I'm breathless with excitement! (pant, pant, pant) The prez "eased" environmental regulations on gasoline! (gasp) The very regulations that hope against all probability to keep us all breathing without respirators as the oceans inhale the coasts and we have to have our skin genetically engineered to sweat sunscreen! (deep breath, choke, thud)
Thankfully, when I was outdoors in my moon suit today I found this absolutely true account of the Oval Office conversation that lead to the announcement.
"Hey, Dubbie," says Karl the demoted demon. "The polls say you're a completely out-to-lunch simian and your war -- sorry, 'our' war -- is not the winning issue we hoped. We need to drive a new, improved wedge between what people desire and what they really need."
"I got it!" shouts the prez. "They need shoes but they desire flippers! We need one of them geriatric engineers, right? Right?"
"Too long-term, Boss-in-Boots. We can pretty much lead the citizenry around by the nuts if we manipulate oil prices."
"Like always?" asks Bush, looking, as Henry Rollins says, like a Hollywood dog wondering if his off-camera trainer will be pleased enough to throw him a cookie.
"Summertime, you've got all kinds of people squeezing into their luxury frontiersmanmobiles to chug their miserable way out to The Grand Canyon and stuff. We knock back the price for a fill-up from ninety bucks to eighty, and that's like handing them a ten dollar coupon for Stuckey's."
"Ev'body likes them nut rolls," says the chief nut roll.
"But that only satisfies the short-term desire," Karl says, mulling, his brain bubbling in the rancid blood that barely keeps him functioning. "We need to declare war..."
"I like what I'm hearin'..."
"No, Gee, war on an ideal. Something where we're really screwing people over but we can make it look like we're doing them a favor." A dark cloud seems to envelope the room. "It's time to unveil Operation Asthmatic Kids' Freedom."
"Opera-sha-what?"
"We smother the environmental regs while we're temporarily muffling the gas prices. Makes it look like one caused the other; you look like a hero -- we'll get you a gas station suit or something; and a few more thousand asthmatic kids die, gagging like the fish-out-of-water in that video you like."
"Yeah, screw the environment!" says Bush. "They didn't vote for us!"
Karl flips open his mobile phone, which, unfortunately for truth, justice, and the American way, doesn't immediately create a cancerous tumor in his head. "Dial my whore," he says to the phone's voice-dialing feature.
"Fox News," says the phone.
"Hey, we're vacuuming the guts out of the environmental protections," Karl says. "Sugar-coat that for me, wouldja?"
"Hmm..." says the Brit Hume-sounding person from Fox. "How about we call that 'easing' the regulations?"
"Perfect!" croaks Karl. "And my truck needs washed, so get your pretty little fanny over to the compound with some soap A.S.A.F.P."
"What's the 'F' stand for?" asks the servant.
"I guess that stands for 'easing,' " Karl says, laughing until he coughs himself to tears.