Newsweek will end its print publication after 80 years and shift to an all-digital format in early 2013–The Washington Post

Sing, O Muse, and Goddess, speak ye:

Death, as it must to each newsweekly

Comes now to the world’s most quoted.

Once so thick it barely floated,

Insouciant and cheeky.

Who did the deed? Who was the psycho

Who sold that final ad to Geico

And on the way to shutting down

Threw the switch marked “Fade to Brown”?

And when the final Boomer dies

Will it take us by surprise?

Will women ever have it all?

What will happen to Ron Paul?

If there’s another coup or strongman

In some place like Chad or Mali

The world won’t know the right from wrong man

Unless he’s interviewed by Lally.

And if they find a cure for cancer

Billy Graham’s gay male lover

Prince Charles with a belly dancer

It still won’t make it on the cover.

Chatter on, ye coastal classes

All the world’s a vast arena

History moves on, and passes

Without a backwards glance at Tina.

“…the institution of slavery that the black race has long believed to be an abomination upon its people may actually have been a blessing in disguise. The blacks who could endure those conditions and circumstances would someday be rewarded with citizenship in the greatest nation ever established upon the face of the Earth.”–Arkansas state representative Jon Hubbard (R-Jonesboro).  

 “Nowhere in the Holy Bible have I found a word of condemnation for the operation of slavery, Old or New Testament. If slavery was so bad, why didn’t Jesus, Paul or the prophets say something?”–Arkansas state representative Loy Mauch (R-Bismarck).

 “Both your male and female slaves, whom you shall have, shall be of the nations that are round about you; of them shall you buy male and female slaves.”–Leviticus 25:44.

Oh, say can you see, over there on the Right,

That slavery had several features redeeming

It’s there in the Bible, in plain black and white

God likes the sound of the flogging and screaming.

And who knows from where

The idea’s in the air

That freedom is something that you have to share.

And the word of the Bible over Arkansas waves

The land of Huckabee, and the home of the slaves.

Well, Jim, my opponent is a lying sack of shit

Known for cheating orphans and for sucking on the tit

Of Moloch and the Golden Calf.  He combs his hair with spit.

I’m glad you asked that question, Jim, and my opponent’s answer–

From Mister Job Creator here, the big-shot wealth enhancer–

He wants the uninsured to die a painful death from cancer.

He wants to make you straighten out your poor pathetic lives

But mostly wants to guarantee the hoity-toity thrives.

His tax returns would show he’s got at least a dozen wives.

He torments children in the street with noogies and with pinpricks

Sneaks up on nuns to goose them and gives raspberries and shin kicks

To anyone who can’t afford a horse in the Olympics.

And Jim, if I can take a moment here to summarize

My opponent wants to stick hot needles in your eyes

He’s never had to look for work, or miss a meal, or beg, yet

His idea of “trickle down” is gonna get your leg wet.

“I am asking you to join me and my family … by fasting and praying for Mitt Romney that he will be blessed in the debates, which will be held Oct. 3rd…I know that fasting and praying brings about miracles.”–an email circulating among Mormons in several Western states.

When the pendulum is swinging and it’s aimed right at your head

When commentators turn away and give you up for dead

When you think you should have maybe gone to dental school instead

Get down on your knees and pray and fast.

When you’re losing in Ohio here’s a tip you might find handy

It’s a lesson drawn directly from God’s modus operandi

He’ll give you what you ask for if you starve yourself like Gandhi

Or mystics in the dim and distant past.

If Gallup says it’s time to curl up in a ball and die

Remember that the only Poll that counts is in the Sky.

And we’ve converted all the dead to Mormons, which is why

It doesn’t matter if we’re running last.

We’re blanketing the airwaves with a massive prayer attack

You can’t turn off commercials from the Lord’s own Super-Pac

So any day now you will see Mitt Romney bouncing back.

We’ll get the vote that God alone can cast.

What if Ayman al-Zawahiri and other al-Qaida leaders gave up Osama Bin Laden for the express purpose  of making Obama look good?–Rush Limbaugh

Oh, you can fool Wolf Blitzer or Matt Lauer any day

And Rachel Maddow swallows whole most anything you say.

But Rush is just impervious, you can’t lead him astray.

You’ll never change the mind inside a head made out of clay.

Yes he can spot conspiracies so clever and so vast

That everyone is part of them. The world would stand aghast

If they could know what he knows. The giant net is cast

Across the globe to snare us all, but Rush is just too fast.

If he’d been at Pearl Harbor then he would have known the score

It all was planned by FDR to get us in the war

And climate change is just a hoax, dreamed up by Al Gore,

The lunar landings all were staged, and Sandra Fluke’s a whore

And far away in Pakistan, that little bit of drama there

Staged with all the fireworks and Special-Ops-arama flair

Was actually a double-cross, al Qaeda’s shrewd Osama snare

To ruin the United States with bailouts and Obamacare.

Are you better off now than four years ago?–Tiresome campaign meme.

What I am, is four years older.

That’s not the change I voted for.

I’ve got this big Manila folder

Labeled “Hope” here in the drawer.

I’m not getting better off in

Any way, as time will tell.

When they put me in my coffin

I’ll just be changing rooms in Hell.

Spare me all your cute banalities

Don’t expect me to rejoice.

Four more years of root canalities

Isn’t my idea of “choice.”

Life is only what you make it

Don’t give presidents the blame

Existentialists can’t fake it

I’m voting for him all the same.

Convention musings:

Give me your tired, your poor

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

They can start a bar or candy store.

We’ll make ours in private equity.

Descendants of these hapless schlubs

In just a generation

Can join us in our country clubs,

Denouncing immigration.

And proudly look back on the life

They built upon this shore. Cheers

Will echo for their toil and strife

At least once every four years.

And when the game of life is scored

You’ll see that hard work pays

Being rich is our reward

For grandpa’s 16-hour days.

The future of the future isn’t what it used to be

We crossed the New Frontier and look around us and we see

Aspirations, once so bold, so high and Apollonian

Confined into a dusty case somewhere in the Smithsonian.

The Moon, it seems, is made of rocks. We have the rocks to prove it.

A greater feat of genius than the paintings in the Louvre. It

Wasn’t private equity that built those giant rockets

You didn’t see the “job creators” reach into their pockets.

If you want to reach the Moon your prospects will depend

On a certain willingness to–ahem– “tax and spend.”

And in the modern lexicon it all sounds so distasteful

Tea Party knows the government’s incompetent and wasteful

By definition anything it does is a mistake

And Fox TV will tell you that the landings all were fake.

And science has to answer for the way it rides roughshod

Over the eternal truths as written down by God.

Apollo Missions 1, 2, 3 …. 8, 9, 10, 11:

Why bother going into space unless to look for Heaven?

The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand–Paul Ryan

 I regard charity as a marginal issue. What I am fighting is the idea that charity is a moral duty and a primary virtue.–Ayn Rand, interviewed in Playboy, 1964.

To illustrate this on the altruists’ favorite example: the issue of saving a drowning person. If the person to be saved is a stranger, it is morally proper to save him only when the danger to one’s own life is minimal. –Ayn Rand, “The Virtue of Selfishness”

Don’t go jumping off the docks

Don’t put yourself in danger

You’ll catch cold if you wet your socks

Rescuing a stranger.

To the cries of drowning men

We all must turn our backs

We fired all the lifeguards when

We cut the income tax.

Where’s the virtue, what’s the sense

When, by charity beguiled,

You give up your hard-earned cents

To feed a hungry child?

The greatest vice is sacrifice

And it’s a moral blunder

To charge less than the market price

Or share your hoarded plunder.

“I’m very looking forward to a Republican being back in office. When you’re rich, you want a Republican in office.”–porn film star Jenna Jameson, endorsing Mitt Romney.

Rich people, united, will never be defeated!

Shout it from the country clubs, broadcast and retweet it!

Even if you made your money lying on your ass

You’re not in bed with Democrats, you won’t betray your class.

Does the government get credit for the way you shake your booty?

Should every little money shot be subject to a duty?

Someone had to build those breasts, to make them perk and stand out

It wasn’t any bureaucrat, it didn’t take a handout.

You’re a job creator in your–ahem–private sector

And you don’t want to give it up to any tax collector.

And you earned every dollar on your knees or on your rump

And so you take your stand today, alongside Donald Trump.