BUSH, CHENEY, ROVE, RIDGE, ASHCROFT, RUMSFELD

PRESIDENT BUSH: Good morning, Gentlemen.

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: Hello, George.

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: Reporting for duty!

KARL ROVE: It’s good to see you all today. It is seldom that I am moved to great emotion. But this is one of those days. We have accomplished one of the great goals of right-thinking people in the last seven decades. We have finally and definitively abolished Social Security. And along with it, Medicare and Medicaid. I hope you all realize the magnitude of what we have accomplished.

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: Yes, Karl. It’s a proud moment for all of us.

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: You got it, Karl. I hope that damn socialist Franklin D.---for Demented---Roosevelt is doing wheelies in his grave.

ATTORNEY-GENERAL ASHCROFT: An act of social terrorism has been reversed. At last the American people can be free of their retirement funds. And their health insurance.

PRESIDENT BUSH: What does kicking Saddam Hussein’s butt have to do with eliminating Social Security?

KARL ROVE: The tax cut, George. We’ve bankrupted Social Security. We could never take it on directly. Too hot, politically. So we just chopped the money out of the fund. We’ve gutted $800 billion out of the federal treasury. There’s no money left for any social programs. The only people that seem to have noticed are the usual liberals. Krugman. Ivins. The Nation. They’ll get theirs soon enough.

ATTORNEY-GENERAL ASHCROFT: Pointing out that Social Security has been abolished is an act of terrorism.

SECRETARY RIDGE: But sir, soon many elderly people will be bankrupt. They won’t have food to eat, and they won’t have medical care and they won’t be able to work.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Hell, Tom, if people that old haven’t saved enough in this land of opportunity to take care of themselves, then they just aren’t fit to live. Or to call themselves Americans. Look at the Bush family. Each of us has worked hard and saved plenty. When we retire we’ll be just fine. Why can’t everybody else be like us? And if they can’t be, they can just go to Jesus. He’ll take care of them. Unless they’re Jews. Or Islamites.

VICE-PRESIDENT CHENEY: It’s all down to basics now. There are three legitimate functions of government and only three: fund our military, subsidize our corporate contributors, arrest our opponents. All else is now officially unfunded.

SECRETARY RIDGE: Aren’t we also supposed to protect the country from terrorism?

KARL ROVE: Yes and no, Tom. It’s nice to talk about. But we need a healthy taste of terrorism now and then to keep the public, well, terrorized. We don’t want people getting too comfortable. Makes ‘em soft. Makes ‘em think they don’t need us.

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: Even makes ‘em think there could be a future for the Democratic Party.

ALL: Loud, prolonged laughter.

KARL ROVE: Well, before we get too smug here, just remember why it was necessary to kill Mel Carnahan and Paul Wellstone when we did. You can’t take chances. Those two votes were the margin that got us the tax cut that killed Social Security. You just never know.

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: Right. Same with Clarence Thomas. Remember, George, how your Dad stuck to his guns about putting Clarence on the Supreme Court even though the nation was in an uproar? Then who wound up putting you in the White House?

KARL ROVE: And never forget all those wimp Democrats that voted for him. Never underestimate the willingness of a liberal to cut his own throat.

SECRETARY RIDGE: So why is it necessary to keep Joe Lieberman and Al From and Terry McAuliffe on our payroll? Why can’t we just use the money for other things?

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: Hell, it’s petty cash. Those guys would lick a latrine to make themselves look mainstream.

SECRETARY RIDGE: But we don’t have sufficient funds to protect our harbors, our airliners, our nuclear plants….

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: There’s no money for schools either, Tom. That’s the point. Except for our specific uses, government is over. Democracy is over. The Bill of Rights is history. The American nation finally being ruled by the people who are fit to rule it. US!!!!

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: Watch your ticker there, Dick. We don’t want you keeling over at the helm during your big moment.

KARL ROVE: Right. Remember what happened to Nelson Rockefeller.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Nelson Rockefeller? What happened? Did he lose his Medicaid?

KARL ROVE: Let’s just say he died in the saddle.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Nelson Rockefeller was a cowboy? Did he have a ranch like mine?

ATTORNEY-GENERAL ASHCROFT: No sir, he didn’t. But speaking of cowboys, there’s an Indian I think we should be concerned about. His name is Tecumseh.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Who was Tecumseh?

ATTORNEY-GENERAL ASHCROFT: I don’t exactly know. He keeps turning up on leftist web sites. We’re having the FBI investigate.

SECRETARY RIDGE: Tecumseh was Chief of the Ohio Shawnee. He was born near Chillicothe, south of what’s now Columbus. He was a remarkable leader who spoke five languages and assembled a large coalition of tribes against the whites. But he was defeated by William Henry Harrison at Fallen Timbers in 1813. His body was never found.

KARL ROVE: Right, and they later called it Tippicanoe, because it sounded better for Harrison’s campaign. I can relate to that.

SECRETARY RIDGE: Tecumseh was a uniquely powerful spiritual figure. In 1840 Harrison was elected president. When he died a month after being inaugurated, they called it “Tecumseh’s Curse.”

PRESIDENT BUSH: So?

SECRETARY RIDGE: After that, every president elected on the 20th year died in office, and ONLY those presidents. It was Lincoln in 1860, Garfield in 1880, McKinley in 1900, Harding in 1920, Roosevelt in 1940 and Kennedy in 1960.

KARL ROVE: But then there was Reagan in 1980.

SECRETARY RIDGE: Reagan was shot, of course. When he didn’t die there were those who said that lifted the curse. But how much of Ronald Reagan was actually left?

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: Not too damn much. By 1986, Nancy was running the show. She dumped Don Regan. She shut down the fundamentalists. She kissed up to Gorby. She wanted ending the Cold War to be Ronnie’s legacy. What a nightmare.

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: God, what a bitch she was. Hillary in drag.

PRESIDENT BUSH: So what’s that got to do with me?

SECRETARY RIDGE: Well, sir, you were elected in 2000. That’s a twentieth year. Some people think Tecumseh might be out to get you.

PRESIDENT BUSH: But he’s dead. Right? Isn’t he?

KARL ROVE: We can’t let these things fester, George. I’ve seen this Tecumseh stuff on the web sites. It’s a perception thing. We’ve got to stamp it out now.

ATTORNEY-GENERAL ASHCROFT: All mention of Tecumseh is an act of terrorism.

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: Just do a search and destroy on Tecumseh’s name. Arrest anybody that talks about him or his curse. Crash their web sites. Burn the text books. Delete the dictionaries.

KARL ROVE: He who controls the past controls the present.

SECRETARY RIDGE: There’s a town in Michigan named Tecumseh.

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: Bomb it. We can hit Ann Arbor, too. By mistake.

PRESIDENT BUSH: I don’t like this. It makes me feel creepy. Like when I sat on that toilet seat in Alabama. Where’s my flight suit? I want my flight suit.

KARL ROVE: No need to panic, George. After all, you weren’t really ELECTED in 2000. So it’s probably not relevant.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Right. That’s right. All those other guys were really elected, weren’t they. I was appointed. We lost by 500,000 votes. That should count for something.

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: George, calm down. Tecumseh can’t hurt you any more than all those negroes we expunged from the voter rolls in Florida. It’s all just smoke and mirrors. Relax.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Well, I think we should do something to divert attention, then. How about we attack Iran.

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: Great idea, sir. We’re already on it. Those towelheads won’t know what hit them.

SECRETARY RIDGE: But there are more than 50 million people in Iran. They are much more powerful than Iraq. Their government is not unpopular. We haven’t been bombing them for 12 years. We haven’t starved them with sanctions. We haven’t sent in the UN to disarm them. We might be asking for trouble.

KARL ROVE: Trouble is good, Tom. We like trouble wherever we can create it. Look what we’re doing to the state governments. They’re all at each other’s throats, and the public is disgusted. That’s exactly what we want. Disillusionment. Depression. Denial. A public that is dispirited and downtrodden is a public that will let us do whatever the hell we want.

SECRETARY RIDGE: Yes, sir, but there’s quite a bit of anger about not finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Well they didn’t find Tecumseh, either, and he’s still out to kill me. So why should anybody care about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction? We all knew he didn’t have them anyway.

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: Yeah, and that idiot Jew Wolfowitz just got quoted that the whole thing was just a sham. Why do we let people like that continue to live?

KARL ROVE: Oh, hell Don, what counts more: that a few journalists know we lied, or that Showtime is making a movie about September 11 showing George to be a cross between Moses and God. When that thing airs it will be Gospel. Nobody’s going to remember Saddam Hussein or weapons of mass destruction.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Does it show how I saved Private Lynch? That was really one of my great moments. I was wearing my flight suit.

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: Right, George. And that Congressional report on 9/11 can go straight in the trash can. All that stuff about us ignoring warnings and opening the door to Osama. Nobody’s going to read it. Nobody’s going to cover it. We’ve got George on Mt. Rushmore and all that sweet Iraqi oil driving down gas prices just in time for 2004.

KARL ROVE: Plus Michael Powell burying what’s left of the media. It’s all about pre-emption. It’s all about staying ahead of the game.

ATTORNEY-GENERAL ASHCROFT: Along those lines, gentlemen, we are now rolling out the very latest in law-enforcement. It’s called pre-emptive detention. It’s based on the same theory we used to justify attacking Iraq. We we went to war saying Saddam might have weapons of mass destruction and might be thinking about using them. So now we can say that if someone might be thinking about opposing our policies, we can have him arrested.

KARL ROVE: It’s beautiful, John. I read where you are grabbing people who like they might be heading to a demonstration. Excellent. We can’t take any chances.

VICE-PRESIDENT CHENEY: You also arrested some jerk who brought a United Nations flag to the President’s cavalcade in Indiana. Why didn’t you just shoot him?

PRESIDENT BUSH: I saw that flag. It was scary.

ATTORNEY-GENERAL ASHCROFT: Having the appearance of going to a demonstration is an act of terrorism. Carrying a United Nations flag is an act of terrorism.

SECRETARY RIDGE: There is also a movement growing to demand paper ballots. They claim the voting machines are rigged. They want a paper trail.

KARL ROVE: Ignore them. Nobody’s going to cover them. We’re using the Florida model nationwide now to eliminate millions of black and Hispanic voters. Like Wellstone and Carnahan, leave nothing to chance.

ATTORNEY-GENERAL ASHCROFT: Advocating paper ballots is clearly an act of terrorism.

KARL ROVE: It’s only a matter of mop-up, now. Total mind control. No social programs. No educational system. No independent media. We are God. Who can stand before us?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Well, I’m worried, Karl. That goddam Tecumseh. I don’t want him out there threatening me. I want him found. I want him destroyed.

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: Got it, sir. When can we attack Detroit?

copyright c 2003 by Lee Waters, www.freepress.org