A Category-Five Q&A from “Pond Zero”

My exclusive interview with an anonymous high-ranking senior official.

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Do you think all the hurricanes lately have anything to do with global warming?

Well, I’m still optimistic on global warming. ‘Cause, look, in the winter it’s going to cost less to heat your house, and in the summer it’s going to take less gas to get to the beach, cause it’s going to be right outside your door, even if you live in the middle of the country. So we’re going to stay the course on our environmental policies. Environment is a good thing in moderation. And we cannot let natural disasters make us forget about the war on terror, otherwise the meteorologists win.

You really dropped the ball in New Orleans, though.

Would you stop your bitching and moaning, please. The thing to keep in mind is that we can save more lives spreading freedom in the desert in the Middle East, than enabling our own citizens who insist on living under sea level, especially those who didn’t have the sense to get out of town when all the white people did.

Hey, I thought we were always supposed to err on the side of life.

Only when people can’t err for themselves cause they’re in a veggie coma or in a womb or something. And that goes double for petri dishes. So no stem cell research. Goes against my beliefs and is out of step with most Americans who think like I do. We cannot destroy a life to save a life. No exceptions, sorry.

Aren’t you making a little exception in the case of war?

Right, well, sure. To defend our culture of life from evildoers, you have to err on the side of killing. It’s called moral clarity. That’s why it’s so important everybody supports our military one hundred percent.

Alright, let’s say you’re a soldier, a woman, you serve your country, save your platoon, get captured, tortured, rescued, get honorably discharged and want to get married, but to another woman.

Hey, our country salutes you, miss, ma’am, lady, but we cannot let the sacrosanct institution of holy matrimony be hijacked by a same-sex sleeper cell. Heterosexuality should be strictly between a man and a woman, purple heart or no purple heart.

Could they just live together and adopt?

You mean a baby? Or each other?

How about an Iraqi orphan?

Oh, under the Patriot Act, absolutely, they could get provisional custody of the little enemy combatant, once the kid learns to pledge allegiance to the United States of America, one nation, under an Intelligent Designer.

OK, let’s say, Intelligent Designer forbid, while the kid’s reciting the pledge, civil war breaks out in Iraq, will we have to reinstate the draft?

No. Not gonna do that. I’ve said it before, absolutely no way.

Does that mean yes?

Yes, yes it does. But, hold on. All we gotta do is grant conditional citizenship to all the illegal immigrants and draft them. Let me make that perfectly clear—real Americans don’t have to worry about the draft.

Then a totally open immigration policy is the exit strategy for Iraq?

As the Mexicans stand up, we stand down.

That can’t be constitutional.

Actually, I’m hoping the new Supreme Court lets us turn it into a reality show and put it on PBS to balance out the liberal programming.

Why not make it a telethon to raise money for things like going to Mars while cutting taxes?

First of all, every American should have a personal Mars account. The government should not be in charge of your space exploration dollars. You invest a small amount of your paycheck every week and when the time comes, you can use that money to take a trip to Mars or buy a Mars bar, depending on how you did in the stock market.

Still, the country is getting deeper and deeper in debt.

But to China, which is in our best national interest. We should borrow as much as possible from China, ’cause they would never attack a country that owes them as much money as we do. Being financially irresponsible improves homeland security. Do the fuzzy math.

Doesn’t encouraging fuzzy math send the wrong message to our nation’s at-risk students?

If we really want to get serious about saving our schools, we start by taking out the Galapagos Islands. They’re holding up textbook reform. Without the Galapagos Islands in the way, we can edit out evolution and no child will have to worry about getting left behind when it comes time for the rapture.

So we add Galapagos to the Axis of Evil?

No room, Mother Nature just made the list. From now on, we will make no distinctions between natural disasters and those who harbor them, and those who harbor those who harbor them.

OK, let’s say our students are failing after we liberate the school systems of all secular propaganda, our entire migrant workforce gets drafted to pick fights in the Middle East, we’re down to our last Mars bar, the Chinese are killing us with late fees on our deficit, and Hurricane Axis is breaching our superdomes, couldn’t we at least get a break on price-gouging at the pump?

People gotta understand what gouging means. It’s just another word for profit. See, they’re two words that mean the same thing – it’s called a sonogram. We’re trying to make the world less dangerous, not less profitable or gougable.

Shouldn’t we just become less dependent on oil?

Listen, the Middle East may have the oil. But we have all the crude democracy. The idea is to get them just as hooked on democracy as we are on oil. Once we get them paying through the nose for a barrel of crude democracy, terrorism doesn’t stand a chance.

So we increase the demand for democracy by force?

Only as a last resort. When we have incontrovertible pretty good intelligence, that a hostile country clearly has weapons-of-mass-destruction-related program intentions of a terrorist nature in accordance with the evil-doing plans of people who are up to no good and speak a funny language, we need to start spreading democracy immediately by any means necessary.

Does democracy over there have a chance?

In New Orleans, I don’t know. In Iraq we must prevail, especially since we couldn’t attack our honorary Texan brothers in Saudi Arabia. You know the number one kareokee song in the Emirates is “Save a camel, ride a Saudi.”

But looking back at everything between ground zero and pond zero, the government’s ability to respond effectively to worst-case scenarios is called into question. If there’s a terrorist attack tomorrow, can America respond to crisis?

As long as it don’t rain too hard, I don’t see a problem.

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We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

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