President Obama is making great progress on climate change. He’s turning the political climate of our country back towards Republicans!

Number two:

In the eyes of many, President Obama is cool, cool, cool. But Americans are beginning to realize he is wrong, wrong, wrong.

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.”

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.”

Even the Chinese will benefit from McCain's global economic solution! (Flickr: sinosplice)

Challenged to move away from generalities and bromides and provide specifics about fixing America’s troubled economic situation, Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, has at last responded. He presented a sweeping new idea so startling that not even top economists and leading banking regulation authorities would answer phone calls seeking comment.

“Every American should buy an Amway distributorship, sit back and watch the cash pour in,” the Arizona senator declared. “I’ve studied almost every page of the Amway pamphlet. Everybody will get rich. My economic advisers tell me this would have a very fundamental effect on fundamental things — like jobs.”

McCain further predicted that Amway’s vast line of household products, spurred by huge new demand after franchisees start beating the bushes to sell Amway distributorships to others, who will sell distributorships to still others, who will sell distributorships to the yet others, one of whom will actually have to buy Amway products to sell,

This will also create a “tsunami” in the manufacturing and raw materials sectors as suppliers of alkali, palm oil, ammonia and other staples scramble to produce enough soap, sponges, stain-remover and other key commodities to stock distributors’ basements and garages nationwide.

“This is my very own idea,” the Vietnam War hero and 26-year Capitol Hill veteran emphasized. “Cindy [McCain's wife] thought everybody should buy a beer distributorship instead,” he disclosed, “but not in Arizona.

“I told her that wouldn’t be fair to the fine folks, the Arizonans, or Arizonians, or whatever,” McCain continued, “and, after all, my fundamental principle is fundamentally fairness to all, I believe. But, by then, I realized Cindy had gone shopping.”

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.”