Oct. 23, 2008

HOLLYWOOD--God bless America, and how’s everybody?

• Wall Street enjoyed a normal trading pattern in the stock market for the first time in a month Monday. There was a national sigh of relief. Americans were never happier to turn on cable news and see kidnapped children as the hour’s top story.

• Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama Sunday, then denied it was based on race. He favored sending U.S. troops into Iraq and now he backs the candidate who wants to yank them out. Nobody in Washington ever admits they were wrong, you have to decode it.

• Ricky’s Costume Shop in New York said Monday its top-selling Halloween costume is a Sarah Palin beauty pageant sash reading Miss Alaska on one side and Miss Vice President on the other. It comes with glasses. Wig and drilling rights sold separately.

• NBC’s Chairman Jeff Zucker ordered $500 million dollars in cuts in next year’s network budget. Enough already. Wages are dropping so fast in America that last week 50 people were forced out of their jobs by the Emancipation Proclamation.

• The Tampa Bay Rays and Philadelphia Phillies will play in the World Series. These two third-tier franchises made it to the top thanks to baseball’s luxury tax and revenue sharing. When the series gets low ratings you can blame it on Barack Obama’s tax plan.

• Jerry Jones showed off his new Dallas Cowboys stadium to reporters Friday. It reacts automatically to sun and rain. The retractable roof opens whenever oil is above $90 a barrel and closes shut when Saudi Arabia increases production.

• Congressman Tim Mahoney was targeted Monday by the House Ethics Committee over a sex scandal. He got caught cheating on the mistress with whom he was cheating on his wife. The saddest part is he missed getting the Medal of Freedom by one president.

• President Bush signed railroad safety rules Friday to avoid another crash like the one in Los Angeles. It’s tough. Cops have to crack down, but if they break the thumbs of everybody who texts while driving, we will lose our advantage over the apes.

• John McCain called attention to Barack Obama’s former ties to 60s terrorist William Ayers Tuesday. Whatever happened to letting bygones be bygones? John McCain lived with communists for five years and you don’t hear Barack Obama harping about it.

• The New York Times ran an article on Cindy McCain Sunday mentioning her struggle with depression. It’s an epidemic lately. Wall Street bankers are borrowing money from loan sharks just to have somebody who’ll talk them out of jumping out the window.

• The Social Psychology Bulletin studied 40 years of Playboy pictorials Monday and found that bustier women signified a bad economy. There’s a simple explanation. Whenever there’s a recession, all they serve at the Playboy Mansion is macaroni and cheese.

• Great Britain released UFO files from the Cold War Monday which reveal that two U.S. fighters tried to shoot down a UFO. We make no apologies. Shooting down anything we didn’t understand was our military policy then and today it’s our education policy.

• Brigham Young University revoked the diploma of ex-communicated Mormon Chad Hardy Monday after he published a calendar of barechested missionaries. The ex-communication could be a blessing in disguise. If Mitt Romney had been thrown out of the Mormon Church he would be two weeks away from being the next President of the United States.