McCain Offers $300M Award for New Campaign Staff

Fresno, CA -- Republican presidential challenger Senator John McCain announced his intention to bestow a 300 million dollar cash prize as a recruitment incentive for his new brain trust.

Mr. McCain also proposed $5,000 tax credits for any Americans who could provide "really good ideas" to his sputtering campaign.

The pugnacious yet combative presumptive 2008 GOP nominee made the offer during a speech at Fresno State University on Monday.

"Most of my existing team receives great compensation from the various corporations for which they lobby," said Mr. McCain, "but they still can't keep my White House bid off the guardrails. I'll miss them at first but I think I'll get over it."

"My friends," he continued, "I am determined to prove that throwing crazy amounts of money at a problem is the answer, as long as you have enough of it to spend."

In the first hour following the Senator's address, his Website servers collapsed under the strain of nearly 750 million hits.

Mr. McCain responded to questions about the source of the award's funding by saying the money would be diverted from pork barrel projects—including $225 million already allocated to high-tech aerospace companies Boeing and Northrop-Grumman for the development of newer, improved pork barrels.

The Arizona Senator's campaign challenges have intensified recently, following remarks made by his soon-to-be-former advisor Charlie Black.

Mr. Black was quoted in an upcoming Fortune magazine interview as saying he hoped "a comically large anvil would fall on Senator Barack Obama's head during a speech," and said an event of that kind "would really help us."

"If the same thing happened to Senator McCain, however," Mr. Black continued, "it would be bad for us—very bad. The Senator is as dry and rickety as a house made of saltine crackers."

Reaction to Mr. Black's verbal train wreck was intense, with print media, blogs, and broadcasters scrambling to deliver lucid, cogent commentary.

Radio talk-show host Don Imus, when asked why Mr. McCain's staffer was embroiled in so much controversy, replied on-air Monday, "it's because he's Black."

Mr. Imus immediately apologized, claiming he had been misunderstood and that his remarks were taken out of context.

"Charlie is a great guy—I just meant he makes statements like that all the time," the controversial shock jock said Tuesday morning. "Whenever somebody says something dumb at McCain's headquarters the rest of the staff just call it a 'Black-Out' or a 'Fade-to-Black,' that's all."

"I sincerely hope my unfortunate choice of words does not take my name off Senator McCain's list of possible vice presidential candidates," added Mr. Imus.