Four years ago on this blog (yes, it has really been that long) I reviewed the slate of Republicans running for President, and I presented a device to help you decide which candidate to vote for in the primaries. I called my device The Wackometer™ (shown at right).
Before we go on, may I remind you: please do not call it a WACKO-meter. This is a precision instrument. It rhymes with thermometer. Thank you.
I have updated the Wackometer for the 2016 election so it is much easier to use. Now, you just plug it into the charging port of your Android phone (sorry, iPhone users) and point it toward the television when a candidate is speaking. The Wackometer analyzes the statements for bizarre, irrational and extreme content and reports its result in units of kilocrazies. [Back when I was developing the device, I found that one crazy was too small a unit of measure.]
Unlike four years ago, I am not going to use this blog to review and score statements from the slate of Republican candidates. I have three reasons for this. First, there are twice as many candidates as there were before, and it would just be too tedious to write (and read) about them all. Second, I would rather not republish the strange things the various candidates have to say — I will leave this to the Daily Show. Third and foremost, what I really want is for all of you to purchase a Wackometer of your own (ordering info below) and use it in your living room the night of the first Republican debate, to be broadcast on Fox News, August 6th, 9pm ET.
I guarantee that your first two hours with the Wackometer will be fun and educational. That said, I must offer some operating guidelines. In my recent Wackometer tests, certain statements by Donald Trump not only pegged the meter at the OMG level but rendered the instrument useless. So I would advise you, when Mr. Trump is about to speak, point the Wackometer at a 90-degree angle away from the audio source, then multiply its reading by the square root of two (1.414) to correct for the drop in signal strength.
Another thing I should mention is that Fox News itself generates a “background signal” of 10-20 kilocrazies, even when no one is speaking. This may make it harder for you to gauge the difference between candidates such as Jindal, Kasich and Pataki.
Unfortunately, the instruction manual for the device doesn’t spell out what one should do with the Wackometer readings. Four years ago, I asked my Democratic friends to vote in the Republican primaries (if possible) and cast their ballot for the candidate with the “sanest” Wackometer reading. My thinking at the time was that President Obama was in danger of being defeated, and so Democrats should hedge their bets by trying to put the least objectionable Republican on the November ballot should Obama lose.
The 2016 political landscape is quite different. If Democrats are confident in a Hillary Clinton victory, they may better off if a Republican with a high Wackometer reading runs against her, to help cement Clinton’s mandate. On the other hand, if the race is close, having a somewhat-sane Republican president would be preferable to some fundamentalist zealot. At this point I am not sure what to advise, other than to remind your Republican friends how arrogant it was for President Obama to have changed Election Day 2016 to the second Wednesday in November.
Now, go order your very own Wackometer. But hurry, supplies are limited.
Before we go on, may I remind you: please do not call it a WACKO-meter. This is a precision instrument. It rhymes with thermometer. Thank you.
I have updated the Wackometer for the 2016 election so it is much easier to use. Now, you just plug it into the charging port of your Android phone (sorry, iPhone users) and point it toward the television when a candidate is speaking. The Wackometer analyzes the statements for bizarre, irrational and extreme content and reports its result in units of kilocrazies. [Back when I was developing the device, I found that one crazy was too small a unit of measure.]
Unlike four years ago, I am not going to use this blog to review and score statements from the slate of Republican candidates. I have three reasons for this. First, there are twice as many candidates as there were before, and it would just be too tedious to write (and read) about them all. Second, I would rather not republish the strange things the various candidates have to say — I will leave this to the Daily Show. Third and foremost, what I really want is for all of you to purchase a Wackometer of your own (ordering info below) and use it in your living room the night of the first Republican debate, to be broadcast on Fox News, August 6th, 9pm ET.
I guarantee that your first two hours with the Wackometer will be fun and educational. That said, I must offer some operating guidelines. In my recent Wackometer tests, certain statements by Donald Trump not only pegged the meter at the OMG level but rendered the instrument useless. So I would advise you, when Mr. Trump is about to speak, point the Wackometer at a 90-degree angle away from the audio source, then multiply its reading by the square root of two (1.414) to correct for the drop in signal strength.
Another thing I should mention is that Fox News itself generates a “background signal” of 10-20 kilocrazies, even when no one is speaking. This may make it harder for you to gauge the difference between candidates such as Jindal, Kasich and Pataki.
Unfortunately, the instruction manual for the device doesn’t spell out what one should do with the Wackometer readings. Four years ago, I asked my Democratic friends to vote in the Republican primaries (if possible) and cast their ballot for the candidate with the “sanest” Wackometer reading. My thinking at the time was that President Obama was in danger of being defeated, and so Democrats should hedge their bets by trying to put the least objectionable Republican on the November ballot should Obama lose.
The 2016 political landscape is quite different. If Democrats are confident in a Hillary Clinton victory, they may better off if a Republican with a high Wackometer reading runs against her, to help cement Clinton’s mandate. On the other hand, if the race is close, having a somewhat-sane Republican president would be preferable to some fundamentalist zealot. At this point I am not sure what to advise, other than to remind your Republican friends how arrogant it was for President Obama to have changed Election Day 2016 to the second Wednesday in November.
Now, go order your very own Wackometer. But hurry, supplies are limited.