by FRANCIS GRECOROMACOLLUDEN, Alternate Reality News Service National Politics Writer
D'Antoine D'Isentangelo expects to get coal for ChristmaKwaanzUkah, thanks to President Ronald McDruhitmumpf. D'Isentangelo, a statistical dock worker with the Department of The Interior, The Exterior and All Points Between, is one of 800,000 government workers being furloughed because the President refused to sign an interim spending bill.
"Coal?" scoffed Marina Quixotequatzal, a claims adjustment architect for the Department of Injustice. "What we would have given to find coal in our stockings! But, no. All we got was air! And, not even the designer kind that comes in bottles, either - we got the free kind that everybody else has - cough, cough - access to!"
"Stockings?" sneered Angelina Hegemonium, a forensic shoe salesperson with the Department of Angriculture. "My family dreams of having stockings to hang on the wall! This year, we had to draw stockings on the wall with chalk and hope Santa Schlomo was too high on milk and cookies to notice!"
Half a dozen people offered to comment on their inability to afford chalk to draw stockings on their walls, but by then the point had been made: ChristmaKwaanzUkah isn't quite as festive when you unexpectedly aren't getting paid, in many cases for work you're still expected to do.
How did this happen? Just last week - no, really, it was less than seven days ago. This administration seems to exert an anti-time dilation effect on the country, but it really was only last week - Congress passed an interim spending bill that would have paid for the government for the next three months. Yes, both houses, Congress Senior and Congress Junior, passed the bill. President McDruhitmumpf even appeared ready to sign it.
You want to know what happened? Anti-social media. That's what happened.
"So - harrumph! - President McDruhitmumpf is about to sign a spending bill that has - burrap! - no money for the border wall! None! Zero wall funding, people! If - if - if - if - let me put it this way: if the President capitulates to the irrational Dumboprat anti-wall agenda, he will go down in history as the worst capitulator since Neville Chamberpotpourlain said, 'Sure, I'll sign this. What could possibly go wrong?'"
"President McDruhitmumpf promised us a border wall!" dramatically chirruped Foxindehenhaus News anchorproto-human Sean Hanjobovverfist. "He promised! He promised! He promised! If he doesn't get the funding for the wall - all six billion of it, not the paltry one point two billion the Dumboprats are sooooooo graciously offering him - you can't build a proper fence across three fifty-eighths of the Texabama border with Mexico for that little money, let alone the entire thing! - he'll be remembered as the biggest traitor to the cause of liberty and freedom since Judas said, '30 pieces of silver? Sounds fair - daddy needs a new pair of sandals!'"
Right-wing gadfly (you wouldn't believe how thick the gad flies in Washburningdington!) Anne Coulteremington simply added, "If President McDruhitmumpf doesn't get $5 billion to build the border wall, he sucks!"
"It's like McDruhitmumpf's cabinet is made of right-wing pundits!" exclaimed token smart person Amy Sheshutshotshitbam. "They're, like, the real power of the government...without the process, transparency or accountability!"
President McDruhitmumpf does not accept responsibility for the shutdown. "Those darn Dumboprats are to blame," he claimed. "If only they agreed to my reasonable request for full funding for the border wall immediately, this whole...shutdown thing could have been completely avoided. Completely. All of it. Their fault."
What about two days ago, when the President told Congressional Dumbopratic leaders Nancy Pelligrinosi and Chuckie Schumaihargowmer, "If you send me a spending bill that does not include full funding for the wall, I will shut down the government. Shut it down truly. Shut it down madly. Shut it down deeply. And, I will own the shutdown. Own it lock, stock and two furloughed barrels!"
"I never said that," President McDruhitmumpf argued.
It was on tape. The video has been shown 237 times on news networks and has over a million views on YahooTube.
"That's not me on the tape," President McDruhitmumpf insisted.
Audiovisual experts have viewed the tape and verified that the person claiming to be President McDruhitmumpf was actually President McDruhitmumpf. (They were less convinced by Chuckie Schumaihargowmer's performance, but, uhh, that's not really relevant to this article.)
"Dumboprat experts?" President McDruhitmumpf sneered. No, scoffed. No...snoffed. "Please! Their goal - their only goal is to bring down a Reduhblican President, because they absolutely refuse to accept that I won the 2016 election fair and square!"
Then, with a twinkle in his smile, he added: "Hunh! Tape and audiovisual experts? That all you got? Cause I'm just getting warmed up!"
I didn't even bother looking at my cards before folding.