My First Annual Political Academy Awards

Photo source: Wikipedia

Everyone’s talking about the Oscars today, and it occurred to me that they ought to have similar awards for politicians. Here then, are the winners of my first annual Political Academy Awards.

The Tammy Faye Baker Thickest Makeup Award: Nancy Pelosi

The Sylvia Plath Award for most suicidal performance at a political convention: the Republican Party for its treatment of the Ron Paul delegates.

The Josef Goebbels Award for Excellence in Selective Editing: MSNBC

The Barry White Award for Best Score: David Petraeus (get it? score?)

The Veruca Salt I Want It Now Award: Sandra Fluke

The Robert Mugabe Award for policies most likely to reproduce the economy of Zimbabwe: Paul Krugman

The Mr. Ed Award for Best Performance by a Horse: John Kerry

The Fred Astaire Award for Best Choreography: Mitt Romney explaining the difference between Romneycare and Obamacare.

And finally, The John Barrymore Award for Best Actor in a Work of Fiction: Barack Obama promising not to raise your taxes.

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com

News from the Asylum - Monday Edition

Ouch. According to the CDC, teen births hit a record low. I should hope so. It must be quite an ordeal for the mother to give birth to a teenager.	Photo source: Wikipedia
Photo source: White House photo	Not listening. Reuters reports that according to a Quinnipiac University poll, "Americans are eager to hear President Barack Obama address the U.S. economy and federal deficit in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday." Meanwhile, in Washington, the president is putting the finishing touches on his speech, which will focus on gun control, immigration, and how he got Charles Dorner.
Tragic day. The New York Post reports, "The distillery behind Maker’s Mark bourbon is reducing the amount of alcohol to meet a rise in global demand, company officials said today." It would behoove Maker's Mark to heed the advice of Sonny Bunch, managing editor at the Washington Free Beacon. His alternative? Instead of "diluting their product in order to ensure that more people have access to a crappier product," apply freshman economics and "raise the price!"	Photo source: Wikipedia
Photo source: AceShowBiz.com	Film critic Rex Reed is under fire for referring to Identify Thief star Melissa McCarthy as a "female hippo." Reed's detractors have a point. McCarthy looks nothing like a hippo. She looks like a governor of New Jersey.
Iranian Media reports that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says he's ready to be the first Iranian in space. Does that even need a punchline?	Photo source: Composite built from images from Wikipedia
Photo sources: rantersbox.blogspot.com, The Inquisitr	Senate Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told Fox News yesterday, "It is almost a false argument to say that we have a spending problem," and "The fact is, we’ve had plenty of spending cuts." When told that federal spending actually increased $192 billion between 2011 and 2012, the former speaker said, "Math is hard."
This morning's top story is the announcement from the Vatican that Pope Benedict XVI will resign at the end of the month. The news came as a shock to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. She thought she was in charge of the Catholic Church. Meanwhile, anonymous sources at Buckingham Palace reveal that Britain's Prince Charles spent the morning subtly planting news articles about the pontiff's resignation around his mother's wing of the palace.	Photo source: Wikipedia
	In an interview with CNN's "The Science Seat", astronomer James Kalirai warned that someday, "The outer layers of the sun will actually reach the Earth, and so the oceans will evaporate and our planet will be fried." In response, former Vice President Al Gore blamed global warming and renewed calls to deindustrialize the planet. In a related story, President Obama promised to "lower the sun level."

Check back throughout the day for continuous updates.

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com

Top 10 Ways to Avoid the Fiscal Cliff

As the nation hurtles toward the automatic tax increases and spending cuts known as the “fiscal cliff,” Congress and the White House seek alternative cost cutting and revenue enhancing measures:

#10 Take tax revenue to Vegas, bet everything on red.

#9 Cut Michelle Obama’s travel budget. On her next trip, she can only bring 20 of her closest friends.

#8 McDonald’s Extra Value meals at state dinners.

#7 Put off buying new fighter jets until Black Friday sale.

#6 Ask Romney for a loan.

#5 Sell the original Constitution to a collector; Obama wasn’t using it anyway.

#4 Have Massachusetts Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren open a casino (Get it?).

#3 Botox tax. The CBO estimates this would raise a billion dollars, just from Pelosi.

#2 Charge Biden a quarter every time he says “malarkey.”

And finally,
#1 Let Sandra Fluke pay for her own damn birth control.

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com.

Five other things to blame on Mitt Romney

The facts are in and there is no merit to Democrat claims that Mitt Romney is a felon, a tax cheat, or the murderer of Mrs. Joe Soptic. But despite the collapse of their accusations, Democrats aren’t ready to give up. You can bet they’re already preparing their next round of attacks. Here are some news stories we can look forward to in the coming weeks:

1. Unemployment

Photo source: TotalMortgage.com

In an impromptu meeting with reporters outside Big Bob’s House of Botox, California Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi blamed corporate raiders such as Romney’s Bain Capital for the 8%+ unemployment rate that has persisted throughout Barack Obama's presidential tenure. When told that Bain Capital was in fact a net creator of jobs, having added well over 100,000 new positions to the economy, the former speaker replied, “That’s not what the ghost of Susan B. Anthony told me.”

2. The National Debt

Photo source: SarcasticGamer.com

In a speech to supporters, Vice President Biden argued that opposition by Mitt Romney and other Republicans to President Obama’s tax proposal was responsible for the $5.3 trillion added to the national debt since the president took office. When it was pointed out that, according to the White House’s own figures, the president’s proposal was only sufficient to cover 16% of the annual deficit, the vice president shot back, “It’s not fair to use math.”

3. The Kennedy Assassination

Photo source: EthicalHunters.blogspot.com

The Rev. Al Sharpton released this photo, purportedly showing a 16-year-old Mitt Romney, on the grassy knoll, taking aim at the 35th president. When a reporter pointed out that it was, in fact, a picture of a squirrel, the Rev. Sharpton called the reporter a racist.

4. The Hindenberg explosion

Photo source: Wikipedia

Appearing on Fox and Friends, DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz revealed that Mitt Romney acted alone in the 1937 destruction of the Hindenberg. When asked how Romney – who was born in 1947 – could have possibly blown up a zeppelin ten years before his birth, Ms. Wasserman Schultz replied, “That just proves that how dangerous Bain Capital is.” Oh, the humanity.

5. Who shot J.R.?

Photo source: imdb.com

In the summer of 1980, the question on everyone’s mind was not whether Reagan would beat Carter, but rather who shot J.R.Ewing, the lead character in the nighttime soap opera, Dallas. In a speech on the Senate floor, Majority Leader Harry Reid has finally revealed the answer: Mitt Romney. In response, Reid’s GOP counterpart Mitch McConnell raised a point of order: “J.R. is a fictional character – he isn’t real,”

“I don’t understand the difference,” replied Reid.

We know you don’t, Senator.

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com.

Psychic Libs

Personally, I thought it was a gutsy and principled speech.

Mitt Romney stood up in front of the NAACP yesterday and said that free enterprise was in the best interest of America in general and the black community in particular. He didn’t adjust his message to an audience he knew was overwhelmingly liberal. While I've long been skeptical about Romney’s commitment to free enterprise, when he tells a roomful of Obama supporters that “free enterprise is still the greatest force for upward mobility, economic security, and the expansion of the middle class,” I start to believe he really means it. Maybe we’ll finally get the debate between capitalism and socialism that the pandering weasel John McCain should have given us, but didn't.

Of course, what made headlines in the mainstream media was not Romney’s eloquent defense of free enterprise, but the boos he received when he promised to repeal the Unaffordable Care Act (The standing ovation he received at the end of his speech received less coverage from the fair and impartial MSM. A search of Google News for “Romney NAACP boos” returned 109,000 hits, compared to 23,100 for “Romney NAACP ovation.”).

According to numerous liberal commentators, the boos were part of the Romney Master Plan. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and TheGrio.com's Goldie Taylor were typical. “It was a calculated move on his part to get booed,” said the former speaker in an interview with Bloomberg Television (don’t you love that phrase – “former speaker”?). Ms. Taylor got her turn when asked by Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC whether it was “too cynical to think that the Romney campaign actually went in that room today with the hope of getting booed, at least three times, because they want the video of their candidate being booed by the NAACP to play in certain racist precincts where that will actually help them.”

“I don’t think you’re being too cynical at all,” Ms. Taylor replied.

What amazes me is the certainty with which the liberals know what Romney was thinking. Now they could be right about Romney’s Machiavellian intent. Or it could be, as an anonymous Romney advisor told Buzzfeed.com, that the candidate just wanted to “send a message that he's going to be president of the entire United States.” Fortunately, we know the answer thanks to the ability of liberals to read other people’s thoughts. This ability is central to their being: it takes formidable mental powers to detect racism where no one else can see it. Their powers also come in handy for staffing bureaucracies with clairvoyants able to make economic decisions better than all the millions of producers and consumers interacting in markets, combined.

Photo sources: rantersbox.blogspot.com, The Inquisitr

It’s too bad that liberals disdain markets – and the profits that go with them – because they could profit handsomely from their psychic powers. Since the voters took her oversized gavel away, Nancy Pelosi no doubt has some free time on her hands; she should consider a second career as a psychic. She could set up a 900-number (do people still use 900-numbers?) and guide callers to the hiding place where poor-departed Uncle Albert concealed the stock certificates. Also, I invite Ms. Taylor to come with me to Las Vegas. If we pooled my knowledge of probabilities with her ability to read minds, we could really clean up at the poker table.