Negative Ads Nastiest Ever

n what some broadcasters are calling "news," negative ads have come from both camps lately attacking the leading presidential candidates George W. Bush and John Kerry. Making the ads particularly noticeable is the level of enmity and unfounded allegation passing muster in attempts to gain early lead in the presidential race.

Democratic debates for the past several weeks, indeed as early as they started, painted unpleasant, however true, pictures of President Bush as a "man" out of touch with the people and leading America down a path toward unjustified war and economic chaos. Bush, sitting on a monster-sized war chest of campaign finance, reserved specific retaliations until John Kerry emerged as the Democratic front-runner. Many theorize Bush was urged to action by comments made by Kerry calling allegations on his defense record as false and referring to those behind the ads as "the most crooked" "lying group I've ever seen." The Bush campaign demanded and apology, and 50 lashes with a leather whip—no, 60! 100! 100 lashes!

The Democratic campaign refused to apologize, and were outraged when an ad began running Friday in major markets, following Thursday's historic terror attack in Madrid which killed 200 people. The ad showed President Bush laying a wreath at the Spanish embassy with an ominous voice narrating: "Thursday, when Spain was the victim of terrorists, President Bush was in the White House all day. Several people saw him. Where was John Kerry?"

Representatives of the Kerry campaign, teen-agers working the phones, described the attacks as "unbelievable bullshit." Campaign insiders suggest the "vicious character" attack inspired the release of a television ad they had originally thought too harsh for airing. The ad uses headlines and quotes from a Los Angeles Times story pointing to a division of intelligence in the Pentagon that privately briefed the White House on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, and may have been broken the chain of command and been responsible for the failure of intelligence. The Kerry campaign comment on the story was in text: "WtF?" Those knowledgeable in abbreviations inform us the letters mean "What the fuck?"

The Bush campaign hit back Saturday, with a speculative radio ad featuring the same ominous voice, saying, "You know, they never did catch the killer of Jon Benet Ramsey. John Kerry—you ever been to Colorado?" The ultimate insult, according to insult experts, was the added tag: "John Kerry: Soft on defense, sweet on little girls?"

Democrat campaign spokespeople described their candidate as "super-pissed," but promised retribution in the form of ads that would "tell it like it is." Sunday morning found the airing in metro markets of a hastily-assembled new Kerry ad. In it, aerial photographs of Roswell, New Mexico play to accompanying voice-over. "People are hearing a lot of things about Area 51. And the president hasn't been very forth-coming on what's there. If it's nothing special, why don't we get to see it? But if there's an evil alien menace lurking in the heart of New Mexico… what will it look like?" At which point a super-imposed picture of the president in his jet fighter suit appears on the screen. "George W. Bush. A pilot… but not of our planes."

Also joining the advertising this week was Ralph Nader's under-funded campaign, who passed around a flip book to supporters in town halls. In it, as one flips the pages, a stick figure appears to dance, while text at the bottom of the page indicts the other major campaigns: "The two-party system has the same old song and dance." the commune is currently on a waiting list to receive the flip book when everyone else is done with it.

n an unprecedented display of commitment to job outsourcing, the White House announced Thursday that several of its own positions, including the vice presidency, would be outsourced starting in 2005. The declaration came as a shock at a time when the subject of job outsourcing has raised controversy about job loss in the United States.

Citing statistics showing increased profits and reduced overhead in outsourcing, and addressing the prominent issue of the growing multi-trillion national deficit, the Bush administration promised outsourcing key administrative positions, not only in the White House but Congress and the Supreme Court as well, to overseas companies would bring the federal budget back in line and produce "exciting, proactive solutions to government problems."

White House press secretary Scott McClellan held a press conference Thursday and provided documentation from presidential advisors showing the many positions to eliminated domestically and re-staffed elsewhere, with India and China touted as very likely candidates. The press noted McClellan's own position was listed among those being phased out, to which the press secretary responded, "Well, obviously this isn't written in stone yet. Not all of them, like that one."

Outsourcing has long been a way for companies to reduce overhead by sending work to be done in locations outside the country, where the cost of living and wages are much less, since they don't have unions and a voice in government in such places. Until the last five years, however, outsourcing was prominently for blue-collar jobs too difficult to give to machines and yet too costly to pay Americans to do; only recently have the upper echelons of management realized white collar jobs basically fit the same pattern and can be done cheaper in other countries, meaning maximizing profit, assuming anybody is left employed to buy the products here.

Just how high a position can be outsourced? The White House says it can go all the way to the next-to-the-top. When asked what he thought of his role in the administration being given to someone else, Vice President Dick Cheney studied the memo and laughed nervously.

"That Georgie," sighed Cheney, "he's got a wicked sense of humor. Funny. Funny guy."

At the press conference, McClellan insisted the vice presidency would be easy enough to train someone else to do.

"You've basically got one real job," said McClellan, "casting the vote in the Senate if there's a tie. Yeah, that happens a lot. Not something you can phone in from New Delhi, that's for sure. It's not like giving press conferences—that kind of thing has to be done daily, a never-ending job."

Other positions being mentioned for outsourcing included White House speech writers, economic advising, secretary of defense, Department of Homeland Security (started as a joke anyway), and Central Intelligence. Among the more controversial choices was the selection of the Supreme Court for outsourcing. According to Legal History Professor Dunbar Gates, an expert on the Constitution from M.I.T., the legality of the move could be challenged.

"Bush may be setting himself up for a lawsuit to outsource positions of the government he didn't appoint," said Gates. "I'm no expert on the Constitution or anything, but he might want to check with a lawyer."

Responded Bush Saturday to commune inquiries: "We'll let the new Supreme Court decide that next year."

You've probably heard a lot of talk lately about how I "caused" the recent commune server crash by trying to hook up the giant electric Tyrannosaurus Rex I bought off eBay from those disgruntled Universal Studios chumps to the commune power grid. No doubt these accusations stem from the fact that I once traded the original www.thecommune.com domain name to a couple of burnouts at a Phish show for a bag of mushrooms. Once guilty, twice shit as the saying goes.

But before you get your tits in a twist deciding I'm guilty before innocent and all that, pigeonholing Omar Bricks as a fan of jam bands, let it be known I didn't know we were going to the concert. I thought we were just going over to Danny's house to hang out, and the next thing I know we're all at the arena. And once you're at the place you pretty much have to roll with shit and go to the concert, unless you want to hang out with all the guys selling patchwork pants and homemade burritos in the parking lot for three hours. All things considered, that was about on an even suck level with actually going to the concert, but I figured at least they don't let dogs inside. The last thing I need is some guy's stoned golden retriever staring me down all night and giving me the creeps. Truth be told, I've never been real good at going long periods of time without blinking.

So we get our asses inside, and the suck is already in full swing because Johnshark made us late haggling over the price of a hemp candle he thought we could smoke in the bathroom once we got inside. I make a beeline for the beer tent, naturally, but when I turn around, Johnshark and Danny are just gone. Turns out the guys I was walking next to on the way to the beer tent were just these two bizarro alternate-universe Johnshark and Dannys, two guys who kind of looked like them through the dry ice and other assorted smokes, but in reality they didn't know a Johnshark from a Assshark.

Now I'm rolling solo through jam band hell, stuck listening to the five-hour version of "Wolfman's Brother" without conversational distraction or Danny inevitably getting naked and trying to crowd surf. So out of desperation I strike up a conversation with the only two hippie dipshits I can find who aren't clog dancing, and before I'm sure what's what I've sold them the commune's domain name for a ziplock bag full of hopefully-psychedelic mushrooms. Judge if you must, but it was so loud in there, I don't think you would've done any better.

The way I figured it, nobody can really "own" a name, that's just some legal bullshit mumbo jumbo, so it was like I was getting the shrooms basically for free. I remember something about the Indians using the same argument after they traded away New York for a pooka necklace and things seem to have worked out okay for them. Not so for Omar Bricks, however. There must be some kind of special Indians-only law on that one, like how they can legally snort heroin or give peyote to little kids because hey fuck you, I'm an Indian. And there's some kind of Indian-giving clause to that where they can scotch a deal because the great sky spirit says land belongs to all God's creatures, something all Shirley McLaine like that.

Whatever the actual law is, turns out it doesn't mean shit if you're no part Indian, and that means I got screwed on the whole thecommune.com domain deal. Not that the mushrooms were bad, they were alright, but I got sick on my landlady's dog later that night, and the eviction crew didn't give two shits about what the great sky spirit had to say about Omar Bricks having all his shit thrown out on the lawn at four in the morning.

Thankfully in the end nobody was hurt. Except Raoul Dunkin, who Red Bagel hit with a portable toilet after he got the news, but whatever. I don't know if he thought the domain debacle was Dunkin's fault, or if Bagel just hit him with that chemical toilet because he didn't like him. Either is entirely plausible. But life went on at communeonline.com, and we were all a little bit wiser about Indian laws after that day.

As for who blew up communeonline.com, beats the shit out of me. But if you ask me, Raoul Dunkin has been wearing a snazzy new hat that I find pretty suspicious. Draw your own convictions from that, Sherlock. Bricks out.

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