By DJ Salinger (with The Serge) HONOLULU – As details of the Democrats’ 1 trillion dollar budget request continue to leak out the president-elect has been mulling the final touches of what amounts to the priciest financial bail-out plan made in US political history.
Known for his decisiveness, Mr Obama is apparently withholding release of the budget pending a decision on whether to bail out shock rock artists Guns n’ Roses new album, Chinese Democracy.
Maverick US financial crisis czar Hank Paulson startled many onlookers last week at an official Team Obama meet n’ greet held at Honolulu’s pricey eatery Shh…Kebab when he traced the root cause of the ailing US economy to GNR’s epic CD.
“I have not heard the album, nor do I or any of my staff plan to hear the album,” commented Paulson.”But what I think is important to remember here, is that our current economic malaise (bad thing) started with the plans to make this recording, at a cost to the taxpayer of some $3576 billion.”
Chinese Democracy is indeed a pricey piece of pop music. Over a 15 year period sole original Guns N’ Roses member Ric Ocasek spent 876 billion US dollars making the ten song CD.
Most of the money came from running up his dad’s credit card.
Hank Paulson is his dad.
“The personal…displeasure that this…has caused me directly is…beside the point,” Paulson confided, as Mr Obama stood beside him at Kebab. “The thing we have to do now is find the money to pay for this damn thing, before the prophecy comes true and we really do have Chinese democracy for dinner.”
At this point Mr Paulson collapsed and mayhem broke out, which is typical at a Paulson event. Mr Obama, taking things in stride, as is his want, tried to poo-poo the affair, saying through his speech writer Jon LeFavre, “What I think is ah important to uh remember here ah is- that, what we want to be careful of – to not overreach ourselves ah in terms of that.”
Asked by The Brutal Times to clarify his comments the president-elect went on, “Ah, this- this is a troubling time ah, ah for America. AND- what I think it’s best to recall- what ah this is something that helps me ah the most, it helps me in these kinds of situations is is to ah to look back at ah how the ah founding fathers would have ah dealt with these kinds of things.”
Sure, but how does this solve like “the prophecy” – whatever the hell that meant, and like the huge frothing financial hole that GNR’s epic lp put us into?
“Well- look, and this is the thing – I’m, we’re- we’re going to have to arm ourselves, what I think Hank, myself and my vice president, Dick Cheney, are taking about here is ah, we’re going to go through the album – song by song – Dick’s going to do that, and any song we don’t like, that’s not amusing to the American people, we’re going to delete that.”
Asked how deleting songs from Chinese Democracy would solve or even help in solving what both Mr Obama and his former rival John McCain have referred to as “Great Depression II”, the president-elect had some other stuff to say, but it was pretty much the same as the stuff I’ve already put down above.
Prove me wrong.