(Flickr Creative Commons, Ally Rose)

Allegedly corrupt Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is being feted as the Scrabble Club of America and Guam’s Man of the Year “for focusing the world’s spotlight on randomly scrambled letters as a limitless source of wholesome fun.”

Informed of this rare honor, the shady Chicago politico said “(Deleted) me! That’s the (deleted) most (deleted) thing I ever heard of. Does it come with any (deleted) money?”

The Scrabble Club plans to honor Blagojevich at a banquet to be held “between the time he’s impeached and the time when he goes to jail.” But the governor has already requested that his award -– oversized silver Scrabble tilesspelling out his name — be left in a plain brown bag on the back doorstep of his Chicago home after dark, along with other, unidentified nightly deliveries.

The club’s previous Man of the Year honorees have included imprisoned Chicago Congressman Dan Rostenkowski, imprisoned wheeler-dealer businessman Dennis Kozlowski and imprisoned Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic.

“Gov. Blagojevich is a natural fit with these notorious mouthfuls,” said a Scrabble Club press release. “And like them, he will receive a complimentary deluxe Scrabble game to help shorten those long hours in prison while building his vocabulary and making new friends.”

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of “All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall” and “Zany Afternoons.”

Helpful hints to Detroit’s Big Three execs now pleading their case in Washington:

Convert the walls lining Mahogany Row to sheetrock. Do you or don’t you want to show shareholders and employees that management “gets it”?

Swallow that overweening pride of yours and place “For a Rainy Day” canisters at the end of every row of seats at this week’s D.C. hearings. They’ll have to admit you’re really trying.

Throw daily parties on your assembly lines and lubricate with free booze; workers have a high old time, production slows to a crawl, and finally — finally! — supply starts matching demand.

Playing the sympathy card is way overdue: blame your haywire financial situation on a C.F.O. with advanced A.D.D. and say the bastard hid it for years.

Using the standard per-vehicle estimate of 10,000 miles annually, add up the miles not driven and fuel not consumed by all your unsold 2008 units — millions of gallons, huge energy-saving story: “We’re doing our part!”

Offer free comprehensive health care with every new-vehicle purchase. Need for Scandinavian or U.K. citizenship goes in the fine print. Come on, who has time these days to read fine print?

If the billions of bucks in bailout loans come through, use the money creatively: donate half a billion bucks to every U.S. senator and sit back as laws banning fuel-efficient cars sail right through. Pressure’s off!

Cash in on the value of empty symbolism: with the word “Detroit” such heap bad karma, shift corporate H.Q. to sweet, green, tree-hugging Vermont and get an instant image up bounce.

Run 2008 Annual Report sales charts upside-down. If anybody quibbles, claim it was a misprint and scapegoat the graphic artist.

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of “All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall” and “Zany Afternoons.”

Gov. Sarah Palin (flickr)

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin made lemonade out of lemons today by auctioning off on the Internet the fancy wardrobe purchased for her failed vice-presidential run, and raking in more than a million dollars — which she immediately donated to the Needy Governors’ Winter Clothing Fund.

The feisty four-eyed political phenomenon evidently doesn’t plan to stop there: Papers have reportedly been filed for a new corporation specifically meant to cash in on her sudden fame with myriad money-making projects.

For example, hubby Todd will be scooping up snow from the lawn of the Palin house in Wasilla, Alaska, and molding it into souvenir “genuine Alaska Toddballs” to be sold for $10 apiece to spectators at January’s Washington inauguration ceremonies to throw at President Barack Obama.

Black Ice, a consulting arm, will specialize in personal vendettas, using covert ops to go after in-laws, friends, employees -– anyone who, as the prospectus puts it, “ticks you off.” A character-assassination campaign aimed at eliminating Arizona Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz,) as a future GOP presidential candidate is allegedly the firm’s first assignment, paid for with uncashed Palin dry-cleaning, limo and lunch vouchers from the recent election contest.

Certain projects seem intended to both make money and further Palin’s political career. Although a plan to trade her governorship, her tanning bed and Todd for the disgraced Ted Stevens’ Senate seat was shot down by the Alaska Supreme Court, insiders mutter Palin may still go through with her idea of performing a “Dance of the Seven Bath Towels” for a private audience at $1,000 per head.

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of a new children’s book, “Marveltown.” His other books include “All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall” and “Zany Afternoons.”

Gov. Sarah Palin (WDCpix)

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was more than prepared should terrorists and their sympathizers quit palling around long enough to throw the coming presidential election a curve and cheat her out of the vice presidency. She has already crafted a detailed plan for her future.

Step One is to resign as governor in favor of her husband, Todd, appointed by unanimous vote of the State Legislature after “a good old-fashioned Alaska-style blackmail blitz” using secret tape recordings, spy photos and paid stool-pigeon testimony.

“Todd and the whole gang will all be living rent-free in the governor’s mansion with room service,” Palin revealed, “and they have all volunteered to serve in at least two no-show jobs apiece, to help get Alaska’s employment figures way up there.”

Palin herself will be moving to the Lower 48 “to either cash in or cash out — I didn’t go to some elite school, so I’m not sure which. I do know I’ll be doing some teaching at either Harvard or Bob Jones University. It’s a toss-up right now between the School of International Law on one hand and Home Economics 101 on the other.”

The perky, crack moose shot also revealed that she is thinking seriously, “or as seriously as a gal like me can,” about establishing a chain of “Sarah Palin’s Shoot ‘n’ Sizzle” firing ranges under tanning lamps, located atop Wal-Mart stores nationwide.

Palin claims to be close to signing with a major publisher for her memoir, “to be written by a famous book author who has a real gift of gab. He says my life reads like a fairy tale and that I play a leading role in it from start to finish.”

On the agenda as well will be the Sarah Palin Foundation, a for-profit think tank with a mandate to think about how to secure a steady flow of cash contributions and free gasoline from Big Oil for ex-Alaskan governors while she is out of political office.

Meanwhile, Palin said that plans to borrow the Alaska state police as her personal security detail would be finalized “as soon as we can root out certain rotten apples.”

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of “All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall” and “Zany Afternoons.”

Sen. John McCain (WDCpix)

Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, today accused his opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, and the entire Democratic Party of being “too stupid to govern America,” citing as proof their falling for the many outrageous lies deliberately planted in his and running mate Sarah Palin’s public utterances to test their intellectual acuity.

“Of course that one [Obama] doesn’t pal around with terrorists,” McCain explained. “Of course, he isn’t a Muslim or Muslim sympathizer. Of course, his tax plan doesn’t punish the middle class. Of course he isn’t a socialist. Those were just booby-traps we set to see if they were smart enough to tell the difference between the truth and a whopper. And over and over again, they’ve flunked this vital test of savvy. They’re so dumb they think we meant it!”

McCain’s accusations marked yet another sharp strategic turn in his PresidMential campaign, from basing much of his argument on dubious claims about Obama’s patriotism and loyalties to revealing them as mere ploys.

“Foxy adversaries on the world scene constantly lie to American officials,” McCain said, “and our nation’s future depends on its leaders’ ability to quickly detect such dangerous falsehoods. My opponent clearly can’t tell a fib from a bomb-throwing underground Chicago terrorist — whereas Gov. Palin and I clearly know more about lying than anybody.”

Asked by a reporter if his amazing revelations were true, the veteran Arizona politico hesitated until close adviser, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), whispered in his ear. “Maybe you should ask William Ayers,” McCain finally replied. Asked in another reporter’s follow-up what he meant, McCain answered with more questions: “Has anybody ever actually seen that one’s alleged Harvard degree? When he was living in Kenya, did he fraternize with Cuban troops in nearby Angola? Is it better for America that Sarah Palin’s wardrobe cost $150,000, or that, as confidential anonymous sources tell me, Michelle Obama, a few years ago, thought about calling Winona Ryder in Hollywood to ask if she could shoplift a mink coat while she was at it?”

Reached at her hotel suite in Dubuque, Iowa, for comment, Palin said, “Jeepers creepers! I should have run this year instead of waiting for 2012!”

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of “All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall” and “Zany Afternoons.”

Sen. Joe Biden (WDCpix)

Increasingly incensed at being shunted to the media sidelines while his Republican counterpart’s every utterance makes global news, Sen. Joe Biden, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, has clearly decided to fight fire with fire.

“The current world economic crisis has come about because people keep dropping quarters that roll away and fall over the edge of the earth,” Biden claimed today, in a speech before an group of astrophysicists. In the same address, the veteran Delaware senator called for a blue-ribbon federal commission to study why the same thermos that keeps cold liquids cold also keeps hot liquids hot.

Casting aside his usual carefully reasoned arguments on geopolitics, the national deficit and other key election issues, Biden — whose new plan for boosting a faltering economy is to transfer all the money in the nation’s millions of Monopoly sets to the federal Treasury -– seems instead to be aiming squarely at the lowest common intellectual denominator.

“He may never become a media darling like Gov. Palin,” admits one campaign insider, “but hey, Joe offered to appear on “Saturday Night Live” a month ago and they said he wasn’t interesting enough. He’s got to start playing catch-up.”

“Playing catch-up” would seem to include Biden’s assertion that Palin “pals around” with known witches; his call for an extension of the “Star Wars” space-weapon program to attack highway speeders, and a new plan to catch Osama bin Laden by calling his cell phone, pretending to be a pizza deliveryman and asking for directions.

“I think that threw a scare into the Palin camp,” one Biden aide confided. “It also threw a scare into the Obama camp,” he admitted, “but we can’t let them win the dimwit sweepstakes by default. From now until Nov. 4, Joe’s going to be fighting brainlessness with brainlessness.”

This may explain why Biden today charged that Palin is actually smarter than he is — stating that he doesn’t know the difference between a moose, an elk, a caribou and a musk ox , even if he can’t see France from the living room window of his Delaware home.

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of “All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall” and “Zany Afternoons.”

Gov. Sarah Palin and American flag (Flick: Jeff Schultz/Kris Kros)

Addressing a large American flag today, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, said, “The real Americans are the America-loving Americans who stand up for America and the American way. Because what would America be without these real Americans? And I would like to congratulate this flag for doing such good work for America, while challenging Sen. [Barack] Obama to come up with a policy that says otherwise.”

Skeptics’ snorts that the perky Alaskan spouts endless bromides and cliché’s about America in order not to deal with substantive issues that may be beyond her grasp were hotly denied by the candidate.

“No true American, except those who pal around with terrorists and never shot anything dead, would say such a thing,” she huffed. “I’m stressing Americanism for one reason: because not being afraid to talk up America at times like this is what being an American is all about. That’s why I’m so proud to be a citizen of this great nation that I, for one, call America. And I invite every red-blooded American, here and now, to do the same.”

The winsome mom and moose-butcherer was not finished. “The most American parts of America are where you feel most American,” she continued. “I could list them for you. But every American knows them by heart. And I’m glad today to be standing here in one such part of America. Or I wouldn’t be an American.”

Palin later spoke at a U.S. post office branch, directing her remarks at a sheet of 42-cent U.S. postage stamps. “I am so honored to be looking at all these American stamps,” she said. “Over and over again, they say ‘America.’ See, it says ‘U.S. Postage,’ loud and clear. That’s one big reason why I always buy American stamps. Plus, I’m told they can only be franked in America, by an American, then sent on their way across a country that, wherever you are in it, is as American as these stamps. That’s why I live in America — even if it’s called Alaska. And no Russian can say that, for sure.”

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of “All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall” and “Zany Afternoons.”

Flickr: Dennis Gerbeckx

In perhaps the greatest financial paroxysm yet, a spate of gigantic mergers sparked by the recent global crisis has overnight reordered the American economic landscape — if not America itself.

Once almighty Wall Street is being forced by its nosediving fortunes into a shotgun marriage with Main Street — relying on Midwestern hardware stores, the savings accounts of little old ladies in Dubuque, California tanning spas and thousands of other small-time institutions nationwide to refill its empty coffers and provide new leadership. The Street’s current leaders will be retrained as grocery baggers, parking valets and other jobs not involved in handling money.

A symbolic condition of Wall Street’s self-dissolution is that everybody on Main Street will receive an unearned Wall Street-style bonus of $24 million, a giveaway meant to be as senseless as every other Wall Street bonus payout of recent years — but with the beneficiaries and the losers reversed.

It will also be compensation for the economic consequence of this and other recent financial moves: nobody except Treasury Sec. Henry Paulson Jr. will have a job.

Meanwhile, General Motors’ merger with Freddie Mac, while it might appear to be — and in fact is — a union of the halt with the blind, is anticipated to be a win-win situation. The complexity of the merger will indefinitely prevent GM from building vehicles nobody wants. At the same time, Freddie Mac will be distracted from conjuring further fiscal mischief.

Chrysler’s merger with bankruptcy administers euthanasia to a patient that has been begging for it ever since being left by Daimler-Benz AG on the doorstep of Cerberus Capital Management with a note and no forwarding address.

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of “All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall” and “Zany Afternoons.”

Sen. John McCain (WDCpix)

A Straight Talk Express cleaning lady today sold several crumpled pages outlining Sen. John McCain’s script for tonight’s third and final presidential debate, which she had found stuck to a takeout pizza box on the floor, to an unnamed member of the media elite.

Anxious to do everything in his power to sabotage the Republican war hero’s campaign, the nattering nabob of negativity immediately turned over the documents to The Washington Independent.

Key excerpts:

- “Go after O. for having a bank account, linking him as crony of greedy Wall Street tycoons. Two-faced hypocrite should put all his $$$ in mattress like Cindy and me. In fact we have stuffed all 32 mattresses in our 10 homes with cash.”

- “Slip in — real casual — question: why hasn’t O. told truth about his 9/11 role? Was only six states away from one of the airplane hijackers in 2000 and did nothing.”"Complain to moderator that O. keeps looking at me during debates, giving “evil eye” notorious among certain tribes in Indonesia, where he grew up.”

- “Express outrage that O.’s tax plan fails to even mention relief for gypsies with 20 or more dependents earning less than $250,000 per year and filing from overseas.”

- “O. is not a maverick.”

- “Keep punching away at O.’s shady connection with fellow Chicagoan Al Capone. Only proof Capone is actually dead is one yellowing piece of paper — (don’t mention it’s his death certificate.)”

- “Repeat rumor that O. plays basketball like a girl.”

- “Challenge O. to prove wife Michelle wasn’t member of Manson Family.”

- “Announce discovery of dinosaur bones in basement of Toledo, Ohio, department store, proving earth is less than 100 years old. (Check with Sarah P’s team first.)”

- “Challenge O. to name all nine starting players on the 1945 Chicago Cubs World Series losers. Only pretends to be a sports fan to curry voter favor.”

- “Announce that veep nominee Sarah P. will be shot into space on a rocket as an accelerated way of getting to know the world and will see countries stay-at-home O. has never even bothered to visit.”

- “Take my pills right before debate starts.”

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of “All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall” and “Zany Afternoons.”

Sen. John McCain (WDCpix)

Drawing on his foreign policy and military expertise, Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, has called for a military surge in America, similar to the one he claims has turned around the situation in Iraq.

“Let’s put 30,000 fine young soldiers on the ground right here at home,” the Arizona senator said. “They won’t even have to leave their loved ones, or fly halfway around the world. But, just as we’ve seen in Iraq, their presence will act like magic to solve every problem here, virtually overnight.”

Pressed for particulars, McCain referred questioners to constant sidekick and adviser Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), as soon as the maverick New England politico figures out how to unbuckle his seat belt on the Straight Talk Express and hurry to his side.

The surge gambit was seen by many observers as a last-ditch McCain effort to turn around his sagging campaign fortunes — a perception immediately countered by Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the GOP vice presidential nominee. “You keep sayin’ that,” she burbled, “and my Todd’s gonna come after ya with a grappling hook!”

McCain himself appears to have zero doubts about the efficacy of placing 30,000 stalwart military personnel somewhere in the United States. “I’d put some of them on Wall Street,” he said, “I’d put lot of them in our national parks to protect oil drilling; another bunch in Chicago to guard against terrorist attacks by Sen. Obama Barack’s cronies, and lots of other places.

“The point is to end the current political unrest,” McCain continued, “reconcile the Shiites and the Sunnis, and halt the constant nuclear threats from Iraq and North Korea. And I wouldn’t be surprised if this surge idea of mine ends up with Obama — I mean Osama — bin Laden under lock and key this month!”

This week’s final presidential debate would furnish McCain with an ideal showcase for his dramatic new initiative.

Aides report, however, that his No. 1 priority will be not walking into TV cameras.

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of “All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall” and “Zany Afternoons.”