A pork-laden mission to the moon

It is 1961, and President Barack Obama has thrown a challenge to the nation's space program. Put a man on the moon before the decade is out!

Instantly, Nancy Pelosi frowns, contorting her facial muscles grotesquely.

She asks, "Why necessarily a man?"

The President, looking quizzically at his teleprompter, mumbles, "Er, it's supposed to be a manned mission, right?"

Later that night, Harry Reid looks up at the sky, and wonders if, since the moon may be made of cheese, Congress might not as well send up some pork, to complement the cheese. He wonders, too, what the senators from Wisconsin would think of his plan. Mr. Reid, like Alice in Wonderland, does a lot of wondering.

But not Mr. Emmanuel. The chief of staff knows, somewhere in that half-million-mile round-trip journey, there's bound to be a crisis, and therefore an opportunity for the administration to advance its agenda. Excitedly, he takes out his checklist, and the roll of toilet paper nearly strangles him.

The government wastes no time ("Is that possible?" Harry Reid wonders) in initiating the president's plan, and in five years the Environmental Impact Study is finished, all the theoretical hydrocarbons counted, the foul emissions deodorized, the seagull population at Cape Canaveral surveyed for its opinions.

Now all that's left to do is the construction of the... "Why not a submarine?" asks Robert Byrd, of Virginia, a coastal state. Harry Reid, incredulous, yet clearly awed, wonders, "Is he thinking of even more pork?"

In 1969, a giant contrivance named "Titanic II" lifts off from its launchpad in Florida.

Naturally, it is made of biodegradable material. To satisfy various constituencies, the rocket comes in fifty stages, the last one being a piece of pork on a skewer, courtesy of Nevada.

For fuel, the rocket burns the compressed embers of $10 trillion incinerated in the Capitol's basement furnace.

Will it reach the moon? "Let's hope so!" cheers Mr. Obama, proud of his legacy.

Alexander Lee

Carol Stream