President Bush: Great President, or Greatest President?

In watching interviews with White House Spokesperson Dana Perino, Vice President Cheney, and even Bush himself, you get the sense that not only were the last eight years not a complete and utter failure, but that all those “mistakes” Bush made weren’t really his – he somehow inherited a crumbling economy, according to Bush and his revisionist scribes. In fact, once “history” has its say, Bush’s tenure will be viewed as an unqualified success. All we have to do now is sit back, relax, and wait for the history to kick in.

Pictured: History

(Of course, we have the “now” to deal with: two wars, a crumbling economy, unemployment rising, a huge deficit, worldwide terrorism on the rise, and oh yeah – where’s New Orleans again?)

Palin…. sings?!

After watching Palin’s interviews, stump speeches, and her appearance on Saturday Night Live (‘appearance’ being the operative word – she literally sat there and watched Amy Poehler rap about shooting a moose and associating Obama with Bill Ayers), there was this gnawing thought in the back of my mind that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

The VP candidate has this mysterious, unknown quality about her, and yet… and yet she has this, I dunno – homey, folksy, down-to-earth-yet-completely-divorced-from-reality quality about her. It reminds me of something I saw a while ago.

It was a story about this fish-out-of-water, completely oblivious woman whose fantasy world is completely detached from the way things really are… she had this superbly naive, idealistic view of things no matter how difficult or complicated things were… Oh, I remember now!

…

Above: Sarah Palin was the not-too-well-known inspiration for Giselle’s character.

The similarities are endless. Take, for example, Palin’s uncontrollable facial reaction to Charles Gibson’s question about the Bush Doctrine and compare it with Giselle entering New York for the first time via magical subterranean teleportation:

Bush Doctrine? Is that a girly disease?

Now, I could go on ad nauseum about Palins’ debate style, her Forrest Gump approach to interviews, even her fundamentally flawed perspective on global warming and reproductive rights. But, in the spirit of Palin’s aw-shucks-ma’am sticktoitiveness, I’ve decided to forego all of that and just write a parody in her honor. After all, it seems that Mrs. Palin would much prefer to skip all the talkin’ and get down to some gosh-darned rootin’ tootin’ fun!

So here it is. This one’s for you, Sarah! God bless you and all of your unwitting, parody-inspiring comedy.

Editor’s note – Brianne Roenbeck provided the lovely vocals for Sarah Palin. More of her can be seen here.

The Empire Strikes Barack

The staff at Weekly Review is busy with a couple of other projects right now, so we’re gonna be lazy today and just post a hilarious Star Wars parody entitled “The Empire Strikes Barack”. Whoever went through all the time it took to Flash animate the primary election struggle between Obama and Clinton deserves BIG kudos.

Editor’s note: splicing footage of Clinton blaming her forgetfulness on the time of day with her “3 a.m.” ad was BRILLIANT.

Sesame Street: The GOP version

The staff at Weekly Review has finally gotten around to getting some of our old videos online for all to enjoy. Most of these are from the live theater version of Weekly Review, performed at Caroline’s on Broadway.

Kenneth Tomlinson, a man obsessed with getting rid of all of the ‘liberal bias’ running amok in the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (you know, Sesame Street, Reading Rainbow, etc.), has resigned.

Fortunately, no permanent damage was done to PBS, but during his tenure at CPB, he spent over $14,000 in taxpayer money for a ‘study’ on this alleged liberal bias, and what could be done about it. Had Tomlinson’s plans reached fruition, we imagine the new, non-liberal, Republican-friendly version of Sesame Street would look a lot like this:

Church-goers to Dems: don’t bother

The staff at Weekly Review has finally gotten around to getting some of our old videos online for all to enjoy. Most of these are from the live theater version of Weekly Review, performed at Caroline’s on Broadway.

Plenty has been said about whether or not it’s worth it for Democratic candidates to go after the ‘religious’ or ‘values’ voters. Sure, Barack Obama attends church regularly, but his pastor’s KRRRRAZY! And, anyway, isn’t he a Muslim or something? And yeah, Hilary Clinton talks a lot about her walks with Jeezus, and how forgiving her husband for his infidelity was the Christian thing to do. But isn’t it all for naught? After all, most gun-loving, chest-thumping, Bible-reading Christian Americans see the letter “D” after someone’s name and picture a limp-wristed Frenchman who wants to surrender to the nearest terrorist, right?

Well…. yeah. For the most part. It certainly doesn’t help when Chan Chandler, former pastor at the East Waynesville Baptist Church in North Carolina removed the liberal members of his congregation for – wait for it – being liberal. Apparently, church is only for those who are “Christian” in the sense that they see Jeezus as a red-blooded, flag-waving, Republican soldier who spits flames and wields an M-16.

It wasn’t until the IRS decided to investigate Chandler’s shennanigans that he was forced to resign. Before that, he regularly used the pulpit to speak on behalf of God’s messenger, President Bush. Anyway, here’s a quick glimpse into what Chandler’s sermons used to look like before he became unemployed.

Sandra Day: We’ll miss you

The staff at Weekly Review has finally gotten around to getting some of our old videos online for all to enjoy. Most of these are from the live theater version of Weekly Review, performed at Caroline’s on Broadway.

Now that Sandra Day O’Connor has retired, thanks to the Bush Administration we’ve got a right-wing leaning Supreme Court that has made decisions that negatively effect, among other things, worker’s rights to fair pay.

A lot of decisions have been made recently that come down to a 5-4 majority. It’s with that in mind that we take you to the Supreme Court locker room, where Ginsberg and her pals are discussing their retired contemporary.

Creationism Class

The staff at Weekly Review has finally gotten around to getting some of our old videos online for all to enjoy. Most of these are from the live theater version of Weekly Review, performed at Caroline’s on Broadway.

Creationism is on the rise in our local schools. Again. A book by Larry Booher called “Creation Battles Evolution” has been published in North Carolina, and some think it should be used as a science textbook. Kansas and Pennsylvania school boards are trying to force “Intelligent Design” into school’s curriculum, even though the Supreme Court has been very clear that public schools cannot teach Creationism.

Recently, the National Science Teacher’s Association has called Intelligent Design a “pseudo science”, and remarked that it has no place in the classroom. They also pointed out that they were stunned and disappointed that President Bush (clearly a scholar in his own right) endorses the teaching of Intelligent Design, which brings Biblical Creationism into American science classrooms. It does make one wonder; would the proponents of Intelligent Design (or Creationism or whatever the Religious Right wants to brand it this week) also vociferously fight for Greek Mythology to be taught in science classrooms? What about Buddhism? After all, there are plenty of creation stories out there, so why not bring them all into public schools and label them ‘science’?

We all know that fundamentalist Christians are trying to make sure that kids don’t get sent astray by evil scientists and their ‘theories’ about evolution. So, to make sure the ‘science’ of Creationism (Earth is 6,000 years old; God made everything in six 24-hour long days) gets a fair shake alongside Evolution (Earth is billions of years old; primordial soup formed the first single-cell organisms that became monkeys, then people) we’ve decided to go inside a Pennsylvania classroom to look at a Creationism Class in action.

Tic Toc Top Court

The staff at Weekly Review has finally gotten around to getting some of our old videos online for all to enjoy. Most of these are from the live theater version of Weekly Review, performed at Caroline’s on Broadway.

What does it take in this day and age to get appointed to the Supreme Court? An even-keeled reputation for fair-mindedness? A stellar portfolio of presiding over difficult cases? Charming good looks? An ethnic minority? No! Not if you’re now-Chief Justice John Roberts, who more closely resembles Otto the Inflatable Auto-Pilot from the movie Airplane than he does an actual judge.

Above: which is the real John Roberts? Can you tell?

Anyway, we’re sure that the President’s choice to tap John Roberts for the Chief Justice chair was a long and difficult one involved a dartboard and a half-empty bottle of Yagermeister, so we present to you the three top contenders at the time: Luttig, Roberts and that lovable scamp Alberto Gonzales.

Dubya and the Munitions Factory

The staff at Weekly Review has finally gotten around to getting some of our old videos online for all to enjoy. Most of these are from the live theater version of Weekly Review, performed at Caroline’s on Broadway.

What happens when you mix Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with Dubya and the international fight to secure nuclear weapon capabilities? You get this:

Bush’s Bicycle

The staff at Weekly Review has finally gotten around to getting some of our old videos online for all to enjoy. Most of these are from the live theater version of Weekly Review, performed at Caroline’s on Broadway.

Leader of the Free World. Pioneer in the War on Terror. Man of the People. Bicycle enthusiast. These are but a few ways of describing our President, who spends more time working out and on his bicycle than he does working on national security and catching Osama Bin Laden. Enjoy our spoof of Queen’s “Bicycle Race”.