It's October, which means that Halloween is just around the corner, and we here at Team Last Call couldn't be more excited. Candy, costumes, an excuse for Young Republicans to wear drag in public – it's the best!
This year, we couldn't decide if we should dress up as a zombie or George W. Bush, so we decided to do both and buy a John McCain mask. It came with a complimentary trophy wife and a bottle of old-man smell. Unfortunately, it was almost 20 years past its expiration date. The trophy wife, I mean.
We know what you're thinking. "Here goes Team Last Call with yet another politically slanted column full of unfair – albeit borderline genius – jabs at the Republican Party, which I support because I am uninformed, out of touch and incontinent, and probably overweight."
Well, you're waaaaay off. This column isn't about swaying your opinion one way or the other. All we want to do today is to present the facts in a "fair and balanced" way, like Bill O'Reilly, but without the blotchy red face and compulsive lying.
We are not here to support Barack Obama, even if he can stabilize our economy, make our country safer, establish universal health care, reverse global warming, turn water into wine, raise the dead and give every American his own private mansion made of gingerbread and lollipops. Neither are we here to support John McCain – that's what his walker is for. We're just here to call it like it is.
You're not going to see us spreading any vicious rumors or lies, like the ones the Republicans have been spreading about Obama – how he is a terrorist, how he won't salute the flag, how he was sworn into the senate on the Koran instead of the Bible. I think my personal favorite is the McCain ad implying that Barack Obama is the antichrist. Totally. He totally is. Nice work. You nailed it. Oh, and he also co-authored the communist manifesto, eats kittens for breakfast and sneezes unicorns. So watch out for that.
There's also a good Republican line about how Barack Obama is going to raise your taxes. The part they don't mention is that your taxes will only be raised if you make more than $250,000 a year. If you make that much money and still can't deal with paying your taxes, you could always consider selling one of your Hummers. Or, in John McCain's case, one of your seven houses. If you can remember where you left them.
But you won't see us feeding you lies like that. Or lies like how McCain's attack dog running mate, Sarah Palin, wants to prohibit abortions even in the case of rape or incest – the kind of self-righteous stance people usually adopt until someone close to them is, you know, raped.
Other lies we won't feed you:
Palin wants to solve our oil addiction by drilling for more oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Palin has supported the Alaskan Independence Party, whose primary goal is to secede from the United States.
Palin has referred to the war in Iraq as "a task from God."
Palin doesn't think humans are responsible for global warming.
Palin's state leads the country in per-capita pork barrel spending.
Palin's gubernatorial inauguration was sponsored by oil giant BP.
And the reason we won't invent those lies is because they're actually all true. And here everyone thought her biggest problem was going to be her knocked-up daughter. Bonus irony: Palin supports abstinence-only sex-education. Oops.
But not everything the Republicans have been saying is a lie. They've made some really valid points about Obama, including the fact that he's entirely too good at public speaking (always a red flag) and the fact that he's simply way too popular to ever win the popular vote.
Clearly, Obama has faults. He's made mistakes. On the other side of the fairness coin, so has McCain. Like how he accidentally ran an attack ad that included a split-second frame showing Obama with the letters "H-A-N-G" above his head. Whoops! And there was the day in August when he defined the middle class as people who make less than $5 million a year. Zoinks!
But McCain's got his strengths, too, like how he's such a zany maverick. He's not afraid to rebel against the establishment, even when he is the establishment. Sure, he's voted with Bush over 90 percent of the time, but for the other less-than-10 percent of the time, whoo! He's crazy! He's a lone ranger! A loose cannon!
He's also, if elected President, about one french fry away from making Sarah Palin the leader of the free world. If you want to fixate on terror, as is the Republicans' wont, this one's a doozey. The self-dubbed "barracuda" proved in her acceptance speech that she can throw out bloody chum by the bucket-full to Republican sharks, but it's questionable what she has to offer beyond the rhetorical nuggets written for her by Bush speechwriter Matthew Scully. Once the teleprompter disappears, will her round-faced cuteness and her state's "proximity to Russia" really guide her through sticky foreign policy snafus? For her recently deployed son's sake, let's hope so. If nothing else, I guess she could always mock our enemies to death.
The upcoming presidential election is the most important one of our time. We Americans have a very big job to do on November 4, and that job is to not screw it up. For the third time in a row.
Like we said before, we at Team Last Call aren't here to "choose sides." Far be it from us to declare who's right and who's Republican. All we want to do is to present the objective truth, which just happens to be that Barack Obama should and must be the next President of the United States.
