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            My14-year-old girlfriend Erin thinks both President Blackie Diamond and his Republican rival are sexy. “They’re so good-looking!” she exclaims. My attempts to explain that they are groomed for the camera fall on deaf ears. She’s 14, her hormones are infallible. Extremely flirtatious, she expects me to live like a eunuch and spend like a sailor. Spotting her walking home from school, I picked her up on a whim. Her body is curvaceous in all the wrong places, but she has flaxen hair, piercing sky-blue eyes and a face as innocent as a lamb. She’s the angriest person I’ve ever met. We’re two peas in a pod. Not recommended!

            There’s no accounting for taste.

            This year’s Republican candidate Mick Rodney, another very tall man, is no improvement over President Diamond. A white guy and a one-time ambassador to Cambodia, he’s as bad as Blackie. If Blackie believes in letting the tail of business wag the dog of government, Mick believes you should bob the dog’s tail, throw away the dog and keep the stump.

            “Now it’s true that I was never elected to public office,” Mick says at the start of every campaign speech, right after praising the wife and saluting the flag. “But just look at George Bush! He was never elected to public office. Not until the day he was elected governor of Texas.

            “Now let me explain my years at DooD Capital. We called it DooD because it’s a palindrome: The word works just as well going forward as in reverse.

            “Now it’s true that every business DooD ever touched, died. We at DooD were known for the Magic Touch of Death. It became almost an incantation, ‘Hey, DooD, where’s my business?’

            “And because our backroom was entirely staffed by Asians— and all our executives were Asians— and we took our orders directly from the Chinese, some people were under the mistaken impression that DooD Capital was a foreign company! Nothing could be further from the truth, I assure you. We did not require foreign expertise to render lifeless every company we ever bought.

            “America’s Got Talent! We did that all on our own.

            “Vote for me in November 2012!”

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            I’ve warned my mom that even if Mick is the Irish anti-Diamond— “He’s a mick, but in a good way”— once elected, he’ll start doing a lot of Republican things that we core Democrats dislike. “He’ll disband the Environmental Protection Agency, push deregulation and tinker with parts of the government we Dems fought long and hard to establish. The Spirit of Ronnie Reagan continues to stalk the land like a malevolent ghost, chanting ‘The less government, the better! Government is the problem, not the solution!’ As long as Reaganism remains the national religion, we’re screwed!”

            I side with libertarian Paul Rand when he says, “What my opponents need in these debates is a throat lozenge that raises I.Q. levels!”

            Mick’s tepid message fails to match his stirring oratory. Mick Rodney, turnaround expert . You turn around and, poof!, the man is gone!

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