mid rampant speculation that either Vice President Dick "Dick" Cheney or presidential brother and hick-state governor Jeb Bush might run for the Republican presidential nomination in '08, current president and term-limit victim George W. Bush has shocked a sleepy and dispassionate nation with the news that he plans to run again in 2008. Though Constitutional scholars and small children both agree that this should be impossible, Bush assured a gaggle of reporters on Sunday that he does indeed have a plan.

"You guys worry too much! Relax, take a nap, I've got it all worked out. Sure, the George Bush you know and have elected to president some number of times is running up against that tired old 'term limits' bugaboo. But under a different name, or after just changing a few letters in my old one, I think I should be able to sail right through the system just fine. Wink, wink."

(The president actually said "wink, wink" here, rather than actually winking. We don't know what the fuck that was about.
-Ed)

"I used this same idea to sign up for the BMG CD club seven or eight times," continued the president. "Trust me, it works. Whether you're voting for Georgie W. Bush or G. Walker Busher in 2008, you'll know the score. Sure, George Bush is a name you've come to know and trust over the three terms that a president has had that name. But why not give Jorge Bosh a chance? He's got some familiar policies, he looks like a president, and he's got the taste adults have grown to love. He's grreeeeeeat!"

At the end of his statement, Bush punched the air like a famous cartoon tiger, greatly worrying most everyone in the room. The president's remarks were met by a stunned silence from the crowd, and a lone, confused request for "Freebird."

When asked what he thought of the president's chances of pulling off such a daring standing broad jump over the U.S. Constitution, Constitutional scholar and commune vending machine restocker Dennis Kurd refused to change the subject away from who had been using a glass cutter to steal Baby Ruths off the bottom row.

commune Answerbot Griswald Dreck was more helpful, taking a break from an intense Joust battle with mail clerk Lefty Gomez to address the legal ramifications of Bush wiping his ass on the Constitution.

"This is a classic case of seniority, open and shut," explained Dreck. "The 22nd Amendment to the Constitution has been going strong since it was ratified in 1951 to finally get rid of FDR, who had been elected sixteen times in a row, four of those after he died. Voters were also concerned about being bored by presidents who might keep un-retiring hundreds of times like Michael Jordan, except they didn't know who Michael Jordon was back then, so they said Wilt Chamberlain. Most think this Amendment to be unstoppable, but one must also consider the other hand, which can fill up with shit fast. George Bush has been doing whatever the hell he wanted to since 1946, a full five years before the 22nd Amendment was even suckling at its mother's paper titty. Fate, gross incompetence, and common sense all appear powerless to end his streak, so I say he takes the Constitution in four rounds. Place your bets now and avoid the lines."

Analysts remain undecided about what effect a third Bush term might have on the nation's fragile liberal population, thought to be currently living in denial, or caves. The nation's humorists, however, have already begun gathering support for a new anti-term-limits Constitutional Amendment to protect their precious golden egg-shitting goose.

he fat-walleted president George W. Bush embarked on a two-day road trip with his staff and advisors to promote a major revamp of the Social Security system, with stops in many western states to gather Republican and Democrat support for his latest plan: Solving the future Social Security problems with magic. With magic, Bush tells us, the problem of supporting a large non-working retired community with a small workforce paying taxes can be fixed, as a small amount of tax money is inexplicably transformed into "bunches."

The plan, first outlined in the State of the Union address, involves heavy investing in magic research, most specifically, figuring out how stage magicians can make a quarter become a dollar coin. Ideally, according to the president, the basic "science" of magic can be expanded until larger sums, such as billions of dollars, are doubled into money to preserve future Social Security benefits. The president's latest proposal replaces less feasible plans, such as just printing more money until we have all we need, or investing in "reliable" stocks and bonds.

"I'm not sure if magic really can be a viable solution to supporting Social Security benefits," said White House critic Rep. Hud Coker (D-Arkansas), "but at least he's not talking that 'privatization' bullshit anymore."

Bush took the lead in the Social Security argument by describing the system as being "in crisis" during his State of the Union speech, and then pushed the agenda further by loading into a van with his staff Friday for a support-building "road trip" to key states. On Friday, the president made stops at auditoriums and town halls, as well as "piss breaks" at gas stations and fast food restaurants, to speak on his hopes for magic as a resolution to the Social Security dilemma future generations will likely face.

"When the workforce is smaller than the community of retirees it supports, it's a big math problem," said the president, while eating from a small bag of Cheetos as he stood by the gas pump. "I'm not very good at math problems, but I know what it means when you need more money than you have. Then I remembered a birthday party I had a couple of years ago, where a magician made twenty-five cents into a dollar. That's what we need, I thought to myself. If this works—and let's face it, it's my best plan yet—it could solve more problems than just Social Security. Funding for perverted paintings and crap? Don't worry, we'll magicize it! And maybe you'll finally let us build missile defense systems and bombers without all the bellyachin'." Then an advisor reminded the president about his campaign promise to quit using the word "bellyachin'" to describe political opposition.

Many critics of the president, those knowledgeable in science and the laws of nature, bemoaned the difficulties of reproducing money through magic, but a few Democrats rallied behind the president's plan as a bipartisan solution to a hot-button old people issue. Ken "Amazing Kenny" Rublett, an unaccredited professor at Ithaca, New York's University of Magic & Illusion, spoke positively of the president's plan.

"I've been lobbying for the government to use magic and prestidigitation to solve national problems ever since Nixon's been president," said Professor Amazing Kenny. "Finally, someone is listening. I don't agree with the Iraq War and I've disagreed with the president's implementation of the Patriot Act, but magic can help us in ways not yet imagined. Have someone like Impresso the Clown put on a show at Guantanamo Bay, and ask for volunteers. When he does the Mystery Box, he can make any potential terrorists disappear—he doesn't have to bring them back. There. We've solved problem of due process without endangering the Constitution! Magic can solve anything!"

The cracker magician then made a ball of fire burst from his hands, at which point this reporter's aggressive instincts kicked in and unleashed a furious ass-whipping on the man.

True, I got fired from my job. I prefer to think I moved on to bigger and better things, and just didn't tell them about it, continuing to use my desk and other facilities for a higher purpose than ameliorating cost-volume reports. They may not have seen it that way, but it could be argued that my superiors were too close to the action to truly see the big picture. My 9 to 5 duties there were, to be frank, just a job. But my newfound mission to figure out what was the worst animated show of the 1980's can only accurately be described as a calling. And I don't have call-waiting, guys, so I've got to run with this now. Sorry for the hurt feelings and the slap fight in the hallway.

First, before we start, can you believe that Perfect Strangers ran for eight seasons? That's fucked up. Okay, on to the cartoons.

During the first phase of my quest to find the worst animated show of the 1980's, the period I like to call my "Gettin' Paid For It" phase, I was working from the misconception that there couldn't possibly have been a worse show than Beverly Hills Teens, which debuted in 1987 and sucked a hole in your TV for an entire season, teaching kids the valuable lesson that being rich is fun. But then I remembered The Care Bears and realized I had a lot of work still to do.

The Care Bears were truly awful, as must be any show created by a greeting card company. But The Care Bears wasn't even the worst show made by that company, as Strawberry Shortcake stank her way up the same path in 1980. And any conversation about bad cartoons made from greeting cards began and ended with Rainbow Brite, which Hallmark spooged onto our collective consciousness in 1985.

Easily more terrible than shows made from greeting cards were shows made from toys. For every semi-tolerable animated commercial like Transformers or G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, there was an antichrist like the Pound Puppies or My Little Pony 'n' Friends. To this day, no one can be sure which side of the fence He-Man and the Masters of the Universe falls on, since this tale of a skinny, bespectacled prince fond of Monty Python and math jokes being zapped with an intercosmic ray that turns him into Dolph Lundgren could be viewed as either wish-fulfillment or supreme nightmare depending on one's point of view.

But stranger still were the cartoons made from things you'd never think they could, or would think to attempt to, make into cartoons. There were cartoons made from prime-time sitcoms (Alf), hit movies ( The Ewoks and Star Wars Droids Adventure Hour), and scary folk legends (The Smurfs). There was even an animated show made from the hit video game Pac-Man, which followed the adventures of Packy and his wife and son, which taught kids the valuable lesson that "Packy" is a really rude thing to call somebody from Pakistan.

But strangest of all those was Rubik, the Amazing Cube, which was a remarkably insane attempt to cash in on the popularity of the Rubik's Cube puzzle. For some reason the show was centered around a Hispanic family in Los Angeles, most likely because the white studio execs thought "Rubik" was a common Latino name.

Then there's the Wuzzles. The Wuzzles were strangely interbred animals formed by either unadvisable jungle mating or unscrupulous laboratory experiments carried on my former Nazi scientists, depending on whose version of their origin legend you believe. Living in the Land of Wuz, where everyone remains firmly fixated on the past, the show followed the adventures of Rhinokey, Bumblelion, and Asparagiraffe, an unfortunate accidental combination of a giraffe and asparagus, who was an outcast even among the Wuzzles. Suck ensued.

All of these, however, held something back from their true powers of awfulness for commercial reasons, and so must be relegated to runner-up status. Because nothing, and I mean nothing, ever sucked as much as The Berenstain Bears. You may disagree, but you'd be wrong. Suck this hot has to be handled with asbestos mittens.

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