October 29, 2008 – Our columnar time machine pilots have been pulling overtime, asking the brightest and best people in history who to support in next week’s U.S. Presidential election. Results are mixed.
Q: What would Jesus do?
A: Not talk to pollsters, apparently. Jesus, Moses, Buddha and the Muslim prophet Mohammad said they do not endorse candidates. Buddha got slightly abusive. Jesus said something about rendering, and mentioned someone named Caesar who was not on our candidate database.
Q: What about everybody else?
A: Some other historical luminaries also refused to participate. In the future, many other news agencies will copy the world-beating Washington Examiner and build their own time machines.
Fox News, alone, will field more than 20 of them in 2024, staffed by the same kinds of irritating motor-mouths we see on their 2008 broadcasts. So, many future millennia have banned time machine polling altogether, and parts of the past are also catching on.
Still, many greats participated, including Plato; Abraham Lincoln’s cousin, Agnes; Genghis Khan’s science teacher; President Warren G. Harding, five Canadian former Prime Ministers (names unknown) and Professor Leo Strauss, the mountebank and father (most say figuratively) of today’s so-called Neo-Conservatives..
Q: Never mind. How should I vote if I am a Republican?
A: For Barack Obama. Then Democrats will run the soup kitchens when the economy really bottoms out. All those greedy Boomers, and their shiftless, listless, feckless and useless offspring, will remember sugary, expensive coffee drinks and warm muffins while they line up in the snow for paper cups of hot water and processed carrot — the anti-Democrat grudges will last a century.
Q: But what if I am a Democrat? Should I still vote?
A: Don’t bother. After Obama, more bailouts and inflation, the only small business left will be two elderly sisters in Elkhart, Indiana, failing to get a bank loan to buy jars for homemade jam.
One sister, the Republican one, will be watched by the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and the (Democrat-run) Department of Homeland Security. America’s nine other Republicans (also under surveillance) will be federal employees managing the nationalized banking sector.
Q: Don’t tell anybody, but I like the idea of killing people. Advice?
A: It depends if you have a preferred means of slaughter, or if you just go for the big numbers. If you like radiation, vote McCain to bomb-bomb Iran. Otherwise, vote Obama. Some 50 million American babies have been murdered by abortionists since Roe-v-Wade, and the Democrat’s Supreme Court picks will likely preserve the status quo.
Q: I’m concerned about America’s moral decline. How should I vote?
A: Write in Paris Hilton. That bed-cam gave new meaning to the word ‘transparency.’ Unlike the other candidates, she does not aspire to do much in office. The only place likely to be invaded would be Rodeo Drive during the Christmas sales. Best of all, if we unfashionable grown-ups vote for her, hip youngsters may be so disgusted that they abandon rotten music, mindless materialism and meaningless sex. In four years, they could be packed into churches and libraries. What’s to lose?
Q: What if I want smaller government and lower taxes?
A: We need to talk. For a very reasonable fee, our time machine pilots are prepared to take individuals to the past (the future sucks) after normal office hours, providing that they are not morbidly obese or carrying more than one small piece of hand-luggage.
Prices will be negotiated. Please contact us directly and discreetly — not through the editors of this newspaper.
S J Masty, a former Washington speechwriter, is an international communication consultant based in London.
