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    Uncle John's Political Briefs
    Uncle John's Political Briefs
    Uncle John's Political Briefs
    Ebook534 pages5 hours

    Uncle John's Political Briefs

    By Bathroom Readers' Institute

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    About this ebook

    Liberal, conservative, independent, or just plain nuts--no one in the public sector gets a free pass in this funny and informative look at the world of politics.

    No one skewers public servants of all political stripes like Uncle John! Here’s a no-holds-barred look at the history and lunacy of our govern-mental machine. Starting with the birth of democracy in the western world, you’ll learn how today’s political landscape was shaped and get an inside look at how government works (and doesn’t work)--from Main Street to Wall Street to Pennsylvania Avenue to the world stage. These 288 pages consist of the most eye-opening political articles from the BRI’s 25-year-history, plus a few all-new pieces ripped from the election-year headlines. So do your civic duty and read about…
     
    * Toilet diplomacy
    * Gingrich vs. the Glitterati
    * Why a donkey? Why an elephant?
    * Animals that ran for office…and won
    * The island election that was buried by a volcanic eruption
    * The birth, death, and rebirth of America’s major political parties
    * Why the first U.S. congresswoman had to hide in a phone both
    * The rapper who (nearly) took a swing at Romney
    * The Russian czar who taxed the human soul
    * The secret plot to take down FDR
    * Poisonous pundits
      And much, much more!
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPortable Press
    Release dateAug 15, 2012
    ISBN9781607106951
    Uncle John's Political Briefs
    Author

    Bathroom Readers' Institute

    The Bathroom Readers' Institute is a tight-knit group of loyal and skilled writers, researchers, and editors who have been working as a team for years. The BRI understands the habits of a very special market—Throne Sitters—and devotes itself to providing amazing facts and conversation pieces.

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      Uncle John's Political Briefs - Bathroom Readers' Institute

      INTRODUCTION

      THE PUBLIC DISS-COURSE

      Politics make me sick! Sounds like something you might hear on the radio or at the dinner table, but that proclamation was made more than a century ago by President William Howard Taft. And who could blame him? After all, he was surrounded by politicians all day. Thankfully, the rest of us can just sit back and be entertained by these public servants.

      That’s what Uncle John’s Political Briefs is about—poking fun at peculiar politicians from all political persuasions. But it’s more than that. You’ll also find out how things got to be the way they are today, starting with the rise of democracy in the Western world (thanks to the Magna Carta) and continuing through the American Revolution to the rise of the Donkeys and Elephants. You’ll also learn how various governments govern in other countries.

      We chose the very best politics articles from the Bathroom Reader series, many of them updated with current information. There are also a few all-new articles and a ton of new facts. You will be briefed on…

      • The president who accidentally gave the pope the wrong set of the Ten Commandments, the president who fell victim to a voodoo curse, and the president who survived two assassination attempts…in one month

      • The British PM who taxed wigs, the Canadian PM who held policy meetings with his dog, and the Japanese PM who held President George H. W. Bush’s head while he threw up all over himself

      • The origins of the Pledge of Allegiance and Hail to the Chief, the stories behind the most impactful U.S. Supreme Court decisions, and that world-class hypocrite Benjamin Franklin

      • Scathing barbs from Maher, O’Reilly, Limbaugh, and Colbert; plus embarrassing goofs on news-ticker crawls; and Dan Rather’s home-spun election-night expressions, such as, This race is spandex-tight!

      • The woman who lost a local election because she forgot to vote…for herself; the candidate who confused a movie star with a serial killer; and dogs, pigs, and other animals who ran for office

      • Secret plots from past and present: poisoning the skies with chem-trails, feeding human embryos to unwitting consumers, and a weird presidential assassination theory—not JFK, but…Lincoln?

      • The only woman who got to vote for giving women the right to vote, the Conservative Conservationist, and a real political party called Party! Party! Party! (All they want to do is party.)

      • Why 300 angry Canadians mooned the United States, and why an old man from India released cobras in a government office

      In closing, I would like to thank my poo-litical operatives for putting this all together: Supreme Chancellor Newman; the Honorable J. A. Altemus; and Angie, Queen of Facts. So have fun, and don’t forget to hold your elected representatives accountable for their looney actions…unless, of course, you happen to live in a dictatorship or an absolute monarchy, in which case—good luck!

      And as always, go with the Flow!

      —Uncle John, Felix the Dog, and the BRI Staff

      Uncle John wants YOU to go to www.bathroomreader.com (and Facebook and Twitter, too)!

      BUREAUCRACY IN ACTION

      We start this book off with a few tales of government spending.

      The Hindustan Times reported in 2005 that the city of New Delhi employs 97 paid rat-catchers. What’s odd about that? They haven’t caught a single rat since 1994. (And, according to the Times , there are a lot of rats in New Delhi.)

      • In October 2005, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security awarded a $36,300 grant to the state of Kentucky. Purpose of the grant: to prevent terrorists from using bingo halls to raise money.

      • Father Anthony Sutch had to call an electrician to change four light-bulbs on the 40-foot ceiling of St. Benet’s Church in Suffolk, England. In the past he used a local firm to do it and paid them £200 ($370), which he thought was pretty steep for changing four bulbs. But government safety regulations now prohibit the workers from using a ladder—they have to erect scaffolding instead. Result: The church had to spend £1,300 ($2,450) to change the bulbs.

      • In 2003 Congress agreed to subsidize the Alaska Fisheries Marketing Board, a salmon industry trade organization. The AFMB used the money to paint an Alaska Airlines 737 jet to look like a salmon (the jet’s nickname: Salmon-Thirty-Salmon). Cost: $500,000. The subsidy was proposed by the late Senator Ted Stevens, whose son, Ben Stevens, happened to be the chairman of the AFMB.

      • The Youth Outreach Unit of Blue Springs, Missouri (pop. 48,000), received $273,000 from the government to combat teenage goth culture.

      • In 1981 the U.S. Army spent $6,000 in federal funds in order to create a 17-page manual for government agencies. The subject: how to properly select and purchase a bottle of Worcestershire sauce.

      • What did the U.S. government spend $24.5 billion on in 2003? Nobody knows. According to the General Accounting Office, that’s how much the federal government couldn’t account for that year.

      Patron saint of politicians: Thomas More, English statesman who coined the word utopia.

      FARMER BILL DIES IN HOUSE

      Our all-time favorite political flubbed headlines. They’re all real.

      RALLY AGAINST APATHY DRAWS SMALL CROWD

      Legislators Tax Brains to Cut Deficit

      California Governor Makes Stand on Dirty Toilets

      Reagan Wins on Budget, but Moore Lies Ahead

      Obama: Gays Will Be Pleased by the End of My Administration

      Legalized Outhouses Aired by Legislature

      MASSACHUSETTS WOMAN HAS EYE ON KERRY’S SEAT

      ELIZABETH DOLE HAD NO CHOICE BUT TO RUN AS A WOMAN

      Brawl Erupts at Peace Ceremony

      U.S., China Near Pact on Wider Ties

      Intern Gets Taste of Government

      Carter Plans Swell Deficit

      MPs Seek Answers on Nutt Sacking

      RED TAPE HOLDS UP NEW BRIDGE

      William Kelly Was Fed Secretary

      SANTORUM BLASTS OBAMA DURING CUMMING RALLY

      NATION SPLIT ON BUSH AS UNITER OR DIVIDER

      Hotel Cancels Jihad Conference, Citing Safety Reasons

      IRAQI HEAD SEEKS ARMS

      HILLARY CLINTON ON WELFARE

      Marijuana Issue Sent to Joint Committee

      L.A. Voters Approve Urban Renewal by Landslide

      Louisiana Governor Defends His Wife, Gift from Korean

      Mayor Parris to Homeless: Go Home

      COUNCIL TO EXAMINE IMPOTANT PROBLEMS

      U.S. Ships Head to Somalia

      MAYOR SAYS D.C. IS SAFE

      EXCEPT FOR MURDERS

      Ten Commandments:

      Supreme Court Says

      Some OK, Some Not

      In 1999 a record 70 million viewers watched Barbara Walters interview Monica Lewinsky.

      ON POLITICS

      We found a bunch of quotes about politics that weren’t cynical, but these are more fun.

      Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on office, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

      —Thomas Jefferson

      "If Thomas Jefferson thought taxation without representation was bad, he should see how it is with representation."

      —Rush Limbaugh

      Get the fools on your side and you can be elected to anything.

      —Frank Dane

      To become the master, the politician poses as the servant.

      —Charles de Gaulle

      We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex, but Congress can.

      —Cullen Hightower

      We live in a world in which politics has replaced philosophy.

      —Martin L. Gross

      Put a federal agency in charge of the Sahara Desert and it would run out of sand.

      —Peggy Noonan

      American politics is like fast food: mushy, insipid, made out of disgusting parts of things—and everybody wants some.

      —P. J. O’Rourke

      Our elections are free. It’s in the results where eventually we pay.

      —Bill Stern

      Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich—by promising to protect each from the other.

      —Oscar Ameringer

      Today’s public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books. There’s some evidence they can’t read them, either.

      —Gore Vidal

      Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politicians won’t take an interest in you.

      —Pericles

      Good thing we’ve still got politics—the finest form of free entertainment ever invented.

      —Molly Ivins

      Mussolini’s Fascist Party slogan: Me Ne Frego! Translation: I don’t give a damn!

      IF ELECTED, I PROMISE TO…

      Sometimes politicians come up with strange campaign promises. It rarely gets them elected, but it does make for good bathroom reading.

      POLITICIAN: Andrew Uitvlugt, running for mayor of Kelowna, British Columbia, in 2005

      PROMISE: Free crack cocaine for anyone who volunteers to pick up trash

      BACKGROUND: Uitvlugt’s reasoning: The town had too many crack addicts and too few garbage collectors. So why not let the crack addicts pick up the trash? The work, said Uitvlugt, would be so satisfying that they wouldn’t even want the crack anymore. (He also proposed moving all of the city’s homeless people to the local landfill, where they could learn to manufacture products out of the trash.)

      RESULT: Uitvlugt lost (he finished fourth out of five candidates).

      POLITICIAN: Silvio Berlusconi, Italian prime minister, running for reelection in 2006

      PROMISE: To abstain from sex until after the election

      BACKGROUND: At a campaign rally, Berlusconi was blessed by Massimiliano Pusceddu, a famous Italian televangelist, who congratulated the conservative prime minister for his strong stance on family values. To show his appreciation for the blessing, the 70-year-old Berlusconi, who is married to actress Veronica Lario, proclaimed, Thank you, dear Father Massimiliano, I will try not to let you down and I promise you two and a half months of complete sexual abstinence until the election.

      RESULT: No word on whether Berlusconi kept his promise, but he lost the election.

      POLITICIAN: Jackie Wagstaff, who calls herself J-Dub, running for mayor of Durham, North Carolina, in 2005

      PROMISE: To form a hip-hop cabinet full of streetwise teens

      The FDA puts the value of a human life at $7.9 million; the EPA says it’s $9.1 million.

      BACKGROUND: Running on the Gangsta platform, the 46-year-old former city councilwoman acknowledged that because most of her support came from young African Americans, that was the demographic she was targeting. To prove her street cred, J-Dub bragged about her checkered past of run-ins with the law (although she wasn’t alone in this: 8 of the other 17 mayoral candidates also had criminal records). J-Dub said she wanted to get drug dealers off the street and into her cabinet because they already have some business skills.

      RESULT: J-Dub lost (she received less than 5% of the vote).

      POLITICIAN: Percy, running for U.S. Congress in 2002

      PROMISE: Ruff ruff. Bark bark. Bow wow.

      BACKGROUND: Percy, a dog, challenged Katherine Harris in Florida’s Republican congressional primary. No one has a realistic expectation that a dog can get elected, said Wayne Genthner, Percy’s owner and campaign manager. But plenty of people will be willing to vote for a dog to represent their discontent with the political system. He then added that, if elected, Percy promised to be obedient. Don’t you wish your representative in Washington could do that?

      RESULT: Percy never got the chance to run: The Florida election board ruled that he was ineligible (because he’s a dog), so Genthner ran in his place…and lost.

      POLITICIAN: Jacob Haugaard, running for parliament in Denmark in 1994

      PROMISE: Better weather, and tail-winds for Danish bicyclists

      BACKGROUND: Haugaard is the founding member of the Party of Conscientiously Work-Shy Elements. He’s also a stand-up comedian and admitted that he was only joking when he announced his candidacy (and then spent all his campaign money on beer).

      RESULT: Haugaard won, becoming Denmark’s first independent legislator in 50 years. I don’t know anything about politics, he said, but now I get an education…with full salary!

      *     *     *

      I never vote for anybody. I only vote against. —W. C. Fields

      Since its independence from Spain in 1825, Bolivia has had almost 200 governments.

      THE ONLY PRESIDENT TO…

      You may know that Richard Nixon was the only U.S. president to resign or that Grover Cleveland was the only president to serve two nonconsecutive terms. Here are a few more unique presidential anomalies.

      The president: Jimmy Carter

      Notable achievement: Only president to write a children’s book. Carter wrote The Little Baby Snoogle-Fleejer, which was illustrated by his daughter Amy, and published in 1995. The plot: A disabled boy named Jeremy meets a repulsive sea monster, who turns out to be quite friendly.

      The president: Abraham Lincoln

      Notable achievement: Only president to earn a patent. In 1849 Lincoln invented a type of buoy. Lincoln is also the only U.S. president to have worked as a bartender.

      The president: Theodore Roosevelt

      Notable achievement: Only president to be blind in one eye. Roosevelt took a hard punch to his left eye in a boxing match. It actually detached the retina, leaving Roosevelt blind in his left eye for the rest of his life. The boxing match occurred in 1908, while Roosevelt was president.

      The presidents: George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush

      Notable achievement: The Bushes are not the only father and son who both served in the Oval Office (the Adamses did as well), but they’re the only father-son presidents who were fighter pilots in their younger days.

      The president: Gerald Ford

      Notable achievement: Only president to survive two assassination attempts in the same month. In September 1975, former Charles Manson follower Lynette Squeaky Fromme tried to shoot Ford when he reached out to shake her hand in a public meet-and-greet. She pulled the trigger, but the gun’s chamber was empty. Just three weeks later another woman, Sara Jane Moore, fired on Ford in a similar crowd situation, but a bystander knocked her arm away.

      Pat Buchanan, Ben Stein, and William Safire all wrote speeches for President Nixon.

      NO GERM VENT

      These anagrams—words or phrases that are rearranged to form new words or phrases—don’t really speak well of their subjects.

      THE COMING PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN becomes…

      DAMN! ELECTING TIME IS APPROACHING!

      DEMOCRAT PARTY becomes… RAT-TRAP COMEDY

      THE REPUBLICAN PARTY becomes…ELEPHANT CRAP! BURY IT!

      GOVERNMENT becomes… NO GERM VENT

      SENATOR becomes…TREASON

      RONALD WILSON REAGAN becomes… RAN ON ALL WRONG IDEAS

      BILL AND HILLARY CLINTON becomes… CAN ROT IN HILLBILLY LAND

      GEORGE W. BUSH becomes… HE GREW BOGUS

      BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA becomes… I, ARAB SHAM, BECKON U.S.A.

      ELECTION PROMISES becomes… STEEP, MORONIC LIES

      SARAH PALIN becomes… LAS PIRANHA

      NANCY PELOSI becomes… ALIEN CON SPY

      RUSH LIMBAUGH becomes… UH, GALS RUB HIM

      ARLEN SPECTOR becomes… RECTAL PERSON

      ERIC CANTOR becomes… ERRATIC CON

      RUDY GIULIANI becomes… GAUDILY I RUIN

      HARRY REID becomes… HAIRDRYER

      JAMES RICK PERRY becomes… SCARY PRIME JERK

      MICHELE BACHMANN becomes… A CALM BI-HENCHMEN

      WILLARD MITT ROMNEY becomes… A RIMMED WINTRY TROLL

      ELECTION RESULTS becomes… LIES! LET’S RECOUNT!

      In 2008 Silverton, Oregon, elected Stu Rasmussen as America’s first transgender mayor.

      WHAT IS DEMOCRACY?

      At the BRI, democracy consists of us telling Uncle John that we all voted unanimously for him to hire a professional catering service to provide us with lunch and snacks. Uncle John, sadly, is a snackless dictator. Here are what some other folks have said about democracy.

      ARISTOTLE: The real difference between a democracy and an oligarchy is poverty and wealth. Wherever men rule by reason of their wealth, whether they be few or many, that is an oligarchy, and where the poor rule, that is a democracy.

      E. B. WHITE: Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time.

      WOODROW WILSON: Democracy is not so much a form of government as a set of principles.

      H. L. MENCKEN: Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both commonly succeed and are right.

      SAM SHEPARD: Democracy’s a very fragile thing. You have to take care of democracy. As soon as you stop being responsible to it and allow it to turn into scare tactics, it’s no longer democracy, is it? It’s something else. It may be an inch away from totalitarianism.

      KARL MARX: Democracy is the road to socialism.

      ABBIE HOFFMAN: You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists.

      HELEN KELLER: Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

      TOM STOPPARD: It’s not the voting that’s democracy; it’s the counting.

      Late bloomers: On January 30, 2005, Iraq held its first-ever democratic elections.

      WINSTON CHURCHILL: Many forms of government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.

      THOMAS JEFFERSON: A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51 percent of the people may take away the rights of the other 49.

      VLADIMIR PUTIN: A legal electoral system alone will not guarantee full-fledged democracy unless it is incorporated into the real democratic institutions of society as a whole.

      MARGARET THATCHER: Whether it is in the United States or in mainland Europe, written constitutions have one great weakness. That is that they contain the potential to have judges take decisions which should properly be made by democratically elected politicians.

      GEORGE ORWELL: It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it; consequently, the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning.

      JOHNNY CARSON: Democracy is buying a big house you can’t afford with money you don’t have to impress people you wish were dead. And, unlike communism, democracy does not mean having just one ineffective political party; it means having two ineffective political parties. Democracy is welcoming people from other lands, and giving them something to hold onto—usually a mop or a leaf blower. It means that with proper timing and scrupulous bookkeeping, anyone can die owing the government a huge amount of money. Democracy means free television, not good television, but free. And finally, democracy is the eagle on the back of a dollar bill, with 13 arrows in one claw, 13 leaves on a branch, 13 tail feathers, and 13 stars over its head—this signifies that when the white man came to this country, it was bad luck for the Indians, bad luck for the trees, bad luck for the wildlife, and lights out for the American eagle.

      BILL MOYERS: Democracy may not prove in the long run to be as efficient as other forms of government, but it has one saving grace: It allows us to know and say that it isn’t.

      Q: Which U.S. politician coined the term lunatic fringe? A: Teddy Roosevelt.

      TICK…TOCK…BROKE

      Round and round it goes! Where it stops—nobody knows! Here’s the story of the National Debt Clock.

      GROWING PAINS

      In the winter of 1980, a New York real estate developer named Seymour Durst wanted to communicate his concerns about the ballooning national debt to elected officials in Washington, D.C. So he sent them New Year’s cards that read Happy New Year! Your share of the national debt is $35,000. No response—so Durst went to a sign maker and asked if it was possible to make a billboard with a numeric display that showed the national debt growing in real time—a doomsday clock for the American taxpayer. It wasn’t possible: That year, the debt was growing at a rate of about $13,000 per second, and the computers of the day weren’t fast enough to operate a numeric display at that kind of speed. It took eight years for technology to catch up with Durst’s vision, and in 1989 the first National Debt Clock was installed on a Durst-owned building near Times Square. Cost: $100,000. (No word on whether Durst went into debt to pay for the clock.)

      TAKES A LICKING

      Each week Durst called the U.S. Treasury to get the latest national debt figures and updated the sign via modem so that the continuously changing numbers were as accurate as possible. He continued updating the clock until his death in 1995, after which the sign company assumed the responsibility. In 2000 the national debt stopped growing, and for the next two years it actually shrank. That created a problem for the sign, which wasn’t designed to run backward. On Durst’s birthday in 2000, the sign was switched off and covered with a red, white, and blue banner in the hope that it would never be uncovered.

      But the debt soon started rising again, and in July 2002 the sign was switched back on. It was replaced with a new, improved sign in 2004, but the new sign wasn’t improved enough: When the national debt hit $10 trillion in 2008, there weren’t enough digits to display all the debt, and the $ had to be converted to a 1. Plans are in the works to add another two digits to the sign. (Every American’s share of the national debt, as of 2012: $49,044…and climbing.)

      There’s nothing in the law to prevent a convicted felon from becoming U.S. president.

      FAMOUS FOR 15 MINUTES

      The political world has played a big part in helping Andy Warhol’s prophetic statement come true: In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. (Even dogs.)

      THE STAR: Lisa Gebhart, a 25-year-old fund-raiser for the Democratic Party

      THE HEADLINE: Pushy White House Intern Proves a Picture is Worth a Thousand Words…and Then Some

      WHAT HAPPENED: In 1996 Gebhart went to a fund-raiser for President Bill Clinton. She wanted to shake hands with the president, so she made her way up to the front of the rope line just as he was approaching. I was all beaming, she says, just ten feet away from him. Then someone pushed me from behind, trying to get in there, very rude.…I had seen Monica Lewinsky around, but I didn’t know her. She couldn’t wait to get to Clinton. Lewinsky got a hug; all Gebhart got was a handshake.

      When news of Clinton’s affair with Lewinsky broke in 1998, footage of the 1996 hug, with a smiling Gebhart standing next to Lewinsky, became one of the most famous images of the Clinton presidency.

      THE AFTERMATH: By the time the scandal broke, Gebhart had met a Welshman named Dean Longhurst over the Internet and was communicating with him by email. Longhurst asked what Gebhart looked like. I emailed him, ‘Watch the news.’

      When I saw her in real life, Longhurst told reporters in April 2001, I thought she was even more beautiful. The two eventually met, fell in love, and got married.

      THE STAR: Michael Brown, 49, head of the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) from 2003 to 2005

      THE HEADLINE: Dubious Endorsement from Dubya Leaves FEMA Head Treading Water

      WHAT HAPPENED: Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job. That’s what President Bush said to Brown on September 2, 2005, four days after Hurricane Katrina caused major devastation along the U.S. Gulf Coast. Because the federal government was facing criticism for its slow response to the catastrophe, Brown became an example of the cronyism in the Bush administration—which was accused of appointing friends and business associates to positions for which they were unqualified.

      In 1807 Pres. Henri Christophe of Haiti declared all gourds the property of the state.

      Case in point: Before being hired to run the nation’s disaster response team, Brown was chairman of the International Arabian Horse Association, a post he resigned in 2001 amid allegations of corruption. Even more damning for Brown: His emails to staffers were leaked to the press. On the day Katrina made landfall, Brown wrote, Can I quit now? Can I go home? In another email (sent while there were still corpses floating in New Orleans), he complained about the tacky suit he had to wear. Call the fashion police! Dozens of other petty emails were sent, all while his office took four days to respond to an urgent request for medical supplies.

      AFTERMATH: Brown resigned from his FEMA post on September 12, stating that all the attention was hindering his agency from doing its job. He accused the press of making him a scapegoat for the administration’s botched response, and added that most of the blame lay on the shoulders of local Louisiana officials. His biggest mistake, he claimed, was underestimating their incompetence.

      Brown made news again in 2007 when he was hired by Cold Creek Solutions, a company that specializes in data storage for big businesses, as their Disaster and Contingency Planning Consultant. Said the company’s CEO, With Michael’s experience and his unique view into what possibly could go wrong when looking at a plan, we can truly help clients be prepared for the unexpected. Brown is currently hosting a conservative radio talk show in Colorado.

      THE STAR: Blanco, a white Collie

      THE HEADLINE: First Dog Is Second Rate

      WHAT HAPPENED: When President Lyndon Johnson moved into the White House in 1963, he brought along his beagles—Him and Her. The dogs made headlines on April 27, 1964, when LBJ picked them up by their ears. A photographer got a shot of Him and Her yelping in pain. The White House was deluged with letters from angry dog lovers.

      Her died in November 1964 after swallowing a stone, and Him died the following June, run over by a car while chasing a squirrel across the White House lawn. It made national news, and dozens of people wrote the White House offering the president a new dog. LBJ said no, but eventually, he gave in. Johnson chose a white collie named Blanco. Bad choice: When Blanco arrived at the White House, she began biting every dog and most of the people she came in contact with.

      Studies show: Voters react to their own party’s candidate emotionally and to the opposing party’s candidate rationally.

      THE AFTERMATH: Blanco was kept on tranquilizers for the rest of LBJ’s presidency, and according to one account, When Johnson left office, he was finally persuaded to give Blanco away.

      THE STAR: Fawn Hall, a 27-year-old, $20,000-a-year government secretary assigned to Col. Oliver North the National Security Council in 1987

      THE HEADLINE: She Stood by Her Man…and He Fed’er to the Shredder

      WHAT HAPPENED: Colonel Oliver North was one of the key figures behind the Iran-Contra scandal, a plan to sell arms to Iran in exchange for the release of U.S. hostages, then divert the profits to the Contras in Nicaragua—a direct violation of U.S. law.

      As word of the scheme began leaking to the press in mid-1986, North, assisted by loyal secretary Fawn Hall, began altering and destroying incriminating documents. After North was fired from his post, Hall continued the shredding on her own. When Hall testified about her role in the cover-up before a nationally televised congressional hearing, she became a celebrity overnight.

      THE AFTERMATH: Hall tried her best to keep a low profile; she even turned down several lucrative endorsement offers (including one from Revlon to become part of the America’s Most Unforgettable Women campaign). I was so out of my league, she says. One day you’re just a normal girl walking down the street; the next, they want to put you in movies.

      Hall worshipped North as a hero. At the conclusion of her congressional testimony she let his friends know she wanted to hear from him. But according to Hall, North never spoke to her again, not even to thank her for the risks she’d taken on his behalf. Hall later married a former producer of the Doors, and became addicted to crack cocaine in the 1990s. She’s now clean, and at last report was working at a trendy bookstore in West Hollywood.

      THE RHINOCEROS PARTY

      Who says government has to be stodgy and humorless? Not Canada.

      PLAYING POLITICS

      In the early 1960s, Quebec was wracked by violent protests against the federal government and the Anglo-Saxon establishment that dominated the province. In the midst of this turmoil, Dr. Jacques Ferron, a physician and writer, launched a new political party—a satirical alternative to serve as a peaceful outlet for disgruntled Quebecois. And he chose the rhinoceros as the party’s symbol. Why a rhino? Ferron said it epitomized the professional politician—a slow-witted animal that can move fast as hell when in danger.

      It lasted for only 30 years, but the Rhinoceros Party put the ‘mock’ back in ‘demockracy.’ And for a fringe group, it attracted a surprising number of votes. Here are some of their more creative campaign promises:

      • They vowed to sell Canada’s senate at an antiques auction in California.

      • They promised to plant coffee, chocolate, and oranges in southern Ontario, so Canada could become a banana republic.

      • In the 1980 election, the Rhinos promised to break all their promises and introduce an era of indecision and incompetence.

      • Fielding candidates with names like Richard the Troll and Albert the Cad, the Rhinos ran on a platform of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll for the masses.

      • Other parties talked about a guaranteed annual income; the Rhinos vowed to introduce a Guaranteed Annual Orgasm and to sell seats in Canada’s senate for $15 each.

      • In 1988 they made national headlines by running a candidate named John Turner against the incumbent opposition leader…John Turner. Turner was not amused (everyone else was).

      • They promised to repeal the law of gravity, provide free trips to bordellos, and nationalize all pay toilets.

      • When the Canadian government was trying to decide where to locate its embassy in Israel, the Rhinos proposed to locate it in a Winnebago, which could travel continuously

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