“At a time of rising costs and vanishing advertisers and plummeting readership and expanding waistlines, we had to do someth,” said publisher Arthur (““Pinched”) Sulzb, formerly known as Arthur (“Pinch“) Sulzberger Jr. Sulzb, who claims to have drastically cut his own width as well, shedding 20 pounds of fat, mostly from his head, added, “Admittedly, when it comes time for the Times to funnel fake intelligence provided by anonymous government officials in order to start unnecessary wars in the Middle East, we may have less space to do it in,” referring to the fabricated WMD-in-Iraq stories by his close friend Judith Miller that ran prominently on the front page in 2002-03. “But,” he continued, “from now on we’’re only going to be buying little subcompact wars, which should fit our new format nicely.” Sulzb also said that if the Bush administration starts a war with Iran without the paper’s help, the Times would not have any room to oppose it, but it was prepared to cover both the war and the subsequent worldwide economic meltdown and total political chaos in the Sunday “Styles” section.

In a related move, the Times published a lead editorial calling upon world leaders to agree on a global plan for reducing the amount of bad weather, riots, insurgencies, epidemics, elections, summit meetings, trends, forecasts, stock market plunges and rallies, and alarming new studies about the irreversibly harmful effects of ordinary foods and beverages by 60 percent by the year 2009. It also called for comparable reductions in the number of tediously similar exciting new upcoming neighborhoods and upscale restaurants and Broadway shows, and strict quotas on the number of boring yet newsworthy new fashion designers, artists, dancers, filmmakers, and rich people who have transformed old abandoned canning factories into cute country homes. That would make it possible, the editorial pointed out, for the Times to reduce its width even more, to about five inches, and to switch to thinner, softer paper, so that the daily edition of the paper could then be sold in handy, fluffy rolls around a cardboard cylinder, which would allow it to serve another household purpose aside from providing questionable news, and the price could be increased accordingly.

We may now be close to an answer. Most of the Neocons, sources close to Mitchell have revealed, have been routinely smoking or injecting Hubris (TM), a powerful stimulant said to give users a sense of power and invulnerability while at the same time causing them to commit one tragic error after another. Among the stars or former stars of the team believed likely to be named in the investigation are Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleeza Rice, Doug Feith, Scooter Libby, John Bolton, Paul Bremer, and Richard Perle.

Hubris (TM) had originally been patented by Nemesis, the Greek pharmaceuticals giant, but was withdrawn after questions were raised. The literature on the drug, which dates back to the 5th century B.C., lists serious possible side effects, including patricide, incest, blindness, madness, repeated attacks by furies, and chronic lying—accompanied by the compulsive invasion and wrecking of remote countries. Nevertheless, the high it produces is so irresistible that not only the Bush team but its devoted fans, including pundits, magazine editors, and radio talk-show hosts, have been, as one investigator put it, “scarfing it down like candy” after obtaining it from shadowy neighborhood dealers in Washington and New York under its street name, Chickenhawk Viagra.

By March 2003 the drug was so popular with the Neocons that they were falsifying laboratory reports and other research in order to force the FDA into accelerated approval of it. Anticipating its imminent legalization, team manager Karl Rove is said to have hired a Madison Avenue advertising firm, Careen, Skidmore & Lurch, which was preparing to launch a major-media campaign for a potent version of the drug, to be marketed under the name Neo-Hubris, with the slogan “Put some zoom in your doom.”

But despite the pressure the FDA concluded that the drug was too dangerous to be made legally available to vulnerable segments of the American population like federal officials. A research group at Johns Hopkins, for instance, found that rats fed Neo-Hubris and placed inside a labyrinthine trap were much more likely than rats fed a placebo to describe the trap as a successful ongoing operation. They were also much more likely to be offered interviews and guest slots on Fox News.

Meanwhile, at the Ozymandias Institute, a treatment facility outside Washington designed specifically for prominent Hubris (TM) addicts whose ambitious projects have fallen to pieces and begun to sink into desert sands, a comfortable padded cell is being prepared for the expected arrival, soon after November 2008, of an unnamed team official whose symptoms—which include slurred, incoherent speech, a compulsive nervous tic resembling a smirk, an arrogant gait and posture especially while wearing a flight suit, and a tendency to fall flat on his face—are all, experts say, consistent with near-suicidal doses of the drug.

Eric Kenning is the pen name of a writer in New York. He can be reached at kenningsatire@hotmail.com.

“On this day,” Bush said in his televised Oval Office proclamation, “Americans in all walks of life can gather together, now and in future generations, to try and figure out what the mission was and what the heck it accomplished. If anybody does, have them call me.”

Wearing the same flight suit he had worn in 2003, though he appeared to have it on backwards, Bush stressed the significance of the new holiday, declaring, “Well, anyway,  we’ve accomplished something. We’ve accomplished a new excuse for not showing up for work. And I’m going to appoint a presidential panel headed by Harriet Miers and Michael Brown to see if maybe they can get somebody to remembrance what this day of remembrance is all about. At least then we’ll have a commission accomplished.”

Bush concluded his remarks by saying while the holiday would not apply to American troops on extended duty in Iraq or most other working Americans, he and his many cronies could now look forward to a nice, well-deserved rest. But afterward he revealed that he would not be spending the day at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Due to a lack of planning and poor pre-vacation intelligence, the brush that he had been attempting to clear during his most recent stay there has now taken over the entire ranch except for a small “Green Zone” where a few blades of grass are still growing.

This small but strategically important patch of greenery was supposed to be protected by a voluntary force of neoconservatives wearing pith helmets and brandishing weed whackers. The so-called Chickenhawk Brigade includes current and former administration officials like Dick Cheney, Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle, John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz, and Douglas Feith, plus journalists and commentators Christopher Hitchens, William Kristol, Fred Barnes, Rich Lowry, Jonah Goldberg, David Frum, R. Emmett Tyrrell, Ann Coulter, and Sean Hannity. But after a few minutes on patrol duty, the neocon army dispersed, running for the next flights back to Washington and New York. In a joint statement, they blamed the rout on an unforeseen surge of “other priorities” which struck without warning and took them by surprise. Taking their place are 300 18-year-old kids who were taken into custody while leaving nearby high schools and who quickly volunteered for the deployment after being told that the alternative was to be subjected to a relentless campaign of rumor-mongering and vilification coordinated by Fox News and funded by Halliburton and AIPAC.    

With his Crawford ranch no longer considered secure, Bush said that he was anticipating a leisurely holiday in the woods “doing a little quail hunting with the vice president.” But a White House spokesman quickly clarified the remark, saying that the president would instead “spend the holiday pretending to report to the National Guard in Alabama, as once again that looks like the safest option.”

Eric Kenning is the pen name of a writer in New York. He can be reached at kenningsatire@hotmail.com.

Cheney has kept his faith a private matter, choosing not to reveal it to President Bush, a sincere Christian who has vowed to read the entire Bible someday, just as soon as he finishes My Pet Goat. But it has led to considerable tension in the Cheney household, where the devout veep unrolls a prayer rug and prays five times a day facing toward an oil well just outside Mecca. In particular, his conversion to Wahabbi Islam has led to bitter arguments with his daughter Mary, who converted to an entirely different sect, Wasabi Islam, while having dinner at a fusion sushi and shish-kebab restaurant in Georgetown last month with her partner Heather Poe. The heated exchanges between father and daughter have been further complicated by the fact that Cheney’s wife, Lynne, is a devotee of the ancient Egyptian snake goddess Irma.

Cheney’s strict adherence to militant Islam has also caused problems with his fellow neoconservatives, most of whom are equally devout, but adhere to a rival sect, militant Bedlam.

Eric Kenning is the pen name of a writer in New York. He can be reached at eric_kenning@hotmail.com. This piece originally appeared in the journal Liberty.