2020 2016 2012

It is the mission of all politicians, from School Board Trustee to President, to ensure that the lives of the people they serve are absolutely perfect in every way. And we’d be able to do it, too, if it weren’t for all these damn issues.
The trouble with America, as you well know, is that people disagree with me. Whenever I present one of my brilliant schemes to improve the country, Congress simply laughs me out of the building. Unable to form any logical arguments against my ideas, they resort to cheap, vote-winning one-liners such as “I don’t think that’s feasible in this current economic situation,” and “But everyone will be killed.”
Now, I’ve thought long and hard about this, which was a bit of a waste of time as the only explanation I could think of is that they’re stupid. And, of course, I realize that stupidity is not a crime, but if you vote for me then I promise that’s the first thing I’m going to change. Nevertheless, while there are still such a disparate array of opinions in this country, the only way to convince the naysayers is to provide detailed summaries of the various ways in which President Weasel will create a brighter future for you and your children, when he isn’t busy golfing.

AIR TRAVEL SECURITY

Back in the old days, air travel was a routine and mundane thing. At roughly 6 a.m. you would be awoken by the impatient horn of a cab driver. This was the only way the driver knew how to communicate, as he had just moved to your area from some squalid Middle Eastern hellhole and had only had time to memorize a few necessary swear words.
“Honk, honk!” he was trying to say. “If we were back in Bejerkikurkistan, you lazy bums would have been fed to the goats by now.” To emphasize his point, he would routinely honk his horn every thirty seconds until he woke everybody in your neighbourhood, including any nearby coma patients. Having woken up late, you would holler to the driver that you’d be a few minutes, hoping that it would be enough time for him to clean all the bodily stains out of the seats.
Rushing out of your house with a big suitcase, you would enter the cab and put on your NFL-regulation football helmet. This was to prevent any injury you might face as the cab driver hurtled the car sideways through town at twice the speed of light, all the while practicing English at other motorists. Having arrived at the airport 2.8 seconds before you left, you would carefully crawl out of the cab, dazed and confused, and hand the driver enough money to buy a new refrigerator.
From then on, you would have to wait around for your flight for several hours, as it had been delayed for refuelling, refurnishing, repainting, etc. Some planes never take off, as airport personnel simply find new and more exciting things to do with them. These “delayed” flights continue to be listed on the airport screens as a joke, and airport personnel often place bets on how long it will take for all of the passengers to give up and go home. In the notorious case of Air India flight 1620 (Chicago to Mumbai), passengers have so far waited for over twelve years and counting as airline personnel, having run out of the standard tactics for instituting delays, got creative and had the Airbus plane deconstructed and transformed into a world-class theater and opera house. In August 2011, the passengers were informed that their flight would be ready to depart just as soon as they had completed their final season of Cats.
If your plane did appear to be ready to fly, you would have to pass through a metal detector, a large doorway-like device designed to ensure that the plane is safe from the dangers of terrorists armed with deadly car keys. It works via x-rays, which experts tell us are completely safe. This is the same line given by doctors when they scan your chest, and one can’t help noticing that when the actual x-raying takes place, doctors seem very keen to get the hell out of there. You get the feeling that they would rather drive to another hospital and conduct the x-ray remotely, much in the same way that the bomb squad would always rather stay the hell back and send in a robot. To minimize risk, then, you typically would need to pass through the metal detector as quickly as possible. The seasoned traveller always stood twenty feet back to get a running start, lest they be burnt to a crisp and come out looking like one of the freaks from Jersey Shore.
At this point you would board the plane, where you could finally relax. A stewardess would perform an elaborate interpretive dance to demonstrate safety procedure. The other stewardesses would take orders for dinner, giving you a choice between beef and fish. The vegetarian alternative would be Sweet & Low. The pilot would chat to the passengers via the overhead speaker system. A suspicious-looking man would hijack the plane and make the pilot to fly it to Cuba. The in-flight movie would be The Bad News Bears.
Unfortunately, everything has changed. In the last ten years, fantastically draconian measures have been introduced to improve airline security, many of which dramatically impact personal liberty. You’re not even allowed to bring a bomb on a plane anymore, unless it is safely stored in a regulation plastic bag. Here are some of the ways the TSA has improved security:

These procedures may be a necessary evil, but I for one think they are a step too far. That’s why I want to be your President: So I will be the only person in the world who doesn’t have to follow them.

WARFARE

We’ve made great strides since we invaded Iraq eight or nine years ago. Most of the Iraqis are dead, for instance, which makes them easier to count.
However, most Americans are now bored with these costly military efforts, and in these tough economic times we have sadly had to pull out of this current war if we are to stand a chance of starting any new ones.
So, naturally, our new priority should be in deciding where next to invade. Remember: American pride is at stake here. We need to rebuild our reputation as a hard-nosed, bottom-line, iron-clad manly country full of manly men growing muscles and perfect teeth and describing themselves with tough-sounding hyphenated adjectives without knowing precisely what they mean. We need a country that looks tough and fearless; the sort of country that would help settle a bar fight by punching whoever’s nearest. Even France looks manlier these days, and they invented the leotard for God’s sake.
Plus, this is an age of diplomacy, so we can’t just choose any old country to invade. Even though they pose no military threat, for instance, we couldn’t just march north and invade Canada, because that would make a large amount of the “International Community” cross. Also they have grizzly bears.
So instead, we need to be very careful to find a target which the world simply doesn’t care about. Luckily for all of us, after a long period of thinking and about fourteen energy drinks, I have discovered the prime target: Switzerland. When was the last time you heard of anything happening in Switzerland? Plus, the military will be easy to overcome, because the only thing Switzerland actually produces is chocolate, so all their soldiers weigh over 400 pounds. What are they going to do? Roll up to our G.I. Joes on their personal mobility scooters and stab us with their little knives?
Now all we need to do is figure out how to invade, and this is the part that may cause a great deal of incredibly boring CNN debates. We could just go the direct route: Bomb the hell out of them, declare victory, then take a couple years rebuilding everything. This has the advantage of quick, decisive, manly action, and it also means that we can get right to the part about improving Swiss society by introducing modern first-world ideas, such as razors for women.
We could, on the other hand, try the diplomatic route, whereby we attempt to cut off all their sources of income on the theory that eventually they will become so poor and hungry that they will be forced to use their children for food. These actions are known as “sanctions”, and are often used by prominent countries in the UN despite the fact that they will never, ever work.
There is also a third way, but it is the most dangerous. To even speak its name may put the future of the country in jeopardy. I speak, of course, of: Espionage.
Espionage, in layman’s terms, is a big word for spying that people use to make them sound French. Right now, in over 40 countries, trained sleeper agents are going about their daily routines, waiting for our signal. Upon “waking”, these agents will immediately attempt to sabotage key public locations using the method dictated by their secret training video, Home Alone 2.
If all goes well, the ensuing chaos will be captured on video, then uploaded to YouTube so that the entire world can bask in the might of American military ingenuity. The Swiss, meanwhile, will feel so disgraced and emasculated that they will have no choice but to concede our demands and become New Cleveland or something. There is no disadvantage if this option fails, as the agents will take their secrets to the grave. If pressed to admit America’s involvement, all agents have been trained to play “I’m Your Venus” in their heads until their grey matter loses the will to live.
Whatever method we use, I remain confident that this plan will reinstate America’s reputation as a military power for as long as it takes to obtain some sort of doomsday weapon.

THE ENVIRONMENT

As we all know, beyond the confines of our comfy little cities lies an area called the wilderness. This is where we keep the Environment, which is the collective name for 20, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 small things that all want to eat you. The environment is largely the reason we built our comfy little cities in the first place, since human architecture includes novel features that nature couldn’t provide, such as flush toilets and not freezing to death in the winter.
The problem with the environment is that it tries to systematically ruin all of our lives on a daily basis. Look around the room. I guarantee that if you look hard enough, you will find some sort of foot soldier sent by nature to spy on you. This will probably take the form of a large, tough-looking spider, who will simply stare at you in that punk spider way, moving its little pincers as if to say, “Go ahead, pal. Make my day.” Proper form upon finding this soldier is to shriek like a girl and run out of the room in the hope that, by the time you return, it will have gone away. If it is still there within an hour, you will have to move to a more remote place like Alaska, where the only forms of nature capable of surviving the cold are also big enough to shoot.
And those are just the foot soldiers. Larger environmental things can also be a menace. For example, unless you seal your garbage tightly, it can attract bulky animals called raccoons, which will root through every inch of your trash in hopes of stealing your identity. Believe me, I know how they work. Back during my lifetime, I was briefly Mrs. Rita Fermont of Boise, Idaho, and I used her information to buy many expensive things out of catalogues and also to send detailed, steamy love letters to people she’d never met. You’ll be pleased to hear, of course, that I am now completely reformed. I have rejected my role as part of nature ever since I rose from the dead, a feat for which The New York Times praised me as “an abomination unto God.”
Now, I’m sure at this point a bunch of hippie nature lovers will be enraged. “But Willy!” they say in unison. “Nature isn’t all bad! What about the beauty of the forests and the fields and the seas?” Well, Mr. Tofu-Eater, I’ll have you know that this speech has been published in the form of text, so I have no idea how I could have heard that. It wouldn’t surprise me if these weirdoes were using some sort of black magic, which shows you exactly why they’re the sort of people who are not to be listened to. You know who else used magic? Hitler! I rest my case.
However, I’m glad you brought up the topic of forests. Environmentalists tell us that forests are being destroyed at the rate of a million bajillion trees per day, and that we should all feel very bad about ourselves. Despite this, we still appear to have some forests left in America, and further, miniaturized forests are appearing inside cities in the form of public parks. Besides the typical benches and concrete, these parks tend to contain a small amount of trees, which are large tree-like objects designed to conceal drug dealers.
This presents a problem, since forests contain a LOT of trees. Tasked with working backward to estimate the scale of the problem, a team of trained scientists working diligently at Weasel HQ promptly quit. This left it up to me to do the math, and I have calculated that the forests of America are likely to contain anything up to 900 drug dealers per square mile. I imagine this is where forest fires come from.
So, clearly, something needs to be done. We need some way of either destroying the environment, or forcing it to move to some other country such as Switzerland, which will sure as hell need one once we get through with it. Luckily, so far we appear to be winning. According to the latest figures from Greenpeace, the state of the environment has now reached 2 ½ Paws on the Polar Bears Falling Comically Through Ice Scale. This figure is projected to rise by as much as 28% by next year, plus an extra 5% for every time Arnold Schwarzenegger drives his massive bloated Humvee to the mall.
Still, I think we can do better. If we are to accomplish anything, we’ll have to collaborate. We are going to need to band together and do our part, working together as a team, putting aside our differences and coming together in pursuit of one, glorious goal. Which sounds pretty easy, until you realize that this is essentially the way Congress is supposed to work. So the hell with it.

THE ECONOMY

If you were to watch one of those so-called “news” programs, you would think that the economy was in some sort of trouble. The way these people describe it, you’re walking along one day, minding your own business, and then -- POOF! -- the banking fairy appears, waves his little wand, and suddenly you’re naked and homeless under a railroad bridge, on the run from vicious debt collecting goons who want to repossess your kidneys.
Luckily, I’m exactly as rich as I was before they started saying this, so clearly they must be wrong. This frees up lots of time for us to talk about more important issues, like:

LOBSTER CONTROL

Now, some people might think at this point that lobster control is not an important issue. “But Willy!” they’ll say. “Lobster control is not an important issue!” Au contraire, you massive idiot. As statistics show, lobsters are the #1 cause of death among dwarfs attempting to scuba in restaurant tanks, and the situation gets even worse for normal people. Not a day goes by that you don’t see headlines like these:

POLICE PROBE CLAWING DEATH

LOBSTER EXTREMISTS CLAIM RESPONSIBILITY FOR EXPLODING ENTREES

MAINE FISHING INDUSTRY POSSESSED BY DEMONS

KATE MIDDLETON IN LOBSTER PREGNANCY SHOCK!
“Click-click-click-click-hisssss” says crustacean father

Clearly, this represents a major threat, not just to Americans, but to the world as a whole. And worse still, the very people we rely on for information are in on it. It’s no coincidence that the media is attempting to bury all these lobster things under stories about countries and banks defaulting. Call me paranoid all you want, but I know a conspiracy when I see it. As many of you may recall, I graduated from Stanford with a Master’s Degree in Conspiracy Theoretical Physics. It was actually thanks entirely to research I conducted many years ago that we now know that objects cannot travel faster than the speed of light because of the Zionists.
For every single second of inaction, the situation gets worse. According to the FBI, 58% of all the world’s mafia members now carry lobsters, and when confronted some have been known to deploy them regardless of the number of innocent spectators. Even now, hundreds of lobsters are being transported through the postal system, sent by homegrown lobster fundamentalists with beards the size of raccoons. USPS officials are trying as hard as they can to track them down and eliminate them, but sooner or later they’re going to slip, and some innocent person averse to seafood is going to open a package and receive an allergic reaction that will make their face swell and burst like a Pillsbury Pizza Pop. We can’t stop these people unless we take action right now, or possibly after lunch if we remember.
So, what are we to do? One solution is to heat Maine to a temperature of 100 degrees Celsius for three hours, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. But I have a more radical approach: We paint all lobsters pink. Think about it: What animal is more manly than the lobster? The minute they see themselves in the mirror, they will feel so emasculated that, far from feeling like harming anyone, they will immediately crawl to the nearest Red Lobster and volunteer. For added effect, we could even make little lobster dresses, complete with curly blonde wigs and pink tutus, but that’s assuming that we want to be sadistic. For particularly brutal or vicious lobsters, we would force them to perform Shirley Temple routines.
A draconic move? Perhaps. But I don’t see any of those other namby-pamby so-called candidates discussing this. They’ve probably been bought off by the Lobster Mafia or something. Well, they haven’t got me, my friends. I’ve never been so much as approached by the mafia, nor asked to conveniently ignore an issue in return for large sums of cash. I’m a candidate with integrity. Although, for the record, I could use a new boat. Wink-wink.

HEALTH CARE

As we all know, thanks to the changes imposed by Obamacare, you are now 36% more likely to die at the hands of doctors than you would at the hands of some massive thug named Ulric in a medieval Viking torture chamber.
Also, doctors have started swapping organs around for fun, or sometimes just to see what happens. Many are the horror stories of people going to the doctor’s with a cold and coming out with their appendix inserted in their stomach and their lungs stuck in places where lungs don’t belong. Worse still, sometimes they apparently swap them between patients. We’ve all heard the infamous story of Mrs. Martha Hersh of Tampa, Florida, who became something of a medical marvel when particularly mischievous doctors removed her original organs and sent her home packed full of nothing but spleens.
You can’t really fault the physicians, though – it’s just about the only creative time they get in their job. The problem is with the health care system itself. Even now, it’s snarling from its cage deep in the White House basement, slurping tax dollars and gnawing on the bones of the lobbyists sent in as sacrifices. If we don’t stop feeding it, it’s just going to get bigger and bigger, until we reach the point where it breaks free and rampages around Washington, D.C., causing untold public damage. After being sentenced to rehab, it would emerge a changed system and it would tell its story on all the gossipy celebrity shows like Entertainment Tonight, and recant the personal hell of its lobbyist addiction. This would likely get a lot of public interest and quickly lead to a permanent spot on one of those daytime shows for fat women like The View, and it wouldn’t be long until the tabloids started following it. Unless you want to read headlines like “Obamacare in Sheep Affair Shock”, we have to kill it, and we have to kill it NOW.
So, clearly we need to fix it, if not outright replace it. Luckily, there are many viable replacements to choose from, including:

If the American people are really serious about fixing health care, I implore them to consider these options. I promise that I will do what Obama could not and finally, properly fix the health care system somehow, assuming I’ll still care once I locate the button that fires the nukes.