The former vice president arrived within hours of an NBC News report that former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor told the Chicago Tribune editorial board that maybe the court shouldn’t have stepped into Bush v. Gore.

“It turned out the election authorities in Florida hadn’t done a real good job there and kind of messed it up,” O’Connor said. “And probably the Supreme Court added to the problem at the end of the day.”

You think?

Gore told White House guards that since Justice O’Connor was on the prevailing side of the 5-4 vote, her change of tune voided the decision – and he was going to “get his.”

“I’ve got four years in this place, maybe eight if Hillary will stay out of the way,” Gore said.

While Secret Service agents tried to reach President Obama, Gore proceeded to recite his inauguration speech on the sidewalk of Pennsylvania Avenue, where he received some applause and was asked for spare change by a few pedestrians.

In the 50-minute address, Gore turned back the clock to 2001, promising to foil terrorism attacks, especially in September, and vowing that he would never, ever invade Iraq.

The real president eventually sent Vice President Joe Biden outside to give Gore the bad news that not only could he not stay, he couldn’t even spend the night in the Lincoln Bedroom.

And Biden noted, since Florida still has not finished counting the 2000 ballots, Gore still technically hasn’t won that election.

Gore, who seemed not to hear Biden, said that Obama could stay on as vice president since Joe Lieberman is now a Republican lover, but that he would need the Executive Suite for his collection of melting iceberg models.

The former vice president stood outside the gate for nearly four hours before the White House announced there had been an oil spill in California and some seals were covered in the stuff, at which point Gore jumped in a cab, headed for Reagan International.

“I’ll be back after I clean up the California coastline,” he warned.

Today’s tune, in honor of climate change:

On Thursday, a cardboard poster of Nancy Pelosi complained that Mark Sanford will not agree to more debates in the remaining weeks before the 1st congressional district special election.

“The voters of the 1^st district need to see more of me alongside Gov. Sanford to better help them make a decision between him and me, even though I am not on the ballot, or even human,” the paper likeness of the U.S. House Democratic leader said in a statement.

On Wednesday, Sanford debated Cardboard Nancy Pelosi in front of MUSC, an event that was not televised, but was widely mocked.

In the debate, which Sanford won handily, the former South Carolina governor complained that he was forced to debate Cardboard Nancy Pelosi because his opponent, Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch, would not debate him more than once.

He said Cardboard Nancy Pelosi’s silence on most issues was proof that he had the better handle on the issues.

However, Cardboard Nancy Pelosi said she was caught off-guard, that she was only outside MUSC trying to talk to hospital employees, all of whom were smoking. So now she wants another shot at Sanford.

President Obama Chair, who lost a similar debate to Clint Eastwood at the Republican National Convention last year, took up for Cardboard Nancy Pelosi on Thursday. President Obama Chair said that inanimate objects are at a decided disadvantage in live debates, and applauded Cardboard Nancy Pelosi for her courage to enter the ring again.

Through a spokesperson, as usual, Elizabeth Colbert Busch said she was too busy listening to the concerns of 1^st district voters to debate Mark Sanford more than once, especially since a Democratic-leaning poll shows her with an 85-point advantage over the former governor.

Colbert Busch said she would commit to three debates with Cardboard George W. Bush, however.

While Cardboard Nancy Pelosi awaits Sanford’s response to her challenge, she said she will spend Friday campaigning for Colbert Busch at the Charleston County Recycling Center.

Today’s tune, Cardboard Nancy Pelosi’s favorite song:

Mark Sanford and Elizabeth Colbert Busch finally faced off Tuesday in an impromptu parking lot debate in West Ashley.

The two 1^st district congressional candidates – who had not yet debated because Busch has avoided it and Sanford has been in Family Court – ran into each other at Harrell Square just outside Citadel Mall.

Colbert Busch was waving at passing motorists on Sam Rittenberg Tuesday morning; Sanford was trying to get a refund on a half-eaten panini at Panera Bread.

When the two rivals saw each they charged, whipped out their note cards and began to debate.

Here’s a transcript of the tussle.

MARK SANFORD: I love Boeing!

ELIZABETH COLBERT BUSCH: No, I love Boeing more!

MS: Do not.

ESB: Do, too.

MS: If you love Boeing so much, why do you support unions?

ECB: I support working people. If you love Boeing so much, why did you oppose incentives for the company when you were governor?

MS: I oppose everything, especially incentives. I won’t even let my four boys use coupons at McDonald’s.

ECB: Huh? I support Boeing so much I’m for tax subsidies to help with their payroll to keep South Carolinians employed!

MS: Well, I support Boeing so much I’d force South Carolinians to work there for free so the company could make a profit. It would be good for the economy.

ECB: I love Boeing so much I’d fly on that Dreamliner with the defective battery!

MS: I love Boeing so much I’d fly on a Dreamliner that didn’t have any seats. So long as I got a discount.

ECB: I love Boeing so much … oh, forget this. Hey Mark – remember the Alamo. It was in 1836, not 1863.

Today’s tune, in honor of our debate:

Congress honored South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley on Tuesday for her amazing amount of nerve and political dexterity.

Following a March 16 fire in Myrtle Beach that destroyed more than 100 homes, Haley asked the U.S. Small Business Administration – a federal government agency – to declare Horry County a disaster area. She did this because the damage to Myrtle Beach, though horrific, was not bad enough to warrant FEMA assistance.

Unlike the damage caused last fall by Superstorm Sandy, which devastated the U.S. Northeast – but was deemed insufficient to garner federal assistance by nearly every member of South Carolina’s congressional delegation.

In light of this irony, Congress responded by passing House Resolution 000, which awarded Haley the “National Chutzpah Award.”

It read:

“Whereas, Nikki Haley has no shame; and

“Whereas, South Carolina routinely refuses all offers of federal assistance to pull the state out of the national rankings toilet; and

“Whereas, an alarming number of nincompoops in the state still want to secede from the Union (again);

“Therefore be it resolved that Congress directs Gov. Nikki Haley and the entire state of South Carolina to talk a long walk on a short pier at the Georgia Ports Authority.”

Democrats and Republicans alike voiced concern that Haley would seek federal assistance just a day after refusing federal assistance. And a week after refusing some other federal money for something else.

And a month after turning down some free education money, which in turn went not to pay down the debt, but to Omaha.

“I may try to scam senior citizens and the middle class out of their hard-earned dollars to help my millionaire friends, but even I’m not this brazen,” said Rep. Paul Ryan, former vice presidential candidate and current fantasy budget writing champion.

South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn said before the vote that he is genuinely worried about Haley.

“If South Carolina hadn’t refused to accept Obamacare, I’m sure the governor would have qualified for some taxpayer-funded tests of some kind,” Clyburn said.

The resolution passed the House on a voice vote. Rather, laughter was recorded as an affirming vote. So it passed overwhelmingly.

The governor’s office did not comment on the Chutzpah Award Tuesday.

A Haley spokesman said the governor spent the day touring the Corridor of Shame, trying to raise money for her latest charity, Hilton Headstart – a program that helps people on the barrier island pay the federally mandated flood insurance on their second homes.

OK, this is parody but it could really happen. Or should.

Today’s tune

The Drunkest City in the Country.

Charleston ranked an impressive 4^th place in the Daily Beast’s latest list of “The 25 Drunkest Cities in America.” Amazingly, the Holy City beat out New Orleans, where they name streets after drinks; Las Vegas, where gamblers drink free; and St. Louis, where they make Budweiser.

That says something. But it’s not enough.

“It’s great that we beat places like Buffalo and Cleveland, where, frankly, there isn’t anything to do but drink,” says M. Bibe, the Convention and Visitors Bureau’s executive vice president for Public Consumption. “Honestly, we want better for our city. We just want to be at the top of every list, we don’t care what it is.”

The Visitors Bureau says the city needs to come up with more excuses for locals to stand around in public parks all weekend and drink themselves silly. The Wine + Food festival, Spoleto and the Southeastern Wildlife Exposition can only carry so much of the weight.

Bibe says we need more events like the Boone Hall Oyster Roast. But it doesn’t take much. Basically anything on Park Circle – say, a yard sale – is going to lead to binge drinking. But there are yuppies all over the suburbs just looking for an excuse to get blitzed in public spaces. And Bibe says we must exploit that behavior.

That is, if we want to beat Milwaukee (No. 3), where all they do is make beer, and then drink it.

Right now, plans call for a Collards Cookoff in January. Bibe says if they can do a full night of drinking for macaroni and cheese, why not a whole weekend for a Lowcountry staple? In addition, the Shrimp and Grits Festival is going to be expanded to a month-long event, and Folly Beach will not only reinstate drinking on the beach, it will set up Coke machines that dispense Coors Light at every beach access point.

The CVB hopes to exploit minor holidays for even more “festivals.” They will save all the unused green beer from St. Patrick’s Day for an “Arbor on the Harbor” in June. They already have sponsorship for “Coronas for Columbus” in October, and “Veterans Viva La Vodka” in November. On Grandparents Day, every person staying in a downtown hotel will get a free Old Fashioned delivered to their room – if they promise to stagger through the Market afterwards.

That ought to do it, Bibe says. And if not, every weekend left open on the calendar will be filled with another food truck rodeo. Because people somehow feel the need to drink liberally when standing around in a parking lot eating food out of U-Hauls.

The Charleston Police Department – which the CVB blames for our poor showing on the Daily Beast list, since they quit allowing Art Walk patrons to carry mini-kegs from one shop to another – says they will lighten up on DUI checkpoints, since it’s for a good cause.

If things go right, Charleston could end up with a twofer out of this – it could also wind up atop the Gastonomical Society’s list for Most Nauseous Cities in the Nation.

What else, Charleston?

The statue stepped down from its pedestal in the Capitol rotunda Monday afternoon and walked into the House chambers, where Wilson was finishing a brief speech.

As the controversial South Carolina congressman concluded with his standard closing line – “God bless the United States, except for the 47 percent” – the Washington statue knocked Wilson upside the head with its walking cane.

Then it turned and walked out of the chambers.

“I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes,” said House Minority Whip Jim Clyburn. “But I can’t say as I blame General Washington. I’ve wanted to do that to Joe for a long time.”

Wilson was giving a one-minute speech on sequestration, blaming the pending loss of thousands of jobs in South Carolina on President Obama, who has done nothing to “help Congress solve this mess” – other than offering proposals that have been promptly ignored by House Republicans.

According to security cameras in the Capitol, just as Wilson said the president should “put the interests of the American people before party politics,” the statue slapped its bronze hand against its shiny forehead.

And then it stepped down and began hobbling toward the House chamber, muttering “hypocrites,” preceded by a very un-statesmanlike adjective that begins with the letter F.

Once inside the chambers, the Washington statue moved with increasing ease. Some onlookers swore they heard it scream “You lie!” as it smashed Wilson over the head repeatedly.

Wilson’s office issued a statement saying the congressman had been treated and released from the Capitol infirmary, and accused Washington of being a tax-and-spend liberal. However, to his credit, the nation’s first president was not a member of any political party.

For a party that gushes about the “founders” incessantly, House Speaker John Boehner said he saw no overt message in Washington’s attack, and expressed gratitude that the sculptor had not depicted the nation’s first president holding the axe that chopped down the cherry tree.

“It’s not like it was Reagan or anything,” Boehner said.

The White House issued a video statement that was apparently a mistake. The three-minute clip included no statement – only images of Obama laughing hysterically.

Since it returned to its podium, the likeness of the Father of Our Country has had no further comment.

But it seems to be smiling more than it did previously.

Hail to the Chief:

Mork, who hails from the Zeta Reticuli star system, said he traveled 39 light years to attend the school after reading about it on Twitter Universe.

“I want to study at the culinary school because the food where I am from is so bland, and the chefs here do such a great job. I’m hoping to open a satellite chain of Magnolia’s back on my planet,” said Mork, whose last name, in English, equates to 73401(10). “I also look forward to attending Trident Tech football games. I’ve heard much about their team on the Twitter.”

Mork’s admission drew protests from the Lowcountry Tea Party, who said it’s not fair for a public institution to admit someone who doesn’t pay taxes and whose people slaughter our cattle, flatten our crops and occasionally abduct us.

Especially since so many members of the Tea Party don’t qualify for admission to the school.

“They take jobs away from our slaughter houses and scare the bejesus out of us when we’re drinking ‘shine out in the woods,” said Abe Clampett, spokesman for the tea partiers. “And if they were going to blow up the White House, like they did in that movie, why couldn’t they have waited ‘til Nobama was in there?”

Trident Tech is currently looking for a professor to teach and speak Hungarian, as all UFOlogists know that Hungarian is the language all extraterrestrials speak.

For now, Mork is communicating through an App on his reallysmart phone, the iPhone4,000,000,000,000S.

“Steve Jobs was my hero,” Mork says. “He was from my planet. You don’t really believe Earthlings reverse engineered all that computer stuff from a crashed spaceship in Roswell, do you? That ship was my planet’s version of the Corvair. The only thing you guys got from that ship was the Betamax.”

Mork, who is paying Trident Tech’s out-of-galaxy tuition rate, hopes to qualify for assistance from the South Carolina Education Lottery. And he hopes to establish residency in the Charleston area. It’ll probably have to be North Charleston, Mork says, as that is the only city that will allow him to smoke.

This guy may be from Mork’s planet, too.

Shortly after the Charleston lawmaker announced his plan to introduce legislation to that effect at Ashley Hall, the private school that was the scene of an attempted shooting earlier this month, a former NRA official released his own statement.

“As usual, liberal lawmakers don’t know when to quit, and now they are even beating up on their own constituency,” actor and gun-rights activist Charlton Heston said in a posthumous statement. “Mentally ill people and other crazies have the God-given right to defend themselves from their attackers, even if those attackers exist only in their heads.”

Heston, best known for breaking the Ten Commandments (literally) and outsmarting a planet full of apes (all of them, presumably, with a hair gel fetish), says that attempting to take guns from anyone is an abomination against God and the Constitution, which was written before the first school shooting, and maybe even before there were multiplexes for crazy people to shoot up. The respected actor and longtime NRA poobah repeated the mantra that guns don’t kill people, people kill people who don’t have guns.

Stavrinakis denied charges that his attempt to literally interject a little sanity into the gun-buying process is a slippery slope that leads to jack-booted thugs coming into your home to confiscate harmless AK-47s and Uzis.

“I think Mr. Heston is brain-dead,” Stavrinakis said.

Technically, Stavrinakis is correct, as Heston passed away nearly five years ago. But conservatives say the film star is still an important voice in our national debate and should continue to chime in, even though he is deceased. Which is funny, since conservatives believe the opinion of any other living celebrity should be suppressed, unless he is Clint Eastwood.

Heston says that he will continue to stand up for the rights of gun owners, even from beyond the grave.

“All that stuff I said about how you can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands?” Heston said. “I didn’t mean it. You still can’t have it.”

OK, before you freak out, this is satire. But this isn’t. This is what you lose when crazy people get their hands on a gun:

They want the Medical University to look into the widespread epidemic of “brain paralysis” among the state’s politicians.

“It’s a scary thing when your body doesn’t work,” says Thelma Louise, a Dorchester County voter. “But it’s even scarier when the people running your state don’t have brains that work.”

Sleep paralysis occurs just as a person is waking up or falling asleep and find that they cannot move or speak. A person experiencing sleep paralysis wakes to find their muscles are frozen – either a result of the body making sure they don’t roll off the bed, or aliens attempting to insert microchips up their noses.

Brain paralysis is a similar condition, except that it freezes all ability of a person to think for themselves. Symptoms often occur in politicians, and set in soon after they get elected.

Is there a connection?

A politician with brain paralysis is unable to absorb facts, or change their minds as new information is made available to them. They are unable to move off pat positions until their party leaders decide it’s time to “re-brand.”

There is some evidence that brain paralysis can affect even wannabe politicians. At a forum of Republican candidates running for the 1^st District congressional seat earlier this month, 10 of 13 candidates in attendance said exactly the same thing.

And sadly, it didn’t make any sense coming from any of them.

“Some people just ain’t right,” says Joe “Tater” McIntyre, a Colleton County voter. “Maybe them scientists should strap some of these fellows down and cut into their brains. Assuming they have any.”

MUSC officials say they appreciate the suggestion, but will probably not consider the request.

“Scientists deal in facts,” says researcher Patel Smith, “and we’re not sure we’d find any facts no matter how many of those folks we cut open. Sometimes you’ve just got to throw up your hands and blame it on alien abduction.”

Today’s tune: What else?

Or insensitive, as the case may be.

Down in Jacksonville, the spokeswoman for Duval County public schools has been moved out of her job and into the human resources office after one of her staffers said she called someone by an offensive name.

Yep, Jill Johnson called her husband a “redneck.”

Now, never mind the fact that the employee who complained had just been called out by Johnson over her own job performance, or that she wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination a redneck (she’s black). And never mind that Johnson called her husband a redneck as a term of endearment.

This employee said she was offended.

Really?

The woman who complained claimed this wasn’t payback for her disciplinary actions. It’s just that “redneck” is a term that once described folks who are intolerant of others.

Now, wait a minute. I’m a redneck – and I won’t tolerate that.

Rednecks are a lot of things. We started out as farmers, who literally had red necks because we were working outside all day. It came to mean country folk, good ol’ boys. Maybe we weren’t the most sophisticated people, or savvy to the ways of society.

Yes, some rednecks can be bigots. But some have manners real good – we don’t discriminate or nothing. We don’t think President Obama or Democrats in general are Socialists; they’re just politicians. Not all of us believe we need assault weapons to defend ourselves from the government. Mainly, we just want to get by, and have a good time. Burt Reynolds is our patron saint. “Smokey and the Bandit” is our “Casablanca.”

Almost.

Those folks in Jacksonville should know about Burt, seeing as how he lives down there in Florida. They should also remember Lynyrd Skynyrd – a bunch of good ol’ boys from Jacksonville. By most definitions, those guys in Lynyrd Skynyrd were rednecks. And not only were they not intolerant, they were fairly liberal.

“Saturday Night Special” was an early call for gun control.

Seems to this redneck that the person who made the slur is the one who claimed “redneck” is a derogatory term. Well, her and the school district that played all politically correct and penalized a woman who talks plain – a common trait of the redneck

Here’s a not-so-big secret: rednecks don’t cotton to political correctness. And we don’t need anyone taking up for us while basically implying that any mention of us offends the sensibilities of sensitive people. Klansman and redneck are not synonymous. Yep, rednecks sometimes know multi-syllabic words. We  may butcher the king’s English sometimes, but we know when we’re being insulted.

Of course, you have to wonder if Johnson qualifies as a redneck. Her response to these allegations was apologetic, reasoned and quite calm.

A real redneck would have told the Duval County school system to kiss her be-hind.

OK, now I can’t get this out of my head: