Hoax Museum Blog: Politics

Gay Penguin for America — If you're one of those undecided voters who can't make up their mind whether to vote for Bush, Kerry, Nader, or HRM Caesar St. Augustine de Buonaparte, then here's a fifth candidate you might want to consider: Gay Penguin. As Gay Penguin's website explains, "Gay Penguin is a homosexual penguin. He is incapable of speaking, of signing laws and bills, and perhaps even incapable of abstract thought." His site then goes on to ask you to "Imagine a world where America has been ruled by a Gay Penguin since 2000." Gay Penguin also has a blog, though it doesn't seem to be updated very often (probably because of his inability to read or write).
Posted: Wed Oct 06, 2004.   Comments (8)

The Michigan Absentee Ballot — image A picture purporting to show a scanned copy of the Michigan Absentee Ballot has been spreading around. Look at it carefully. It would definitely put the Florida Butterfly Ballot to shame. There appears to be no way to vote for Bush/Cheney, but if you decide to vote for Kerry/Edwards, you're really voting for Bush/Cheney. Is the ballot real? Apparently so. It was a ballot printing error, but was confined to one precinct and mailed out to only 69 people. Brad Wittman, from the Michigan Secretary of State's Office, was contacted by someone at Metafilter, and this was his comment:

The ballot printing error is confined to a single precinct in the City of Alma. Approximately 69 ballots containing the error were released to voters on Monday, September 27. On Tuesday, September 28, a voter called the clerk to alert her to the error. Arrangements have been made to send the 69 voters replacement ballots. The clerk expects to receive corrected ballots on Monday, October 4. In the meantime, a voter who received one of the misprinted ballots posted a scan of the ballot on the web. This has created far more interest (an outrage) than what is warranted.
Posted: Tue Oct 05, 2004.   Comments (5)

The Fake Tan Debate — image As the presidential candidates gear up for their first debate tonight, the focus of the world is not on what the two men are going to say about the War in Iraq, the rising costs of healthcare, or the erosion of civil liberties, but instead on the real burning issue: did John Kerry get a fake tan? His face definitely does look a little on the over-ripe side, but then I'm sure that Bush also uses tanning aides. Of course, maybe judging candidates by the quality of their tans isn't that illogical since, as this article points out, these debates are little more than carefully scripted pseudo-events anyway, carefully rehearsed to be completely free of surprises. So the candidates' tans are no more or less real than anything else you get to see about them. Which is why reporters are able to write analyses of the debate before the debate even occurs, as demonstrated by a post-debate analysis written in the past tense that appeared on ABC's site earlier today (i.e. hours before the debate). ABC has since pulled the analysis, but luckily screen captures of it were made, one of which can be viewed here.
Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2004.   Comments (5)

Fast for George W. — Since I fall into the demographic group of cynical, urban, over-educated, non-church-goers, when I saw this site urging people to 'Fast for George W' I chuckled and assumed it had to be some kind of joke. But no. It doesn't seem to be a joke. The aim of the site is to organize people "to fast and pray for the holiness of President George W. Bush." Okey Dokey. It even urges people to "please take this seriously" (they must get a lot of people like me snickering at them). As weird as the idea seems to be, I suppose it can't hurt. Maybe it could even be expanded to include 'Wear a Hairshirt for George W' or 'Self-Flagellation for Bipartisanship'. (via J-Walk)
Posted: Wed Sep 29, 2004.   Comments (8)


Arnie Cakes — True or false: you'll soon be able to buy Arnold Schwarzenegger urinal cakes? It's true! Businessman John Edgell is set to market a line of Arnold Schwarzenegger urinal cakes and urinal screens. I'm sure he'll come up with some catchy name for them like 'The Urinator'. Edgell was the guy who was previously going to market a line of Arnie bobblehead dolls, until Schwarzenegger sued to stop him. He's dreamed up the Arnie urinal cakes as a way to get back at the governor. (Thanks to 'Big Gary' for submitting this. He admits that it's not really a hoax, but it was so weird that it seemed like it belonged here anyway. I agree.)
Posted: Fri Aug 13, 2004.   Comments (1)

Dear Leader’s Weblog — image The Korea Times has an article about the new weblog of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il (known to his people as 'Dear Leader'). It appeared on Cyworld (which I'm guessing is like the Korean equivalent of LiveJournal) a few days ago, and already is getting a lot of attention. On the blog Dear Leader shows off his tanks and other stuff. Of course, it's a fake blog. I can't actually find the blog itself, but here's a screenshot of it. Of course, Kim Jong-Il once had a LiveJournal blog, but it looks like that hasn't been updated in almost a year.
Posted: Fri Aug 13, 2004.   Comments (2)

South Africa Hasn’t Cancelled Christmas — Despite what you may have heard, South Africa hasn't cancelled Christmas. The South Africa Sunday Times ran a headline warning that the government was thinking of cancelling Christmas, since there were too many public holidays already and Christmas couldn't be considered off-limits considering the country's numerous religions. But the Home Affairs Minister has reassured the public that such reports are a hoax.
Posted: Tue Aug 10, 2004.   Comments (2)

Thatcher Isn’t Dead — Margaret Thatcher isn't dead, despite what this elaborate mock-up of The Guardian claims. Nor is Stephen Hawking now going to speak in her voice.
Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2004.   Comments (6)

Longshot Presidential Candidates — If you choose not to vote for Emperor Buonaparte in November (God knows why not), here are some other alternative-reality-type candidates you can cast your ballot for. I found the info about these candidates on the Politics1.com website (you need to scroll about 2/3 of the way down the page before you start getting to the really interesting candidates).

imageFirst there's Albert 'Al' Hamburg. "Perennial candidate Al Hamburg, 72, had lost 14 consecutive bids for President and for Governor, US Senate and Congress before the 2004 race. He proudly described himself as the "Very Independent UNPOPULAR Candidate... Hamburg also made news in the 1980s when he sued a woman for breach of contract involving a car he sold to her. In the lawsuit, he said the woman agreed to have sex with him fifty times in exchange for the car -- but that she stopped performing her end of the deal after 33 times."


image Next up, Grady Dean Mollenhour Jr. "Little is known about this Democratic hopeful -- except that he uses "Reverend" as his title on some campaign documents he filed (so, presumably, he's a minister of some sort). He also served in the US Army (1983-84), worked briefly in the Job Corps in the early 1980s, and holds a high school GED certificate."

image And finally, Vermin Supreme. "A large part of his platform relates to promoting better dental hygiene ('Stong Teeth for a Strong America'). To make sure the American people regularly brush and floss, he promises: 'Warrantless random no knock dental inspections; Government issued toothpaste containing addictive yet harmless substances; Video surveillance through two way bathroom mirrors; Electronic tracking, moisture and motion sensor devices in all toothbrushes ... or even preventative dental maintenance detention facilities.' Our favorite among his proposals: 'Gene splicing to create a race of winged monkeys to act as tooth fairies.'" Vermin Supreme also has a website of his own that you can check out.
Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2004.   Comments (2)

HRM Caesar St. Augustine de Buonaparte — image On September 17, 1859 Joshua Norton delivered a proclamation to the San Francisco Bulletin declaring himself Emperor of the United States. From that point on, Joshua Norton was forever known as Emperor Norton I, a role which he dutifully performed for the rest of his life, proudly walking around the streets of San Francisco dressed in his emperor's uniform, complete with plumed hat, gold epaulets, and a sword at his side. When he died in 1880, 10,000 people showed up at his funeral.

It now looks like America has a new Emperor. Or rather, has had one for about eight years, ever since HRM Caesar St. Augustine de Buonaparte, a resident of Los Angeles, sent a letter to President Clinton declaring war on the United States. Buonaparte claims that Clinton's failure to respond to his letter means that the United States implicitly conceded defeat. Therefore, Buonaparte is now our Emperor.

Although HRM Buonaparte is Emperor of the U.S., oddly enough he appears to have filed paperwork to run in the 2004 Presidential election. He's running as a member of the Good Party. For his campaign photo he appears to have submitted a photo of himself posing in a face cutout from the Renaissance Faire.
Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2004.   Comments (29)

Bill Clinton’s Blog — From the Hoax Forum: The weblog of Bill Clinton. Apparently his nickname for Hillary is the 'dragon lady.'
Posted: Mon Jun 14, 2004.   Comments (12)

Amazon Wish Lists — It turns out that quite a few famous people have wish lists on Amazon. For instance, Arnold Schwarzenegger wants a copy of Gladiator (seems appropriate). Warren Buffett, for some reason, wants a copy of his own collected essays. Based on what Bill Gates wants, he seems to be planning a hunting trip. John Kerry wants a pair of speedos (that's a scary thought). George W. Bush wants a copy of the American-English Pronunciation Dictionary. But Dick Cheney's list is by far the most touching. All he wants is a single copy of the album Love Songs For A Rainy Day. Could it be that Dick's feeling romantic? (inspired by a post at J-Walk)
Posted: Thu May 27, 2004.   Comments (3)

Bush is Lord — image Bush is Lord has collected evidence to prove that "George W. Bush is indeed not only our nation's leader, but our spiritual lighthouse and embodied salvation." Well, if this is true, then does that make Cheney an angel?
Posted: Tue May 18, 2004.   Comments (4)

Bush-Voter-IQ Hoax Rears Its Head Again? — I thought we had all seen the last of that 'states that voted for Bush have lower IQs' hoax. The American Assembler ended up with some egg on its face for publishing that chart in a form that made it seem as if it were fact. But now I've received a number of emails telling me that the same chart makes an appearance in this week's edition of The Economist. Apparently they even list IQ and the Wealth of Nations as the source for the data, even though that book is definitely not the source (I emailed the author of that book to confirm that the data doesn't appear in his book). I haven't had a chance to see this week's edition yet, but if this is true, all I can say is, 'What was The Economist thinking?'

Update (May 20): And now the St. Petersburg Times has written an editorial based on The Economist's erroneous data, proving that the tradition of fact-checking is as strong as ever in the media. (Thanks to Steve for catching this)
Posted: Sun May 16, 2004.   Comments (2)

Bush-Voters-Have-Lower-IQs Hoax Runs its Course — The Bush-voters-have-lower-IQs hoax appears to have run its course. The editor at American Assembler who posted the table that got the whole firestorm going has posted an abject apology. Meanwhile I've still been trying to contact Robert Calvert, the guy who originally posted the IQ/election data two years ago on rec.org.mensa, to see if he would admit that he made it up. But no luck. He doesn't reply to email. So the possibility hangs out there that he got the info from some obscure source that no one else has been able to find. But this possibility seems vanishingly small to me, especially when you consider the character of Calvert's other Usenet postings, many of which relate to the topic of IQ (it seems to be a pet subject of his). For instance, in this post he muses on the possibility that blondes really do have lower IQs than brunettes. At the end of this post he makes some offhand remarks suggesting that blacks "are substantially less intelligent than average." And in this post he expresses his belief that multiculturalism is all a Jewish plot to lower the average IQ of Americans. So he seems like a really charming and credible guy (not!... I get a creepy feeling just reading through his rantings). But if you think about it, it's amazing how this (presumably fake) election/IQ data, originating from a wildly eccentric source, managed to lie dormant for a year and a half and then sweep suddenly through the blogosphere.
Posted: Tue May 11, 2004.   Comments (6)

Bush Voters Have Lower IQs, Update — The Bush Voters have Lower IQ's data, which I posted about a few days ago, is getting a lot of attention now that it's been printed by the American Assembler. Their reprint of it is #3 on Blogdex. But while they're now aware that the source of the info is not IQ and the Wealth of Nations, as they originally claimed, they don't seem aware that the true source of the info appears to be a student at UMass.

Scratch that. The student at UMass definitely helped disseminate the chart by posting it on his website, but he seems to have simply picked it up off the web, specifically from a guy named Robert Calvert who posted the data to a usenet group for members of Mensa back in 2002. Where Robert Calvert got the data is a mystery. Presumably he made it up, since I haven't been able to find figures for average IQ by state anywhere.
Comments
Posted: Fri May 07, 2004.   Comments (0)

Just Say No to the Whizzinator — The Whizzinator is a prosthetic penis attached to a plastic bag that you tie around your waist. Put heated urine in the bag (dehydrated urine provided), and you're all set to cheat on a drug test. Rather ingenious. But now Illinois officials are cracking down on this product. The Illinois Senate voted 56-0 to outlaw it. Meanwhile the far more morally offensive Brief Safes are still legal. What kind of upside-down world do we live in?




Posted: Wed May 05, 2004.   Comments (1)

Bush Voters Have Lower IQs — A table that breaks down states by income, average IQ, and whether they voted for Bush or Gore has been making the rounds. It appears to show, pretty dramatically, that the states with higher average incomes, and higher average IQs, voted for Gore. Whereas the lower income, lower IQ states went for Bush. The comment accompanying this table is usually 'Come to your own conclusions," or something like that. My first thought, on seeing this, was that it's awfully similar to the Lovenstein Institute IQ Report. But I suspect that the figures, in this case, might be correct... in the sense that they were produced by actual research, not just invented out of whole cloth. They appear to derive from a book published in 2002 titled IQ and the Wealth of Nations by Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen. I haven't actually seen a copy of this book (and since it costs $81.95 I'm probably not going to either unless I find it at the library). But the real question here seems to be whether, even if 'actual' research produced these IQ figures, do they mean anything? I've always been skeptical about IQ tests, so I would say 'No, they don't.' And I'm saying this even though I'm a Democrat.

Update: The IQ figures do not come from IQ and the Wealth of Nations, as confirmed by Richard Lynn, the book's author, whom I emailed to inquire about this. Therefore, it seems right now that the figures have actually been pulled out of thin air. In other words, it's a hoax. But it looks like The American Assembler fell for it, among others.

Update 2: The person responsible for the hoax appears to be a guy named Robert Calvert who posted the data to a Mensa newsgroup back in 2002. Presumably he did make the data up, since I haven't been able to find any info anywhere that would corroborate it.
Posted: Tue May 04, 2004.   Comments (55)

Taiwan’s Fake Election Results — On March 20, tv viewers in Taiwan got to see real-time election results flashing across their screens as the votes were counted for the Presidential election. But it turns out now that the election results viewers were seeing didn't actually bear any relationship to reality. The tv stations were just making them up. For example, some stations were reporting 3 to 6 million votes already counted and opposition candidate Lien Chan taking a strong lead, when actually the election commission had only counted fewer than 200,000 votes and the election was a dead-heat. If memory serves me, didn't this same thing happen here in America during the 2000 election?

Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2004.   Comments (1)

EU bans dangerous jellies — One can always depend on EU politicians for bizarre and arbitrary decrees. First there was their decision to reclassify carrots as fruit. Now they've decided to ban jelly mini cups, recognizing them as the obvious threat to public safety that they are. Apparently they're afraid that someone might choke on the things, even though no one has ever done so in the past. File this under 'sounds like a hoax, but actually isn't.'
Update: Apparently there have been deaths attributed to these jelly mini cups. Not in Europe, but in Canada. So it seems like the European bureaucrats are vindicated.
Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2004.   Comments (11)

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