after the U. S. invaded the country to try to find Osama Bin Laden. Doesn’t the man even read the newspapers?

Huckebee is just a good ole country boy. Maybe he just doesn’t know much about what’s happening outside of Arkansas. But recently John McCain showed a similar lack of awareness of what is going on in the world. McCain has been in Washington since 1977, first as Navy Senate liaison, then as congressman and senator. He is a member of the Senate Armed Forces Committee. But he recently stated that Iran was training members of Al Qaeda and then letting them slip back into Iraq where they could attack coalition forces. Iran is suspected of training Shi’ite militias, and these militias have attacked Iraqi police and military, but they are not Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is Sunni, not Shi’ite. Conflict between the Moslem sects is part of the problem in Iraq.

Senator McCain doesn’t know the difference between these two groups. Yet he is sitting in the Senate and the armed forces committee and making decisions that affect us all. He is running for the presidency and urging that we “stay the course” in Iraq. He wants to continue George Bush’s clueless war policy.

Don’t these people even read a newspaper? They are unaware of things that every citizen should know. It is about time that candidates for public office be required to take a current events test before they are allowed to make decisions for the rest of us.