Pope Benedict meets President Bush

Yesterday, the pope met behind close doors with our president, and as luck would have it, I was invited to attend on behalf of the AFP, with the idea that I would soon leak the information, as this administration likes third-parties to do. Sitting in a corner (!) of the oval office was Dick Cheney, pretending to read the Wall Street Journal, but listening intently to the conversation. As an opening act, Alberto Gonzales came wheeling three plastic cases filled with 2 liter bottles of Evian, some rags, and was accompanied by Britney Spears. He was to conduct a quick demonstration of water-boarding and, in the process, attempt to modify the morals of the famous pop-singer. The show was a success as Britney declared, that this was not really torture, it just was “gross,” but was noticeable enough that she would, from now on dress more modestly on stage. When that was done and the guests gone, both Benedict and George opened up their briefcases and spread their paperwork and calculators on the Presidential desk and started to work. You see, both are pro-life, but George doesn’t use the same accounting method as his Vatican’s counterpart. That morning, the Pope had just received a text-message from Jesus updating him on the war-related Iraqis casualties since the U.S. invasion began, and added to that all the Texas death-row inmates that were approved by Mr. Bush when he was governor. The tally came to a whopping 637,732. The deal the Vatican wanted to make with the White House was reminiscent of carbon emissions trading; between now and the end of his presidency, George Bush would have to prevent the same number of abortions if his soul was to be saved. Current data available showed that he’d never be able to get these big numbers out of the U.S. alone. George immediately phoned Condi Rice and asked her about a way to fabricate the missing figures or perhaps suggest some other places where to get them. Without blinking an eye, she said: “China, Russia or Brazil.” That’s when Dick Cheney jumped into the conversation and suggested that a preemptive strike on Brazil would make a lot of sense, that Lula de Silva was friend with Hugo Chavez anyway, and that some extra barrels of ethanol would come in handy only weeks before the heavy driving season…