I swung over to China this morning for some authentic Szechwan Style Red Snapper with a side of oppression. Afterward, I rolled through Shanghai’s America-town, where I found this bootleg copy of the upcoming third and final presidential debate. There’s a little off-color language, so don’t watch this at work:

How else to explain these unexpectedly cruel “gotcha” questions?

Warm up for the upcoming elections by voting for Candorville in another reader poll! If you live in North Carolina or you read the Raleigh News & Observer, go to the News & Observer’s website and vote for them to KEEP CANDORVILLE.

If you don’t care about the other strips they’re mentioning, then only check the Candorville box.Candorville didn’t have an easy time getting into the N&O, since the week it debuted in that big Southern paper, we were running a pretty blunt “Closeted Gay Republican Hypocrites” series. The readership was bitterly divided in the N&O forums, but a perceptive editor realized that meant people would read it every day; even if only to have something to complain about.

But over time, editors sometimes tire of the hate mail controversial comics generate, so they need these polls and any positive comments readers feel like sending to remind them why they originally thought it would be worth the trouble.  If you want to see Candorville remain in the Raleigh News & Observer, you’ve got to remind them now.

You & your family can vote up to five times per computer.

This has been going around the internets for a day or two. Anyone know who wrote it?:

Just to clear things up - I’m a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight….. If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you’re “exotic, different.”

Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers: a quintessential American story.

If your name is Barack you’re a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.

Name your kids Willow, Trig, and Track: you’re a maverick.

Graduate from Harvard Law School and you are unstable.

Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating: you’re well grounded.

If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate’s Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran’s Affairs committees, you don’t have any real leadership experience.

If your total resume is: local weather girl (sports caster), 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with fewer than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with 650,000 people, then you’re qualified to become the country’s second highest ranking executive.

If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 daughters, all within Protestant churches, you’re not a real Christian.

If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you’re a good moral Christian.

If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state’s school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you’re very responsible. If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family’s values don’t represent America’s.

If your husband is nicknamed “First Dude”, with at least one DUI conviction and no college education, who didn’t register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

OK, much clearer now…..

John McCain is crazy like a fox. A real maverick. He’s like a fighter pilot, zig zagging all around to stay one step ahead, behind, or on top of his opponent. While Barack Obama’s skipping through small-town America trying to shore up his vote among the white working class, McCain (maverick that he is) is going after a heretofore untapped segment of the electorate: pedophiles.

I know, it surprised me too. But what other conclusion can one reach after seeing his latest ad castigating Obama for advocating legislation that would teach young children how to protect themselves against sexual predators?