Congress Approves Military Budget for "Whatever the President Thinks is Fair"

sure sign of the times, Congress gave a blanket approval to any military budget requests from president Bush Friday.

In an effort to quickly pass a military budget to cover next year—and the exciting promise of future military operations—both the House and the Senate conceded that what was necessary for the defense of the United States and its aggressive acts overseas was surely better decided by the president than by countless Washington insiders just there to fatten their pockets.

"Now I'm a politician, not a militaritician," said Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-Illinois), "nor am I knowledgeable of what words mean. But the president is a well-informed man with infallible decision-making powers. That's all I need to know before I approve him for whatever he needs. Policeman and firefighters are the real heroes."

After months of arguing over details, according to one Washington insider, members of the House stopped the quibbling by loudly speaking out of turn and saying maybe they were just fighting with each other because of partisanship.

"Well, no one wanted to believe it was true," said Rep. Jose Serrano (D-NewYork), "but we thought it might be possible. That made all of us feel none too good, let me tell you."

It was at that point they agreed the president was better prepared to decide how billions of dollars would be spent on the military projects for the future. Only he had the close contact with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other military officials, and only he knew what was planned for U.S. military actions next year.

The Democrat-controlled Senate quickly followed suit, approving the measure in record time.

"Our fellow representatives in the House are on the right track," said Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-South Dakota). "We can't expect the president to stop doing all the things he has to do to come down here and ask us for money. He's busy making plans, and these plans affect the lives of millions of Americans. And if he's going to send them into battle, we better make sure he has the state-of-the-art equipment and funding they need."

The Senate roared with approval, although one minor voice in the background, a suspected Democrat, was heard to say, "Are you fucking crazy?"

On Saturday Daschle met with President Bush in the oval office with a giant blank check for a photo opportunity as Congress handed the president his open budget for 2003.

"Now just fill in the amount for whatever you think is fair, Mr. Bush," Daschle said, shaking hands with the president. "Keep our boys fighting as long as you think it's necessary. Just don't go buying anything all nutty like a Star Wars defense system or something," said Daschle with a laugh.

"It's not nutty, it really works," Bush snapped, turning red. "It can destroy 9 out of 10 nuclear missiles aimed at us by Russia agents or attacks from outer space."

Daschle then refused to give the check to Bush, saying he had to examine the date and make sure it was correct. He promised the check would be returned to Mr. Bush at a later time.

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Rest easy, faithful commune reader, and any friends you might have: the commune is once again back in our hands.

If the spate of month-long repeats we've been running haven't clued you in, the commune was in a bit of a sticky situation as of late. And it wasn't, contrary to popular belief, just an attempt for us to catch a few winks while our competition stomped us into the ground. I had planned a little time off for the loyal commune staff, and everybody else we employ, but something more like a week, or even a few hours with me just not poking everyone to keep them working at top speed. But it didn't turn out as expected at all. Not at all.

To sum up, terrorists invaded the commune offices. Nothing less than Al Qaeda terrorists, or at least it appeared to me when the small group of foreign men stormed our offices with machine guns and demanded we all choose who would die first. We all chose my brother Gay Bagel, of course, unanimous vote (can you beat Gay voting for himself? What's up there?) Raoul and Ramrod tied for second, somehow beating out my favorite, Ivana. I placed a distant fifth, and I think it has something to do with putting real caramel in the caramel apples at this year's commune Days fair. But anyway, back to the terrorists.

If you think we're going to sit around and let third-world demagogues gun us down, you're sadly mistaken. To stand there and let terrorists kill you would mean the terrorists have already won. So I "flipped out," in the modern vernacular, and began to toss body after body against the wall. Many were Ivan Nacutchacokov, always in my ever-loving way, but I'm sure I got a few terrorists in there, too. We had just enough time to vacate the offices and taking our most valuable possessions with us. I had just enough time to unleash my deadly security force of weasels for the bastards to choke on, while Gay Bagel had just enough time to change the website programming and select a variety of articles for a few "best of" issues, so we wouldn't lose precious advertising revenue after we fled the terror. You never know when you might be able to use ten bucks, I suppose.

The fact that Omar Bricks did not follow us, and was in fact found at his desk, business-as-usual upon our return, speaks volumes about the perceptive depths of Mr. Bricks. We did find he had strapped one of the terrorists to the back of a grizzly bear, but upon closer inspection it's apparent he had mistaken the infidel for Ramrod Hurley.

I could thrill you endlessly with tales of our life on the run, searching out hiding places from which to build a new commune and the way our reporters cobbled together stories out of dust and scraps so we could continue to get the truth out to you. But thrilling you would be contrary to the usual routine of this column. Let's just say we were stumped for days on end on how to get our offices back and rid ourselves of the invaders. Well, I was stumped. Everyone else told me to call the police, the FBI, or any number of establishment-serving official organizations who hunt terrorists for fun. I was convinced this was not the right path. Until I got sick of living day and nigh with my staff in an abandoned building. So a quick call to the feds and we had our offices back, and a hefty reward as well.

It turned out, by the way, that the "terrorists" were actually nothing more than some Middle Eastern mercenaries hired by Crochet! Magazine to end our longtime dispute once and for all. Needless to say, Crochet! gots to pay for its major league fuck-up. And if you see Omar Bricks on the street, thank him for that insightful 10-part investigative report on ben-wah balls he did, but tell him I can't publish it because he submitted it to the faux Bagel mercenary. Who is planning to publish it in a prison newsletter, I think.

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While your average American gives no thought to the complicated world of politics, concerned more with trivialities such as "Will my job survive the year?" and "How can I afford to keep my family medically insured?" the think-tankers in the upper echelons of the U.S. government are asking only one question: "Is Saddam Hussein alive, and if so, where is he?" Yes, if you check, that's technically only one question, hence the single question mark.

The short answer is: No. But wait! Before you think I've become boring in my old age, I haven't cracked your brain with the baseball bat of conspiracy yet, and I assure you there is more to the Saddam Hussein story than you've considered before. And always more than they're telling you.

The reason Saddam Hussein is no longer alive is that he was never alive. Saddam Hussein, was, is, and always has been nothing more than a computer program. Surprised? Good, I say. You don't think I hold off on telling you all this shit simply because it slipped my mind, do you? I get my jollies watching your jaw drop, friend.

Has anyone ever seen the movie Virtuosity? Of course not. Some would chalk this up to the film being predictable and fairly empty of any real enjoyment, but I say this underestimates the part played by the American government to make the movie go unseen. The film is a roundabout way to propose that many of our society's villains are nothing more than distracting computer creations, and it took a lot of government operatives countless hours to make the film so utterly forgettable as to slip through the box office cracks unnoticed. But there was good reason for all the time spent doing so.

If we open ourselves up to the possibility that one villain is really just a souped-up Atari made to look like Russell Crowe doing a decent American accent, where do we stop questioning everything? Consider this: Have you ever been in a room with Saddam Hussein, the actual man? I didn't think so. That should make it abundantly doubtful a real Saddam Hussein even exists.

Everyone knows Iraq was only targeted by the military for one reason, and that's oil; this is only up for debate by people who enjoy deceiving themselves about everything, such as the government has only altruistic motives, or J.A.G. is a really good show. In fact, whenever you hear a government official say they want to bring democracy to another country, it should automatically translate as they have natural resources vital to our economy and are holding out. Hence we decided to bring democracy to Iraq, in exchange for barrel upon barrel of yummy oil.

Of course, Iraq was a foreign culture and has virtually no strategic value, following that we have no enemy after the Soviet Union dismantled and had no strategy against no enemy. The original leaders of Iraq, looking pretty dopey and smiling all the time like they just squeezed out a silent fart, weren't much motivation for the American people to go to war. So the U.S. war machine created the Saddam Hussein computer program, based an old Abbot & Costello routine beloved by Sec. Jim Bakker. "Who's in charge of Egypt?" "Hussein." "I'm sayin', I want to know." Love that one.

But if you build a computer program too good, as any hack movie producer knows, it can develop its own intelligence and decide to take things over. Which is exactly what happened when we installed the Saddam Hussein program on Iraqi Amigas. Pretty soon we did have a Saddam Hussein threat to overthrow—our own. He even generated independently more pictures of George Bush's Uncle Herb in full Iraqi military guard and had him doing ridiculous Herb-like things, such as waving a shotgun around or reading threatening messages to the U.S. government in great big glasses from his underground bunker.

Keep in mind, I still think the Saddam Hussein program is a threat, and if one mainframe carrying the program survived the Baghdad bombing, the danger remains. But all of this could have been dealt with much quicker and efficiently by planting a virus in the Iraqi intranet, or installing Windows 2000 on one of the network computers.

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