We invite you to play our new, can’t-lose holiday game: Where’s Douche Bag?

Monday, November 26th
-New investigations reveal that, despite its criticisms of US treatment of Guantanamo prisoners, Spain allowed US planes to use its airports to transport rendered suspects to Guantanamo. Upon hearing the news, Congressional Democrats invite the Spanish Socialist Workers Party to be honorary Democrats. “You know, sometimes you forget, with national boundaries, how much we have in common,” explains Dianne Feinstein. “But they’re just like us.”

Friday, November 30th
-The Washington Post reports that White House Special Counsel Scott Bloch confesses to having wiped his hard drive of all files relating to his investigation of Karl Rove and says he won’t be providing his copies of the files either.

As another article explains: Following the revelation of the computer wipes, federal investigators have requested Bloch turn over copies of personal files that he saved to his America Online account before his hard disk was scrubbed. Bloch has refused, saying the data…don’t involve his official work.

Why ask Bloch when you could go straight to America Online, right, Dianne? I mean, we don’t even need a warrant, do we, Chuck?

Sunday, December 2nd
-The New York Times reports that lawlessness has hit new highs in Baghdad, with people bribing and stealing at unprecendented levels. (Iraq is now considered the world’s third most corrupt country.) The article runs with a picture of a car wash business that was created by rerouting the water from public pipes. Told of the news, President Bush isn’t worried. “This just shows the Iraqi people’s desire for a free market system in which private initiative, rather than public bureaucracy, drives the distribution of key goods and services.”
-Newsweek reports that Condoleezza Rice will invite Paul Wolfowitz to head the International Security Advisory Board. Wolfowitz will replace Fred Thompson, who was fired for being a corpse. After extending her offer, Condi let Wolfowitz know that the position comes with limits. “You’ve got to promise me you won’t mess this up by trying to throw money at people you fucked,” she told him, in an obvious reference to his early departure from the World Bank. “Unless, of course, it’s Iraq.”

Sunday, November 18th
-Thomas Friedman writes a column suggesting that if Barack Obama gets the Democratic presidential nomination, he should name Dick Cheney as his running mate. This, Friedman explains, will provide an intimidating presence to potentially hostile states. “It’ll just be like Public Enemy back in the day, with Professor Griff and Security of the First World. Man, did I love listening to Welcome to the Terrordome when I was stirring up war. Those were the days. Remember when my mustache was cool? Does this column make my dick look bigger? Okay, well, whatever. Tell Obama to go with Cheney. I’d offer my services, but I’m already booked for my own gig. It’s a movie called ‘Dorf on Punditry.’”

Monday, November 19th
-Seeking to align military service with the incentives of a free market system, the U.S. Military decides that it will force injured soldiers to return their enlistment bonuses. “Why incentivize getting hurt?” explains Chief Military Economist Herbert Spencer.

“This was all my idea,” says a beaming Paul Bremer from the tomato patch in his Connecticut garden. “I’m still relevant!”

Tuesday, November 20th
-An advance snippet of Scott McLellan’s book critiques the President, Vice President, and key aides for sending him to the press with false information. This brings the list of former Bush Administration members to write books critiquing the President to the following:

Colin Powell
Richard Armitage
Paul O’Neill
Christine Todd Whitman
Scott McClellan

Incidentally, because an overeager intern failed to heed Dick Cheney’s “don’t write anything down” maxim, we now know that the list of “People to Extraordinarily Render” looks like this:

Chris Dodd
Dennis Kucinich
That guy from Peru
Mr. Rogers(DEAD)
…
Colin Powell
Richard Armitage
Paul O’Neill
Christine Todd Whitman
Scott McClellan
…

Asked to comment, the intern said, “gurgle, gurgle, cough, cough.”

Thursday, November 22nd
-In presidential tradition, George W. Bush announces his pardon of the White House turkey. His signing statement, however, indicates otherwise. Out back, Dick Cheney and David Addington are seen covering its beak with a towel.

Saturday, November 24th
The New York Times reports that President Bush, facing a lame duck year and a Congress that has been non-compliant on all non-FISA, non-Iraq matters, intends to focus on smaller, domestic goals. To that end, the White House announces the launching of the new War on Malaise. Instead of alert levels (yellow, orange, red), this war will feature mindfulness tones (current tone: off-mauve). “We’d like to see that down to a blanched almond by December,” explains Michael Chertoff’s gut. To combat his own malaise, Dick Cheney shoots small, peaceful birds with a high-powered rifle.

Monday, November 12th
A National Security Council meeting is derailed when the President confuses IEDs with IUDs, puts surgeon general on conference call.

Tuesday, November 13th
The Wall Street Journal reports that, in a nod to traditional free-market economic theory, the U.S. Government is soliciting bids from defense contractors for a $15 billion contract to fight the drug war. Among the competitors is Blackwater.

“It’s simple economics,” explains a Bush economic adviser. “You just prohibit the substance, forcing an informal market and creating profit incentives for legally flexible entrepeneurs. You then liberalize the finance industries in the production countries, allowing drug profits to be stored more easily, no questions asked, and enabling those countries to stabilize their currencies with said profits. Simultaneously, you have the IMF impose austerity measures on those countries, forcing formal industries to contract and pushing more people into the coca trade. Now stay with me, here.” He pauses for a swig of Kool-Aid. “Here’s how you solve it: Find a silver-spoon-fed, A-Team wannabe, Lou Holtz-look-alike party fundraiser, funnel him some money so he can hire some trigger-happy muscleheads, and send ‘em into the jungle.”
“Fuckin’ A,” adds the president. “Hey wait. What about Rambo?”

Lou: Play like a winner today!” Erik: “I thought I wasn’t gonna have to bid on this motherfucker!”

Wednesday, November 14th
David Addington explains to a disappointed President that the term veto is not named after a character from The Godfather.
Addington: Did you sign that signing statement for me?
Bush: Not yet. Wasn’t that awesome when he said he was gonna make him an offer he couldn’t refuse?
Addington: Yes, it was. I’m going to need that statement, Mr. President.
Bush: What’s Habeus Corpus?
Addington ignores him, shuffles papers.
Cheney (from next room): Oh, he’s just Petraeus’ cousin.
Bush: Petraeus…I love that guy.

Thursday, November 15th
An American Research Group poll finds that 43% of Americans support the impeachment of Dick Cheney. Told of the news, an irritated Vice President responds, “well, I’m in support of waterboarding 43% of them, so I’m not sweating it either.”

Friday, November 16th
The Pittsburgh Steelers receive an inspirational message from the Vice President, who has bet on them to cover the spread against the New York Jets. “Remember,” concludes Cheney. “All I need is a Gatorade bucket and a Terrible Towel.”

Monday, November 5th
-Pervez Musharraf receives a congratulatory phone call from David Addington.

Tuesday, November 6th
-Dennis Kucinich pushes for a House vote on his articles of impeachment for Dick Cheney. In the office of the Vice President, David Addington hands a bristling Cheney a pledge the latter signed when Chris Dodd put a hold on the FISA immunity bill:

Wednesday, November 7th
-Lynne Cheney speaks about the stories in her memoir, Blue Skies, No Fences, at a Washington D.C. luncheon. An article describing the event in the Stafford County Sun states that “[i]t was a time when the adults did not hesitate to teach values and proper social morés of honesty, hard work, and patriotism.” Explains Cheney: “We were taught never to write anything down. And if you were going to strap someone to a table, cover their mouth with a towel, and pour water on their face, you know, just so they would think they were drowning, you didn’t do it in your hometown. Preferably, you had someone else do it, like Syrians or Uzbekis.”
-She also recounts a period in their courtship when Dick decided he wanted to date other people. Her relatives “circled the wagons,” decking her out in the finest outfits to make Dick jealous. Asked for more details, she says, “I dressed up as a schoolgirl. Even back then, there was no one Dick would rather screw than our nation’s children.”

Friday, November 9th
-Citing an obscure provision of the Patriot Act, Pervez Musharraf has barbed wire and troops placed around the home of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. Asked his thoughts on the maneuver in an opinion poll, Michael Mukasey is undecided.

Saturday, November 10th
-The Asia Times reports that the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran has been held up for a year by Dick Cheney’s office, which wants one that will better support their aggressive positions toward that country. Now that the NIE will be released, word is that the Administration will attempt to classify large portions. “Right now, we’re on two fronts,” explained a Cheney spokesperson. “If we fail to classify the NIE but succeed in classifying the Constitution, we’ll consider it a victory.”

Sunday, November 11th
-The New York Times reports that the United States can’t account for 190,000 small arms that were shipped to Iraq. President Bush, however, remains confident: “The market will find a solution. The real concern is making sure that the terrorists aren’t receiving arms from Iran.”

Monday, October 29th
Michael Mukasey refuses to answer whether the President’s invocation of “olly-olly oxen-free” may, as the President asserts, properly confer upon his subordinates immunity from the nation’s laws. “I’d need to read up on that,” explains Mukasey. “It may depend on whether the situation involves enemy combatants.”

Tuesday, October 30th
-Karen Hughes, undesecretary of state for public diplomacy, announces her resignation. Among her accomplishments was a “listening” tour of the Middle East in which she advised Saudi women to learn to drive to make themselves more sympathetic to Americans and asserted, “to preserve the peace, sometimes my country believes war is necessary.”
Said Condi Rice: “she will obviously leave a very big hole.” We consulted an expert for an explanation: “I believe what Ms. Rice is saying is that Ms. Hughes has Goatse’d America.”
-The Los Angeles Times reports that Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates has come to the conclusion that bombing Iran may be counterproductive. Our intrepid reporter scours the Pentagon recycling bins (Shhh—don’t tell Dick they’ve gone green!) and is able to find Gates’ original list of conclusions:

Note the reference to Petraeus’ diminutive
stature

Thursday, November 1st
-The Washington Post publishes an article about the contents of Donald Rumsfeld’s memos, which he termed snowflakes (a nomenclature that created tension with General Peter Pace, who refused to read them on the grounds that they sounded “too gay.”) Cheney is irate, and tracks down a suntanned and well-rested Rumsfeld at the Podhoretz compound, where Don and the boys are engaged in a circle jerk around a map of Iran and a miniature model of the Enola Gay. Cheney smacks Rumsfeld on the back of the head. “Snowflakes melt, dumbfuck. Memos don’t. We oughta get you on a waterboard.” At the mention of this last word, Rumsfeld achieves orgasm.

Friday, November 2nd
-At a Dallas luncheon, Dick Cheney implies that Hugo Chavez is the President of Peru. When asked later about the gaffe, he insists it was based on the best intelligence available at the time.
-The same speech is interrupted by protesters. Afterward, a fearful Secret Service supervisor apologizes to the VP, who is surprisingly forgiving. “As long as none of the lunches were eaten by schoolchildren, you did a good job in my book.”

Photo credit: Darryl Bautista

Monday, October 22nd
-Blackwater security guards scramble to kill Iraqi civilians before they’re forced to leave the country.

Tuesday, October 23rd
-Our reporter catches up to L. Paul Bremer III at his home in New Canaan, Connecticut, where he’s working in the garden. “This is pretty much what I do with my days,” he says. “My wife won’t let me near the household budget.” Asked whether he keeps up with events in Iraq, he grows pensive and wistful, fingering the Presidential Medal of Freedom he wears at all times. “You know, this means a lot,” he says, holding the medal up. “But I’d give it back—the money, the medal, all of it—for just one more chance to really fuck something up.”

Wednesday, October 24th
-George Bush reads the coverage of the Republican primary campaign and realizes that waterboarding is different than surfboarding.
“Dick, you got me again!”
“I couldn’t have done it without Al,” says the Vice President.
Meanwhile, in Texas, Alberto Gonzales looks for his keys. “I don’t recall where I put them,” he mutters.

Thursday, October 25th
-In an interview with CNBC’s Kudlow and Company, Dick Cheney refers to Congress’s new children’s health bill as “veto bait.” Lynne Cheney, who is patriotically eavesdropping from the next room, bursts in with a smile: “George is going to veto another children’s health bill?!”
Dick smirks. “That’s right.”
“I’ll go to the store,” she says. She then leans over and whispers something into his ear.
“You know I prefer oil-based, Lynne. Maybe petroleum?”
Lynne looks to the interviewer with a smile. “See: after 33 years, he’s still a romantic at heart!”
-The Poughkeepsie Journal announces that Dick Cheney plans on hunting in the Poughkeepsie area Monday morning. His motorcade is expected to disrupt school bus service. Inside sources indicate that Cheney insisted the trip occur on a weekday.
“One less day we have to pay to feed those little fuckers.”
-Condeleezza Rice continues implementation of her new Subtlety Doctrine. On a widely publicized memo from Maliki’s office specifying that government officials aren’t to be investigated without his approval, she tells the House Committee on Oversight, “I don’t know precisely what you are referring to.”
On the case of Maher Arar, the Canadian citizen mistakenly flown by the US to Syria for an “extraordinary” vacation of sensory deprivation, waterboarding, and other forms of tor [REDACTED FOR NATIONAL SECURITY REASONS]: “mishandled.”

Friday, October 26th
-FEMA holds a news conference with FEMA employees posing as journalists. The nation’s press corps is outraged. “Only we can pose as journalists! Iran has WMD!”
-The AP reports that the Army has begun their investigation of Iraq contracts for fraud and waste. The article quotes Frank Anderson, president of the Defense Acquisition University at Fort Belvoir, as saying that deceiving the checks and balances in the (cronyistic, no bid) federal procurement system takes careful planning.
“You had some smart bad apples. It had to be someone who understood the business well enough to figure out how to get around the system.”
Somewhere, an enterprising and morally flexible contractor licks the tip of his pen and begins a list:

No bid contract (all Halliburton????)
Make friends with Dick?

Donate money to GOP (Erik Prince)

Find $9 billion??

A phone rings in New Canaan, Connecticut, and L. Paul Bremer III bolts up from behind a tomato plant, his Presidential Medal of Freedom jingling against the zipper of his sweater jacket, his heart swelling with hope.

Monday, October 15th
-Jealous of his wife’s success with her book Blue Skies, No Fences, Dick Cheney decides to write a children’s book. Waterboarding Builds Character, or How Ahmed Got His Groove Back debuts at #1 on The Weekly Standard’s bestseller list.
-Wyoming historians write a letter to Lynne Cheney protesting the exclusion of any mention of Fennis Dembo from Blue Skies, No Fences:

Tuesday, October 16th
-Partial transcript from Oval Office recordings:
[video game sounds]
Aide: Sir, the immunity bill looks like it’s going to make it through the Senate–
President: [unintelligible]
Aide: No, sir, not vaccines. This was the bill to give retroactive immunity to telecom companies that allowed us to monitor any communications we wanted without a warrant
President: [unintelligible]
Aide: I agree that that shouldn’t be illegal, sir.
[video game sounds stop]
President: What about E.T. I want to know what he talks about when he phones home.
Aide: We haven’t found him yet, sir.
President: Well, find him, damnit! I’ve been asking for that tap since we were in Afghanistan.
Aide: We’re still in Afghanistan, sir.
President: Oh.

Thursday, October 18th
-Bush’s veto of the S-Chip bill holds, with bill supporters coming up 13 votes short. Dick Cheney says, “Shoop! I feel like I can finally exhale!”

Apologies to Angela Bassett, the rest of the ladies.

-Rolling Stone reports that Dick Cheney is making a big push for an American attack on Iran next year. Our intrepid reporter tracks him to the annual NAMBLA conference, where he is accepting a lifetime achievement award. “They also welcome those of us who prefer to fuck children figuratively,” he explains, citing the S-CHIP bill. “I’d like to accept this on behalf of everyone who stood with me in opposing the federal school lunch program.”
“Why Iran?” Our reporter asks him after the big dinner. Cheney wastes little time in responding. “That’s easy,” he says. “Because it gives me a boner.”

Friday, October 19th
-Cheney adds Christopher Dodd to the list of people to extraordinarly render. Addington makes him erase it. “Too soon, Dick. All things in good time.”
General Petraeus, whose diminutive stature has been hidden by a complicit press, spends some time riding around the Oval Office floor with Ralph, aka The Mouse from The Mouse and the Motorcycle.

Dick-Cheney-as-creepy-angel photograph courtesy of Fox News

Monday, October 8th
Lynne Cheney continues her work on the press circuit to promote Blue Skies, No Fences, her recently released memoir of her childhood in Casper, Wyoming.

Guantanamo detainee listens to Blue Skies on audio book.

Pitch for sequel: Casper goes to Guantanamo, finds fences, doesn’t come back.

Tuesday, October 9th
Clarence Thomas writes that if Lynne Cheney’s book outsells his, he will “stop writing books, sleeping on the bench, and pubicizing my disputes.” His editor declines to add a [sic].

Thursday, October 11th
Dick Cheney poses for a Fox News profile of him in one of his vintage Inquisitionist robes.

“The robe reminds me of the debt I owe my forebears,” explains Cheney. “It keeps me humble.”

Saturday, October 13th
Baghdadis flock to the Al-Zawraa zoo to celebrate the Eid al-Fitr holiday. At midday, the festivities are interrupted by gunfire. Afterward, a young Iraqi boy is overheard asking his father, “where were those big American elephants that always talk about how we’re so important?”
“They just say that,” responded his father. “They don’t actually come here.”
Both are then shot by Blackwater Security guards.

Michael O’Hanlon, whose war cheerleading helped lay the foundation for our current successes in Iraq, and who then allowed himself to be presented as a “war critic” in a 2007 article he co-authored stating that we’re making progress, responding to news that black enlistment in the military has plummeted since 2000:

“African-Americans have been such a key part of the modern military. There’s obviously been a degree where the black community in the United States has seen [military service] as culturally valuable and promoted it. That whole culture and value system is at risk in the black community. That is a big, big change. To me, it portends the possibility of a longer-term loss of interest. It can be tough to get it back.”

Mr. O’Hanlon went on to explain that he’d spent the weekend watching re-runs of the Jeffersons, the Cosby Show, and the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in an attempt to discern what had changed. “I feel like Carlton would have considered enlisting,” he said. Asked later whether any of his comments might have evinced anti-troop bias, O’Hanlon became defensive. “That’s ridiculous!” he yelled. “Some of my best friends are dead people!”

Monday, October 1st
-After hearing rumors, David Addington has to remind Dick Cheney that extraordinary rendition is strictly prohibited by the bylaws of their fantasy football league. “I understand,” says Cheney. “Here, have one of these.”
“No, Dick. That’s a roofie.”

Tuesday, October 2nd
-Blackwater Security head Erik “Colonel Jessup” Prince testifies before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. At issue: Blackwater guards—whether they are reckless; the truth—whether you can handle it.
“You’re goddamn right I ordered the code red!” He shouts. “And instead I got a fucking SURGE!”

Wednesday, October 3rd
-The press is not invited to the private ceremony as Bush vetoes the bill to expand the Children’s Health Insurance Program. To quell their resulting arousal, and to avoid having their purchases scrutinized by the GAO, Cheney and Addington extraordinarly render some escorts.
-Alberto Gonzales can’t remember whether he fed the cats.

Thursday, October 4th
-The New York Times reports that the Justice Department issued a secret endorsement of the CIA’s harshest interrogation techniques. People pretend to be surprised.
-Dick Cheney issues an executive legislative order that all future legal opinions be written on Etch-a-Sketch.

Friday, October 5th
-”Super” David Petraeus meets with a representative of the mushroom people to plan their liberation.