Ken Layne's Outrage

When you run for president in America, the basic Number One rule is that you must say, early and often, that "America is Number One" or "This is the greatest country in the world" or some other equally uplifting, patriotic statement that makes it very clear to voters that America is the top nation on Earth, and you are the candidate who best understands the unique glory of the United States.

Also, you must wear a very large "flag pin." Experts say the winning presidential candidate must wear an American Flag Pin that weighs at least seven pounds, and the pin must pierce through the heart muscle (for patriotism).

But the three remaining candidates in the 2008 race are facing a terrible new problem: Everybody's saying America's not really Number One at anything anymore, beyond maybe defense spending and childhood obesity. Even the famous weekly news magazine Newsweek says so in the current issue's cover story!

The desert metropolis of Phoenix was terrorized last week by sinister lights in the sky that hovered overhead while changing from a diamond shape to an "S" to a creepy cross. They were seen by air traffic controllers. The military denied involvement. Matt Drudge had the story at the top of his website. America panicked.

As the panic increased, a nameless "hoaxer" conveniently claimed responsibility -- balloons and burning flares were the cause of the unusual light show, he said. If so, the parched desert surrounding North Phoenix evaded a devastating wildfire, and with that the scare seemingly ended.

But what if the invasion had truly begun? Not the illegal-immigrant invasion from Mexico that the maverick John McCain supports, but an invasion by angry space monsters? Which of the three presidential front-runners is best prepared to lead our planet into a doomed war with the UFOs?

Barack and Hillary keep having stupid televised debates about flag pins and Sinbad. John McCain continues his sad "About Schmidt" tour of places where he used to be young, a half century ago. Cable news and political blogs somehow manage to fill the time and space, every day, with creative variations of last week's and last month's and last year's Campaign 2008 stories.

Meanwhile, the long-denied Recession is smelling a lot more like a Depression, specifically the decade-long "Great Depression" that wrecked tens of millions of American lives and permanently altered the political and economic systems of the United States.

There are all sorts of terrifying parallels for people who study this stuff: insane debt/income ratios, asset bubbles, runs on commodities, a tight credit market, collapsing banks and investment houses. But the latest evidence is so simple, even a common illiterate U.S. high-school graduate could understand it.

The nerve of that Barack Obama! Did you hear what he said?

Hillary Clinton and the Republicans are acting very upset about some remarks Obama made at some fundraiser. And it's no wonder: Obama said poor small-town Americans are bitter because the Clintons and the Republicans have been screwing over American working people for the past 28 years.

Since Reagan took office in 1981 -- and onward through the Bush Senior, Clinton and Bush Junior presidencies -- working class people apparently just keep getting poorer, while more people are "falling out of the middle class," and even economic "booms" are completely passing over all but the richest 5% of the nation.

Like everyone in this country, GOP presidential candidate John McCain says Condoleezza Rice is "a great American." And Secretary of State Rice obviously believes, as all Americans believe, that war hero McCain is perhaps the greatest American of all.

It's only natural that these two great tastes would go great together. That's why Rice's people are suddenly trying to make her the GOP nominee for vice president, while McCain is pretending like he has no idea what's going on -- or, considering McCain's age, he may simply have no idea what's going on.

On the traditionally quiet news day of Sunday, Rice made her ambitions known, through an intermediary. On the hit ABC show "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," a GOP insider announced that Rice is now "actively courting the vice presidential nomination," despite denying any interest in the job for several years.

"Instead, what began as a promising collaboration between two men bent on burnishing their reformist credentials collapsed after barely a week. The McCain-Obama relationship came undone amid charges and countercharges, all aired publicly two years ago in an exchange of stark and angry letters." -- Washington Post, March 31, 2008

Dear Senator Obama,

Congratulations on your election. I hope we can work together on campaign-finance reform and other pressing bipartisan issues, my friend.

Warmly,
John McCain

Dear Senator McCain,

Thanks for your kind note. I look forward to working with you in leading the country to a new future. Also, "hope" is my word.

Your Friend,
Barack Obama

According to the same financial experts who didn't manage to predict the current housing crash/credit crunch recession, the next step in this miserable process will be a full-blown Great Depression.

There are many causes for our new national nightmare, and it's no more fair to say "George W. Bush personally caused the entire catastrophe and ruined America forever" than it's fair to say "George W. Bush personally piloted those jets into the World Trade Center and Pentagon."

The important thing is to prepare for your new life during the New Great Depression, which will probably last at least a dozen years and end with the United States being one of the world's poorest, most-backward nations. But there's a bright side, too!

The main job of the American President is to renounce everybody and everything he or she has encountered over a lifetime.

All three leading candidates spend most of their time proving they're "tested" and "ready" for this particular job challenge by constantly saying they renounce this or that person or statement or thing or belief.

John McCain had to renounce some wingnut preacher who wants the Gays to be made illegal, and Hillary sort of halfway renounced her best friend Eliot Spitzer who loves hookers more than anything, but it was Barack Obama who really had to do the renouncing this week, because white conservatives find it very racist when black people talk about racism.

Dr. Congressman Ron Paul's supporters took "grass roots politics" to its ultimate, ridiculous extreme. They brought fun to politics -- even if they didn't see the humor -- and the nation's "Mainstream Media" will always be thankful for the Paul fanatics. Over a two-year-long presidential campaign that was always really about Hillary or Obama, the Ron Paul Love Revolution kept things weird.

Nobody but the elderly Texas Republican's most ardent Internet followers ever believed Ron Paul had any chance of winning the GOP nomination, let alone the White House. And that's what made the Paulians such a hoot. Like a doomsday cult convinced that Jesus is coming back on a certain day that passes without any such apocalypse, the Paul People were constantly adjusting to the crushing sorrow of reality, but that never stopped them from making hilarious home videos about their hero.

George W. Bush's seven years in the White House have fueled all kinds of terrible, paranoid conspiracies -- and the greatest, weirdest Bush Conspiracy is the "Exile To Paraguay" tale.

The story goes like this: George W. Bush and/or George H.W. Bush bought hundreds of thousands of acres in Paraguay, adjoining a similar spread owned by the Unification Church's Rev. Sun Myung Moon. Both massive parcels are hidden within a remote South American wilderness atop the world's biggest freshwater aquifer adjoining a secret U.S. military airbase. Oh, and there's a special non-extradition law to protect the Bush/Moon families as they enjoy their old age and run drug/weapons smuggling rings, safe from American justice. And they'll own all the drinking water in the world, or something.

So when George W.'s scandal-plagued little brother Neil Bush rushes down to Paraguay to meet with Rev. Moon's secret cabal, as happened Thursday, even the professional skeptic can be forgiven for wondering just what is up with these people.