Ameritocracy

…1 cup sugar, 1 lb cherries, 3 ounces Human Growth Hormone…The

The candidates have moved away from baseballgate and moved on to piegate.

Yep, that’s right - with two weeks to go til election day, the national dialogue has centered around apparently-genetically-modified enormous America-sized pies, which can be shrunk and grown based, apparently, upon which of the two candidates’ economic policies are implemented.

First, here’s John McCain.

“He believes in redistributing wealth, not in policies that grow our economy and create jobs and opportunities for all Americans. Sen. Obama is more interested in controlling who gets your piece of the pie than he is in growing the pie.”

Hmmm…We’re all familiar with baking pies, eating pies, and throwing pies in the faces of others.  But “growing” pies is an entirely new one to us.  Okay, let’s hear what Barack Obama had to say in response.

“But let’s be absolutely clear — after eight years of Bush-McCain economics, the pie is shrinking. And what’s left of the pie has been eaten by millionaires and billionaires…We want to grow the pie. And then we want a slice of the pie.”



Interesting. The pie can shrink now.

Well, we suppose that by eating the pie, then the actual volume of pie available to the average pie-eater making fewer than 30,000 slices of pie per year would, in fact, have shrunk, assuming that particular pie eater aspires to eat an additional 10,000-20,000 slices of pie per year which he or she would hope to then regurgitate (NOTE: we didn’t come up with this dumb metaphor, we’re just sticking to it) in order to better feed his or her family.

Pie growth is a little trickier, though. We’re not quite sure how that one works, so we typed in some keywords to the Googles and guess who stepped in to clear up our political metaphor-based confusion? Noted political expert Rachel Ray, of course. The answer? Yeast! From Robert Wolke’s  ”Ask Einstein”* column on her website:

During their sugar feast, the yeast cells burp carbon dioxide gas, which forms bubbles in the dough, making it rise. Without this rising, a loaf of bread would be more like a brick.




So, in other words:

John McCain is concerned that Barack Obama’s policies are anti-yeast, pro-distribution towards those with yeast allergies. McCain suggests his plan would inject the US economy with a kind of genetically-altered superyeast that would “grow” the pie to an epic size, enough to feed the entire US electorate.

Barack Obama is concerned that John McCain’s superyeast approach is impractical and suggests that the bakery has charged too much for pie in the past, because only rich people can buy pie, and if we grow a bigger pie that only rich people can afford then we still rob those with lower incomes with their inalienable pie-eating rights, and thus obesity rates in America remain dangerously low.

Right?

*note: not actually written by Einstein, who is dead.