bizarreville

Forward-thinking speechwriters in Washington are drafting up a speech to be delivered by the President in the near future with a working title “Return of the Malaise”.  It will borrow vignettes and excerpts from that classic speech by President Malaise in the late 1970’s that seemed to capture the hearts of manic depressives, Wall Street bears, dope-smoking left wing marxists, Cubs fans, and the whole whacko subculture across the land.  Back then, the Malaise Master-in-Chief just seemed to have his thumb on the pulse of the nation.  And then he followed it up with profound leadership that brought us hyper-inflation, skyrocketing interest rates, hostages captured in Iran, and a bumbling rescue attempt featuring helicopters crashing into each other.  Few other leaders in our history have been able to ultimately bring the nation together quite like he did.

Writers plan to develop an infomercial-type speech using exerpts from Return of the Jedi and other Star Wars clips and storylines.  They want to use the scene where Luke Skywalker gets his hand cut off by Darth Vader, with a subliminal message that “these upcoming new taxes will feel like Washington is cutting off your hand, but we can sew-on a bionic hand, or at least a Hook temporarily to return some functionality to you.  And cover it in our new Health Care plan to boot!”  Writers also want to zero-in on the Darth Vader story:  good guy, turns very bad when he gets sucked into the Dark Side, then turns good at the very end of his life when he finally realizes what a numbskull he was.

The President believes that the best way to boost confidence is to start by driving down confidence as low as it will go…again, a page out of the Carter playbook.  He has said we’re off to a good start with the 10 percent unemployment, nationalizing banks and autos, the burgeoning National Debt, and continuing to have government focus on stuff unimportant to the public.  But he believes there is more, much more that can and must be done to get consumer confidence at an all-time low…so that any improvement will seem like a major boost.  He cites as example the recent decrease in the increase in unemployment claims.  “Harry Reid and the national media went into a frenzy about that!”

Writers are hesitant about using the term “Malaise” again, and are searching Thesauruses to discover another word that will be as memorable.  The Vice President suggested using the term “Cluster F*!#”, but the President allegedly told him, “Shut up, shut up, will you please just shut up….geez.”

Disclaimer:  all stories in Bizarreville are fiction, even the ones that sound so real.

Nancy Pelosi yesterday ordered all of her liberal colleagues to immediately pick up a copy of the new book, “Karl Marx Unleashed”.  She said that it is high time we stop pissing around, nibbling away at important issues like auto industry nationalization, health care for the proletariate, and jail time for all capitalists.  “It is time for decisive, revolutionary-type action…that’s why the public elected us, and that’s what we are obliged to deliver…and deliver now before all the whackos on the Right have a chance to hose us down and extinguish the liberal flame within us.”

The new book, authored by Elmwood Skank, a professor of Political Science Mythology at Dweeb College, puts a brand new spin on old Karl’s 19th Century ideas.  He points out that Marx was like an Industrial Age Nostradamus, predicting that the working class would get pissed at CEO salaries and bonuses, that capitalism would cause major boom/bust cycles that would devastate so many speculators, and that the New Orleans Saints would eventually win the Super Bowl.  Of course that last prediction requires the reader to take a few interpretive symbolic leaps to make the connection.

But his communist fundamentals, according to Skank, ring true today…including the concept of sharing the wealth, helping the lazy, replacing competition with kumbaya, and disincentivizing initiative that, oh so often, leads to greed.  He invokes the famous Rodney King quote, “why can’t we just get along” to describe the societal problem with police brutalizing people just because they break a few laws here and there, threaten a few people, and terrorize the occasional neighborhood…or a dictator in Iran who just wants to be loved by the world communicty.  Karl Unleashed would get them all together and smoke a peace pipe…4 or 5 puffs and they would all get along just fine, thank you.

Nancy has become so inspired that she has gone to the library and picked up writings from Lenin, Engels, Trotsky, Mao, and Castro to really bone up on Marxist thought, and help her turn it into Action.  She has instructed her colleagues to develop a “Contract with Karl” set of 10 fresh new legislative bills to get this revolution into gear…high gear.  She has tried to not be too prescriptive, but hinted she would like to see things like food rationing, apartment-size equalization, and more public transportation to replace individual cars.

A Republican spokesman was asked to comment, but just shook his head and said “Wow”.

Disclaimer:  all stories in Bizarreville are fiction, even the ones that sound like they could be real.

Suddenly, its seem there is a nouveaux love affair with the bizarre teachings of Mao among some of the Port tack whacks.  Mao?  Killer of millions of his own people?  That Mao?  Huh?

Turns out, it was all a big mistake.  They weren’t quoting that nutball Mao…they were quoting Delwood Mou, the old red-neck who lives down at Slobson Creek.  Yeah, that guy.  The one who once said:  “Showers?  Baths?  Who needs ’em?  What a waste of our precious water resource!”  Or who said, “The only thing those f#&@*!  deer understand comes from the barrel of a gun.”  And…”When you put the power in people’s hands…well they’ll probably just fart if off.”   And finally, “Class stuggle is a problem in society… because some people like to go to classes, and others like me like to ditch.”  That Mou.

Mou is garnering more and more followers to his profound teachings.  He wrote a book chock full of his favorite sayings, but he forgot and left the original manuscript in a public restroom at the bus station.  Next morning:  gone.  He put out a $3 reward if anyone found it, but so far, not so good.  But with all these Libs now quoting Mou, he thinks the manuscript may surface.

Mou got much of his material…the provocative sayings, philosophy, and pretzel logic…from his grandfather, Papa Hooma Mou, who was a deeply religious preacher and part-time bass singer in a funky country music quartet.  Critics called the elder Mou “off key”.  The elder Mou would often bellyache about large corporations and capitalism.  They say that he was bitter, ever since being fired from Flummox Inc. for excessive absenteeism, sleeping on the job, general laziness, and using bad language.  “No way did I ever use bad language,” Papa Hooma Mou replied.  “I was flippin’ railroaded.  And that’s the problem with big companies…they’re out to fire all their workers…constantly on the look-out for who can we fire next?  They all need to be put in jail.”

When asked if he would prefer socialism, communism, marxism, or fascism as an alternate, old Mou would answer: “Sure.”

The word is getting out that Taxes will go up if the new Bizarreville Health Care plan goes into effect.  Leaders previously promised no new taxes to fund Health Care, but then a local 5th grader found a mistake that the Budget Office made in their arithmetic.  The staff of PhD’s on the Bizarreville Economic Council were embarrassed, but said that the flaw was in their solar calculators due to all the overcast skies in the past couple weeks.

So now the Leaders are trying to figure who will foot the bill for the new funding needs.  They took a poll of the Citizens, who overwhelmingly voted to tax the Rich guys…percentage-wise, the vote was about 90 to 10.  Some pundits were concerned that this was the sixth time recently that taxes would go up on the Rich, and at some point that gravy train would need to end.  They said that the new tax would reduce jobs, as more and more companies would move investment outside of Bizarreville to more tax-friendly places.  They whined that you can’t keep giving all these other people free rides.

The Other side responded:  “Waaah, waaah, waaah…let’s all shed tears for the multi-millionaires.  Boo-hoo.  May have to get by with 4 butlers instead of the conventional 5.  May have to sell off one of the 8 Jags parked in the garage, the one that hasn’t been properly dusted in over a week (how gross).”  They responded that the Boards will just jack up their salaries higher to compensate for the higher tax anyway…the rich dudes may end up net ahead when all is said and done.  When asked about the impact on small business, they responded that the small guys are all getting Walmartized anyway…wake up, smell the decaf latte.

The Tax Fairness Congregate (TFC) said that Bizarreville is moving toward a culture of Tax Payers and Tax Consumers, a very dangerous trend, long term.  “More and more people are getting removed from the tax rolls via reduced rates, tax rebates for the untaxed, and a plethora of freebies, handouts, and bogus breaks.  It’s moving us rapidly toward socialism/marxism.”

TFC opponents, when asked about how they feel about Karl Marx, responded: “Was he the Italian guy with the funny hat, or the mute guy with the little honking horn?  No matter…Bizarreville could definitely benefit from a little more comedyism and humorism.”