On the eve of an Election Day in which Americans will choose their next president, I will take a rare detour into politics.

I love politics, but the only other time I wrote about politics in this column was in 1996, when I declared myself a write-in candidate for president. I had a lot of fun writing nine columns in which I made fun of Clinton, Dole, and that funny foreigner, Ross Perot. My program included turning over the Department of Commerce to the Chamber of Commerce as a cost-saving measure. “They will hardly need to change stationery,” I wrote.

I knew my wife would refuse to move into the White House (a bad neighborhood for young children), so I would appoint a First Lady, like a cabinet position. Since I had no money for a campaign, I promoted my candidacy by chain letter (chain column in fact) including the dire warning: “Don’t break the chain, or Perot will hear ‘Hail to the Chief’ next January.” My secret weapon was facial hair, which no president had had since Taft. My goatee gave me a sinister look (remember Lenin?) to intimidate foreign enemies. JD Vance stole my idea.

Our dying child, Worshrag, age 7, honestly thought I was going to be president. He told his school friends that he was going to live in the White House.

In today’s wake/cancel climate, you can hardly tell a joke without causing the seriously offended to demand your head.

Kamala Harris solved this problem by frequently bursting out laughing for no apparent reason. No joke, therefore, no offense. It must be the pure joy she often talks about as president. She became hysterical over the wonders of an electric school bus. (The electric bus company later went bankrupt.)

I ventured a political joke when I spoke to the Rotary Club of Calcutta last week.

Here’s the joke: “Kamala Harris walks into a bar. The bartender says, “Why this long face?

Bada-boom. I invented it myself.

Is it a joke, I asked Rotarians, to pass the Rotary four-way test? Is this joke true, fair and beneficial to all involved and does it build goodwill and friendship? No, but a good laugh will do you good, flooding your blood with dopamine, oxytocin and endorphins. Maybe “Does that make you laugh?” could be Rotary’s fifth test.

Come to think of it, I’ve never heard Kamala tell a joke. She just laughs. She never explains her politics or why she laughs. Come on, man, share the joke.

Trump tells jokes all the time. He really enjoys this campaign, at least when he’s not being shot at.

After Joe Biden Called Out Trump Supporters “garbage,” Trump, dressed in a garbage suit and safety vest, holds a news conference from the cab of a Trump garbage truck. He’ll wear the outfit again at his next rally because, he says, someone said it made him look thinner. On Halloween night, Trump supporters across America carried trash bags to take their children trick-or-treating. They got the joke.

You could say that Harris’ policy proposals, like fixing rent and food prices to stop inflation, are a joke. A bad joke. She wants to adopt a “wealth tax” on the very rich by taxing “latent capital gains”. Consider a random example, like the billion-dollar appreciation of Trump’s Truth Social stock as his poll numbers increased over the summer. Better tax him quickly if you win, Kamala, because if he loses, Truth Social will just be a penny stock.

How to tax capital gains on the value of a property (shares, real estate, business) when there have been no capital gains?

This proposal touches me because my sisters and I inherited the family farm. We didn’t pay anything for it, so if we sold it, all that money would be capital gains and would be taxable. We plan to pass it on to the next generation of the family, but according to Kamala’s plan, they would probably have to sell it to pay the taxes.

You may notice that she proposes this tax only on the very rich, but such ideas tend to trickle down to people like us after the rich find ways to dodge them.

I could fill this entire newspaper page telling you, dear reader, what I think of his other policy plans (packing the Supreme Court, ending the filibuster, abolishing the electoral college, etc.), but you have obviously a brain in the head. , since you have read my column.

Did you like my Kamala joke? Yes, the original was about a horse, and horses have long faces and funny laughs, but I won’t go there. I don’t want to be called a misogynist.

But she has a long face.