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Since we just got through an election and most are still somewhat in a political mindset, I’ve wanted to write a little something clarifying just what the Conservative position is. Of course, immediately we have to acknowledge that there are many different people with many different political philosophies who all try to take the mantle of “Conservative” upon themselves. That is because, as polls during the latest election bear out, “Conservativism” is a “winning” label whereas “Liberalism” is a “losing” label. Indeed, more people claimed to be Conservative than claimed to be Republican in this election; however, far more people claimed to be Democrat than claimed to be Liberal. In other words, in terms of self-identification, Conservative and Democrat are both viewed favorably but Republican and Liberal are both viewed unfavorably.

While anyone can claim to be anything they want to be, I am not interested in those who claim to be something just because it is a winning label. So this post will examine the foundation of Conservative thought. It should be noted that it is certainly possible for someone to inconsistently hold to the major tenets of Conservative philosophy without agreeing to the foundational presuppositions that support it (e.g. many Libertarians on fiscal issues).

What is that foundation then? At first glance, we might be tempted to say it is human rights. That is, Conservativism is born out of a desire to be consistent with our Founding Father’s concepts of the rights of man. Why do Conservatives believe that lower taxes are better? It is not a pragmatic reason, such as how beneficial it is to our economy—even though it is indeed true that lower taxes are beneficial to the economy! It is because Conservatives believe that all human beings have the right to their own property. What I own is fully under my control to do with as I see fit, and no one—no government, no other individual—has the right to force me to do something with my property that I do not wish to do.

Furthermore, we can look at the Second Amendment. Why is it that Conservatives argue that the right to bear arms is something that cannot be taken away by the government? It is not simply because that’s what the Constitution says (although that is indeed what the Constitution says). It is because we have the right to life and liberty, and that means we have the right to protect our life and liberty.

But human rights need to be justified too. We cannot simply assert that they exist; we must argue for why they exist. And that means that, at its root, Conservativism is based not in human rights but upon theistic principals. And lest someone quibble, this is the actual reason given by the Fathers themselves. Before the Constitution was formed, the Colonists had to provide justification for why they threw off the yolk of England. If their rebellion was illegitimate, their Constitution was illegitimate too. That’s why they took such care to write the Declaration of Independence, to provide their reasoned argument as to why they were justified in breaking from England. The Declaration begins:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to separation.

The Declaration begins, in other words, by asserting that there are “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” that entitle us to certain rights. Without Natural Law given by Nature’s God, there are no rights. And what are those rights?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. – That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. – That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its foundation on such principals and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

So we see that our rights come, not from the whim of any man, but because we are endowed with them by our Creator. Furthermore, we see that Government is established “to secure these rights.” That is its primary purpose.

It should be noted that thus far we are not concerning ourselves with what aspect of theism fits. After all, while most of the Founding Fathers were Christians and the culture was definitely shaped by Christianity, there were also many Fathers who were only deists, and there were even some atheists who signed on. It is beyond the scope of this post for me to go into the reasons why Christianity provides the strongest rationale for these rights in comparison to other religions. Instead, I will focus briefly on why atheism cannot give us these same human rights.

If we take away rights endowed by our Creator, how do we establish those rights as actual rights? We cannot do so in any manner that escapes arbitrary decrees. For example, it might be argued that our intellect is what gives us those rights; that because man is the rational animal, he has human rights. But if we say that, then those who are more intelligent must have more human rights than those who are less intelligent. If the foundation of our rights is based on intellect, then this is inescapable: the geniuses have more rights than the imbeciles.

Yet we instinctively know that it is not the case that smarter people have more rights. We know that intellect is not a philosophically meaningful distinction when determining rights. We cannot keep someone enslaved, away from education, and claim that we have not violated his rights because we are smarter than he is.

If we instead argue that just as the Fathers said that Government derives its power “from the consent of the governed” our rights come from the consent of humanity as a whole then we still have not escaped the problem. After all, not all humans give the same consent. To cite the overly-used, yet crystal clear analogy: Nazis did not consider Jews to have human rights. We did not consider the Nazis to have the right to act consistently with those principals. Which view is right?

Under the position that the consent of the people determines human rights, neither position is right or wrong. We have two groups of people who disagree; there is no consent as to whether Jews have rights. Therefore, what prevails is nothing but might makes right. Nazis were wrong not because they were philosophically wrong but only because they lost World War II. If the Allies had been weaker, the consent of the world would have been that Jews are not human.

Once again, that concept is alien to us. Philosophically, our rights do not change simply because the whims of a group of individuals have changed. This is not a meaningful reason for our rights to change. Or rather, if it is a meaningful reason then our rights are worthless.

Human rights require a transcendent truth. They require objective truth that all men are, as part of their very being, deserving of specific rights. These rights cannot arise from nature alone. Evolution cannot explain how these rights got there, for man is but one evolutionary branch of billions. There is nothing that distinguishes man amongst the animals other than intellect, and as we’ve seen that would result in the smarter people having more human rights than the unintelligent. The only possible way we can have unalienable rights is if something higher than ourselves has given them to us.

Human rights come about because of the ontology of the human. We recognize them because of our being, not because of anything granted by any government or any group of people. It is precisely because these things do not depend on our size, location, level of development, sex, race, or beliefs that “all men are created equal” is true. That equality is found in our human ontology, and that comes about because man is created in the image of God.

With this in mind, we can sum up the basic Conservative ideology. Man has been endowed with the rights of Life, Liberty, and property (understood as the pursuit of happiness). These rights are God-given rights, not Government-granted rights. As such, any Government that would deprive anyone of those rights without proper justification is an unjust Government. The role of Government is to secure those rights for those who are governed. This means that the Government does have the right to tax its citizens consistent with securing those rights; but any taxes that are not consistent with securing those rights are unjustly depriving citizens of property. This means that Government has the right to defend our country from enemies, both domestic and foreign, by creating a police force and army; but it also means that Government cannot interfere with our own actions to secure our freedoms too (such as our right to bear arms).

Unfortunately, life is never as cut and dried as bare-bones philosophy will make it. To use an easy example, was the War in Iraq based on Conservative principals? It depends to a large extent on whether you believe the War is an attempt to secure our right to Life that terrorists seek to deprive of us. Insofar as we have not had another terrorist attack on America since 9/11, it is quite possibly due to the fact that we are engaging the enemy overseas. This would be consistent with the Government defending us from attack. On the other hand, it is also possible that the terrorists would not have been capable of another attack even had we left Iraq alone. That would make the War in Iraq unnecessary to secure out freedoms in America.

The net result is that it is quite possible for Conservatives to support or not support the War in Iraq and still remain Conservative.

On the other hand, consider abortion on demand (as opposed to abortion to save the life of the mother). Since human rights are based on our humanity, not any concept of “personhood” or the location of the human being or the developmental status, then the Conservative position must always be against abortion on demand. The unborn is a human being; that is the only thing that human beings can create via reproduction. The unborn therefore has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

On the other hand, abortion to save the life of the mother is not against Conservative principals because in that case the objective is not to deprive the life of the unborn, but to save the life of the mother. The unintended consequence is the unborn child also dies. We ought to do whatever we can to minimize the possibility of the death of the unborn, but when it is inevitable it is not against Conservative ideals to support abortion in those cases.

One final word should be noted. It is certainly possible for someone to be Conservative on some issues and not on others. People are, by and large, inconsistent. They tend to have a hodge-podge of beliefs, many of them contradictory, that they subscribe to. So it is possible that someone can be a fiscal Conservative while not being a social Conservative. But the logic of Conservative thought does boil down to our God-given rights, and therefore one is justified in weighing whether any particular issue coheres to those presuppositions. Since people can be (and often are) inconsistent, it should be no surprise at all that there is a wide range of belief amongst those who would call themselves Conservative; but that is no grounds to say that we should accept all those positions as being equally Conservative. Nor is the existence of those contradictory people evidence that Conservativism itself is incoherent or lacks a real presupposition.

In perusing moonbat blogs recently, I have discovered some of them are a little frightened. While most are busy recovering from their hangovers and thus the frightened moonbats are a minority, it is a minority that can only grow as realization dawns upon them all. These moonbats are frightened that Conservatives will act toward The Fresh Prince of Bill Ayres like the moonbats have been acting toward Bush!

Indeed, Coulter’s latest column has provided them with some justification for their current fear, for she states explicitly: “In the spirit of reaching across the aisle, we owe it to the Democrats to show their president the exact same kind of respect and loyalty that they have shown our recent Republican president.” This has caused fear.

(Translation for moonbats: ph34r!!!!11!1!)

But I say unto you, fear not, ye moonbats. For while I, as a Conservative, understand logic and therefore find it deeply ironic that you unwittingly have acknowledged your treatment of Bush for the last eight years has been immoral, I bear glad news for you.

Conservatives are not Liberals.

Yes, there is a difference between Conservatives and Liberals. In the zoo of politics, Conservatives are tigers, standing with stoic pride on our principals and character (we only occasionally gnaw on dope-smoking San Franciscoites). Liberals are monkeys, content merely with flinging their own excrement at (and fornicating in full view of) innocent school children. But tigers do not become monkeys simply because monkeys deserve it; and Conservatives will not behave like Liberals even though Liberals deserve it.

So fear not the response of the Conservatives.

Now God’s response, on the other hand…

Some Conservatives are naturally upset about how the election has gone. But while The One campaigned successfully with his mantra of “hope” and “change,” it has always been the Conservatives that embody hope. Indeed, unlike the Liberals who immediately whine of stolen elections when they don’t get their way, Conservatives do not live and die by political fortunes because we recognize that we are some things (read: “almost everything”) more important than politics.

So while it is okay for Conservatives to be disappointed that the Omighty One is elected, as a Conservative myself I see the countless reasons to remain optimistic, even in “defeat.” Consider just one number for a moment:

55,543,527.

That’s how many people (according to the counts at the time of this writing—and look for it to be revised upward too) who voted against the Anointed One. Fifty-five million is not a small number. Fifty-five million is, indeed, a very substantial portion of our voting population.

There is fear that Obamessiah will try to institute many of his radical ideas. The media, who failed to do basic journalism and were so in the tank for the Chosen One from day one, engineered a victory for a man with some of the most questionable associations, statements, and beliefs ever elected. We’ve seen O lie about public financing, promise to bankrupt coal companies, and continue to lower the dollar cut-off for whose taxes will be raised upon.

But 55 million people are a check against him. Even with majorities in Congress, the Democrats have to acknowledge that the electorate has only given them a razor thin edge at the moment; if they try to do anything radical, that edge will shift immediately to the Republicans.

Conservatives can take heart about this. We are logical people. We understand that reality is real. All our dreams (or our father’s dreams) and hopes do not change what is real. And the reality is: 55,543,527 is not a landslide loss.

But while Conservatives deal with reality, let us also use our imaginations for just one moment. McCain got 55 million votes. Imagine what we could have done with a real candidate.

See, the Republicans nominated a weak candidate. McCain was burdened by being in the same party as an unpopular president, he was outspent in commercials, faced a hostile media, was inarticulate and unable to debate to save his life (or in this case his candidacy)…and he still got 55 million votes. Change any one of these factors and he would have won. So what could we have done with a real Conservative, one who understands Conservativism and therefore can defend it even against all of the above?

There is no reason we can’t have a real candidate in the future. Indeed, if Republicans are paying attention we will get that real candidate in four years.

Moderate Republicanism is a dead-end. And this election demonstrates the fruit of selling out our core principals. If Republicans ignore Conservatives, they lose; it’s that simple. If Americans want Liberalism, they can vote Democrat. If Republicans do not offer an alternative then why are they surprised when they lose?

Just to make it personal, after 2004 I could see that the Republican Party had strayed from its Conservative base. As a result, in 2006 I ceased to call myself a Republican. As Ronald Reagan would have said: “I did not leave the Republican Party; the Republican Party left me.” The Republicans ought to have seen the problems in 2006 given their massive losses in Congress. They ought to have realized that they could not win on a moderate ticket; they had to return to their Conservative roots.

They didn’t. Instead, they nominated McCain. Conservatives were told, “Support McCain because he’s electable.” (Good call there, RNC!) But I couldn’t do so. Only after what the media did to Joe the Plummer did I even think to vote for McCain. I never supported McCain, though; I just despised the media. And I’m not at all heartbroken that McCain lost. I had nothing invested in this man.

There’s more reason to hope though than just McCain. The Republican losses extended well beyond the presidency. The Democrats increased their majorities in both branches of Congress. This ought to be a major wake-up call for the Republican Party: you CANNOT win on moderate Republicanism!

Because we’ve now had two straight losses due to moderate Republicanism, even the densest political strategist ought to grasp that. That’s why McCain’s loss should be a good thing for Republicans. See, Conservatives like me are still waiting for you, dear leaders of the RNC, to return from your prodigal path. If you use this opportunity to reform and return to your Conservative roots, you will find success once again…plus I’ll be able to call myself a Republican again.

As I stated earlier, Conservativism is built upon logic. Unfortunately, logic is intentionally no longer taught in public school. But it is not very difficult to grasp for those who are interested in learning it, and simple analogies (which require candidates who are good at thinking on their feet, unlike McCain) can quickly show the error of virtually every fallacy even for those who do not wish to see. We need to teach people logic once again, to show them how empty and hollow Liberal rhetoric is.

Conservative ideas are strong because they are based on reality, not illusory dreams. It is preferable to be the party of rationality than the party of emotionalism, even if most people these days are irrational. This is still a position of strength because (as I also stated above) reality is real. That which is based on reason will win out in the end, no matter how deluded anyone may be.

This is why Conservativism wins. This is why we cannot give up on it for an easy “win” by caucusing with the intellectually lazy.

Related to that, we must argue for our ideas, especially since we do live in irrational times. It is not enough to simply present those ideas and hope others see the logic of the position. We must be able to defend each and every Conservative position. This requires Conservatives to have an understanding of Conservativism; we cannot accept candidates who claim to be Conservatives but who have no understanding of the philosophy behind it. This is how we ended up with moderate Republicans in the first place, and we’ve seen where that leads us. If Republicans seriously want to win again, they need to winnow the field. Cast out the RINOs. Insist that if you are going to call yourself a Republican there are certain philosophical standards you must uphold.

If Republicans do that, then they will begin to win again. But if they do not—if they are still convinced that “moderate” is the way to go—then Conservatives need to take the next step. This election ought to be our line in the sand. If the Republicans won’t return, then it is time for us to get rid of them. It is time for Conservatives to form their own party. Conservatives may have been hesitant in the past because we did not wish to lose everything by dividing the Republican vote with a third party…but Republicans have lost everything anyway. Conservatives have nothing left to lose in forming our own party.

It would naturally be preferable for Republicans to return to the Conservative fold. But this election has shown us that we Conservatives no longer need to be tied to Republicans on the false hope that it will provide us victory. And that, perhaps, is the greatest reason for optimism of all.

So Conservatives take heart. We did not lose this election, and now is the time to take back our party. The chaff has been cleared away, the façade broken. All excuses are banished. Now is our time.

The Keen Sense of the Obvious award goes to….

One of the hot-button environmental issues is Global Warming. While some people argue we must be more specific and refer to “anthropogenic Global Warming,” I do not do so. Not because I think humans are not affecting the environment in any way, but because I think it is scientifically impossible to accurately measure the temperature and compare it to historical trends in the first place. And if it is scientifically impossible to do so, then all Global Warming (anthropogenic or natural) is unscientific.

In order to demonstrate the scientific problems with Global Warming, we must first understand a bit of how scientific experiments work. The two key concepts will be our understanding of precision and accuracy. Without these two ideas firmly in place, we cannot even begin to weigh the evidence presented for Global Warming.

While precision and accuracy are often thought of as being identical concepts, in science there is a specific difference between the two. Precision refers to the level of certainty an instrument gives us. For example, if we measure time using an analogue clock with no second-hand, the clock is precise to the minute. That is, we can tell that it is 10:58. But we do not know if it is 10:58:03 or 10:58:57. On the other hand, we could have a clock with a second hand that would be more precise because it would illustrate the seconds. Furthermore, we could have a digital clock that would be able to give us fractions of a second as well.

However, at some point the precision ends. We might be able to use a stopwatch to calculate that something took 10.874 seconds, but we wouldn’t know if it was 10.8744 or 10.8740 or (possibly, depending on the specs of the stopwatch) if it was 10.8739 and rounded.

To tell how precise an instrument is we need to know how many decimal points the measurement goes to. The more numbers after a decimal point, the more precise the measurement is. As a result, 10 seconds is not as precise as 10.0 seconds (since 10 seconds could be rounded from 10.3 or 9.7, etc. while 10.0 could only be rounded from, say 10.03) and 10.000 would be even more precise.

In addition to precision, however, we must take into account the accuracy of the instrument. A stopwatch might give us a precise measurement down to the eighth decimal point (for example), but if the stopwatch is inaccurate then that precision is illusionary. For example, if two stopwatches measure the same amount of time and one says 10.000 seconds passed while another says 9.989 seconds passed, we would know that one (or both) are inaccurate instruments. There is, however, basic general agreement between the two instruments. We would be safe to say they were approximately similar, but we would need to give an error range in order to remain scientific. (And it should be noted that any scientific experiment that does not give you its error range is worthless.)

In addition to instrument accuracy we have to deal with human error. Sometimes, people misread instruments or write down the wrong number. Further, as we again use the stopwatch illustration, we have to deal with the lag between when the event being measured starts and when the experiment observer presses the button to begin the clock. This reaction delay must be figured into the experiments as well.

All that is fine and well, but what does it have to do with Global Warming? Well, first of all we know that Global Warming claims a specific temperature change over the course of the last century. For example, global temperatures are said to have risen about 0.6 degree Celsius since 1900. The problem with this is that our thermometers are far more precise today than they were in 1900 as the advancement of technology continues. Beyond that, we do not know how accurate the experimenters in 1900 were per say, or where exactly their thermometers were placed, or a host of other possible important factors to the experiment.

This is important for the simple fact that 0.6 degrees Celsius is a very small number. In fact, when you consider that most historical weather reports give temperatures in whole numbers (i.e., “On April 4, 1907, the high temperature was 68 degrees F”) this means the recorded temperature is not very precise at all.

This immediately brings us back to an important rule of precision. An experiment is only as precise as the least precise measurement used. For example, suppose you were trying to determine the volume of a cube. We know that volume is length x width x height. If we measure the length as 10.0 meters, the width as 5 meters, and the height as 14.973 meters, we multiply those numbers together to get 748.65 meters cubed. However, since the width is a whole number variable, the precision of the experiment can only be a whole number! We cannot have any decimal portion at all, so the true, scientific volume of the cube is 749 cubic meters. Due to this, the extra precision that we got measuring the height is irrelevant to the final answer. It can only be as precise as the least precise measurement.

Which means that if temperatures at any point in the data are in only whole number increments, we cannot have a temperature change of 0.6 degrees. The precision of the answer is more precise than the data given; it is invalid.

Now someone could argue that it doesn’t matter because the 0.6 degrees is in Celsius rather than in Fahrenheit, which is what virtually all of at least the earliest American data was measured in. However, this brings up another matter. The Fahrenheit scale is inherently more precise than the Celsius scale because the degrees are finer. That is, between freezing and boiling there are only 100 degrees on the Celsius scale, but there are 180 degrees on the Fahrenheit scale. This means that measuring in degrees F is 1.8x more precise than measuring in C. To show why this is a problem, both 87 and 88 degrees F round to 31 C. In fact, assuming infinite precision, 87F = 30.555…C and 88F = 31.111…C, a difference of 0.555…. Or, to put it another way, about 0.6 degrees C.

This means that virtually all of the touted Global Warming temperature difference could possibly be nothing more than just the imprecision of conversion between C and F.

But there is another problem with the methodology used to calculate Global Warming. It’s based on average data. Unfortunately, I’ve yet to see a report that indicates how the averages are determined. I’ve even emailed specific people who have written on the topic and gotten no response. Granted, I am pretty much unknown; still, this information is necessary for us to be able to make an informed decision as to the veracity of Global Warming.

Let me give an example of what that is the case. If the average is simply the average between the highest temperature of the day and the lowest temperature of the day, two radically different days can give the same average result. For instance, if the high was 80 degrees and the low was 40 degrees, the average would be 60. But the average would also be 60 degrees if the high was 120 and the low was 0. Granted, that is a rather extreme (and unlikely) example; but more realistically, 82H and 38L also average out to 60.

But beyond that, there are even more problems. Two days with identical highs and lows can themselves be radically different once you factor in the temperatures throughout the day. For example, suppose the high and the low occur within a 6 hour range and the two days look like this.

Day 1: hour temperatures from 6 – noon = 40, 50, 55, 60, 70, 80
Day 2: hour temperatures from 6 – noon = 40, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80

(The second day had cloud cover that kept the cooler temperatures in the morning, but once the clouds burned off the heat increased.)

The average (keeping the precision of the “experiment” above) of all the numbers for Day 1 = 59 degrees. The average for Day 2 = 57 degrees. That’s 2 degrees F different, more than 1 whole degree C too…and neither of those matches the 60 degree average between the high and the low alone.

While those numbers are arbitrary, they are not unlikely numbers at all. Indeed, it is very probable that the cloud cover effect could happen in the morning while the afternoon temperatures remain similar.

It is therefore critically important that we know how the averages are calculated. Indeed, another possible way that averages are collected is by simply taking the high temperature for the date and averaging it out for every other year for that same date. I.e., saying “The average high temperature on June 7 is 87 degrees.” In addition to not accurately representing how hot a day actually is (given the above, since two days with the same high can have radically different average temperatures when you break the day down hour-by-hour), we are also left with the fact that averaging on a daily basis ignores an important calendar phenomenon.

Leap year.

Yup, that pesky leap year thing throws off our precision because comparing June 7 of this year to June 7 of last year is not a precise comparison. The Earth is not in exactly the same place as it was that time last year (of course this also ignores the rotation of the solar system, etc. which probably would affect temperature well below the precision our instruments can detect anyway). In fact, it is possible that June 7 of this year is more likely correlated to June 6 of three years ago than June 7 of last year. As a result, “record highs for this date” are also pretty much pointless. They’re okay for giving a general idea of the weather, but they play havoc with trying to maintain any kind of precision on temperatures.

Unfortunately, I do not know which method scientists actually use to try to determine the average temperatures and to come up with their number of 0.6 degrees C. As I stated earlier, no one that I’ve e-mailed about this topic has ever bothered to answer my question. In order to make an informed decision, we must know this.

But even not knowing the actual method used, the methods I’ve shown above would be unable to provide any precise data for the past 100 years. And I do not see how any other method of determining this number could work. As a result, I have no reason to believe in Global Warming at all, let alone anthropogenic Global Warming. Scientists must provide the details of their experiments, the details of how they determined these averages, the error bars for the temperatures collected at the beginning of the 20th Century, etc. before we can even hope to accept it as a theory. Anything less than this disclosure renders Global Warming as unscientific.

ASP News, Denver – Pundits, anchors, and other members of the media waited in eager anticipation for the first speech candidate Pepsi would give after accepting his party’s nomination for President of the United Sodas of America.

Pepsi, marketed as the Choice of a New Generation, has enjoyed wide appeal in the media. “The first time I tried Pepsi, a shiver ran up my leg,” said Chris Matthews, a short-tempered and short man who we assume has a TV show somewhere. “That shiver continues to this day.”

Pollsters are convinced that Pepsi will win the election despite the fact that those they poll do not agree. “We alter the polls consistently, changing the questions here and there, and eventually they get the right numbers,” said one anonymous pollster who wished to remain anonymous because he was spineless.

After months of speculation, Pepsi announced Dr Pepper as his running mate. Dr Pepper ran against Pepsi earlier in the race, denouncing Pepsi as a radical leftist who was too blue. It had widely been assumed that Mr. Pibb would get the nod after her close race with Pepsi.

“After looking over the details,” Pepsi said, “we decided to go with the purple-ish can of prune juice. Dr Pepper’s experience is evident by the ‘Dr’ sans period at the front of his name. Mr. Pibb just couldn’t compete with that. Even though her husband, Mrs. Pibb, was a successful president if you can ignore his record.”

The Pibbs were unavailable for comment.

ASP News, St. Paul – SHOCK!

That is the only word that can describe the scene here in the Xcel Energy Center as Coke Classic, an aged formula long popular with nursing home residents and prescription drug addicts, announced his choice for running mate: Mountain Dew.

“I never saw that one coming,” said Anderson Cooper, who never saw it coming. “Every indicator pointed to Coke Zero topping the short list. Instead, Coke Classic picked someone who is completely GREEN! Mountain Dew has no experience whatsoever. In fact, only drunk co-eds like Mountain Dew, and only then because of her looks.”

Diet Coke had spent months campaigning for the candidate’s coveted VP slot. “This is a complete sell out,” said the junior diet soda from Georgia. “They say it’s not easy being green. Well, it’s about to get a lot tougher.” Diet Coke is now said to be stumping for Pepsi.

The media, working in conjunction with Pepsi’s campaign, has promised to vet Mountain Dew’s credentials. Already, however, it looks like a lost cause for Coke Classic. “Have you ever opened a can of Mountain Dew?” one Pepsi spokesman said. “It looks like a can of urine. What does it say about Coke Classic’s judgment if his pick looks like human waste?”

Sprite, and other women’s rights groups, have denounced Mountain Dew over her views on abortion. “Mountain Dew totally should have aborted that Code Red crap. The only thing we have in common is carbonated water and high fructose corn syrup” said Sprite. “That’s not enough to make me vote for a sell-out.”

ASP News, Someone’s Basement – In other news, 7-Up has announced Ale-8-1 as his running mate. 7-Up, running on the environmentalist green ticket, so far only has the backing of Moon Mist Shasta, the former vice president tuned recycling activist who earned fame last year after the success of his film “An Inconvenient Fizz.”

Critics are already questioning Ale-8’s experience, given his limited distribution in and around the state of Kentucky. “We all know that Kentuckians are just a bunch of racist rednecks,” said Dr Pepper. “What do the hicks down there really know anyway?”

ASP News, Washington DC – The presidential campaign took a nasty turn today as Pepsi and Coke Classic both went negative. Pepsi’s negative campaign was witty and refreshing, as Pepsi called Coke classic a “flat” and “undrinkable” beverage.

Coke Classic responded with a vicious character attack, saying Pepsi had been “left out in the car under the hot sun for too long.” When asked if Coke Classic thought the negative tone of the campaign would hurt him, he responded: “He started it.”

Pepsi retorted with “I know you are but what am I?”

Meanwhile, 7-Up has asked to attend the first presidential debate, scheduled for next week. So far, no one is paying him any attention.

ASP News, Washington DC – The continual vitriol of the campaign took a turn for the worst as Coke Classic accused Pepsi of ties with the pink can, TaB. TaB, which in 1969 contained the now-banned chemical cyclamate, supposedly launched the career of Pepsi from TaB’s living room, if you believe Coke Classic and the people who were there instead of those of us in the media who don’t want you to focus on this.

Pepsi has fired back that TaB is just some can in the neighborhood and that Pepsi was only eight years old when TaB’s cyclamate was banned by the FDA. Coke Classic countered that while “Pepsi” was only eight years old, “Pepsi-Cola” had been around since 1903, and was originally called “Brad’s Drink” in 1898.

Since we’re the media and we are objective, we will ignore everything about TaB. Instead, an important thing to ponder is the fact that Coke Classic is the real hypocrite here. Coke Classic had an original formula, but now is only pretending to remain true to the original formula having substituted high fructose corn syrup for his original sweetener, cane sugar. Furthermore, Coke is made from processed cocaine leaves. Explain that, Coke Classic!

ASP News, Washington DC – The Red party is becoming increasingly desperate as Coke Classic sags in the polls, down by as much as 7/32 of a percentage point. In an attempt to deflect attention from failed economic policies, Coke Classic has accused Pepsi of fraternizing with COLON. COLON, which stands for “Confused Organization of Liberals for Oligarchy Now” has been active in registering 6.8 trillion people in Los Angeles alone.

“It is obvious that there is voter fraud going on,” said one Coke Classic spokesman.

“What is going on is disenfranchisement,” Pepsi spokesman Diet Coke responded. “Coke Classic doesn’t want your vote to count more than once. He is skewering this election away from the will of illegal aliens, felons, and other up-and-coming Blue candidates. That’s why Coke Classic didn’t pick me—I mean Coke Zero for his running mate. He’s racist against the black can!”

In unrelated news, the Red Party released a YouTube video showing a 1990s Pepsi rally where Pepsi stated: “A colon is not that far behind.” Pundits have supposed the Red Party is going for the irony angle, but as we are objective media personalities we don’t understand it.

ASP NEWS, Toledo – Earlier today, Pepsi made an unscheduled stop in Toledo to talk to random sodas. There he met Grape Soda, who asked him: “Why are you planning on increasing my carbonation?”

Pepsi responded, “I want to spread the carbon around.”

Developing…

ASP NEWS, Toledo – Who is Grape Soda?

That is the question the media will focus on until everyone forgets Pepsi’s poor answer to Grape Soda’s question.

Grape Soda is not who he claims to be. For one thing, his name isn’t really Grape Soda. It’s “Big K Diet Grape Soda.” For another thing, he’s not a real soda. He’s a generic brand. In fact, he only costs $0.70 for two liters! Under Pepsi’s plan, only those sodas which cost more than $2.50 for a two liter bottle would be extra-carbonated.

Further examinations have uncovered the possibility of Grape Soda’s fraudulent portrayal of himself while daring to ask a question Pepsi answered truthfully. Big K Diet Grape Soda had indicated his affiliation with King Soopers while his recently released tax records suggest strong ties with Kroger.

In a press conference yesterday afternoon, Diet Coke commented, “Which is it ‘Grape Soda’? These questions demand an answer – you can’t have it both ways!”

As if that weren’t enough, Sprite also noted, “You can’t spell ‘Grape’ without ‘rape.’”

What does “Grape Soda” know, and when did he know it? Why did Coke Classic plant Grape Soda at an unscheduled Pepsi stop? The media demand answers! We will continue digging until our last latex glove is soiled.

ASP NEWS, Washington DC – The Coke Classic campaign has accused the media of bias due to its kid gloves treatment of Pepsi and its anal examination of Big K Diet Grape Soda, the fake soda who Coke Classic planted to trip up Pepsi.

The media, biased? As if! We aren’t biased if there are no objections to our reporting and after Pepsi gives his acceptance speech on January 20, we will help usher in a new world of fairness via the Fairness Doctrine which guarantees the suppression of views that disagree with us.

It is Coke Classic who is against being fair. That’s just a fact. It’s not biased to report the facts, even if we only report half of them and occasionally retract three quarters of the half we do report. That’s what true, objective journalism is all about.

ASP reporters Travis Johnson and Peter Pike contributed to this report.

Peter Pike is the author of the novel Public Transit available on-line and in many black market stores worldwide. His website it http://www.intellectualist.net/.

Johnson and Pike are currently collaborating on a screenplay version of Public Transit. So far, they have finished six pages and consumed fourteen gallons of coffee.

If you had asked me even a month ago, I would have told you that I am not voting for president in this election. There are sufficient ballot issues that would have gotten me to the booth, but I’d simply have written in a candidate for the presidential election.

I can stand neither McCain nor Obama. I view both as pompous windbags (that is, “politicians”) who have no one’s interests but their own in mind.

But as Election Day 2008: A Shiver Runs Up My Leg® draws nearer, it becomes more and more obvious that this election has important implications well beyond simply deciding the next president. And I don’t mean the Supreme Court or legislation passed in Congress either. America is big enough that it will be quite difficult for any radical changes in the next four years, although it is of course possible that it would be a necessary first step toward that radical change in, say, 20 years or so.

What I am referring to is the rampant fraud, the illogical ranting, and the obvious bias of the media’s reports. This election has torn open the cesspool that is Washington politics. It has exposed the rot that’s been beneath the surface for years in the form of ACORN. It has shown us the fallacy of trusting in a system that one party refuses to allow to be examined.

We have seen that if you ask The Chosen One a question that he accidentally answers truthfully, the media will ruin you. We now know more about Joe the Plummer’s taxes than we do about Obamessiah’s connection to William Ayers. We will see supposedly erudite philosophers defend this attack, despite the fact that Joe is not running for office, Obama approached him, and it is Obama’s ANSWER that is problematic. Any attack on Joe is an obvious ad hominem, and in fact is the definition of the “Politics of Personal Destruction” but nevertheless it is justifiable to destroy Joe because Obama forgot to lie.

We have seen that voter irregularities don’t matter if they are irregular to the benefit of the Chosen One. We have seen that people who whine about voter suppression couldn’t care less that a certain group is registering the same person dozens of times. What’s the big deal? We all know who ACORN voters trend toward (ein Politiker der Höpenchange), so this is really a good thing. America must be saved from itself.

In fact, we’re told that voting registration irregularities don’t translate into actual voting irregularities. Despite the fact that they do. And have. Indeed, the GOP has been in the unusual position of defending none other than Hillary Clinton in New Mexico because they’ve found the ACORN voting irregularities translated into votes for Obama in the Democratic primary.

But the mainstream media doesn’t want to investigate anything that could possible harm The One. Unfortunately (for Neo, anyway), they’re not the only game in town. The bloggers are doing the job the MSM can’t be bothered with. Which is okay for the MSM since they can claim: “It’s just in the blogs and not in any serious publication.” (Forget for a moment that Monica Lewinsky was broken by Drudge, the first real blogger; that the Dan Rather bogus Bush/National Guard story was cracked by bloggers who took all of fifteen minutes to type up the forged letters in Microsoft Word to determine they were identical to Word’s format. Throw that in the Memory Hole and trust the Media. We Know What’s Best For You™)

From biased “moderators” of debates to the New York Times whitewashing (RACIST OVERTONES ALERT®) Obamessiah’s record, the media has proven itself to be the most vacuous institution on Earth. Given the overall hatred of President Bush and Congress, my own instinctive feeling is that if we polled the average person about their approval of the media, the media would score a single-digit percentage. This is probably why that poll is never done.

Democrat supporters and the media (but I repeat myself) have ruined elections in America forever through their tactics. And therefore, despite the fact that I still despise John McCain, I will be voting for him on November 4 if for no other reason than because the media tells me I shouldn’t and I’m fed up with them. If the media takes time to stop crucifying plumbers, they just might discover the extent to which they are held in contempt. In fact, they might realize they just earned McCain another vote that would have gone to Khan from Star Trek II instead.

Then again, I’m an obvious closet McCain supporter , so what can you believe?

Question not the Chosen One.

If you question Obamessiah, the media will ruin you.

We now know more about Samuel J. Wurzelbacher than we do about The Great One.

Democrats on Sunday had denounced Palin’s charge and warned that it would trigger reexaminations of McCain’s past. McCain “does not want to play guilt-by-association, or this thing could blow up in his face,” Democratic strategist Paul Begala had warned Sunday.

Source.

Maybe it’s just me, but when the basis of this is due to the guy who was in the Weather Underground, that did such things as, you know, blow up a police station, Begala would probably do better to, you know, AVOID the bomb references…

Oh wait. He’s a Democratic [sic] strategist. Of course he doesn’t know any better.

I’ve mentioned this to a couple of people I work with, but regardless of who wins the presidential election this year, there is going to be one clear loser. The media.

That’s right. Our “objective” media is proving beyond all doubt that objectivity is a myth. More accurately, for them objectivity means “agreeing with the New York Times” which the rest of America knows is a crock.

I do find it funny how one little governor from a state that no one in Washington could find (you know, cuz those wonky maps show it off the coast of Mexico, southwest of Los Angeles, sorta near Hawaii, BUT THIS IS A TRICK because it’s really east of Cleveland) has these people in such a tizzy. If I didn’t despise McCain so much, this election season could actually be fun.

Oh well.