People always say, “Oh, if Barack Obama was white, he’d have the election in the bag.”

I guess that’s interesting to think about.

But I have more fun thinking about this:

What if John McCain was black?

I haven’t compiled a list of all the stuff the white John McCain has said or done that would destroy the candidacy of a black John McCain. Why? Because I don’t have twenty billion pieces of paper to write the list on. But you don’t need a list. All you need is your imagination. When you go to bed tonight, try this exercise:

Think of the things White John McCain has said in, oh, the past month. Think of some of the decisions he’s made recently. Remember the whole “Zapatero” kerfuffle? What about this new thing where McCain claimed his campaign manager hadn’t taken money from Freddie Mac but actually he had? LOL, now just imagine John McCain was a 72-year-old black man. And he was running for president. And he thought people maybe might vote for him. LOL, LOL, be sure to warn your bunkmate that you will be giggling in your sleep!

UPDATE: And what if Black John McCain suspended his campaign and tried to postpone the debates because he was scared of the economy? OMG LOL OMG LOL.

I wish I wasn’t going to Pennsylvania this weekend; this looks fun.

LOL, “This Flock of Seagulls cassette used to belong to Fred Kagan. One dollar.”
LOL, “This bottle of Max Boot’s saliva from when he slobbered all over us costs 50 cents.”
LOL, “Those secret plans for attacking Iran, Syria, and North Korea are five bucks each.”

The clock is ticking. Have you done your part?

(Picture stolen from here, which has more glorious images.)

Ladies and gentlemen, we could be closer than we think . . .

UPDATE:

People seem a little confused by my previous explanation of the current financial crisis. Sometimes I forget that not everyone has spent the last fifteen years studying macroeconomics, and I forget to use layman’s terms. So, once again, here’s my attempt to explain what’s going on:

Basically, this is a crisis of overleveraged stagflationary liquidity. The GSEs were overleveraged while the MMAs were staglated. And the ZQLs were illiquidated (an astonishing 52% were ranked “lukewarm liquid” or “lumpy liquid” by Monday’s closing bell.) In other words, all the money that was in the banks’ unincorporated mortgage-backed assets is now being drawn into 1.) the portfolios of the Treasury bonds — except for those certificates that are still indexed to the regional banks’ ATMs and WKRPs, and 2.) the portfolio of one Tony “Zazz” Zazzles, a hot new banker on the scene.

What does this mean for you? It means you better come up with motherfuckin’ ONE TRILLION DOLLARS or your house may get trapped in a bubble — AN IRON BUBBLE OF DEATH.

How about, after the bailout, when everything is back to normal and the crisis has passed, we all chip in and give Henry Paulson twenty billion dollars, as a thank-you gift? Just a way of saying, “We appreciate all you did to avert the crisis and for coming up with such a great bailout plan.”

We could present him with a gigantic oversized check.

LOL, what if, once the bailout plan goes through, they literally stage a ceremony on the White House lawn where Bush hands Paulson a big, fake check for “ONE TRILLION DOLLARS.”

You may LOL, but that would definitely be on the front page of every newspaper in the world the next morning:

“DOUCHEBAG PRESENTS LARGE CHECK TO BALD GUY”
– The London Times

“FAT BAILOUT GOIN’ DOWN ON WHITE HOUSE LAWN”
– The Frankfurt Daily Zeitmensch

“CHECKMATE! LOL, AMERICA ON THE EDGE”
– Osama bin Laden Podcast

Seriously. At least something interesting would probably happen. And at the end of the day, isn’t that what we all want? For something interesting and exciting to happen? Face it, Iraq is no longer interesting. Nobody cares about it or thinks about it. “Blah blah, the Sunni Awakening Council drafted some resolution in coordination with Anbar Mothers Against Drunk Driving or something.” Afghanistan isn’t interesting — hasn’t been for a long time. “Ho-hum, news alert, we found some more rocks and dirt in southern Afghanistan.”

But literally flushing one trillion dollars down the toilet? That’s interesting. When I walk down the street in my stolen bus driver uniform, wearing my special helmet, and I grab people and say, “Let’s flush a trillion dollars down the toilet, we can even use my toilet,” people are INTERESTED. They are ENGAGED. They are STRUGGLING — but I am stronger than they are.

John McCain sounds a lot like a certain political cartoonist I know, named “Me!”

If you’re evaluating the politican-as-narrative-vessel, a tendency to personalize conflict is a tremendous virtue. The problem comes now that McCain is being asked to seriously understand world events and crises, and the public is looking for more than a good quote or an angry denunciation. They’re looking for a compelling explanation. And McCain doesn’t have any of those.

I think McCain actually does have a compelling explanation: Everybody (who’s not in the military fighting for freedom) got greedy and stole too many mortgages and so now we have to kill Russia.