81) Why are the Republicans about to overturn their decade long policy of not allowing indicted Senators to Chair Senate committees?
b) everybody knows that Republicans are highly moral, so having rules imposing morality on them is just insulting
c) because they can
82) By this time in human history, offices should have been a thing of the past – we were all supposed to be working at computers in our homes. Wha happen?
a) bosses found it was harder to harass employees by email
b) the plan was quickly abandoned when workers of all sexes realized that offices were an important refuge from young children and door to door used Avon ladies
c) what are you talking about? It happened just like computer scientists said it would. Wha – are you still working in a cubicle in an office building? Oh, I am sorry!
83) Why does the American department of Homeland Security spend seven times more money per person in Wyoming than New York?
a) have you ever been in a field of exploded cows? It’s not a pretty sight…
b) they’re behind in their paperwork
c) like the Ayatollahs, the Republicans wouldn’t be upset if New York disappeared into a black hole (they’re just not as vocal about the city being bombed…post-9/11 sensitivities…you understand…)
d) because they can
84) What the heck happened to Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko’s face?
a) Gamma rays have turned him into The Thing
b) ELO’s “Turn To Stone” has just been released in the Ukraine, and, well, Viktor was always so suggestible…
c) he was poisoned…BY RALPH NADER!
85) Who is in the biggest denial?
a) the Pentagon, which rejected an International Committee of the Red Cross accusation that the US military was using tactics “tantamount to torture” on prisoners at Guantanamo Bay
b) Iraq’s interim government, which has rejected a British based study that claims the country faces a “health disaster”
c) Don Cherry fans who cannot believe that he wasn’t chosen as The Greatest Canadian
86) Ottawa spent as much as $3 million on security for American President George Bush’s 22 hour state visit. What could this money have been better spent on?
a) 300,000 lunches for homeless people
b) 500,000 toothbrushes and bottles of Scope for homeless people
c) 30,000 Gameboy consoles for homeless people
87) Gillian Cosgrove’s column has been dropped by The National Post because of a controversial piece she wrote about Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson. What could Cosgrove have possibly written about the GG to get fired by the Post?
a) she’s secretly addicted to MacDonald’s hamburgers, but she gets the children’s meal so hubby John Ralston Saul can have a toy to play with
b) she snorts seal blubber
c) she’s a decent woman doing a reasonable job
88) Who is more cynical: fundamentalist Christians who support the state of Israel even though they believe that most Jews who live there will be consigned to the flames of eternal hellfire during the Rapture, or Jews who, knowing the Christians see them as barbecue meat, accept their help even though they believe the Rapture will never happen?
a) Earl Pomerantz
b) that’s why indefatigable is rarely used in the subjunctive tense
c) a cube of watery brie, stilton or a hardy cheddar
89) Did the last question make any sense?
a) Ender’s Game
b) the pathology of the common house termite
c) sure, the question made sense…the answers, on the other hand, are a completely different matter
d) the trick is to make the audience look at your nose while you’re palming the seven of spades
90) What is a BISCUIT team?
a) groups of physicians and psychiatrists who, according to the Red Cross, advise soldiers at Guantanamo Bay on how to torture prisoners
b) the people who make tacky feel good movies about corrupt sports (oh, sorry, that’s a Sea BISCUIT team)
c) a ring of 10 year-olds who counterfeit cookies (but who never make a profit from their illegal activities because they always eat their ill-gotten gains)
91) Why should anybody take seriously Pakistan dictator – sorry, President Pervez Musharraf’s declaration that the country’s second nuclear missile test in a little over a week poses no threat to anybody?
a) because god – the ultimate missile defense system – is on our side (just remember to wear clean underwear in case you get lifted out of your clothes in The Rapture)
b) President Bush called him a “courageous leader,” and you know the President wouldn’t sell out America’s long-term interest for the short-term gain of the Republican Party
c) severe blunt trauma to the head
92) Why was the Canadian government so intent on encouraging strippers to immigrate to Canada?
a) horny Canadian men like variety
b) strip club owners are just the kind of fine, upstanding entrepreneurs who deserve government support
c) it’s not like the government could encourage strippers to immigrate to other countries – can you imagine the uproar? I mean it – sometimes, you ask the dumbest questions!
93) When this issue blew up in the press, why did NDP leader Jack Layton say, “Now the government, at least in the future, might not be any longer pimping for the sex industry”?
a) hard as it may be to believe, he wants the government to go back to pimping for the lumber industry (and the oil industry…and…and…)
b) he’s trying to wrestle some of the fundamentalist vote away from the Conservative Party (and that’s a match I’d love to see…in mud…with no underwear…)
c) because he can
94) Why did strip club owners threaten to recruit college students if the government stopped encouraging the immigration of strippers?
a) to alienate the one or two people in the country who may have had a shred of sympathy for them
b) an expensive management guru told them they needed to be “proactive”
c) they had just finished surfing the “College Girls Gone Bonkers” Web site and it gave them ideas (damn the Internet for being such a corrupting influence on…uhh…strip club owners)
95) Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was found guilty of authorizing a bribe for a Rome judge, but was not sentenced because the statute of limitations on the crime had run out. In what sense does this mean that he was “cleared of corruption charges?”
a) you know, I could answer “in the Humpty Dumpty sense” or “in the war is peace” sense, but that’s just a little too obvious, don’t you think?
b) not that that leaves much else…
c) …nope, not really much left to say after that…
96) Before he declined the nomination, what made Bernard Kerik a strong candidate to head the Department of Homeland Security?
a) he once declared bankruptcy, an experience which would greatly benefit the Bush administration
b) as many as 34,000 of the men he was responsible for training to be police officers in Iraq were later fired for being either ill-trained or corrupt, an experience which would greatly benefit the Bush administration
c) he quit his Iraq gig three months before he was supposed to, an experience which would greatly benefit the Bush administration
97) Gee, how could a man with such a stellar record be forced to withdraw just because he hired an illegal nanny to look after his kids?
a) golly gee, the world isn’t fair
b) nobody messes with the all powerful Filipino lobby in Washington
c) behind every great man is a woman…pushing him over a cliff
98) Why has the US government banned a book by Nobel Peace Prize winner and Iranian campaigner for human rights Shirin Ebadi?
a) to illustrate for the Ayatollahs America’s commitment to freedom of speech
b) if you don’t use those laws enacted in 1917 every once in a while, people will lose respect for them, and we can’t have that!
c) if Americans actually understood foreign cultures, it would make it harder for them want to bomb those countries back to the stone age
99) In heated discussion with Department of Defense officials, a Pentagon official admitted that the “harsh interrogation techniques” (torture to anybody without a classified security clearance) used on detainees had yielded no information that hadn’t already been documented by the FBI. Why do they continue to do it?
a) they keep trying to prove that you can GTMO intelligence for less
b) oh, like you never wanted to dress a burly Arab man up in a pink chiffon nightie and lead him around a cell by a leash for 36 hours in blazing light while your friends laughed at him and took pictures. Well, okay, maybe you never have, but could you at least not spoil the fun for the rest of us?
c) the DoD was improperly toilet trained as a youth
d) because they can
100) Is “because they can” really a good reason for anybody to do anything?
a) yes
b) I’m sorry, I don’t – are you suggesting that people should do things because they can’t? That doesn’t make any sense…
c) we’re all going to die and, within a generation, be forgotten, all of our life’s work completely transformed by those who come after us – is there any good reason for anybody to do anything?
d) no