Mike Corrigan

By Mike Corrigan

BN Columnist

The week in review:

Climate change: Before recessing in August, Congress voted to deny the existence of climate change. Then, they voted to deny the existence of Washington, D.C.

“Why we didn’t think of ruling before that Washington is entirely imaginary is beyond me,” said Arkansas Rep. Bill Spittoon. “It really clears up a lot of problems and I’m thinking maybe we won’t have to come back after the recess now.”

While Rep. Spittoon indeed was among 23 freshmen Congressmen absent last week, when others got word that President Obama wanted to declare war on some country or other, they decided to return and give him a hard time. (Seventeen others who did not come back from recess said they had previously voted to deny the existence of President Obama, so why bother even showing up?)

At this writing, what’s left of Congress is debating whether denying the existence of Syria would work. An Idaho Congressman said he understood that Syria was “a blue state,” so he didn’t see why Idaho should send aid. The wacky California Republican delegation caucused and voted to deny the existence of existence.

Syria: President Barack Obama (a.k.a. Mr. Trigger Happy) drew a red line in the sand recently, but a wind came up and erased it. So he asked Congress if they had seen his red line, or if maybe he should draw another one? Meanwhile, President Assad of Syria said he didn’t see any line so he would continue doing whatever it was he was doing before the world press interrupted him with a lot of questions which, Assad said, “I found to be quite rude, to be honest with you.” After several days of hearings and video poker playing, Congress finally compromised and voted to deny the existence of sand.

National Security Agency: It was revealed last Friday that the NSA has decrypted all privately-encrypted data on the Internet, in the belief that the government must know the public’s secrets even if the public is never to know the government’s secrets. “You can trust us,” an NSA spokesman said. “We’re the government!”

Protestors arrested: Protesting Walmart’s low wages and lack of benefits and general lack of enthusiasm for anything but profits, two dozen protestors were arrested in New York and Los Angeles last Friday while trying to present petitions to regional headquarters. Because that’s what police do now when anyone challenges a corporation’s policies peacefully and legally: citizens must be arrested and taught a lesson.

“It is the people’s business to work when we say they’ll work for however many hours it’s convenient to us and at whatever pay we decide will humiliate them the most,” a Walmart spokesman said. “This ‘citizenship’ stuff sets a dangerous precedent. ‘Protestors’ should remember that we can have them killed if we feel like it. No brag, just fact.”

In more cheerful news, the seas are dying. Ocean acidification is proceeding at its most rapid pace in three hundred million years, a report in Science concludes, asserting that the process is a byproduct of the climate change that Congress has ruled does not exist, raising a thorny legal question plus the price of lobster. Coral reefs are dying back even faster than anticipated and the plankton cycle is threatened. Oceanographers added, however, that there’s nothing to worry about, since Congress is poised to take a vote soon to defund the oceans, which, according to the Joint Subcommittee for Incredible Pronouncements, are “too salty anyway.”

When Mike was working here every day, steadily growing older and crotchetier, we called him “Crusty.” Little did he know we spelled it with a “K.