Monday, July 28, 2014

Congress blocks Obama’s attempt to order new office supplies (Borowitz Report)

As we all know, the world is going to hell in a handbasket, and more on that soon. Meanwhile, back in the World's Greatest Democracy ...

This little piece by Andy Borowitz (satire! satire!) gets to the heart of how our national government has been operating from the moment Barack Obama took office in January 2009 and the Congressional Republicans decided to respond with a strategy of monolithic, unrelenting, indiscriminate obstructionism (which got even worse after the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in 2010, a majority they managed to retain in 2012 mostly because of gerrymandering, and began using their control of the House to generate a string of manufactured crises that have twice brought the US government to the brink of default and threatened to blow up the world economy).

Yes, this piece is satire ... but does it really sound so far from plausibility?

In the real world, whenever people start complaining about "Congress" or "Washington" in an undifferentiated way, they need to be reminded that the Republicans are the problem. (And if the Republicans manage to take control of the Senate this fall—which doesn't look at all impossible, since they don't seem to pay any political price for what they've been doing—then we will really be in trouble.)

—Jeff Weintraub

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New Yorker
July 25, 2014
Congress Blocks Obama’s Attempt to Order New Office Supplies
By Andy Borowitz

The House panel that mandated the office-supply freeze denied that it was politically motivated, citing “budgetary concerns.” “It’s time President Obama learned a tough lesson,” House Speaker John Boehner told reporters. “Being President does not entitle you to a spending spree at Staples.”

At the White House, the President blasted the Republicans’ move to strip him of legal pads, pencils, and other office essentials, calling it “just their latest attempt to keep me from doing my job.”

At the White House, the President blasted the Republicans’ move to strip him of legal pads, pencils, and other office essentials, calling it “just their latest attempt to keep me from doing my job.”

In an Oval Office appearance, a visibly irritated President Obama showed reporters a nearly empty supply cabinet and said, “They have manufactured this crisis,” noting that he will be out of paper clips and Post-its by August.

Andy Borowitz is a New York Times best-selling author and a comedian who has written for The New Yorker since 1998. He writes the Borowitz Report for newyorker.com.