Release: 10thcircle Wire News, January 14, 2008:

In a surprise move this morning, Republican and Democratic Presidential Candidates arrived on the planet Mercury this morning for a quick campaign stop to take advantage of the media coverage of the arrival of NASA’s Messenger spacecraft , the first such visit of an NASA probe in 34 years.

It is expected that the candidates’ campaign stops on the hottest and most hellish planet in the Solar System will translate to favorable caucus and primary results in warm weather states such as Nevada, the Carolinas and especially Florida on the run-up to the ExtraTerrestrial Tuesday primaries on February 5th.

John Edwards will reportedly visit every single crater on the surface of the planet in a whirlwind tour lasting four hours, while Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama will campaign from Mercury’s North and South poles in order to address both the dark and light sides from a single position (a Mercurial day lasts almost 59 Earth days, so the candidates will have to provide their own spin to address both sides) while appearing to keep as much distance as possible from each other.

Clinton and Obama’s campaigns continue to snipe at each other, with the Obama campaign claiming that Hillary’s choice of addressing the issues of both sides of the planet from the North Pole “unfortunate” and “ill-advised,” while Clinton’s people are speaking off the record that Obama is distorting Clinton’s position on Mercury due to Obama’s campaign failing to properly assess Mercury’s orbit by accounting for the effects of Einstein’s General Relativity and the warpage of spacetime so close to the sun, and claiming that it is indicative of Obama’s lack of experience in Interplanetary Affairs.

Dennis Kucinich is expected to do well on Mercury, as rumor has it that he has family and friends with winter homes there and regularly charters private flights to visit them.

Republican Candidates by and large are remaining in the dark on the planet, with John McCain being the notable exception. McCain is reported to have said that he doesn’t care what Fred Thompson thinks, he’s going out into the light and doesn’t care what damage that level of exposure may cause his skin; he’s 71 years old, for Pete’s sake.

Mitt Romney’s staff reportedly considered the idea of a “Mitt’s Mission to Mercury” media campaign but discarded it after a cost-benefit analysis.

Populist Mike Huckabee’s staff is hurriedly setting up a stage and his band’s instruments, we expect them to run through a set of music to include “Age of Aquarius,” “Space Oddity,” “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” and conclude with “Mercury Blues.”

NASA cameras expect to capture all of the action today, but the results are unlikely to be formally released until after February 5th.

We at the 10thcircle were able to locate a recent test photo of Mercury, and noted that one grassroots campaign team was far out ahead of the mainstream candidates:

Copyright by the Author 2008. All rights reserved.