To Lower Expectations, Both Obama and Romney Campaigns Claim Other Side Won Debate

We all know that both campaigns (and candidates, and proxies/pundits) were doing their best ahead of time to lower expectations for the outcome of Wednesday night's presidential debate. And in keeping with this attempt to lower expectations, both sides claimed a loss to the other side. The Romney campaign was quick to claim the election might as well be over already, and Mitt Romney has given up. Likewise, the Obama campaign claimed Romney won an absolute and total victory in the debate, all but denying President Obama a second term. And both campaigns claim to be way too scared to even have another debate after tonight. So I hope everyone has decided which candidate they like best, because apparently it's all we're going to get. Now it only remains for them both to concede the election to each other, leaving Gary Johnson the de facto President of the United States.

Obama's Coal-Crushing Policy

In the first presidential debate tonight, Mitt Romney said President Obama is crushing coal with his policy. Oh, but anyone who has watched the old Superman show knows, when coal gets crushed, it becomes diamonds! And this must be the president's secret plan to pay off the national debt: to crush coal until it becomes diamonds! It's brilliant, really: almost as brilliant as the alchemists who turned base metals into gold in the middle ages. Plus, everyone knows that while coal is dirty, diamonds are clean. So this must be the whole idea behind "clean coal" technology: to make coal into diamonds! (It's the only way I know of to make coal clean, plus it will make it worth a lot more, too!)

Romney's Winning Strategy for Ohio

I keep hearing reports on the news that no Republican candidate has ever won the presidency without winning Ohio. Well, if it looks like Mitt Romney is going to lose Ohio, the congressional Republicans could pass a bill making Ohio an independent country, and no longer a state, so they wouldn't be eligible to vote in the election. Then, if President Obama tried to veto the bill, they could say it's a conflict of interest, and a ploy to throw the election, as well as being tyrannical rule over a separate independent nation. And if that worked, they could emancipate every state that votes Democrat as an independent nation, and Mitt Romney would be sure to win the election! (And if that didn't work, maybe he could get the {Republican} governor of Ohio to draft a declaration of independence for Ohio.) And once he's won his second term, President Romney could invade all these former states and claim to be reuniting a fractured country, like the first Republican, Abraham Lincoln, did.

First Lady Debates

We have all kinds of debates for candidates for president, but what about for their wives? (Or spouses: I'm not trying to be sexist here: there are only men running again, though.) The First Lady has a lot of pull during a presidency, and many policies come out of what they want to do. Remember the push for "Hillarycare"? That led to the HMO system we all have today. Remember the "Parental Advisory: Explicit Content" warning labels on music albums? (They were like an R-rating for a horror movie back then: everyone wanted one of those stickers, because it made kids want to buy the records more, since it made them seem forbidden.) That was from Tipper Gore. (Okay, she wasn't the First Lady, she was the Second Lady; but they can have a debate too. And they should!) And you know about the health food initiative initiated by Michelle Obama, right? How do we know the First Lady isn't influencing all policy decisions in the White House? Maybe they are! In fact, for all we really know, maybe the presidential candidates are merely ciphers for their wives' policies, and that's why they look so incompetent trying to explain their policies (or are so cagy about what they are) so frequently.

That's why we need a First Lady debate! We can find out what they believe in, and see how dominant or passive-aggressive they are, and so how likely they might be to dominate policy. Then we can weigh both people together as a package: one's weakness may be the other's strength, etc: we don't really know without the pressure of a debate. Plus, as Candy Crowley said today on CNN, it's more stressful for the wives to watch on the sidelines than it is for the candidates who are in the debate, so it's just sadistic to not let them debate too. And just to make it less stressful for everyone, the debates could be simultaneous, and just broadcast one after the other.

And, as an added bonus, Michelle Obama and Ann Romney could try to 'out-poor' each other in person, like they did in their respective party convention speeches. (Remember the eating-dinner-off-an-ironing-board stuff? Always my favorite campaign strategy: trying to use one-downmanship for out-modesting their respective beginnings. It's just so much fun to watch the super-rich ruling elite play down to us all like that: what a laugh riot!)

The Spin Room

After the big presidential debate, all the news reporters retreat to the media room known as the "Spin Room" to do their reports. And it's called the "Spin Room" because we all know that they all try to spin the results to favor whoever they want to trick us into voting for. But since it's already called the "Spin Room", I think they owe it to us to do something else too: literally spin around before they do the report.

There's a fairly famous drunk dunk video clip on YouTube where some guy chugs a beer, spins around leaning over with a plastic bat ten times, and then tries to dunk a basketball in someone's driveway, resulting in the guy flipping sideways into some big plastic trash cans because he's so dizzy. Well, this is what I think the reporters should have to do in the "Spin Room". We already know what they're going to say, so it's not interesting anymore. No wonder their ratings are down! But if they would chug a beer, spin around a plastic baseball bat ten times, and then try to deliver their report for the cameras, it would be great, and everybody would want to watch it! And reporters would have to spin around the bat in whichever direction they plan on spinning the debate results: to the left, or to the right.

So if they want viewers and ratings, they know what to do in the "Spin Room": do like this guy (it starts at 6 seconds in):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2yxXKmCCuM

Mitt Romney's Proctologist (Joke) Ad

There's a new SuperPAC ad with Mitt Romney's garbageman, and he's complaining that Mitt Romney doesn't care about him, etc. And apparently there will be more of these ads, with more people Mitt Romney doesn't care about, so I have a (joke) suggestion: make an ad with his proctologist! And the ad could say that Mitt Romney wants to deny poor people medical care by repealing Obamacare, etc., and then his proctologist could say: "Mitt Romney's an asshole. And I ought to know: I see enough of them!" (That's what the real ads are trying to say anyway, so why not get the guy with the right job so they can just come out and say it?)

Crest Whitestrips Moby Dick (Joke) Ad

This (joke) ad for Crest Whitestrips would play out like a prequel to the novel/movie Moby Dick, showing us what happened to set up the story initially. So the situation is that Captain Ahab is a ship captain delivering a shipment of Crest Whitestrips to New England, when they hit rough seas, and a crate of the stuff falls overboard into the ocean. Well, the next day, they see a white whale spouting at the surface (made white by the Crest Whitestrips), and intrigued, Captain Ahab wants to see if the whale's teeth are ultra white too. Well, Ahab uses some live bait to try to attract the whale, the ship hits a rough patch of sea, he gets too close to the white whale (whose teeth are so bright white, they blind him), he slips, and the whale bites his leg off by mistake. (Oops!) But even so, its teeth are gleaming white! Then the announcer says: "Get a whale of a smile that's killer white! Get Crest Whitestrips!"

And then the next ad could be about Jaws, where the great white shark is revealed to be called a "great white" shark because it has such white teeth from using Crest Whitestrips, and Richard Dreyfus's shark expert marine biologist could confirm this fact, right before someone gets eaten by the shark. And Richard Dreyfus's character could get into the shark cage to show us how white the shark's teeth are, and to point out that the shark's body is actually mostly blue-gray, so it must be the teeth that gave it its name. Then the announcer says: "Get great white teeth with Crest Whitestrips!" And perhaps as a tag, the ad could use that shot of the grinning shark from Finding Nemo.