"HOW TO"S OF PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS
By Alexandar H., age 14

THE EASIEST WAY TO BECOME PRESIDENT WITHOUT BEING ELECTED.

1) Make sure you are a Republican. America looks the other way when
Republicans commit election crimes.

2) Make sure that your dad is rich, a CIA director, Congressman, Vice
President and President. That way he can fix all your problems and use
his influence to help you. If this does not describe your father,
consider becoming a janitor. The odds of success are better.

3) Don't worry about grades in school. All that's needed is daddy's
influence to get into higher schools and jobs that straight A students
get turned away from.

4) Arrests for drug and alcohol-related offenses only matter if (1) is
not applicable to your father.

5) If a war or international police action comes up, be sure to dodge
the draft and let some poor kid go in your place. If you don't survive
the war, you cannot become President.

6) A good way to dodge the draft is to join the Air National Guard.
Don't worry if your score is barely passing, A little influence from
(1) above will get you a lot further than a 100% score on the entrance
exam.

7) Don't report for a physical. Drugs might show up and that would be
bad. It's better to have them guess.

8) No need to report for duty. You can go AWOL for over a year
without anyone caring. If anyone asks where you were during the year
you were AWOL, just say you don't remember.

9) Marry someone who has already killed her first fiancé. That way,
she won't have any grounds to object to the body count your
administration leaves.

10) Get foreign experience by going into business with the Bin Laden
family. Don't worry if the business goes belly up. Your investors will
be grateful for the chance to buy your dad.

11) Make sure daddy has well placed friends in the SEC so that if
there is anything funny going on with your company stocks or any
insider trading, it won't get it the way of your career plans.

12) Become governor of a state where the governor gets to take most of
the days as vacation days and be sure to wreck the environment of that
state so your friends in the environment-wrecking business will be
happy enough to support you when you run for President.

13) Hold up federal health care funds so all the kids who might oppose
you never have a chance to grow up.

14) Order lots of executions so that you will feel right at home when
your administration starts lots of wars.

15) Make sure that your brother is the governor of a critical state in
the presidential election and that a close friend of his is Secretary
of State for that state and that they will call that state's election
for you even if you've lost that state.

16) Hire the families of members of the Supreme Court in case the
Supremes later get the opportunity to appoint the President.

17) Make sure the news media is owned by mega-corporations controlled
by your party and reports only what you want reported.

18) It's okay to act dumb. That way if any disasters happen during
your administration, no one will suspect you.

19) Fund a third party candidate to distract your main opponent and
split his vote in critical states.

20) MOST IMPORTANTLY - DON'T LET THEM COUNT ANY BALLOTS.



HOW TO STAY IN THE WHITE HOUSE EVEN WHEN EVERYONE HATES YOU

1) Have major disasters and wars on your watch and call anyone who
questions you unpatriotic or "Terrist."

2) Make sure the news media only covers your version of the news.

3) If you have any intelligent opponents, such as Dennis Kucinich,
make sure they get no news coverage of any kind.

4) Pick the opponent you want to run against and make sure he winds up
on the covers of Time and Newsweek and that Ted Koppel makes a 90
minute info-merical with him.

5) Have your dissenters crowded into First Amendment zones.

6) Make sure corporations controlled by your party write voting
programs that will guarantee you the victory and that these are
installed in voting booths around the country. Make sure the software
stays secret so no one can view the lines of rigged code.

7) Make sure there is no paper trail to prove who really wins the next
election.

8) Make sure the president of Diebold, one of the companies that
supply the voting software, promises you such states as Ohio.

9) If anyone notices that two years before the next Presidential
election voting computers gave vote count victories of 18181 (A-Ha-Ha
when translated into letters), make sure the news media doesn't comment
on this.

10) Catch Osama Bin Laden, put him in solitary so no one know and wait
to report it until late October or November 1.

11) Make sure no one counts the votes.



BEST WAYS TO LOSE A PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION

If any of the nine candidates is just trying to get his/her name out
there, get a pat on the back for making a good try and never have to
take office, this strategy might help in achieving that goal.

1) Make sure no one on your national staff has national campaign
experience and fire anyone who does.

2) Upset major ethnic groups by canceling longstanding speaking
engagements at the last minute with a flimsy excuse that no one will
believe.

3) If volunteers come up with creative ideas that might actually win
you the election make sure that a campaign coordinator calls those
volunteers fringe lunatics or LaRouchees and scares them off. Also,
regular insults from paid coordinators to the volunteer staff help to
discourage volunteers when they do too much work.

4) If you can find someone who has run companies that have caught the
attention of federal law enforcement officers, quickly make him part of
your campaign so dedicated volunteers will quickly resign. If you give
someone like that a position of prestige and authority, you may get
lucky enough to lose all your reputable volunteers.

5) If you can, find coordinators from outside of your political party.
That way your party won't take your election too seriously or actually
help you to win.

6) Discourage volunteers from writing significant numbers of letters
to newspapers, TV stations and talk show hosts. If any of these people
or places actually received volumes of mail from people wanting you
covered, they might actually cover you.

7) If someone donates an office to your campaign, make sure the
campaign never arranges for it to have telephones. People might start
calling the office and joining your campaign.

8) If you are getting great results from well-organized and structured
volunteer groups, be sure and insult these organizations by treating
them as irrelevant and by only recognizing people who are working hard
to rip these volunteer organizations apart.

9) Be sure and isolate yourself from feedback from volunteers and make
sure that all individuals who have the success of your campaign at
heart have no way to directly give you information that might save your
campaign.

10) Remember, never trust your hardest working volunteers. They're
probably only doing it because they want to see you elected. If you
listen to them, you might wind up having to cancel that vacation
planned for the day after your concession speech.



[bio: Alex is an actor, dancer, choreographer, writer, comedian, artist
and the illustrator of the weekly comic series "The Continuing
Adventures of Cowardly Tom and Bully George." Years ago when Alex was
in kindergarten, he was identified as intellectually gifted by his
school district and was quickly placed into a special program for
gifted and talented students.]