Healthcare Weasel Sees Shadow: Six More Weeks of Negotiations

In a heartwarming ceremony earlier today, Washington Wally the Healthcare Weasel was wrenched from his hole by prominent Democrat leaders. Democratic strategists report that as Wally emerged, he saw his shadow. That means just six more weeks of negotiations before they ram the bill through.

Healthcare Summit a Mixed Bag

President Obama tried one final time to get Republicans to understand why they are so wrong about everything, but once again, they just would not listen.

The summit ended up being a mixed bag of results, as Democrats performed like gold medal Olympic stars, while Republicans stumbled and bumbled like infant monkeys on broken roller blades.

The Democrats today made sense, spoke with empathy as they read heartwarming letters, and had a pitch perfect day of incredible amazingness. On the other hand, Republicans tried to obscure and cloud the emotional summit with tedious facts and yawn-inducing figures.

The Republicans even wheeled the gigantic 3,000 page bill into the room as a cheap political stunt. Why should they even have the bill in the summit room? It's not like anybody's ever going to read it.

Face it, Republicans. America is fed up with political gamesmanship. They have proven over and over again that they just want something, anything to get done, no matter what damage it does to the country in the long run. This bill needs to be passed right now, right now, right now, so it can begin to start right away in 2013.


Blah, blah, blah indeed. The healthcare summit is done, and the time for talk is over. Again.

Study: Liberals Smarter, More Open-Minded Than Conservatives

A new study has demonstrated that there are key differences in the physical brain structures of liberals vs. conservatives.

Commissioned by UC Berkeley and carried out at Columbia University, this unbiased research attempted to determine if there were any mental predictors of liberalism and conservatism. The results were as stunning as they were unassailable.

"One thing we learned was that the makeup of the liberal mind shows an incredible eye for assembling new information and modifying beliefs where necessary", remarked one of the scientists. "The conservative mind, on the other hand, demonstrates inarguable rigidity, pre-judgment, a very low IQ, and often an unshakable belief in pathetic and stupid, impossible things that everyone knows is wrong".

Subjects were asked a series of questions to determine their political outlook and put into two groups: "Democrat" and "Republican". After being divided into groups, they were then sat in front of a keyboard and computer screen and shown a series of quotations about the world and themselves. The instructions were simple - hit one key for "Yes" and one key for "No".

What the subjects did not know was that the keys were secretly labeled underneath with alternative meanings. The "Yes" key was the "I am Smart" key and the "No" key was the "I am Dumb" key.

For example, when the groups were shown the quotation, "Man's greed is causing the Earth to die", liberals by a very wide margin hit the correct key, "Yes" (I am Smart), where conservatives very often hit the stupid key, "No" (I am Dumb). "Toilet paper should be used one square at a time, no matter what you are wiping" produced the same result.

Racism was rampant among conservatives, and the study left little future argument for this obvious fact. When the quote "The president is doing an amazing job, especially for a black guy", liberals always hit "Yes" (I am Intelligent) where conservatives showed their hateful right-wing bias by hitting "No" (I am a Stupid Racist).

Other quotes shown to the subjects included, "There is no God, only Government can save us", "Unwanted babies should be left alone in hospital closets" and "Communism is the bees knees".

On the personal beliefs side, some quotes were, "I don't believe in God", "I think the right of free speech was meant to be limited to the expression of universally correct, liberal truths", "Conseratives are dumb", "Islam is the light", and "George Bush wrecked the World Trade Center so he could get Saddam and also oil from the brown people." Incredibly, liberals got all of these questions right ("Yes") where conservatives got them all wrong ("No").

More study will, of course, be needed to determine exactly how intelligent liberals are and why their brains function so astoundingly well. Also why they're so alarmingly open-minded about every single thing.

Based on the results of the study, the scientists agreed that it would be waste of time for anyone to compare conservatives to liberals anymore, hinting that future studies may want to pit conservatives up against something more on their level, like "poop", and "poopypants".

Mega Word Jumble Puzzle

So, you think you're the smartest Mega Independent reader out there? Well, try this word jumble puzzle on for size, and stretch your brain to the max! Take breaks, if necessary.

Answer next week!

Was the Alabama Professor a Tea Partier?

Amy Bishop has been accused of killing three colleagues with a gun. And now a "photo" has surfaced here at The Mega Independent which brings up troubling new questions. Below is her mug shot, and beneath that, a "photo" that may depict her at a so-called "Tea Party" gathering in Washington DC.

Now, we at the Mega Independent cannot be positive as to what date the "photo" is from, or if there was a Tea Party going on that day, or even if the "photo" may have been doctored slightly, with the sign added hastily for mega effect, and our "artists" too lazy to even come up with a decent daytime shot of the Capitol Building as a backdrop.

But just the fact that we're floating the whole idea of Amy Bishop being a Tea Partier without any real proof or checking our facts, and even by brazenly manufacturing things whole cloth when possible, does bring up some troubling new questions about the Tea Parties, doesn't it?

Our headline is troubling. The questions are troubling. The word "troubling" is troubling. The whole thing is very troubling. Watch out for tea partiers.

Scientists: 2010 Already The Warmest Year on Record

Renowned climate scientists are warning that 2010 is already the warmest year on record.

"The data is terrifying," remarked one scientist who wished to remain anonymous. "If things continue this way, there will be no turning back from it. Ever."

The brutal winter that has hit much of the northern hemisphere has allowed low-knowledge skeptics to distort all of the facts. "The fact is we have weather stations, and these weather stations are reporting to our computers that this is the warmest year on record," continued the scientist. "Only an idiot would bother to disagree with a computer."

But computers get things wrong all the time, right? Wrong. A good computer can make over sixty trillion calculations in one second. We asked a global warming skeptic how many calculations he could make in a second, and he admitted that it was "probably one or two". Sixty trillion vs. two. You do the math.

But a weather station can be wrong, too, right? Wrong. Weather stations are just little computers that measure things. We asked the very same skeptic what the temperature was outside and, embarrassingly, he was off by three degrees. But a weather station can measure current temperature with accuracy to the third decimal point. Advantage, weather station.

So who are you going to believe? A scientist with a computer or some teabagging skeptic?

The science is clear. 2010 is the warmest year in the history of the planet. And even if it isn't, the ice caps are melting like crazy. And even if they're not, Greenland will be gone by the end of 2014. And even if it won't, the sea level is rising at a faster rate than ever. And even if it's not, the oceans' temperatures are warmer than ever before. And even if they're not, the carbon we are pumping into the atmosphere with our policies of greed is going to put the Earth at a dangerous "tipping point" from which there will be absolutely no return.

And even if it's not, some scientists tell us that the right mixture of greenhouse gases could potentially cause the sun to heat the Earth's crust much like a giant microwave, burning all of us slowly to a dried up crisp, like some medieval torture at Guantanamo Bay.

The data is in. 2010 is either the warmest year on record, or you enjoy the idea of everybody being microwaved to death.

Poll: Healthcare Reform

We polled 3500 Independent readers about Healthcare Reform to find out what the electorate believes the Democrats' next move should be. Thank you to all who responded.

Breaking: Sarah Palin Mega Scandal!

Sarah Palin gave a speech to the tea party convention in Nashville last night. But special cameras reveal that all is not what it seemed.

Ms. Palin stood in front of a podium, with a slanted surface and a small lip, and on this lip was a collection of hand written note cards. And attached to the podium was a double microphone, used to elevate and project her voice through artificial speakers that were strategically placed around the large room to fool attendees into believing she speaks much louder than she really can.

"Great orators do not hide behind podiums and microphones", said one Democratic strategist. "George Washington did not need a podium to cross the Delaware, Abraham Lincoln did not free the slaves with a microphone, and Martin Luther King's famous speech was called 'I Have a Dream', not 'I Have Some Little Note Cards'".

At many points through the evening, Palin showed herself to be far out of her element, shuffling her cards one after the other after the other like a smarmy Vegas blackjack dealer. When poor Sarah was finished with each card, she would flip it over upside down as if to brag to everybody that she didn't really need it after all.

But the cameras tell the tale. As each new card was revealed, Palin's eyes would glance down at them, as if she was using them to recall various "points" while she spoke, like a nervous fifth grader giving her first ever public speech to her little public friends.

Palin was asked about running for president last night, and she did not rule it out. But someone should notify her that she will not be able to drag her giant wooden podium along with her when she meets with foreign heads of state. And that when she's at an important dinner gathering, she may have to actually project her voice to people without the supersonic technological assistance of a hidden double microphone.

Sarah may have captivated the teabaggers last night with her endless stream of assisted words, but the truth is quite clear... no matter how much she "mugs" for the camera, or how many cards she "leaves" behind, speaking off the cuff without help is quite obviously not her "cup of tea".

Global Warming Causing Record Snowmelt

An incredible amount of snowmelt across the continental U.S. this winter is being blamed on rising global temperatures.

In the past two months, the country has been slammed with brutal dripping, flooding and icicling, and scientists are pinning it directly on excess carbon output. As one climatologist from UC Berkeley explains, "Instead of sitting on the ground like normal snow, this snow is being bombarded sometimes with above freezing temperatures, causing record havoc".

In a perfect world, snow will sit on the ground for days and days, slowly sublimating into the atmosphere as harmless water vapor. But increased temperatures are being blamed for causing much of this winter's snow to bypass the sublimation process, and turn into deadly liquid snow.

"Unlike regular snow, liquid snow doesn't stay in one place," explains Vishnu Mrkaman, a climate scientist from Great Britain, "it can move around and cause great amounts of unpredictable damage. In a winter such as this one, which has the potential for lots and lots of liquid ground snow, Global Warming is an even bigger danger than ever."

Until we do something to stop the bleeding economically, snowmelt is just one more Climate Change force we all must reckon with.

Obama Breaks Promise

The story Obama Breaks Promise has been withdrawn. A replacement story will run whenever we get around to it.

If you would like to see what was in the article Obama Breaks Promise, don't bother looking around. It certainly wasn't about Obama, or any promise that he broke. We swear.

Four Steps to Republican Resurgence

An Opinion Column by Frank Finger

As the recent elections in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts have demonstrated, Republicans have one chance this year to go from complete marginality to at least a faux leadership position. This is how they can do it.

1. Accept That Not Everybody is White. The Republicans will never win the vote of minorities by catering only to the needs of white people. Republican code words like "freedom" and "tax cuts" that refer specifically to the priveleges traditionally enjoyed by caucasians need to be put back two centuries where they belong. The president is a black man. And he won fair and square, no thanks to any of you, you racists.

2. Stop Being the Party of No... Ideas, That Is. It's been horrifying enough watching Republicans attempt to thwart President Obama's center-right agenda over and over through a petty barrage of no, no, no. But one day the GOP will wake up and realize that voters want to hear actual ideas, not just simpleminded obstruction. Hopefully by the time they come up with a single suggestion for improving the American healthcare system, we won't already all be dead.

3. The Crusades Ended 800 Years Ago, Get Over It. What Americans believe spiritually is the most private thing in their lives. So why is it that Republicans want to shove Jesus Loves You down everybody's throat through invidious legislation? Are they so out of touch that they don't know that people also worship Buddha, Allah and Vishnu? Have they missed all the recent shouts of Allahu Akbar (translation: God is Great)?

4. Admit That Democrats are Smarter and Have Better Ideas. As 2008 demonstrated, the American people have awakened to the fact that Democrats not only know exactly what they're doing, but they know exactly how to do it. It's no coincidence that since the anointing of Barack Obama, America gets more and more awesome by the day. So as Republicans campaign in each election, big and small in 2010 and beyond, my advice to them is to just come out and say it. "Yes, my opponent is more refined, more intellectual, has all the answers, and understands how to make America incredibly amazing. But vote for me anyway." It will show a degree of honesty that has been sorely lacking and the voters will respect them for it.

Frank Finger is a six-time Pulitzer winning conservative columnist who writes for the Mega Independent.