Can apostrophes win votes? To be sure!

He’d have had this election sewn up months ago – never mind the twin implosions of Sarah Palin and the economy – if he’d just changed his name, ever so slightly, to… Barack O’Bama.

< comedy Irish accent >
“Is that the Galway O’Bamas, now, Barry? Ah, will you not come in and have a nice cup of tea – you put your feet up while I pop out and get the town to vote for you.”
< /comedy Irish accent >

And if you’ve got Irish roots, however spurious, ‘palling around with terrorists’ actually helps…

So don’t ever tell me that punctuation doesn’t matter.