The Campaign Starts: Solving the Amtrak Problem, Etc.

I have been working out. Every morning, I do ten minutes of vigorous stretching, followed by fifty “crunches,” thirty-five pushups, and a five-mile walk. Then I do some light weight-lifting and some more stretching. The idea is that this routine will give me the stamina—to say nothing of the “buff bod”—I will need to withstand the rigors of the Campaign Trail. Plus, it can’t hurt to have “six-pack abs” and “buns of steel” (both, no doubt, “®”) while stalking scouting for potential first ladies.

That’s right, folks. I am officially announcing that I am available for the Presidency. Yes, I realize that every four years this country is suddenly overrun by people, mostly rich white men with a LOT of spare time, who claim they can do a better job than whatever goober is occupying the White House at the time.

Me, I couldn’t care less whether I do a better job or not (although frankly, it’s not like I have a “hard act to follow”); my entire agenda is that I want to wake up at three-thirty in the morning, pick up my bedside phone and order roast beef and thin-sliced Nepalese Yak on Wonderbread®, topped off with sautéed truffles, saffron and coelacanth roe and hear the guy on the other end of the line say, “Right away, Mr. President.” Well, that and the plane. I mean, the plane is key. Talk about your “chick magnets.”

Nonetheless, I realize that the American people demand more—albeit, alas, not much more—of a platform than just the willingness to eat odd sandwiches at all hours of the night.

Fortunately for me, we presidential candidates can now lie about even more things we’ll never get around to doing than ever before. Thanks to the precedents the current administration is setting, I no longer have to worry about that silly “checks and balances” thing, which works out well, since the first plank in my platform is to replace Congress, in its entirety, with Yorkshire Terriers and Shih-Tzus and so on. Face it, the American public would love to see 535 ugly little yippy dogs racing around the Senate and House chambers, pausing only to sniff each other’s butts, a job currently left to lobbyists. Plus, they’d probably get more actual legislation passed than we’ve seen in years.

With that out of the way, I would then replace the entire Federal Elections Commission with David Gatchell of Tennessee. The Davidson County Chancery Court recently ruled that Gatchell, who is currently running for governor AND the U.S. Senate (which, if you ask me, is precisely the kind of energy we need in government), cannot use his middle name on the upcoming November ballot. Gatchell’s middle name is “None of the Above,” and I think it’s high time we put political acumen like that in a seat of power. I will of course have the idiot judge who made that ruling deported.

Speaking of idiot judges, I can think of no punishment harsh enough for Judge Gary McKinley of Kenton Ohio, the moron who ruled that two high school football players can play out the season before serving time for a “prank” that almost killed several people. It’s judges like McKinley who have turned the NFL into the single largest collection of lawbreakers outside prison walls in the world, with the possible exception of Record Company Executives and of course the House of Representatives, which we’ve already discussed. I will leave “Judge” Gary McKinley’s fate in the hands of my main criminal-justice enforcer, Santiago Montoya, the brilliant Argentinean tax guy who confiscated a tax cheat’s big-screen TV just before the crucial World Cup quarterfinal between Argentina and Germany. Probably, Montoya will start by confiscating McKinley’s entire “Fathead” collection….

(Ed. Note: A spittle-spewing rant follows at this point. President-to-be Iggy obviously has some major issues with professional sports and the preferential treatment accorded “athletes” [his quotes, not ours] in the U.S. Suffice it to say that he wants any player of any game found using any performance-enhancing substance summarily shot, pointing out at one point, “you’re playing a [expletive] game, you [plural expletive], and getting paid for it. If you’re too [string of highly expressive yet hilariously funny expletives] stupid to follow a couple of simple rules, you’re too stupid to be part of the [expletive] gene pool.” There was more, but you get the point.)

Ahem. Sorry about that.

Other aspects of my platform are the much-needed recognition of “Talk Like a Pirate Day” as a National Holiday, possibly lasting upwards of a week, the privatization of Amtrak (we’re gonna turn it over to the “Hooters” people) and the elevation of the Flying Spaghetti Monster to National Deity-of-Sorts. So you can see that this is no half-assed campaign we’re talking about here. This stuff is carefully thought about for a full minute and a half or so before we make it “official.”

Finally, we at campaign headquarters (me, the cat, and some guy named “Dave” who comes by occasionally to tell me that God told him to run for governor) have finally come up with a killer campaign slogan: “Vote Once; Vote Often. Just Vote Iggy.” Or I swear I’ll sic Santiago Montoya on you.