Pile of Manure Left on Debate Stage Surges to Lead in GOP Race

There’s a new leader in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. A pile of horse manure left on the stage before last night’s outdoor debate in Casper, Wyoming, was the runaway debate winner, according to a new poll out today. Perhaps even more surprising, “Joe the Manure Pile,” as the pile of horse poop has been dubbed, now leads the Republican field overall in the campaign to see who will oppose President Barack Obama in 2012.

52 percent of viewers called Joe the Manure Pile the debate’s big winner, compared with just 17 percent for Herman Cain and 13 percent for Michele Bachmann, according to a FOX News poll. And in a new Gallup poll out today, Joe leads in the race overall with 28 percent of the vote, followed by Cain at 24 percent and Romney with 22 percent.

“He didn’t make any gaffes,” said Republican strategist Karl Rove. “While Herman Cain got a lot of audience applause when he said he would put land mines along the Mexican border, and Rick Perry scored points when he said he’d order the National Guard to open fire on the Occupy Wall Street protesters, they also stumbled at times. Joe the Manure Pile was steady as a rock. Compared to the other candidates, he looked pretty presidential.”

Republican voters seemed to agree. “That pile of shit had the best ideas of anyone on our side,” said Preston Dullard, who was in the audience for the Tea Party-sponsored debate. “I really liked him. He’s a strong, silent type, and you know where he sits, issue-wise. He’s not a flip-flopper like Romney.”

“He’s down to earth,” said Wanda Panky, 62, who was also in the audience. “He doesn’t try to confuse everyone with his fancy plans, like Cain with that 999 stuff. Plus, Joe’s a real American. There’s no questioning that. We all saw him come out of that horse.”

Others, however, were more cautious. Like Tea Partier Goober Hockley of Stinkwater, Neb., who said: “At first I thought it was Mitch McConnell up there. He looks just like him. But then I thought, no, this feller’s not quite as slippery as McConnell. I liked him a lot, but I want to find out where he stands on the Sharia Law issue before I decide for sure.”

70-year-old Hoke Ferch of Pine Bluff, Ark., struck a similar chord. “I want to see how he does in a couple more debates before I make up my mind,” said Ferch. “I do like the way he sticks up for himself. He doesn’t take any guff. You didn’t see Romney put his hands on Joe the Manure Pile the way he did Perry did you? But on the downside, he’s a pile of horse pucky. Still, all things considered, he just might be the smartest one of the bunch.”

Occupy Longstreet: Movement Protests Bad 1970s TV Shows

Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the former home of the late actor James Franciscus in Beverly Hills on Tuesday in a peaceful protest of bad 1970s television shows. Franciscus played blind private eye Mike Longstreet in the 1971 detective drama, “Longstreet,” which aired for one season on ABC.

One of the protest’s apparent leaders, Nat Lint, told the Wedgie that Occupy Longstreet is a “resistence movement” aimed at drawing attention to the role that watching bad TV shows in the 1970s had in ruining the lives of people like himself.

“All those years I shoulda been studyin’, but instead I got hooked on this junk,” said Lint. “I mean, a blind detective? Come on!”

Lint, an unemployed truck driver from El Segundo, carried a sign that read: “I wish I could say that I’m One of the 99% who didn’t watch your show.” He said that, after Franciscus’ former home, the group planned to picket the gravesite of Claude Akins, star of the bad 1970s trucker drama “Movin’ On.”

“That show was the reason I became a trucker,” Lint said, wistfully. “You see how that turned out.”

Another protester, Betty Schaefer, who carried a sign that read, “No Blood For Potsy,” said the group also planned to picket the homes of Lee Majors, star of the 70s hit, “The Six Million Dollar Man,” Linda Henning, who starred in “Pettitcoat Junction,” Chad Everett (“Medical Center”), Dan Haggerty (“Grizzly Adams”), John Schuck (“Holmes and Yo-Yo”) and James Farentino (“Cool Million”), as well as the graves of several other stars, including Christopher George (“The Rat Patrol”), Bert Convy (“Love, American Style”), Dom DeLuise (“Lotsa Luck”), Nipsey Russell (“Match Game”) and Ted Bessell (“Me and the Chimp”).

When informed of the protest, LAPD chief Charlie Beck said, “It’s one thing to desecrate the grave of Dom DeLuise, but we draw the line at Chuck Connors.”

Occupy Main Street: Dozens of billionaires protest in seedy New York neighborhood

Carrying signs declaring “We are the 1%!” and “Free Bernie Madoff,” more than 20 billionaire bankers, war profiteers and tycoons gathered outside a Bronx soup kitchen to protest what they called “high taxes and regulations” on the nation’s richest citizens.

The billionaire industrialist Koch brothers – worth $25 billion apiece -- marched hand-in-hand, singing the 1940’s coal mining song, “Sixteen Tons,” while candy bar heiress Jacqueline Mars plucked a golden harp.

“We’ve been here for more than twenty minutes, and we’re not leaving anytime soon,” said media mogul Ruppert Murdoch, who carried a sign that read, “Tax the Poor.”

"That's right," said David Koch. "We're sick and tired of these poor people whining about low pay and unemployment. Why don't they pull themselves up by their bootstraps, like my brother and I did? Why, we were barely billionaires when we inherited diddums' oil fortune. But we rolled up our sleeves and went to work, bribing politicians and officials, and in the past decade, our net wealth has skyrocketed! Why can't those wretched 99 percenters do something like that?"

Meanwhile, other marchers warned that the movement would spread. “This is only the beginning,” said Donald Trump. “Zuckerberg and (Google founder Eric) Schmidt are marching in California, and we’ve heard that several Sheikhs have gathered in Saudi Arabia.”

After about an hour, billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg arrived in the back of a limousine with lunch for the protesters -- a silver bucket of caviar and bottles of champagne -- which was served to the protesters by two NYPD officers wearing white gloves.

The billionaires then sat around tables covered in white tablecloths to eat and drink. Hedge-fund manager Steve Cohen yelled, “Fight the weak!” as he stuffed his mouth with caviar.

“Power to the bosses! More blood for oil!” yelled Wal-Mart chairman S. Robson Walton, thrusting his soft, pink fist into the air.

After finishing lunch, the whole group then sang a rousing chorus of “We Shall Underpay,” before piling into their various chauffeur-driven Rolls Royces and driving off, vowing to return.

Republican candidates accuse each other of being kind, human at testy debate

Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney shared the stage Thursday night with seven other presidential candidates in a contentious Iowa debate — which found the underdogs jabbing at each other, vying for the number two spot.

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who is struggling to gain traction, went after Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, accusing her of having “crazy eyes” and being "soft on gays.”

"Your husband looks like a cross between Stuart Smalley and Captain Kangaroo!” Pawlenty squealed.

Bachmann, who has risen in polls since entering the race this summer, quickly responded with a list of what she called Pawlenty's liberal policies when he was Minnesota's governor, including his support for legislation to curb industrial emissions and help the poor.

"You tried to stop factories from dumping poisonous goo into our rivers, and you supported giving food to starving old people," she told Pawlenty, while the partisan Republican crowd booed and hissed. "That sounds a lot like Barack Obama if you ask me.”

But the two Minnesotans weren’t the only candidates to trade insults. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich attacked Godfather’s Pizza founder Herman Cain, accusing Cain of hiring minorities. “You even paid your employees a few cents above minimum wage, in several instances,” said Gingrich, as the crowd gasped. “And, in 1995, after you’d made millions, you actually paid taxes.”

“Oh yeah?” Cain fired back. “How much did you spend at Tiffany’s this week, fat boy?”

“Not a dime,” snipped Gingrich. “My wife and I were on one of our yachts, on a private cruise to Greece.”

Meanwhile former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum sniped at John Huntsman, accusing Huntsman – who until recently served as President Obama’s Ambassador to China – of “palling around with terrorists: the Obamas.”

“I’ve seen pictures of you sitting and eating dinner with the Chinese,” said Santorum. “Are you prepared to tell the American people tonight that you’re not a Communist?”

When Huntsman explained that he was simply fulfilling his duties as the Ambassador to China at the time, Santorum responded, “As a proud American, I am not ashamed to say that I don’t know what an Ambassador is.”

Bachmann, meanwhile, took jabs at Huntsman’s record while he was Governor of Utah. “Did you or did you not sign legislation that funded a program – paid for with taxpayer dollars -- allowing legless orphans to get discounts on wooden legs?”

But the candidates saved their most pointed barbs for the front runner, Romney. At one point, Gingrich ridiculed Romney’s background as an executive with Bain Capital. “When you were at Bain, your modus operandi was to buy out companies, then lay off thousands of workers.”

“Yes,” said Romney. “It was essential to maximize profits.”

“I have no problem with that,” smirked Gingrich. “But why didn’t you fire everyone? You could have made even more money? And you expect us to believe that you’re a real Republican?”

Moments later, Bachmann harangued Romney for being anti-gun. “When you were Governor of Taxachusetts,” Bachmann said, playing to the crowd, “did you push for legislation making it mandatory for schoolkids to bring firearms to class?”

When Romney admitted he had not, Bachmann demanded to know why, saying, “How the heck are our children supposed to defend themselves from the government, if you’re denying them their second amendment rights as citizens?”

And Texas rep. Ron Paul brought up an unfounded report, decades old, that Romney once helped a blind lady cross the road. Romney denied the charge, saying that he and the woman just happened to be crossing the street at the same time.

The debate was nearly overshadowed by Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who stole some of the spotlight from afar by making it known hours before the debate that he was running for the GOP nomination. Perry was unable to attend the debate, however, as he was instead co-hosting a “Pray Away the Recession” event in Houston with the American Family Association, a group of rabidly anti-gay Christian fundamentalists who believe that, among other things, Oprah is the Antichrist’s Sister-in-Law, gay marriage caused birds to fall from the sky in Arkansas, Hitler was sent by Jesus to stop Jews from selling condoms to Europe’s schoolchildren, and the Japanese earthquake happened because the Emperor slept with Godzilla.

As for his Presidential bid, Perry said, “The time is right for a gun-totin’, brush-clearin’, cowboy-boot wearin’ imbecile Governor from Texas to run the country. What could go wrong?”

Republicans Release Economy, Details of Kidnapping Emerge

Congress passed the emergency debt limit increase today, and after President Obama signed it into law, the Republicans released the economy, ending the nearly six-week kidnapping ordeal. It was found lying in a brush-covered ditch outside former President George W. Bush’s Crawford, Texas, ranch Tuesday afternoon by a Boy Scout troop on a bird-watching expedition.

“The economy is weakened, starved, dehydrated and bleeding from thousands of cuts inflicted upon it by its kidnappers,” said an FBI spokesman. “It was taken to Parkland Hospital in Dallas, where it was placed on life support.” Hospital officials said the economy is in ICU, and is listed in grave condition.

Meanwhile, as the nation turned its unemployed eyes on an economy struggling to survive, new details of the kidnapping emerged.

On June 18, President Obama asked Congress to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, as it has done 102 times simply and without drama since 1917. In response, the White House received a ransom note written with cutout letters from various newspapers. (The FBI has since identified the newspapers used as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, and Britain’s now-defunct News of the World, all owned by disgraced tycoon Ruppert Murdoch).

The note read:

“WE HAVE THE ECONOMY. WE HAVE STRAPPED A LARGE VOLUME OF HIGH EXPLOSIVES TO ITS BODY. IF YOU WANT TO SEE IT ALIVE AGAIN, PACKAGE 2 TRILLION DOLLARS IN UNMARKED ENTITLEMENT PROGRAMS, REGULATORY AGENCIES (CLEAN AIR, CLEAN WATER, ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION, FOOD INSPECTORS, FINANCIAL REGULATION, ETC.) AS WELL AS PLANNED PARENTHOOD, NPR, EDUCATION SPENDING, TRANSPORTATION FUNDING – AND BRING IT TO JOHN BOEHNER’S OFFICE AT MIDNIGHT. COME ALONE. IF WE SEE EVEN ONE TAX INCREASE ON THE RICH, THE ECONOMY GETS IT! IF WE FIND ANY DEVICES IN THE PACKAGE -- SUCH AS DEFENSE CUTS OR CUTS IN TAX LOOPHOLES FOR THE RICH – LIKE THE ONE FOR CORPORATE JETS OR CUTS IN SUBSIDIES FOR OIL COMPANIES – KABOOM! WE MEAN BUSINESS! NO FUNNY STUFF.”

Despite being urged to use the many weapons at his disposal to fight the kidnappers, President Obama instead chose to pay the ransom.

But even as one ransom was being paid, House Republicans announced that they have taken another hostage: the FAA. Authorities announced that, indeed, more than 32,000 workers – including safety inspectors – are missing. Officials confirmed that Republicans have sent another ransom note, demanding that the Senate dismantle aviation and rail workers’ unions in exchange for setting the FAA free. In the meantime, $200 million a week is being added to the deficit because airline ticket taxes can’t be collected, 4,000 FAA workers have been furloughed, and $2.5 billion in airport construction projects put on hold, with 87,000 construction workers also furloughed.

President Obama, meanwhile, has reportedly been hospitalized with a severe case of Stockholm Syndrome.

“He’s delirious,” said a concerned White House spokesman. “Mrs. Obama found him huddled in a corner of the oval office, waving a white flag and muttering about compromise.”

New Ben & Jerry's Flavors We'd Like to See

During L.A.’s recent “Carmageddon” – the 53-hour shutdown of a 10-mile stretch of I-405 -- Ben & Jerry’s ice cream offered commuters in the Los Angeles area free scoops of the flavor, “What a Cluster.”

Really? What a Cluster? That’s the best they could do? What’s wrong with Ben & Jerry’s? Do they have brain freeze from eating too much Barack Obama's Yes Pecan? Have they just given up trying to create amusing names for their pop-culture-themed ice creams? Why not Ben & Jerry’s Caramelgeddon Crunch? Or Ben & Jerry’s Gridlox and Cream Cheese? Well, okay, there’s nuttin’ funny about those either, but you get the idea. Ben & Jerry’s isn’t even trying anymore! Has the pressure of the high-stress frozen treat business finally gotten to them? Whatever the problem, it looks like they need a little help. So we’ve come up with a list of new Ben & Jerry’s flavors we’d like to see.

Observe:

Casey Anthony’s Nut Guilty Surprise

Rum Raisin the Debt Ceiling

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Home Maid Infidelity Fudge (Rich Austrian chocolate rippled with a custardy swirl)

CaraMel Gibson’s Raging Nut Crumble

Charlie Sheen’s Fricking Rock Star from Marzipan Swirl (Whiskey-flavored ice cream with gobs of bananas and nuts, sprinkled with tiger’s blood and covered with a white mystery powder)

Donald Trump’s Coconut Combover Swirl

Harold Camping’s Raspberry Rapture Jubilee (Rich raspberry ice cream with expired dates)

Anthony Weiner’s Bulging Beefcake Surprise

John Boehner’s Orange Sherbet

- or -

John Boehner’s Hell No Pecan’t!

Justin Bieberry

Kim Kardashian’s Rump Raisin

Lindsay Lohan’s Arrested Develop-Mint

Michele Bachmann’s Old Fashioned Nut Bar

Mitt Romney’s Vanilla Smoothie (Smooth vanilla with a vanilla center, topped with vanilla frosting)

Paul Ryan’s Medicaramel Crunch (no ice cream, just vouchers you can use to buy ice cream on the open market)

Planet of the Apricots

Ruppert Murdoch’s Phone Tapuccino Explosion (Capuccino ice cream stuffed with shriveled prunes and sprinkled with $1,000 bills)

Sarah Palin’s Half-Baked Alaska

Nut Gingrich

Robert Brownie Junior

Good ‘n Pawlenty

Jim de Minthe

Glenn Beck’s Just Nuts

Andy Macarooni

Kiwi Herman

Eric Pecantor

Fudge Judy

J. Lo Pudding

Tonya Harding’s Kneecapuccino Surprise

On Dumbass Day, Republicans Refuse to Raise Debt Ceiling, Pants

Happy Dumbass Day, everybody! Yes, today the great French writer, Alexandre Dumbass (or, Dumas, as the French spell it), author of such classics as “The Three Musketeers” and “The Count of Monte Cristo,” would turn 209 years old, if he could still turn.

To celebrate Dumbass Day, Congressional Republicans, led by their Three Musketeers -- House Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell -- dropped their pants and refused to raise them again until President Obama makes the Bush tax cuts for the rich permanent.

Speaking before reporters at the Capitol, a pantsless John Boehner said: “It is absolutely essential in this economy that we not raise taxes on the job creators.”

When it was pointed out that the Bush tax cuts have been in effect for the past 10 years and yet the “job creators” have not created any jobs, Boehner threatened to drop his underwear. “I’ll do it! Don’t push me!” he said, grabbing the waistband of his tighty-whiteys.

In response, President Obama immediately walked out of the White House with his hands in the air and began turning out his pockets. He then offered his counter-proposal.

“Look, I know how tough it is for Republicans,” the President said in a hastily-called press conference on the White House lawn. “They’ve given their pledge to Grover Norquist, a portly, bearded tax cheat who spent his teenage years in the 60’s working for Richard Nixon. I mean, c’mon, how cool is that? So in order to keep Republicans from having to break that pledge to super cool Grover, that they would never, ever, ever raise taxes on millionaires and billionaires, no matter what, I’m going to give them a break, and ask the nation’s elderly and poor to shoulder all of the burden again. My offer is this: I’ll make the Bush tax cuts permanent, so that millionaires and billionaires can go on paying less in taxes than their gardeners and secretaries until the sun fizzles and drops out of the sky. But in return, the Republicans have to accept my offer: I will only slash Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits by half. No more than that. Okay? Please don’t hit me.”

Meanwhile, House Republicans met with their pants around their ankles on Sunday and continued to resist any tax increases on the nation’s richest citizens and corporations, instead pushing for price hikes on student loans.

“These students are sucking off the government teat, living high on the hog on their free Top Ramen and Macaroni and Cheese, while the job creators are suffering,” said Cantor, speaking from the House floor in a Speedo. “Why, the Koch Brothers could only afford to buy three yachts last month! Three!”

Coincidentally, it was announced that the 400 richest Americans could pay off every student loan in the country and still have $370 billion left over to divvy up amongst themselves – or about $925 million per person.

The House Minority Leader scoffed at that suggestion. “They wouldn’t even be billionaires at that point,” sneered Cantor. “I mean, why go on living if you’re just going to be a lousy millionaire? It’s preposterous!”

Murderers Flock to Florida After Casey Anthony Trial, Citing World’s Dumbest Jurors

Murderers from around the world are moving to Florida after a Tampa Bay jury found Casey Anthony not guilty of murdering her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee. The jury somehow believed Anthony’s defense, that the girl drowned in the family pool and that her father, a former police officer, decided to make the death look like a homicide by placing duct tape over the child’s mouth and dumping the body in some nearby woods.

“Wow!” said Ralph Rousseau, 27, formerly of Tarzana, Calif., as he stepped off a Trailways bus in downtown Orlando. “I thought the O.J. jury was dumb, but these Florida juries take the cake. They gotta have the dumbest juries in the world here. I mean, who makes an accident look like a murder? It’s crazy! And they bought it!” Rousseau then let out a whoop, pulled out a .38-caliber handgun, and began firing. “I’m gonna blame it on Bigfoot!” he yelled.

Meanwhile, at the Miami International Airport’s Baggage Claim carousels, 57-year-old Harold Crumb was collecting his luggage after a flight from Topeka, Kan. “I plan to stab some folks, my brother-in-law and probably a few more, and blame it on the space aliens,” said Crumb. “They’ll believe me. Why wouldn’t they? If that Anthony jury believed that load of garbage, they’ll believe anything. This is a great day for murderers!”

In Tampa, Josh Huggins, 34, of Ames, Iowa, was arrested after several witnesses saw him push his 32-year-old wife off of a 14th-floor balcony of the downtown Hilton Hotel. “She drowned in the pool!” Huggins yelled as police led him away. “I was just trying to make it look like murder!”

Halperin calling President Obama “a dick” continues tradition of frat-boy insults

The other day, conservative MSNBC “analyst” Mark Halperin called President Obama “a dick” on live TV, setting off a firestorm of criticism. Halperin, who also writes for TIME Magazine, was suspended indefinitely from the network. Honestly, what’s the big deal? After all, Halperin was just following in a time-honored tradition of presidential frat-boy name-calling by America’s journalists.

Take, for instance, the time in 1797 when Thomas Paine called George Washington “a douche” for refusing to run for a third term in office. Or when Edward R. Murrow responded to a 1959 speech by Dwight D. Eisenhower by saying that Ike was “kind of an ass pie.” Then there was Joseph Pulitzer’s reaction to Theodore Roosevelt’s launching of the Bull Moose party in 1912. “Teddy,” wrote Pulitzer, “is acting like a real fartknocker.” And who could forget the time that Walter Cronkite called out John F. Kennedy over the failed Bay of Pigs invasion at the end of a 1961 telecast. “JFK,” said Cronkite, “is a giant jerkwad.”

More instances of journalistic insults:

• Charles Dickens, in 1837, writing in Bentley’s Miscellany, wrote of England’s Prime Minister William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne: “Melbourne is a huge wanker.”

• Horace Greeley, publisher of The New York Tribune, writing in an 1864 editorial: “Abe Lincoln, you, sir, are a humongous jag-off.”

• Nellie Bly, in an 1887 article in The Pittsburgh Dispatch, called President Grover Cleveland a “big, fat dipshit.”

• French philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre called French President Charles de Gaulle “a ginormous A-hole” in 1959.

• David Brinkley, co-host of NBC’s Huntley-Brinkley Report, said in 1967 of President Lyndon Johnson: “What a butthead!”

What to Do in the Zombie Apocalypse? Write Zombie Haiku, Of Course!

Recently, in Leicester, England, a “concerned citizen” used a Freedom of Information request to ask how the city would handle a zombie attack. The answer was, apparently, not well. So a week later, about 150 people dressed up like the undead and took part in a “mass shamble” through town to the city council’s offices. According to the shamble organizer: “We didn't try to get inside - just pressed ourselves up against the glass like zombies do.”

Thankfully, a group of Canadian researchers from the University of Ottawa have been studying the zombie apocalypse issue. In their study, the brainiacs posed the question: If there was to be a battle between zombies and the living, who would win? Their conclusion: humanity’s only hope against the zombies would be to “hit them hard and hit them often.” The researchers added: “It’s imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly or else … we are all in a great deal of trouble.”

Hey, thanks a lot, Poindexters!

Lucky for you, we’ve been down in the Wedgie Lab, working hard on the zombie problem, and here's what we've come up with: We're all doomed! But while we haven't found any answers for how to deal with the zombie apocalypse, we have written some pretty lame zombie haiku, so at least you'll have something to read while you're waiting for the undead to show up and eat your brain. Here you go, lamebrains:

Zombie barbecue
BYOB. Translation?
Means: “Bring your own brains.”

Of all cereals
What’s a zombie’s favorite?
Raisin Brain, of course!

Zombie stands, clears throat:
“My name is Doug, and I am
a brainaholic.”

Undead Golden Girls
At the early bird special
Ah! ZomBea Arthur!

Zombie at my door
so I shot him dead. Oops! Uhh…
Sorry, Keith Richard!

Undead Trump demands
to see Zombie Obama’s
Death Certificate

Orange-faced zombie
Undead Speaker of the House
Hello, John Broehner

Stagger-thru window
At the Zombie MacDonald’s
You want brains with that?

I received a Tweet
Undead Anthony Weiner
Picture of his brain

Road rage on I-5
He gave me the finger, so
I bit it off. Yum!

Brains brains brains brains brains
Brains brains brains brains brains brains brains
Brains brains brains burp brains

Alaskan zombies
Went to Sarah Palin’s house
Alas, no brains there

Kim Kardashian X-Rays Her Butt, Finds Al Capone’s Missing Treasure

Agents from the Internal Revenue Service were dispatched to the Beverly Hills home of Kim Kardashian on Saturday after an X-ray of the reality star’s behind revealed Al Capone’s famous missing treasure lodged inside her rectal cavity.

Kardashian, sick of people questioning whether her behind is real or not, went to her family doctor and got an X-ray to prove that her rear is all natural and not enhanced with implants. But according to UsMagazine.com, the X-ray technician was shocked when Kardashian’s butt X-ray showed not the inside of her empty booty, but a real booty instead.

A spokesman for the reality star read the following statement to the press:

“Ms. Kardashian was taken immediately to Cedar’s Sinai Medical Center, where the items were removed in a surgical procedure. I can confirm at this time that the items included several stacks of aged currency, totaling a sum of $1.2 million, three cases of bootlegged whisky, and various mementos from the 1920s. The items were inspected by agents from the Internal Revenue Service, as well as two historians from UCLA, who positively identified them as belonging to the notorious 1920s gangster Al ‘Scarface’ Capone. Ms. Kardashian has no idea how Mr. Capone’s property came to be in her behind, and she is cooperating fully with the authorities in this matter.”

The spokesman added that Kardashian is resting comfortably in the hospital, and that the entire procedure was taped and will appear in an upcoming episode of the reality show "Keeping Up With the Kardashians.”

Kardashian’s sister Khloe, meanwhile, tweeted the image of Kim and her X-ray, saying, “Al Capone’s loot is lodged in Kim’s ass! Are you serious?! Her butt is, like, iconic. Eat your heart out, Geraldo! LOL.”

You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Blog

This week, Jaws turns 36 years old. Yes, on June 20, 1975, the movie that made an entire generation fill their swim trunks with fear was released. So Happy Birthday, you giant man-eating killing machine! In honor of this jawspicious event, we’re declaring this Shark Week here at the Wedgie. And we’re kicking it off with these lame shark jokes:

Q: What’s green and gross and lives under the sea?
A: Shark boogers!

Q: What was the shark's favorite Pixar movie?
A: Eating Nemo

Q: What did the shark order at McDonalds?
A: A quarter flounder with cheese.

Q: Who gives sharks presents on Christmas?
A: Santa Jaws.

Q: What would happen if Jaws ate Harry Potter?
A: You’d get a movie called “The Wizard of Jaws.”

Q: How do you shoot a blue shark?
A: With a blue shark spear gun.

Q: How do you shoot a great white shark?
A: Hold his nose until he turns blue, then shoot him with a blue shark spear gun.

Uhh, okay, those jokes really bite. But here’s a totally jawesome story about the making of “Jaws,” from IMDB.com:

During pre-production, director Steven Spielberg, accompanied by friends Martin Scorsese, George Lucas and John Milius, visited the effects shop where "Bruce" (the mechanical shark used in the movie) was being constructed. Lucas stuck his head in the shark's mouth to see how it worked and, as a joke, Milius and Spielberg sneaked to the controls and made the jaw clamp shut on Lucas' head. Unfortunately the shark malfunctioned, and Lucas got stuck in the mouth of the shark. When Spielberg and Milius were finally able to free him, the four men ran out of the workshop, afraid they'd done major damage to the creature.

Michael Caine, who stars in Jaws: The Revenge ("This Time It’s Personal!"), on the movie:
"I have never seen it, but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific."

And, finally, one more jaws-droppingly bad joke:

Q: What did the shark find in Davey Jones’ locker?
A: Smelly gym shorts!

Fin

Anthony Weiner Resigns to Spend More Time With His Penis

Rep. Anthony Weiner has resigned his seat in Congress after a two-week scandal spawned by lewd photos the New York lawmaker took of himself and sent online to numerous women.

“I am resigning my seat in the House of Representatives so that I can spend more time taking pictures of my nether regions and tweeting them around the world,” Weiner said at a news conference in Brooklyn. Weiner added that he hopes to compile the photos into a coffee table book and have it in stores in time for Christmas. “I’m speaking with a couple of publishers, but no deal is imminent at this time,” he said.

Republican congressional leaders expressed satisfaction that their calls for Weiner’s resignation had finally culminated in the New York Democrat’s leaving office.

“It’s about time,” said Sen. David Vitter, R-La., speaking to reporters in the lobby of a New Orleans bordello, where Vitter said he was getting a “massage.”

“Rep. Weiner has besmirched the honor and dignity of the United States congress with his immoral and disgusting behavior,” said Vitter, who was clad only in a diaper. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have an important submissiveness training seminar with Madame Domina, or, as I must call her, She Who Must Be Obeyed.”

Vitter then put a pacifier into his mouth, dropped to his knees and crawled out of the room on all fours, crying like a little baby as a tall woman dressed in a black, leather miniskirt and thigh-high spike-heeled boots followed behind him, cracking a long, red whip.

Elsewhere on Capital Hill, Speaker of the House John Boehner introduced a bill to give disgraced Senator John Ensign the Medal of Freedom.

Ensign resigned in May after a 22-month Senate investigation into his sordid affair with the wife of a staffer left the Nevada Republican facing expulsion from the Senate and possible criminal charges.

“Nobody embodies the principles of freedom more than Senator John Ensign, with his swinging ways,” said Boehner.

Michele Bachmann: “Replace Federal Government With Craig’s List”

Two days after Tim Pawlenty unveiled his “Google Test,” saying that if you can find a good or service on Google, the government shouldn’t be offering it, Michele Bachmann announced her own plan to slash spending.

“I call it the Craig’s List Quiz,” said Bachmann, speaking before a crowd of eight Tea Party Republicans in Smoot, Iowa. “You’ve got all these people offering their services on Craig’s List. So why turn to the government to answer all your problems? Instead, log on to Craig’s List.”

As an example, Bachmann cited research she and her staff had performed the night before.

“Last night, I did a little research on Craig’s List, and you know, you can find just about anything on there! You want to invade Libya? Just type in ‘Mercenary.’ You can hire an entire army right there from the comfort of your own couch. And they come with their own weapons. So we can disband the military. Just think how much we can save! And what about education? I did a search for ‘Tutors.’ A whole bunch of ‘em popped up! Math, Science, Economics, you name it, the private sector has it. So why do we need public schools? We don’t. Government just needs to get out of the way and let the free market spread its wings.

“You want to learn about how the Founding Fathers worked tirelessly to get rid of slavery? You don’t need to pay some fatcat, Socialist, unionized public employee 30 or 40 thousand dollars a year, plus benefits. Just hire one of these guys online!”

Meanwhile, House Republicans today announced a proposal to make Pawlenty’s “Google Test” the law of the land.

“Looky here,” said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, speaking to reporters on a conference call from his Washington office. “I just typed ‘free food’ into the Google and a whole buncha stuff came up. Food banks, soup kitchens. Here’s a You Tube video called ‘How to Get Free Food From Restaurant Dumpsters.’ Boom. There ya go. No more Food Stamps. We don’t need ‘em. I just saved the taxpayers $60 billion.”

Cantor then typed something else into his computer. “Here’s another idea. You wanta find a criminal? You don’t need the FBI. I just googled ‘Find a fugitive.’ Check it out. This guy looks like he could do the job. Dog the Bounty Hunter dot com. Look, he’s got a badge and everything. Boom! I just saved the taxpayers another $300 billion.”

Palin: Paul Revere Tried to Warn British About Anthony Weiner’s Penis

Sarah Palin said today that the real purpose for Paul Revere’s famous 1775 “midnight ride” was to warn the British about Anthony Weiner’s penis tweets.

“He who warned uh, the British that they weren’t gonna be takin’ away our freedom of speech rights, uh by snappin’ those photos, and um, makin’ sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and tweets that we were going to be sure and we were going to be free, and we were going to be armed. With bulging underpants.”

Upon hearing Palin’s latest free-form interpretation of American history, the Mama Grizzly’s supporters immediately flocked to Wikipedia and furiously edited Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s famous poem, “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere,” to match her claims.

Here is an excerpt of the new Palinized version of the poem:

“The Midnight Tweet of Anthony Weiner”
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight tweet of Anthony Weiner,
On the eighteenth of May, in 2011
His underpants bulging, like a loaf of bread that’s been leavened
In a tweet that was heard ‘round the blogosphere

He sent to a co-ed, out west in Seattle
Tweets of his junior representative, begging her not to tattle.
But Breitbart, the goon, never associated with fact
Found the tweet and fired the first shots of attack.
“Aha!” cried Breitbart, with a mighty bellow.
“Weiner’s tweeted photos of his little Longfellow.
“That’s him, in his undies, in these photos, so lewd.”
Said Weiner: “I can’t say that’s my penis, with any certitude.”

“No, no!” said the Rep. “My Tweets have been hacked.
‘Tis not me, committing some Twitter sex act.”
“It’s him,” said Breitbart. “Of morals, he’s bereft.
We all know that this Weiner leans hard to the left.”
And then from the Internet, other accusations, they sprang
Until Weiner admitted, “Yes, ‘twas me. I tweeted my wang.”
“Vindication!” cried Breitbart. “For me, who’ve been scorned,
After Shirley Sherrod, and my shameful lies ‘bout ACORN.”

And now the party of Vitter and Ensign demand an election
After Weiner resigns, due to his tweeted erection.
But Weiner stands firm ‘neath the onslaught and vows, still,
That he will not step down just because of arousal.
And the American public is left but to wonder,
How a guy name of Weiner could make such a blunder.
Should we now worry about a boner from Boehner, or, not to be outdone,
Perhaps Norman Dicks, the Dem from Washington?

Will Rep. Anna Eshoo of California tweet herself sneezing?
Or will it be Roy Blunt of Missouri, toking up and a-wheezing?
Will we see Rep. John Boozman, drunk on the lawn?
Will Mike Crapo tweet pictures of himself on the john?
Will Richard Lugar be caught hocking goop from his nose?
Or Orrin Hatch sitting nude on an egg, I suppose.
All this because Weiner, sadly named at his birth
Tried to let his Longfellow shoot its Wadsworth.

Speed 2: Sarah Palin Says Bus Will Explode if Donations Dip Below $50kph

Sarah Palin said today that her “One Nation” bus tour must stay above $50,000 in donations per hour or her bus will explode.

“Pop quiz, hot shots,” said Palin, speaking with reporters on a conference call from her bus as it sped south out of New York City. “There’s a bomb on a bus. Once donations to my SarahPac Web site dip below $50,000 an hour, it blows up. What do you do? What do you do?”

The former half-governor of Alaska and current reality TV star, who is travelling around the eastern seaboard in a bus for some reason, had been counting on raising millions in donations from her “One Nation Tour,” but, apparently, the money has been slow to roll in. So the Tea Party queen announced Wednesday that her bus would start taking on paying customers. After boarding some two dozen passengers at various stops around Manhattan, the bus took off down Interstate 478.

A Palin aide traveling with the Fox News celebrity said that Palin had said that if any passengers tried to get off the bus, she would blow it up. Witnesses along the bus route said they could hear screams coming from terrified passengers inside the bus, although it wasn’t clear if they knew about the bomb, or if they were simply being forced to watch tapes of the former Vice Presidential candidate’s speeches.

Ward, I'm worried about The Beaver

Today is The Beaver’s birthday. No, not the sock puppet crazy Mel Gibson wears on his hand and speaks through in his new movie, “The Beaver.” We’re talking about The Beav’! Yes, Jerry Mathers, who played Beaver Cleaver in the old sitcom “Leave it to Beaver,” turns 62 today.

Although, hmmm, that does get us to thinking about the two Beavers, Beaver Cleaver and crazy Mel Gibson’s sock puppet Beaver. You know, because they have so much in common. In fact, we bet you can’t even tell the difference between them in this list of quotes. Go ahead, give it a try!

In each pair of quotes below, we’ve included one soundbite from Beaver Cleaver, and one from the other “Beaver,” Mel Gibson. See if you can tell which is which:

On Dealing With Stress:
A. “Boy, I sure wish there was somebody in the family for me to yell at.”
B. “I DON'T NEED MEDICATION! YOU NEED A FUCKING BAT TO THE SIDE OF THE HEAD, ALL RIGHT? HOW ABOUT THAT?”

On Geopolitical Matters:
A. “I wouldn't wanna do anything to hurt God. He's got enough trouble with the Russians and all.”
B. “Fucking Jews …. The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world … Are you a Jew?”

On Girls:
A. “But gee, Wally, you hang around with girls and the guys don't give you the business.”
B. “What do you think you’re looking at, sugar tits?”

On Jungle Movies:
A. “The Mayan culture is shrouded in mystery and myths. I didn't show half the stuff I read about. I read about an orgy of sacrifice: 20,000 people sacrificed in four days. They were also very fond of impaling genitals and torturing people for years on end.”
B. “There was too much kissin' and not enough apes.”

On Guys They Don’t Like:
A. “How come Eddie’s such a creepy guy?”
B. “I want to kill him. I want his intestines on a stick. I want to kill his dog.”

On Hanging Out:
A. “You know something, Wally? I'd rather do nothin' with you than somethin' with anybody else.”
B. “Go ahead to the goddamn Jacuzzi yourself. Go ahead, fuck it, fuck the Jacuzzi. It’s a thing. You have no fucking soul.”

On Teeth:
A. “I did not hit Oksana with a closed fist, as she alleges. I did not punch her in the face, in the temple or anywhere else, not then or at any other time. There was never any blood and no teeth were 'broken,' although one of the false veneers from a tooth apparently came off, I did not see that occur.”
B. “Sure, Dad. If all your teeth fall out, you won't have anything to eat groceries with, anyways.


ANSWERS:
Stress: A. Beaver Cleaver B. Beaver Mel
Geopolitics: A. Beaver Cleaver B. Beaver Mel
Girls: A. Beaver Cleaver B. Beaver Mel
Jungle Movies: A. Beaver Mel B. Beaver Cleaver
Guys They Don’t Like: A. Beaver Cleaver B. Beaver Mel
Hanging Out: A. Beaver Cleaver B. Beaver Mel
Teeth: A. Beaver Mel B. Beaver Cleaver (After Ward tells June that he can’t pick up groceries for her because he has a dentist appointment)

Sarah Palin Bus Now Picking Up Passengers, Making Stops

With donations to her “SarahPac” lagging for her cross-country bus tour, Sarah Palin announced that she would start carrying passengers on her bus and making regular stops, like Greyhound.

The failed vice presidential candidate had been counting on raising millions in donations from her “One Nation Tour,” billed as a campaign to “promote the Fundamental Restoration of America,” but, apparently, the money just didn’t roll in. So the Tea Party queen announced Wednesday that her bus would start taking on paying customers.

“We’re changing gears,” Palin said, between greeting passengers as they boarded the red, white and blue painted bus on 5th Avenue in Manhattan. “We’re now a full-service passenger bus line serving over 250 destinations across the U.S. We’ll still be stopping at all the important sites of interest in the heartland of this great nation of ours, such as the World’s Biggest Ball of Twine in Cawker City, Kansas, and a shoehorn once used by Ronald Reagan in Dustbin, Iowa. Plus we’ll be shootin’ buffalo, varmints and what have you out the windows, just like our forefathers used to as they crisscrossed this great land so many centuries ago.”

Palin said she’d already been moved by sites she’d visited on her bus tour, like Mount Vernon, the famous home of President George Washington.

“Even Piper was able to grasp the significance of being in the presence of our first President - who had such diverse interests,” Palin said of her 10-year-old daughter. “When she told me later how hard he must have worked to keep that farm going, planting all those seeds and harvesting all the crops all by himself! And, my gosh, we were so impressed by how Mr. Washington gave free food and lodging to all those black people who just showed up on his farm, apparently, lookin’ for a handout.”

Meanwhile, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY), announced that he, too, will take to the road. Weiner said he will travel cross-country in a vehicle he’s dubbed "The Wienermobile," in an effort to clear his name following the hacking of his Twitter account.

“It has nothing to do with the Oscar Mayer motorized hot dog,” said Wiener. “This car is named after a penis. I can’t say with certitude whether it’s named after my penis. However, I will be handing out hot dogs and Wiener Whistles to people I meet on the highway, or who I happen to follow on Twitter.”

Republicans Propose Replacing Military With Coupons For Guns, Bullets

Republicans, led by Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, unveiled a bold new plan to cut the nation’s deficit by eliminating the military and replacing it with a voucher system for ordinary citizens to purchase weaponry.

“Instead of spending billions and billions of taxpayer dollars every year on our nation’s defense, Americans will receive $15,000 coupons which they can use to purchase everything they need to protect the country themselves, from guns and bullets to bazookas, tanks and even fighter jets,” Ryan said in an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Pointing to an array of pie charts and graphs, Ryan outlined his plan to save the country billions in defense spending and funnel the money to the wealthy in the form of tax cuts.

“These cut-out coupons will come to citizens through the mail, similar to those offered by pizza companies, like Domino’s,” Ryan said. “You’ll just have to be careful to read the expiration date at the bottom of each coupon. Otherwise, when your military hardware arrives on your doorstep, you won’t get the discount.”

“We’ve got to get America back to a feeling of individual responsibility,” Ryan told host David Gregory. “And that includes our nation’s military. If you have a problem with, say, China, don’t wait for the government to do something. Using our new coupon system, you’ll be able to go out on the free market and buy your own army of military contractors, and use them to attack Beijing. Or, if you prefer to go it alone, use your voucher towards purchase of a nuclear submarine. You’ll have the launch codes, not some socialist General living off the government tit.”

Speaker of the House John Boehner heartily endorsed Ryan’s plan, and said he intends to bring it up for a vote in the House as early as next week. “It’s time we put an end to socialized military in this country,” Boehner said.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor called the plan a “win-win” for the American people. “Not only does our plan put a stop to this government takeover of the military, it gives our nation’s psychopaths an outlet for their rages and murderous sprees. Instead of going down to the local mall or fast-food joint to shoot it up, they can do something constructive. Like invade Norway.”

“Americans have a do-it-yourself kind of spirit,” said Cantor. “They don’t want bureaucrats in Washington deciding who needs to be shot or blown up. They want the freedom to go out there and blow them up themselves.”

On “Meet the Press,” Ryan went even further, saying he planned to propose similar plans to replace the country’s police and fire departments with a series of fun-house tokens, like those offered at arcades.

“Any American citizen will be able to purchase their own fire truck or police cruiser on the open market, as long as you have sufficient tokens. Only instead of using them to play Whack-a-Mole, you’ll be buying handcuffs, billy clubs and fire hoses. The plan will save taxpayers billions!”

The Dictator's Toilet and Other Close Shaves

While we’ve all been sitting around waiting for the rapture, the world’s idiots haven’t stopped entertaining us with their colorful shenanigans. Take, for instance, the following news item:

Zimbabwean Police Sergeant Jailed For Using President Robert Mugabe's Toilet

Alois Mabhunu, a homicide detective in the western city of Bulawayo, is in a wee bit of trouble after he used a toilet reserved for President Robert Mugabe. The incident occurred at the annual Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZITF). According to local radio station VOP, this is how it all went down in the Presidential toilet:

"Mabhunu, due to the call of nature, rushed to the toilets reserved for Mugabe and his guest Ekra, but was stopped by other officers guarding the toilets," VOP said. "Under intense pressure from the call of nature, the officer forced his way in and managed to relieve himself. He was arrested on 7 May after a report was made to Mugabe's security men and to senior police officers in the city."

A local human rights lawyer pooh-poohs the charges. "There has to be a law saying the toilet is the president's, but this was a public one," Beatrice Mtetwa is quoted as saying. "They will have had to issue a proclamation in the government gazette specifying it. I bet they didn't do that."

Okay, I don’t mean to dump on the President of Zimbabwe, but do I understand this correctly? The Zimbabwean government regularly issues proclamations in the official government newspaper anointing specific public toilets as Mugabe’s personal privies, not to be sullied by the buttocks of any other human? What’s this feature in the gazette called? The Toilet Blotter?

Well, at least all of Zimbabwe can rest easy now that the police have flushed out this dangerous criminal. And let this be a warning to the rest of you: Don’t use the president’s whiz palace or urine trouble, pal!

Meanwhile, in Florida, a woman named Megan Barnes crashed into the back of a pickup truck at about 45 mph while driving on the highway between Miami and Key West. Ms. Barnes told the investigating officer that she was distracted because she was “shaving her bikini area” while driving.

But wait! It gets better. Ms. Barnes told the officer she was on her way to a date and “wanted to be ready for the visit,” so she asked her ex-husband (I’m guessing his name’s Cletus), who was in the car with her, to steer so she could concentrate on shaving her hoo-ha. To no one's particular surprise, the Highway Patrol quickly discovered that Ms. Barnes didn't have a valid driver's license. Oh, and, the day before, she'd been convicted of DUI and driving with a suspended license. Oh, and her car had been seized and had no insurance or registration. Oh, and she was on probation. But hey, at least she’s well groomed!

Rapture Preacher: “My bad. I forgot to carry the two.”

Saying “math was never my strong suit,” red-faced end-times preacher Harold Camping apologized to his followers tonight when the world didn’t end as he had predicted.

“It was a simple math problem,” Camping said, in a broadcast from his Oakland radio station. “I forgot to carry the 2. A little mistake like that has enormous ramifications in the Bible Code. It throws everything off. So, instead of God saying May 21 was Judgment Day, what He was actually saying was that it was Bad Judgment Day. And, when you look at all the people who believed me, and spent all their money and gave away all their worldly possessions to get ready for the Rapture – not to mention the millions of people who went to see that new ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ movie – it’s pretty hard to argue with Him. It was Bad Judgment Day.”

The 89-year-old number-crunching preacher has scrutinized the Bible for almost 70 years and claimed to have cracked a Bible code that told him when the Rapture would take place.

When a caller to his radio show pointed out that this marks the second time Camping has erroneously predicted the end of the world -- the first being in 1994 -- Camping responded, "Yeah, I know. What can I say? I suck at math."

Camping added that, according to his newest calculations, something called "The Rupture" is scheduled to take place on Tuesday, May 24th, but that it doesn't sound like anything to worry about.

Your Guide To Post-Rapture Looting, or Armageddon a New Microwave!

Featuring The Rapture Rap!

Remember waaaaaaaay back in January, when we warned you the world was going to end on May 21? Yeah. Now everyone’s hopping on the bandwagon. The Harold Camping bandwagon. You all know who he is by now. The 89-year-old end-times crank who claims that, at about 6 p.m. Saturday, Pacific time, about 2 percent of the world’s population will be immediately "raptured" to Heaven, while the rest of us will be, uhh, heading in the opposite direction.

So, if you've got big Saturday night plans, you might want to reschedule. Because, if you’re like us, the only hot date you've got this weekend will be with .... Satan!

Okay, you say. So the rapture’s coming. What do I need to know to be prepared?

Well, it’s kind of complicated, but basically, either you’re going to be sucked up into the clouds to meet Jesus, or, if you’re not on the guest list, you’ll be staying here to writhe in a misery of plagues – massive earthquakes, boils, frogs, and giant horse-like locusts with scorpion’s teeth and lion’s tails. So you might want to stock up on RAID. And unguent. Perhaps head out for a little post-rapture looting. We’ve got our hearts set on a new microwave.

But Wedgietor, you ask. What's the best way to go about post-rapture looting?

The key to a good post-rapture looting excursion is preparation. Before you head out to loot, make yourself a To-Loot list. Remember, there's going to be a massive earthquake, which will throw open all the graves, tossing the bodies of everyone who's ever died out into the open, so A) the roads may not be driveable, which means you'll probably be looting on foot (don't overdo it!), and B) it's going to be smelly. Also, C) there might be zombies.

Considering this last possibility, the first item on your To-Loot list should be a shotgun -- the best weapon for zombie-killing, according to "The Zombie Survival Guide."

#2 item on the To-Loot list: air-freshener.

#3: a pair of comfortable shoes.

#4: toilet paper. Lots of toilet paper.

Then, find a good place to hunker down for the End Times. There should be plenty of options, what with all the Christians being raptured right out of their houses. Try to pick a quiet, out-of-the-way place, with sturdy doors. And remember, no chimneys -- locusts like chimneys. Then, kick back and make yourself comfortable while you wait for the misery of plagues. And while you’re waiting, you can sing this little Rapture Rap we’ve written. We like to call it, "Baby Got Raptured":

I don’t like big bugs and I can not lie
You other brothers can't deny
When a locust flies in with a lion’s tail
Then you’ll know your life was an epic fail
You get stung, wanna pull out your hair
When the locust stings you on the derriere
Deep in the jeans you’re wearing
You’re doomed and you can't stop swearing
For five months they’re stingin’ your rump
Then just when you think you’re over the hump
Along comes the seventh Trump and says “You’re fired”
Throws the beast into the lake of fire
Then Satan gets cast in the bottomless pit
Oh, [bleep]!
Old Beelzebub, he escaped
Started a war but ended up in the fiery lake
So ladies, ladies
If you don’t wanna roll in Hades
Then sing it loud in the clouds
Even left-behind boys got to shout
Baby got raptured!

Schwarzenegger admits, “I am the Impregnator”

As attention in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “love-child gate” shifted to the former housekeeper who bore his child, the former governor and movie star made a bizarre admission at a hastily-called press conference, announcing that he is actually a cyborg sent from the future to single-handedly repopulate the planet.

With his estranged wife, Maria Shriver, at his side, Schwarzenegger spoke to a crowd of stunned reporters gathered outside his Pacific Palisades mansion.

“It is true,” he said. “I am the Impregnator, a cyborg model T-1000 love machine, sent from the future to save humankind. You see, on January 27, 2013, one week after Michele Bachmann is sworn in as the 45th President of the United States, a massive nuclear war is triggered when President Bachmann accidentally attacks North Korea, China, Russia, Iran, Mexico, Chile, Vietnam, France, England, Germany and Taxachusetts simultaneously with nuclear weapons. After those countries retaliated, a worldwide nuclear fire ensued. No humans survived. I was sent back in time from the future to repopulate the planet with as many half-cyborg babies as possible, so that they can survive this nuclear fire. That is why I have spent the past thirty years spreading my cyborg seed all across the planet Earth. Now that I have completed my mission, it is time for me to return to the future. But before I go, I would like to say to all of my bastard love-children: Hasta la vista, babies.”

Schwarzenegger then stepped onto an elevator platform above a vat of boiling molten steel. Turning to Shriver, he handed the elevator controls to her. “Here,” he said. “I cannot self-terminate. You must lower me into the…”

“Oh, don’t worry, you bastard,” said Shriver, feverishly pushing the button that lowered her philandering cyborg husband into the pit of unbelievably hot bubbling molten liquid.

As his buff body sunk into the boiling goo, the bodybuilder-turned actor-turned-governor of California told his wife, “I know now why you cry. But it is something I can never do.”

“I’m not crying!” Shriver yelled, continuing to push the button. “Die, lying bastard cyborg scum!”

And with that, Schwarzenegger disappeared into the blistering lava. Then, however, a metal hand reappeared, thrusting out of the fiery liquid to form a final thumbs-up, before sinking once more into the molten steel.

Report: Bin Laden Partied With Porn Stars, Charlie Sheen

Evidence that Osama bin Laden partied with troubled actor Charlie Sheen at his Abbottabad compound was found in the hideout of the slain Al Qaida leader by the Navy Seals who killed him, U.S. officials said on Monday.

The evidence recovered in bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, consists of Sheen’s wallet, which the debauched star apparently left behind, and home-made video recordings that show bin Laden drinking, snorting cocaine, and cavorting with Sheen and two unnamed porn stars, according to the officials, who discussed the discovery on condition of anonymity.

At one point on the video, a drugged up and naked bin Laden is shown smashing furniture in his bedroom and locking one of his wives in the closet, the officials said. Reuters identified the woman on the video as bin Laden's youngest wife, Yemeni born Amal Ahmed Abdel-Fatah al-Sada, and said that she was screaming inside a locked closet while the terrorist mastermind threw chairs and tables around the room.

“He thought she stole his walkie-talkie,” the Reuters report states. “She was fearing for her life and was hysterical. Bin Laden was incoherent and screaming slurs at her, while Charlie Sheen can be heard in the background telling him to ‘man up.’”

The officials said they believe the videos were made earlier this year, in January or early February, and that they include a 20-minute rant by bin Laden in which the al Qaida leader appears to have been coached by Sheen on how to improve his video messages.

In this section of the video, according to a source who has seen the footage, bin Laden appears on camera, chain-smoking and rocking back and forth. He claims to have ‘the blood of a camel’ in his veins’ and says that ‘defeat is not an option.’

“They are going to have to change the United States of America to the Usama States of America. Duh. Winning!’” the source quoted bin Laden as saying.

According to Sheen’s lawyer, Monty Dingle, the former “Two and a Half Men” star has been interrogated by U.S. intelligence, but remembers nothing of the incident.

“Charlie Sheen says that he was kidnapped by ‘The Church of the Martian Idiots’ – which is what he calls Alcoholics Anonymous – and that they brainwashed him,” said Dingle. “He recalls nothing from 2004 up to and including last night.”

Dr. Mengele comes out of hiding, defends enhanced interrogation

Nazi War Criminal Dr. Josef Mengele has come out of hiding to join the parade of former Bush administration officials defending their use of torture.

Dr. Mengele, 100, infamous for conducting grisly human expriments on concentration camp inmates at Auschwitz during World War II, fled to South America after the war and was thought to have died in 1979. But Mengele resurfaced this week when he appeared on Fox News’ Sean Hannity Show with former Vice President Dick Cheney.

Mengele, aka “The Angel of Death,” reminded Fox viewers that the Bush administration term for torture – “enhanced interrogation techniques” – originally came from the Nazis.

“It was (Gestapo Chief Heinrich) Muller, actually -- who first coined the phrase, ‘Verscharfte Vernehmung,’ which translates to ‘sharpened, intensified or enhanced interrogation,” said Mengele.

The former SS Captain seemed at ease, playfully teasing Cheney at times. “You Americans amuse me. You are so fickle. At the Tokyo Trials after World War II, you tried, convicted and even hung Japanese soldiers for waterboarding POWs. And you were certainly against it when the Gestapo did it, accusing us of breaking the Geneva conventions. Then, after 9-11 you embraced it. Now, who knows? Make up your mind, won’t you?”

Hannity seemed in awe of the doctor. “I’m a big fan of your work,” the smitten host told Mengele.

Cheney, meanwhile, seemed equally infatuated. “When you talk about torture, it’s Vlad the Impaler, Torquemada, and this man right here. They’re the holy trinity of pain infliction.”

Hannity had Mengele sign an autograph, and then Cheney and Mengele went on NBC’s “Meet the Press” with David Gregory, joining former Bush administration officials Condoleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, torture memo author John Yoo, and Cheney’s daughter, Liz, who proclaimed, “the debate is over. Torture works.”

“Who cares whether it works or not,” said Mengele. “The point is, it’s fun!”

Al-Qaida Puts Out Help-Wanted Ad for “Evil Mastermind”

Al-Qaida confirmed the killing of Osama bin Laden and put out a Help Wanted ad for his replacement Friday. The ad, released on the terror organization’s official Web site, was dated Tuesday, the day after bin Laden’s death. It reads as follows:

Help Wanted: Evil Mastermind

Al-Qaida has an opening for an Evil Mastermind with the necessary strategic, marketing, leadership, business and evil acumen to direct the future growth of a worldwide terrorist organization. The EM is responsible for strategizing and creating worldwide fiendish plots and jihads, terrorizing various nations and people, and synergizing backward overflow. In addition, the EM takes part in the preparation of occasional menacing video and Internet statements, which consist of issuing various threats, rants, manifestos and announcements. The ideal candidate will have a minimum of 10 years of relevant experience, including experience with fundraising, fiscal and staff management, explosives, and beards. A history of increasingly-responsible roles in a worldwide evil organization is required. Some regional and international travel will be necessary, and extended hours of squatting in caves, walled compounds, spider holes, volcanic lairs or other undisclosed locations may be required.

Physical Requirements: Ability to use various military weaponry, lift up to 20 pounds, sit or squat for extended periods of time, and flee from Navy SEALS.

Al-Qaida offers a competitive salary and benefits package, including Medical and Dental Insurance, 401(k) with Company Match, use of various safe houses and caves, and one slightly-used bullet-proof vest (size XL). NOTE: We are no longer able to offer Life Insurance for this position.

As part of our standard hiring process for new employees, employment with the Al-Qaida organization will be contingent upon successful completion of a comprehensive background check.

If interested, please contact our HR department.

Fox News Headquarters Explodes – Investigators Cite Lethal Mixture of Stupid and Crazy

Investigators sifting through the rubble of Fox News Channel headquarters in New York City after it blew up early this morning say they believe the massive explosion was caused by a lethal mixture of crazy and stupid, forming an explosive chemical that experts call “crupid.”

“Anyone who’s spent five minutes watching that channel since the death of Osama bin Laden would immediately recognize that a dangerous chemical combination was being introduced,” said New York City fire investigator Jerry Ewing. “All the signs were there. When you get that much crazy and stupid in one enclosed space, something has to give.”

Chemicals expert James Farthammer agrees. “Our investigators have been going over the tapes of their broadcasts since bin Laden’s death was announced, and the word I’m hearing is that they’ve never seen so much crupid in one place. It’s just a recipe for disaster, like lighting a match next to an open gas line.”

The building, located in midtown Manhattan just a few blocks from Times Square, blew up in what witnesses termed a massive blast at about 3:40 a.m. Friday. No one was inside the building at the time, and no injuries were reported.

“We got lucky,” said Ewing. “If this had happened during the day, with all the craziness and stupidity you had built up in there, we’d have had major loss of life.”

According to Farthammer, lethal levels of crazy have been brought in by, among others, Glenn Beck, who wondered on one broadcast if Bin Laden was “ghosted out of his compound” and speculated that what we’re seeing now is just a “show,” and Fox Business host Andrew Napolitano, who speculated that the government might not be “telling us the truth or pulling a fast one to save Obama's lousy presidency.”

Stupid emissions have included Sean Hannity, Karl Rove and others declaring, without any evidence, that Bin Laden’s death was a “victory for torture,” and countless claims that Obama’s appearance in New York City was a “shameless victory lap.”

Meanwhile, according to Farthammer, Fox & Friends’ Steve Doocy has brought enough of both elements to blow the building up all by himself, citing the following:

On the May 4th edition, Doocy said of the potential release of photographs of bin Laden's burial, "If you don't show [bin Laden's] face, then, you know, who's to say what was in that bag?" leading co-host Gretchen Carlson to immediately state: "I believe it was him." On May 3rd, after a guest pointed out that the body has been confirmed as bin Laden's through DNA testing, Doocy replied that skeptics won't "believe DNA" evidence, because "that's just numbers on a piece of paper." And Thursday, Doocy reacted to news that the Obama administration will not be releasing photographic evidence of bin Laden's death by claiming that the photograph will, eventually, be leaked, "if it exists."

Farthammer warned that other structures containing Republicans and right-wingers could also be in danger due to high levels of crupid. He cited The Washington Times building in the nation’s capital, and the homes of conservative bloggers like Michelle Malkin, who erroneously reported that President Obama had a flag removed from Ground Zero before his appearance there, and anyplace that Sarah Palin spends more than five minutes in.

“No doubt, when we’re talking about lethal mixtures of stupid and crazy, Palin is a walking bomb,” said Farthammer.

Aloha, My Lovely, Part 6: A Placenta in the Sun

From the case files of Sam Stain, Private Eye, who's been hired by Donald Trump to go to Honolulu and bring back the President's placenta

We splashed down in a stream of rushing water, and floated. The little Smart Car’s headlights showed the way as we bobbed along on the surface.
I looked at Al Gore, who was still gripping the wheel, as if he could steer. “The gizmo floats?” I said.
He pointed out the windshield. “Clearly. It’s not a Swift Boat, but it’ll do.”
We were moving fast, the river carrying us downstream, away from the Governor’s goons who’d been chasing us in the big Packard.
“You know,” said Gore, “this is a perfect example of how global climate change has adversely affected the planet. This raging river that we’re floating in used to be a tiny stream, but now, due to increased rains brought on by a warming climate…”
I thought about plugging him, but I couldn’t do it. There was only one alternative. Groaning, I opened the door and jumped.
I could hear the former Vice President’s frantic cries fading into the distance as I hit the water and went under. Gasping and flailing, I fought my way to the surface as the river hurtled me downstream. Then something slammed into the back of my head, and the lights went out.
I don’t know how much time had passed when I came to, lying spread-eagled on my back on the riverbank with a lump the size of a breadfruit bulging the back of my head. It was still dark, stars twinkling the night sky above. I staggered to my feet and stood there, pain throbbing my think-tank. Where was I? I had no clue. I had to get to the airstrip, somehow, and I was running out of time.
An idea crawled up my spine and nipped me in the noodle. I still had Al Gore’s Blackberry. I pulled the phone out, praying that it still worked. It did, flickering to life when I powered it up. A half an hour later I staggered onto the Halawa Beach airstrip, Mapquest leading the way. I was just in time. The sound of a jet engine cut the darkness from above. Looking up, I saw landing lights flashing as a big, dark jet descended out of the west. Moments later its wheels hit the ashphalt runway, a roaring blue 727 with the word TRUMP printed in big, white letters across the fuselage. I recognized the design – it was one of the Trump Airline jets from the ‘80s. The Donald had bought the Eastern Air Shuttle, a flying bus service that flew hourly shuttles between Boston, New York and Washington. He’d tried to turn it into a luxury shuttle, but it didn’t take. The airline went bango a couple years later, Trump defaulted on his loans and the company was turned over to creditors. He must have kept one of the jets for himself, I thought, as I watched the plane bounce down on the asphalt runway.
I followed, running to the end of the airstrip as Trump’s jet wheeled to a halt. A door opened at the rear of the aircraft and a comely blond stewardess lowered a portable stairway. “Welcome aboard, Mr. Stain,” she said as I walked into the empty jet. Well, it was almost empty. There was one other passenger: The Donald. He was sitting in a big swivel chair in the center of the aircraft, facing a flat-screen TV and holding an empty vodka glass.
“Have a seat,” he said. “I was giving a speech in Honolulu, so I thought I’d just swing by and pick you up. You look like shit, Stain. What the hell have you been doing?”
I started to answer but he cut me off, holding his empty glass up so the stewardess could see. “I’ll have another T&T, Tonya,” he said, jiggling the glass. He looked at me. “You want one, Stain? Trump and Tonic. My own label. Trump Vodka. You remember, I’m sure. It was the best, Stain. Everything I do is the best.”
I remembered reading somewhere about his vodka venture. He’d predicted the T&T would become one of the most requested drinks in America, but then the vodka went bust, just like the airline.
“I’ll take a bourbon,” I said.
Trump gave me a disgusted look, then turned to the flat screen. He was watching himself give a speech. “Watch this, Stain. It’s my favorite part,” he said, then he pointed the remote at the screen and turned up the sound.
The Trump on the screen was looking straight at me, his piercing blue eyes dancing with delight. “You wanna know what I’d tell the Chinese,” he said. “Here’s what I’d tell the Chinese. I’d say, ‘Listen you motherfuckers, we’re gonna drop a 25 percent tax on your asses.”
The crowd went wild.
The Donald muted the screen again, then turned to me, smiling smugly. “You see, Stain? They love me. I’m gonna tell you something. Everyone’s saying it’s all a publicity stunt, that I’m not really running for President. But let me tell you, I’m running. It’s gonna be Trump-Blagojevic, 2012. What do ya think? I’ve already got the slogan. ‘Let the hair take you there.’ What do ya think, Stain?”
“It’s catchy,” I said.
His too-blue eyes narrowed, boring into me, and his nostrils flared. “You stink, Stain,” he said. “Why don’t you go back into the dressing room and change your clothes. There’s a whole wardrobe back there from my personal collection. Go ahead. You’ll feel better.”
He turned back to the TV, turning the sound up once again. I got up and walked back to the back of the plane. Behind me, I heard him replaying his favorite line of the speech. The part where he tells the Chinese who’s boss.
Tonya, the stewardess, led me into a private dressing room, filled with clothes from the Donald J. Trump Signature Collection. I picked out a white silk dress shirt and a pair of black slacks. The labels read: MADE IN CHINA. Peeling out of my filthy clothes, I slipped them on. They fit like a dream, the silk cool and clean against my skin, but somehow, I felt even dirtier wearing them.
When I got back to my seat, there was a glass of bourbon waiting for me, but The Donald was gone. I picked up the glass and drank. Then I drank another. Before long, my eyes closed and I went drifting off to dreamland.
I awoke to a gentle rocking, sunlight streaming through the windows of the plane. Tonya’s hand was on my shoulder, shaking me awake. “Mr. Stain, we’re here,” she said.
I peered out the window. She was right, we were on the ground, the big Trump plane parked at a jetway next to a terminal. “Mombasa?” I said.
“Cairo,” said Tonya, smiling. “We had a change of plans. Mr. Trump told me to give you this.”
As I stood up, she handed me an envelope.
Cairo? What were we doing in Egypt? I opened the envelope. Inside were two Disney On Ice tickets and a note. The note read:

Stain,
I received a tip that what we want is in Egypt. A man named Dennis will contact you at the Sultan Bar, at the Mena House, near the Great Pyramids. Give him the Disney On Ice tickets, and he’ll tell you where to find Obama’s placenta. Contact me when you get back to New York.
- Trump

I took a cab to the Mena House, a spectacular hotel in the shadow of the pyramids, and went up to the Sultan Bar.
“I’m looking for Dennis,” I told the bartender, a dark, elegant-looking man with a big, black moustache. His eyes led me to a dark booth in the corner of the bar, where a little man with a fez on his head sat with his back to me, sipping a martini. I walked over and stood behind him, looking down at the top of his fez.
“You must be Dennis,” I said.
He turned. It was Dennis Kucinich, his gigantic, elf-like ears jutting out from beneath the fez. “And you are Mr. Stain,” he said. “You brought the Disney On Ice tickets?”
I nodded.
“Show me,” he said.
I slid into the booth opposite the congressman and handed him the envelope.
He rubbed his little fingers over the tickets, licking his lips. “Excellent,” he said, smiling.
“The placenta?” I said.
He slipped the tickets into his jacket and stood up. “Come with me.”
I followed him outside, through the luxurious marble lobby of the Mena House to the hotel’s sprawling, jasmine-scented gardens. Above the gardens towered the Great Pyramid of Giza. That’s where he took me, the tassle of his little red tarbouche bobbing beside his head as he lead the way. We exited the gardens and walked out onto the plateau of the pyramids, heading for the spectacular temple of the Pharoahs. We passed the Great Sphinx, reclining as it had for nearly 5,000 years, and made our way to the pyramid’s entrance. The temple filled my field of vision, its sides sloping at a perfect angle to the sky. Gazing up at the smoothly polished limestone, I felt a shudder, as if the cold fingers of time were passing over my spine.
We walked inside, our shoes making loud clicks on the ancient stone. Kucinich led me down a passageway that took us through a series of chambers, each seemingly smaller than the last, until I had to crouch down just to keep my head from smacking the stone ceiling. Finally he led me into a vestibule that opened up, the ancient stone walls soaring hundreds of feet high, sloping together at the same, steep degree as the pyramid itself.
The congressman stood in the center of the room, gazing up at the distant ceiling overhead. “They built this place,” he said. “Not the Egyptians. You know that, right?” His voice echoed off the pyramid’s walls.
“Who?” I asked. “What do you mean, not the Egyptians?”
He looked at me. “They visited me, Mister Stain. I was at Shirley MacLaine’s house, in Washington state. The smell of roses drew me out to my balcony where, when I looked up, I saw a gigantic triangular craft, silent and beautiful. It was watching me. It hovered, soundless, for ten minutes or so, and then it sped away with a speed I couldn’t comprehend. But I felt a connection in my heart and heard directions in my mind. Those directions led me here. Which is where I found this.”
He took something out of his jacket pocket. It was disc-shaped, about the size of a Frisbee, dark brown in color, almost maroon. It looked like it was made of rotten meat.
I moved toward him, staring at the dingus. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Yes,” said Dennis Kucinich, tossing the meat-disc onto the dusty floor of the pyramid. “It’s Obama’s placenta. Or whatever they call it on his planet. President Obama wasn’t born in Hawaii, Mister Stain. Nor was he born in Kenya. He came from up there, somewhere.” He pointed up, toward the ceiling, but what he really meant was beyond the ceiling. Beyond the pyramids. Beyond the earth.
“He’s an alien being, Mister Stain. Brought here, to our planet, to rule us.”
“You’re nuts,” I said.
“Am I?” said Kucinich, smiling, his little, rodent-like eyes dancing beneath the fez. “Or am I so sane I just blew your mind?”
I tried to cluck sympathetically, but it caught in my throat. Before I could get it out, somebody laid a blackjack to the back of my head and the lights went out completely.

*********

When I came to, my head was throbbing and my eyes didn’t want to focus. I made them. I was sitting in a first-class airline seat, with a portable DVD player in my lap. A card on the seatback in front of me read “Hawaiian Air.” Someone was shaking my shoulder. It was the flight attendant.
I felt like I was having a deja-vu. Or, was I?
“Sir, we’ve landed.”
“Landed?” I mumbled, my mouth full of marbles. “Where?”
“Honolulu,” she said, smiling. “You slept most of the flight. You were talking in your sleep, too.”
I rubbed my temples. “Oh yeah? What was I saying?”
“Something about Obama,” she said. “It was hard to make out.”
It was a dream. The whole thing, just a cockamamie dream. Being kidnapped. Joe Biden in drag. Al Gore. Kucinich. The Pyramids. All of it. I hadn’t solved any case. Obama wasn’t an alien. Either I was headed for the loony bin or … I looked down at the little DVD player on my lap. Fox News was on the screen, Sean Hannity spewing a mouthful of gibbering hooey. That was it. I’d been watching Trump’s lousy DVDs and I fell asleep. The teabags had opened, and the wingnut juice seeped into my brain. I folded the screen closed, then I stood up, shaking my head, trying to clear the gibberish.
I staggered off the plane and into the terminal. In my pocket, my cellphone buzzed and hummed. I answered it.
“Stain, it’s Donald Trump. I need you to come back to New York. Obama released his long-form birth certificate. I’m very proud of myself that I was able to force him to do this.”
“I thought you wanted the placenta,” I said.
“Maybe later,” said The Donald. “But right now I’ve got something else that’s more pressing. I want you to look into his college transcripts. I read somewhere that he was a bad student. Horrible. I’d like to know, how does he get into Harvard, how does he get into Columbia if he wasn’t a very good student? I knew lots of kids, Stain. Rich white kids, with lots of money. Their fathers had all sorts of connections, and yet they couldn’t get into Harvard. So how’d this guy do it? There’s something fishy about it, Stain. I can smell it.”
I hung up. Sweat seeped out of my pores and clung to me like a stench. I felt dirty, like I’d been rolling in filth. I went to the ticket counter and picked up the ticket, then I stopped at B. Dalton’s and bought a book for the flight home. A biography of Barack Obama. I read it cover to cover, soaring 30,000 feet over the Pacific. Trump was full of it. So maybe Obama didn’t get straight A’s at Occidental College or Columbia. There are plenty of other presidents who didn’t get great grades either, including George W. Bush. In fact, Bush was a dunce, but you didn’t hear anyone asking to see his credentials once he got to the White House. Maybe they should have. And once he got to Harvard, Obama was brilliant, graduating Magna Cum Laude and named president of the Law Review.
By the time we touched down at JFK, I knew what I needed to do. I hopped in a cab and headed downtown to my dingy office, and I went to work. It took me a couple of days of digging, but I found the information I needed. When I had it all, I called Trump and told him to come to my office.
He came in, his face a pompous mask of glowing bronze, his hair swooping like a puma, ready to pounce.
He sat down in the chair across my desk, his face filled with expectation. “Well, Stain, did you get the dirt on Obama’s college transcripts, like I asked you?”
I pushed a manila folder at him. “It’s all there,” I said.
He opened it, pulled out my report and looked. His eyes glinted as they swept across the top page. Wrinkles appeared in his forehead, and his face turned red as the ink on his casino ledgers. He looked up at me, his lips trembling with rage. “What the hell is this? This isn’t what I asked for…”
“No, but it’s worth something, just the same,” I said.
He thumbed through the pages. “This is all my dealings with Ghaddafi in 2009.”
“That’s right,” I said. “It reeks like a Boardwalk Port-a-Potti.”
“Where did you get this?”
“I found it. That’s what I do, Mr. Trump. I find things.”
“What is this, a shakedown?”
I shrugged. “Call it what you like. A warning.”
He squinted, his deep-blue orbs twinkling with anger. “What is it that you want, Stain?”
I leaned over the desktop and stared straight into his tan-in-a-can kisser. I said: “I want you to shut your big bazoo. Stop lying about the President. That’s all. No more lies. Got it?”
Trump’s lips quivered, as if he were about to smooch something. It wouldn’t be me. “And if I don’t?”
I stood up, moving quickly around the desk. I stood over him, my hands clenched into fists of rage. “If you don’t, I’ll steal the marmot. You know, the one on top of your head.”
He looked up at me, a smug smile playing across his lips. “Don’t threaten me, Stain. I leave particles of guys like you in my wind.”
“That must be painful,” I said, snatching the dead marmot off his head. Stepping quickly around the desk, I opened the window that looked out over the Avenue of the Americas, and I tossed it out. The sound of car horns honking echoed from the street below.
Without taking his eyes off me, Trump ran a hand across the top of his bald dome. He looked ridiculous. Like a clown, like an inconsequential foof. Like a dirty, bald-headed crumb. “I have another one at home, Stain,” he said.
“Then I’ll get that one too.”
“I have two more at my brother-in-law’s house.”
“I know where your brother-in-law lives.”
“Damn you, Stain.”
He got up and went to the door. Before opening it, he turned to me. “You’re a dead man, Stain. You know that, don’t you? As soon as I leave here I’m going to pick up the phone and make a call. That’s all I’ll do. Make one phone call. And then men will come here and rub you out. It may be tomorrow. It may be the next day, or the day after that. But they will come.”
I shrugged, pouring bourbon into a dirty styrofoam cup. “I’ll be here,” I said. “Waiting.”
He went out. I watched him walk past the bullethole in my frosted glass window, and then he was gone.
I put my feet up on the desk, leaned back in my squeaky office chair and drank.
I would wait. Like the sign on the door said, I was Stain.

THE END

Vatican Digs Up the Pope, Finds Obama's Birth Certificate

When Vatican officials exhumed the body of Pope John Paul II on Friday, ahead of a beatification mass, they made an unusual discovery – U.S. President Barack Obama’s long-form birth certificate was clutched in the dead Pope’s hands.

Examination of the birth certificate revealed that Obama was, indeed, born in Hawaii. Officials had no explanation for how the document came to be in the corpse’s possession. Pope John Paul II died in 2005.

When asked to comment on the events, professional foof Donald Trump, who has gained a lot of publicity recently by publicly questioning Obama’s U.S. citizenship, had no comment. "I'm speechless," he said.

The ceremony of beatification - the first step toward canonization, or sainthood, is scheduled for May 1st. Prerequisite for canonization is to commit a miracle. Said one church official, who asked not to be identified, "I think getting Trump to shut up qualifies as his miracle. He's a shoe-in now."

Other Republican leaders expressed surprise at the finding, and confusion over the Catholic ceremony. Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin said, “I can’t wait ‘til they canonize him. I thought they only did that to circus midgets.”

Aloha, My Lovely, Part 5: In the Veep of the Night

From the case files of Sam Stain, Private Eye, who's been hired by Donald Trump to go to Honolulu and bring back the President's placenta

Joe Biden stood barefoot in the moonlight in his orange sarong, pointing a .38 Beretta at my belly button. “Okay, Stain,” he said, his lipstick-smeared kisser curled into a sneer. “We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the Scranton way. Which is it gonna be?”

I raised my hands, slowly. “Take it easy, Joe,” I said. “I know when I’m licked.”

He waved the gun at the long, flagstone stairway that led to the entrance of the hotel, flanked on both sides by lush hibiscus. “Walk,” he said. “Slowly.”

I did as he ordered, climbed the steps to the Volcano House with my hands in the air, the Vice President’s pistol prodding my ribs for impetus.
Halfway to the front door I spoke to him over my shoulder. “So you actually pulled it off. Put an alien in the White House. Congratulations, Joe.”

He chuckled. “You don’t know the half of it, Stain.”

“Who would have guessed it,” I said. “I always figured the Birthers’ story had more holes in it than one of Trump’s golf courses.”

“You figured wrong, smart guy,” said Biden.

I kept climbing the stairs to the front entrance of the hotel. Halfway up I missed a step, accidentally on purpose, and stumbled back into him. He should have just plugged me, but his instincts took over and he tried to help, put his arms around me to keep me from falling. Liberals. They can’t help themselves. I grabbed the Beretta and twisted it out of his hands. It was like taking Texas from a Democrat.

Biden’s eyes widened under the long, fake lashes, and his pale, bony arms reached for heaven. He still held the blond wig in one of his brown-spotted hands.

“Okay, talk,” I said. “What did you do with Trump’s investigators? The Jersey boys?”

He smiled, his sapphire-colored orbs twinkling in the moonlight. “They had a little accident over by the volcano. Seems they needed some health care, but the death panel voted ‘em down. Damn shame, really, but the panel decided they just weren’t worthy recipients of health care. I do hope their families understand.”

“Damn big government socialist bureaucrats, rationing health care!” I yelled, driving my fist into his jaw. He fell back onto the flagstones, unconscious before he hit the ground. He looked ridiculous, spread-eagled like that in his sarong and coconut bra, like Rudy Giuliani at the end of a bender. I stood over him, figuring my options. Loud voices coming toward me from the top of the steps helped make up my mind. I dragged the Vice President off into the hibiscus, then crouched down in the bushes, watching.

A large man in shorts and a luau shirt came down the steps, humming “The Girl From Ipanema.” He was heading for a parking lot filled with little electric Smart cars. I recognized him. It was Al Gore. I stuck the Beretta in my pocket and followed him down the flagstone walkway.

The former vice president walked to one of the funny-looking half-cars, which was plugged into some sort of electric charging post. While he fumbled with the cord that ran from the post to his gas cap, I came up behind him and stuck the Beretta in his back.

“Here’s an inconvenient truth,” I said through clenched teeth. “If you make a sound I’ll put a hole in you bigger than the ozone. Now, what do you say we take your little gaymobile for a spin.”

“Okay,” he said calmly in that Grand Ole Opry drawl, his voice thick as a Memphis breakfast. “Now, let’s not do anything rash here.”

“Good idea,” I said, opening the door. I got in first, scooting across to the passenger seat, then motioned for him to follow. “Get in and drive,” I told him.

He did as I said.

The little gizmo started up with a whir. “Sounds like a vacuum cleaner,” I said, as he wheeled us around the driveway.

He glanced at me, cold daggers shooting from his hooded eyes. “Let me tell you something. This little puppy can go from zero to sixty in 3.5 seconds, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and our nation’s dependence on foreign oil, not to mention…”

I aimed the Beretta at the floor, a couple of inches from his right foot, and pulled the trigger. The explosion reverberated like a cannon shot inside the little toy car.

Gore jumped in his seat. “Jumpin’ Jehosephat!” he yelped.

“One more word,” I said, “and I’ll take off a couple of toes. What’ll that do to your carbon footprint?”

For once in his life he clammed up, staring straight ahead as he steered.

“That’s more like it,” I said.

We exited the drive and moved out onto the main road. After a moment, he looked at me. “Where are we going?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Just drive. Give me your cell phone.”

Gore pulled a Blackberry out of his pocket and handed it over. I thumbed the keypad, punching in Trump’s number. He picked up on the seventh ring. I’d forgotten about the time difference. It was the middle of the night in New York.

“This better be good,” said The Donald. “Do you know what time it is?”

“Sorry, Mr. Trump. It’s Sam Stain.”

“Where the hell have you been, Stain? You were supposed to have checked in hours ago.”

“The liberals kidnapped me,” I said. “Brought me to Molokai.”

“Did you find Obama’s placenta?”

“Not yet,” I said. “But I found out what happened to your investigators. The boys from Jersey.”

“Tell me,” he said.

“They were death paneled. Liquidated by the big machine.”

“Son of a bitch,” hissed Trump. “Murdered by Obamacare.” The line went silent for a moment, then he said: “I need that placenta, Stain. The liberal press is killing me.”

“I think I might know where it is,” I told him. “I’m going to need another plane ticket.”

“Where to?”

“Africa,” I said. “The Dark Continent, where it all began. Get me a ticket to Kenya, Trump. I’m going to blow this caper sky high, with a cherry on top. But first, I need a way off this island.”

There was silence on the other end. The great mind at work. “Okay,” he said, finally. “I’m going to tell you what to do. Where are you?”

“On the eastern edge of Molokai,” I said. “Near the volcano.”

“All right.” His voice was the sound of authority. “Here’s what you do. There’s an airstrip not far from the volcano. Be there in one hour. I’ll take care of the rest.” He hung up.

I looked at Gore. “Do you know where the airstrip is, the one by the volcano?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I know where it is.”

“Take me there,” I said.

Turning to the window, I looked out at the dark landscape whirring past. A bright light blazed in the side mirror. I turned around and had a look out the back window. A big, black Packard was coming up fast behind us, its headlights eating up the road.

I turned to Gore, who had his eyes fixed on the windshield. “Step on it,” I said. “We’re being followed.”

“All right,” he said, his foot stomping the gas.

The little gizmo puttered ahead, not going any faster. I glanced at the dash. The needle danced at 60. It didn’t feel like 60.

“Is that the best it can do?”

Al Gore looked flustered. “Well, heck, I’m doing 60 kilometers an hour!”

I stared at him. “Kilometers? What’s that in American?”

He squinted, figuring the math. “37.28227153424004 miles per hour.”

“Dammit!” I yelled, pounding the dash.

Behind us, gunshots rang out, bullets pinging off the gizmo’s chassis.
“They’re shooting at us!” Gore yelled. “Why are they shooting at us?”

I rolled the window down, leaned out and fired back at the Packard.
The muzzle of a Tommy Gun appeared out of the passenger window, belching fire. Rat-a-tat-tat. I answered with the Beretta. Bullets ricocheted off the hood of the the Packard, but it kept coming. The big car sped up, ramming us from behind. The little gizmo veered crazily across the road, tires squealing.

“Hang on!” yelled Gore as we flew off the road. We bounced wildly through the thick, tropical brush, and then we were airborne, the little car taking flight. As we soared through the darkness, I heard someone scream, and realized it was me.

Gore's eyes were wide as cueballs, his fingers white on the wheel. He yelled, “I regret nothing!”

“Remember the Stain!” I screamed.

Next time: the thrilling conclusion!

Aloha, My Lovely, Part 4: Lava Means Never Having to Wear Your Sari

From the case files of Sam Stain, Private Eye, who's been hired by Donald Trump to go to Honolulu and bring back the President's placenta

The roar of the surf became the drone of engines as I came to lying face down on a cold metal floor, vibration shaking my bones. Wind whipped my clothes and hair and bit the back of my neck. Groaning, I raised my head. I was in an empty cargo bay, in a propeller plane that seemed to be missing a door. Outside the doorway there was nothing but air, whooshing by. If I craned my neck just a little, I could see the ocean, blue and distant, blurring by a couple of thousand feet below.

Behind me sat the two hula boys who’d conked me with a coconut at the Department of Health. They were sitting in a pair of fold-down seats, watching me quietly through dark, placid eyes. I remembered Lulu’s voice, just before I slipped under. “Take the haole a-hole to the volcano,” she’d said. “Like the others.”

That’s when it hit me. They were going to throw me out of the plane into a volcano. I was about to become Magma, P.I. I’d stuck my nose where no noses should go, asked one too many questions about the President’s birth certificate, and I was going to pay for it, head-first into molten lava, unless I did something, quick.

Moaning, I staggered to my feet, then, steadying myself, I ran for the cockpit door, grabbed the handle, and yanked. Nothing. The door was locked tight as W’s flight suit on the deck of the Abraham Lincoln. I looked over my shoulder. Funny. The hula boys hadn’t moved. They just sat there, watching me and smiling.

“Relax, haole,” said Kong #1, his voice rising above the sound of the propellers. “We’ll be landing soon.”

“Landing? Landing where?”

“Molokai,” he said, his smile growing wider.

I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck. “Molokai? Isn’t that a leper colony?”

Kong #2’s eyes lit up. “Kalaupapa,” he said. “Father Damien.”

So that was their game! Ask too many questions about Obama’s birth certificate and you end up a leper. And not just figuratively, like David Frum or Peggy Noonan, but a real, honest-to-goodness skin-falling-off leper, like that Scottish king in Braveheart. Sweet mother of Ben Hur! I sank down onto the cold floor of the plane, my back against the cockpit door. In a few minutes we would land, and I’d be face to face with the noseless ones. Was this the end of Stain?

A few minutes later we touched down. As the plane taxied down the airstrip, the hula boys tromped over and lifted me by the armpits, carrying me to the open doorway. The plane probably wasn’t going much more than 20 miles an hour when they threw me out. I bounced along the runway a few times and came to rest in front of a big black Packard, the kind you’d see in an old Bogart movie. Two pugs got out, picked me up and threw me in the back seat like a sack of pineapples.

The Packard started up with a roar and got rolling as I peeled myself off the old man’s lap. He didn’t look like much, but at least his nose hadn’t fallen off yet.

“Allow me to introduce myself, Mr. Stain,” he said. “I’m Neil Abercrombie, Governor of the great state of Hawaii.”

He didn’t look like a governor, with that scruffy white beard in need of a trim. “Must be tough, for a politician,” I said. “Being a leper and all.”

The governor’s eyes glinted behind wire-framed specs. “You’re a little behind the times. We haven’t had a leper colony on Molokai in decades.”

“Oh? Then why did your hula goons bring me here?”

“Let me be blunt, Mr. Stain. We know you’re working for Donald Trump. You’re the third investigator he’s sent to Hawaii to find President Obama’s birth certificate.”

“It’s worse than that,” I said. “Now he wants the placenta.”

“I see,” said the Governor. He looked out the window, gazing at the lush vegetation whirring past. “Trump’s an idiot, Mr. Stain. But, yeah, he’s right.” He turned back to me, his cheeks dimpling as he smiled. “The President wasn’t really born in Hawaii.”

He was smug about it. Too smug.

“No, really. See, when Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, a poor white girl living in Honolulu and attending the University of Hawaii, married a foreign student from Kenya in February, 1961, on Maui, she was already three months pregnant. Despite the fact that, as Mr. Trump himself puts it, ‘everyone wanted to become a United States citizen,’ she chose to fly all the way to Africa and have the baby there instead. Even though she somehow knew then that 50 years later he would become the first African-American President of the United States, and, in order to do so, would have to be an American citizen. So, with the help of her parents, a scheming World War II vet and his conniving bride, the homemaker who’d worked at Boeing during the war, she developed a cunning plan. First they bribed doctors, nurses and officials at the Kapi'olani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu, convincing the hospital to send a bogus birth announcement to the Hawaii state Department of Health, which, in turn, issued a counterfeit certificate of live birth. Next they bribed the editors of two separate Honolulu newspapers, The Honolulu Advertiser and the Star-Bulletin, to run identical phony birth announcements stating that the future President was, indeed, born in Honolulu. Not content to stop there, they bribed many friends of Ms. Dunham’s in Hawaii, including yours truly, and still more friends in the state of Washington, where she visited with little Barack one month after his birth, convincing us all to attest to their dastardly lie. It all worked beautifully, and would have continued to do so, if it weren’t for that meddling billionaire, Donald Trump. Congratulations, Mr. Stain. You got us. Too bad you won’t live to tell anyone.”

I stared at him, my mouth hanging open in disbelief. “The President’s mother was named Stanley?”

He nodded, smiling, then turned and looked out the window as the big Packard wheeled off the main road and turned down a lazy, palm-lined drive. In the distance, a brightly-lit sign flashed the words, “The Volcano House” in blazing neon.

The Governor turned back to me, patting my knee consolingly. “You do understand why we can’t let you leave the island, Mr. Stain. There’s simply too much at stake.”

We were approaching the front of a sprawling, plantation-style hotel. Leaning over me, the Governor unlatched the door.

“Goodbye, Mr. Stain,” he said. “I hope you enjoy your stay.” The car was still moving when he pushed me out.

I did my impression of a bowling ball again, rolling down the driveway. When I finally came to rest, I was looking up at a pair of long, bony, white gams that rose above me like tall stalks of sugar cane, disappearing into an orange sarong. I got to my feet and took in the rest of her. She looked vaguely familiar, and all wrong somehow, like Michael Dukakis driving a tank. A big yellow sunflower sprouted out of her long, blond hair. Her eyes were laughing sapphires in the leathery, crinkled map of her face. She had the sinewy, hard-scrabble shoulders of a champion bowler, and breasts the size of passion fruits beneath a string coconut bikini. Her turkey wattle neck jiggled when she spoke.

“Hello, Mr. Stain. You’re just in time for the luau. We have fresh Humuhumunukunukuapua'a.”

Her voice was deep. Too deep. It did things to me I’d rather not think about.

She reached up and played with her hair, the way girls do when they’re nervous. She had hairy wrists, for a dame. “Perhaps you’d like to clean up, and then join us for dinner. Would you like me to show you to your room?”

I rolled my tongue back into my mouth and said, “You had me at Humuhumunukunukuapua'a.”

I was still drooling when she took off the wig. I didn’t notice where she got the gun from. Maybe it was in the wig. All I know is that when I looked at her hand, there was a .38 Beretta in it, pointed right at my spleen.

“Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle,” I said, trying to look more relaxed than I was. “Joe Biden.”

TO BE CONTINUED