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Pope Benedict XVI disguises himself as a cab driver in Sidney, Australia, to avoid being recognized before the start of World Youth Day.
PALM BEACH, Fla. - For the first time ever, the National Hurricane Center has run out of names for hurricanes, so it must resort to a list of heretofore “forbidden names” that Hurricane Center officials hoped never would be used.
As a result, the next storm on the horizon, Hurricane Center officials say, is Hurricane Lee Harvey Oswald, a storm that shares the same name as the assassin of President John F. Kennedy.
As of last night, Hurricane Oswald was building up steam in the Caribbean and appeared headed on a straight path for Palm Beach, Florida, where Senator Ted Kennedy and his family are vacationing.
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, unveiled a sweeping plan that will eradicate “future dead beat dads” by garnishing the allowances and wages of all U.S. boys ages 8 to 17. The monies will be used to fund child support obligations the boys will incur when, as adults, they divorce and lose custody of their own children.
Under the plan, every boy will be required to set aside a sum of money based on a sliding scale that will increase each year. An eight-year-old will be required to pay $200 annually; a seventeen-year-old, $2,500. Any boy who fails to make the required payment will be jailed for up to one year.
Obama said the plan is the centerpiece of his domestic policy “because I don’t have any sons,” and because it ”will help me win over Clinton supporters.”
Khrushchev Makes Indecent Proposal to Kennedy: Soviet Premier Tells U.S. Prez: “I Won’t Put Missiles in Cuba If You Let Me Sleep With Your Wife”
VIENNA, Austria - Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev has reportedly offered President John F. Kennedy his solemn pledge to refrain from placing offensive missiles in Cuba if Kennedy will allow him to sleep with his wife, according to sources privy to discussions between the superpower leaders.
It is also being reported that Premier Khrushchev offered his own wife to President Kennedy “for as long as he wants.” However, President Kennedy declined, using his trademark wit and charm. “The President told Mr. Khrushchev that his fields were already plowed and planted, and that he wouldn’t need any beasts of burden in the immediate future.”
The scene in Australia several hours before the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople was shot to death in a row boat.
“I’d like to cut that cartoonist’s nuts off.”
NEW YORK - The Rev. Jesse Jackson said yesterday that he did not consider himself a racist, and that he was “deeply shaken” by the comment he made last week about Barack Obama’s testicles.
Jackson appeared on the Rev. Al Sharpton’s syndicated radio program as the first in a series of public apologies he hopes will “let the healing begin, and get everyone to stop criticizing me.” Jackson told Sharpton that he knew his comments hurt Senator Obama, the Democratic Party, the black community, and castration survivors, and that he hoped to meet with representatives of all the aggrieved parties so he could personally ask for their forgiveness.
Sharpton began his show by describing Jackson’s comment as “racist” and “diabolical,” adding that it reminded him of something “Southern plantation owners would have said about their uppity slaves.”
“I’m not a racist,” Jackson said, “but I do think Senator Obama is uppity. Still, I should not have said what I said. It was the wrong thing to do. Even if what I said was right.”
WASHINGTON, DC - The campaigns of presidential hopefuls John McCain and Barack Obama found common ground for the second time this week, agreeing yesterday that Irish writer Jonathan Swift “went too far” in a controversial essay that suggests poor families might ease their economic burdens by selling their children as food for the rich.
Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” first published in 1729 but still widely read and accepted today, argues that “a young healthy child well nursed is, at a year old, a most delicious and wholesome food,” and that, “whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled,” it can provide a rare culinary delight for which wealthy gourmands will pay handsomely.
“Jonathan Swift may think, as one of his editors explained to us, that his essay is a satirical lampoon of failed 18th Century social and economic policies. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. Even in these difficult economic times, hard-working American families would never eat their children or sell them as food for rich Republicans like our opponent,” said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton.
VATICAN CITY - In a bold moved designed to make the canonization process more fan-friendly, Pope Benedict XVI announced today that the Roman Catholic Church would soon begin on-line voting for sainthood.
The Pontiff broke the news at his weekly press conference. He explained that on-line voting would not be the sole factor in the elevation of the faithful to the firmament but merely a part of the process that involves prayer, contemplation, investigation and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
“Our research indicates that today’s Catholics are yearning for an opportunity to become more involved,” said Pope Benedict. “We thought this would create a little more buzz, so to speak, about canonization.”
CHICAGO - Sen. Barack Obama, incensed over The New Yorker magazine’s cover illustration portraying the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and his wife as radical Muslim terrorists, has issued a fatwa against the magazine’s editors and the illustration’s artist, Barry Blitt.
The fatwa states: “Even if the New Yorker editors and Mr. Barry Blitt repent and become the most pious men in this or any other age, it is incumbent on every Muslim to commit his life, his wealth, his entire being to insure that they are sent to Hell, Allah willing.”
Obama rejected the explanation of David Remnick, longtime editor of The New Yorker, that the cover was intended to be satirical. “That is not satire,” Obama rejoined. “Satire is me winning the Democratic nomination. So I know satire when I see it.”
ANTARCTIC PENINSULA - A major Antarctic ice shelf is disintegrating at an alarming rate, scientists say.
“Throughout all recorded history, the disintegration of this ice proceeded at a glacial pace,” explained Dr. Samuel Blatchford, Dean of Glacial Science at the University of Antarctica.
“But the rapidity with which the ice is now melting can only be attributed to global warming.”
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the situation is so dire he will dispatch carpenters from the HGTV series “Designed to Sell” to fix the broken shelf. ”They are not only expert craftsmen, but some of them are real hunks, if you know what I mean,” said Ki-moon.
NEW YORK - The United Nations Security Council voted unanimously to impose harsh sanctions against Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe yesterday “to show the despot we deplore his actions.”
But moments after the resolution passed, a Security Council intern charged with proofreading the document sheepishly admitted that the Council had, in fact, condemned the founder of the American wine industry, Robert Mondavi.
“It was my fault,” said Clarence “Skip” Himmelfarb, a summer intern at the United Nations who will be a junior at Georgetown University this fall working toward a degree in international relations.
Arabs wonder, “What are those sneaky Jews up to now?”
“If we’re going to win in November, we need to put our differences — and my balls — behind us,” the Illinois Senator explained.
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Jonathan Klein, president of CNN, says he has a plan “to regain ground” his network lost to NBC and FOX, which enjoyed ratings surges following the deaths of respected newsmen Tim Russert and Tony Snow.
An internal memo from Klein to high ranking CNN executives calls for the network to withhold iconic talk show host Larry King’s medication in an attempt “to create a martyr that ‘The Most Trusted Name in News’ can call its own.”
“What CNN needs is our own beloved deceased network icon,” the memo explained. “No on-air personality at CNN is more beloved, nor closer to death anyway, than Larry King.”
LOS ANGELES, CA - Comedian Michael Richards, who played wacky Cosmo Kramer on the hit TV show “Seinfeld,” appeared with the Rev. Jesse Jackson last night to announce his “full support” of the controversial civil rights activist.
During a press conference at the Laugh Factory comedy club in West Hollywood, Richards told reporters that Rev. Jackson was the victim of a “high-tech media lynching,” and that his remarks, far from being controversial, were actually representative of how people across the country feel about the Illinois Senator. ”I’d like to cut his nuts off,” Richards said, “and I’ll bet some of you would too.”
Richards, who said he’d chosen to deliver his remarks at the comedy club because it “reminds [him] of [his] commitment to the African-American community,” said that the Rev. Jackson should be given credit for apologizing “even though he had nothing to apologize for.” ”After all,” Richards said, “fifty years ago, we’d have had Obama upside down with a f***ing fork up his ass.”
When asked which candidate he supported in the upcoming election, Richards replied, “What election?”
Couple from Darfur adopts newborns
Commentary by Carbolic Smoke Ball Founder Emeritus, The Hon. Rufus Peckham
The Rev. Jesse Jackson has been a titan in the American sociopolitical milieu for forty years. Like every titan, he’s been beset with sneering, green-eyed troublemakers whose sole mission in life is to destroy him.
Take, for example, the whiners who bellyache that, contrary to Rev. Jackson’s claims, he was not on the balcony with Dr. Martin Luther King when Dr. King was shot.
And this is a big deal – exactly why? So, it slipped Jackson’s mind that he wasn’t on the balcony - sue him! Things slip my mind every day. Just yesterday I forgot to put out the trash and the recycling bin. So, you see, being on the balcony with the era’s leading civil rights leader at the time he was shot - or not being on the balcony - is not the sort of thing one would necessarily remember. As I always say: If forgetfulness were a crime, the jails would be filled with senior citizens, and prison rape would be a thing of the past.
“They’re like a couple of old uncles who say things I don’t always agree with,” Senator Obama explained.
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