Washington, DC -- President Obama's strict new rules regulating activities of lobbyists--banning them from giving gifts of any type to members of his administration, barring anyone who leaves his administration from lobbying former colleagues for at least two years--have severely shaken the K Street community. A spokesman for the lobbyists has asked newly-confirmed Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for a 90-billion-dollar bailout, claiming that these unfair new restrictions will destroy the profession of lobbying. If lobbyists are allowed to go under, he said, there'll be nobody left to pressure lawmakers and other elected officials to make decisions favoring large multinational corporations, thus forcing senators and congressmen to obey the capricious whims of an unpredictable group known as "voters." This has never happened before, he said, and would lead to utter chaos.
Also arriving on Secretary Geithner's doorstep this week was a representative of the women's intimate apparel industry, who sought a 25-billion-dollar rescue plan. Francis Spurlock, President Obama's recently-appointed panty czar, threw cold water on the intimate apparel manufacturers and then hung them out to dry, urging them to "suck in your guts, get off your fat butts and update your product lines--dump corsets and girdles, re-tool and make thongs, thongs and more thongs--oh, and by the way, how about some really edible panties?"
A third group petitioning the Treasury Secretary and Congress was dominatrices. A dozen of them, clad in black leather motorcycle jackets and leather pants, spike-heeled black boots and chains, appeared before Congress and loudly demanded a 30-billion-dollar rescue plan. Lawmakers were stunned, but surprisingly complacent. They seemed willing to seriously consider the dominatrices' demands, but confessed that their hands were tied due to the many demands from other groups. The dominatrices are now working out the details of the bailout with Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin.
When a contingent of recession-ravaged street mimes appeared in the House of Representatives, seeking a bailout of several hundred dollars and loose pocket change, at first lawmakers couldn't even tell why they'd come, because they expressed their plea in the familiar trapped-in-a-box and straining-against-the-wind routines. Eventually, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi figured out what they were saying. She urged them to return in a week with a specific plan to restructure their business model, suggesting that they take a leaf from the motion picture industry, which made a financially successful evolution from silent films to talkies in the late 1920s. She suggested the mimes consider adding dialogue to their routines and "losing the whole white-face thing." Sadly, the mimes seized upon the metaphor "take a leaf " and went into an annoying routine of plucking leaves off trees, which caused members of Congress to fall upon them with kicks and punches, soon pounding them senseless.
Advertisement