An anonymous coward writes:

"Eye for an Eye:

Bush Braining Storms"

President Bush addressed the nation today from the oval office, “My fellow Americans, due to the grave threat posed by future hurricanes like Charlie and Frances, I have asked Congress to declare war on hurricanes and they have done so.”

The move comes as a surprise to many. A senior administration official familiar with the matter said, “We had no choice. We face a canny enemy. Hurricane Frances targeted Florida and Ohio and appears to be an attempt to alter the result of November's election.”President Bush announced a realignment of foreign policy priorities given the new world order, “Today I announce a coalition of the willing to eradicate hurricanes that includes Iran, North Korea, Syria, Cuba, Serbia, Sudan and Somalia. We thought the enemy was Iran when they were storming our embassy in Tehran. Now we know the enemy was the storming. Nations must stand with us to fight hurricanes or they stand against us.”

Donald Rumsfeld described the first administration policy action to initiate the War on Hurricanes, “We are moving our military bases to coastal nations to reflect our new strategic priorities. To the nations of Europe that support us, I say to paraphrase the immortal words of George Orwell, 'Double New Europe double plus good. New Old Europe double plus ungood.'”

Ralph Nader delivered the Green Party response to the President's speech, “This war is all about wind. We should be switching to hydrogen instead of wind. There is no truth to the statement that wind is required to produce hydrogen. No blood for wind!”

In solidarity with the President, the Republican Party has announced its next convention will be at Disney World.

At over 160 deaths per year, hurricanes account for 1 out of every 15,000 deaths in America. Hurricanes are the second leading cause of heart attacks during hurricanes after heart disease. Hurricanes are a close rival to the flu causing 1/3 of 1% of the deaths of the flu every year.

160 deaths is 16 times as many US deaths from that other bane of meteorology, asteroid strikes. Sources in the administration anticipate a major announcement on the restructuring of NASA accordingly. NASA has been told to refocus all efforts on meteorology.

Hurricanes also account for $5B/year in property damage. Other less costly methods than declaring war such as using IBM's Deep Thunder supercomputer were deemed too little too late to address the destructive power of hurricanes according to sources familiar with the matter.

FEMA announced changes to the rebuilding assistance program. Low interest loans have been offered to Floridians that are willing to rebuild, but only if they build at least 10 feet below sea level. In the words of President Bush, “We will not let hurricanes affect our planning. If we do, the hurricanes have won.”

President Bush asked Los Alamos to build a peaceful fusion bomb using lunar 3He that will destroy hurricanes with only 3% of the radiation of conventional nuclear air bursts.

The vote in favor of the declaration of war in the Senate was 77-24. Senator Kerry accounts for the unusual tally. He is counted as both for, against and absent.

A tri-partisan hurricane study commission has been assembled, co-chaired by Zell Miller, Jim Jeffords and John McCain. They all said in unison, “Hurricanes are a uniter, not a divider.”

Reaction to the Congressional action was swift. The Kerry Campaign said that Kerry has been fighting against hurricanes for decades pulling someone out of a motor boat in the 60s at grave risk to himself.

The people in the motor boat say, “Kerry did not have to have three limbs reattached afterwards, only one.” Kerry's subsequent testimony before Congress that the militaristic response to hurricanes was counterproductive was probably why there is a discrepancy.

Congress also passed the “Not Unamerican Act” to help fight hurricanes which allows the Federal Government to tap all phones, pagers, blackberries and weather stations. The ACLU responded, “They are blowing in the wind. Hurricanes can be fought with no reduction in individual rights.” Michael Moore began filming, “Category 5” but has not received permission from 3com to use the title.

President Bush also announced that he was merging all agencies that have anything to do with the weather including the National Weather Service, FEMA and NASA into one cabinet level agency, the Department of Weather Security. All TV weather announcers have been nationalized and are now federal employees. A spokesman from Clear Channel Communications said, “It is clear that centralization will help get all weathermen on message.”

Governor Jim McGreevy was appointed as new coordinator and in emergency action confirmed by the Senate. McGreevy said after being sworn in, “My first act is to announce a proposed constitutional amendment banning wind mills. Second, since only God may create storm cells, by executive order, meteorologists may only study natural storm cells, not create new ones.” These two actions appear to be a nod to President Bush's Republican base.

McGreevy continued, “Third, the existing hurricane warning and watch designations reveals sources and methods and are therefore too specific. We have instituted a national level of hurricane threat. The threat level will always be red to avoid confusion.”

In a nod to civil libertarians, McGreevy announced an additional measure, “Fourth, we are eliminating the category designations for hurricanes as they amount to profiling. As President Bush told me, 'We are at war with hurricanes, not wind. Some of my favorite kinds of weather are breezes.'”

The administration next announced a specific alert, “Fifth, based on three-year old data, we are preparing for Hurricane Isabel. We are fully aware that the hurricane already hit in 2001.” The clarity of the announcement was unprecedented and won praise from the media.

McGreevy continued “Finally, we are instituting a national tip line to report windy days, but to avoid criticism, the line will always be off the hook.” The move satisfied neither the left nor the right, a sure sign of optimal policy.

McGreevy announced a national preparedness strategy, “The best way to prepare for hurricanes is to get plenty of duct tape and plastic sheeting and keep half a tank of gas in your tank.”

In an unusual departure, McGreevy then continued with a cost-benefit analysis, “We understand that filling up twice as often will reduce GDP by 1/2 of 1% a year as people spend 12 extra minutes filling up every week, which is a cost of $50B a year or ten times the cost of hurricanes, but everyone has to sacrifice if we are going to win this war.”

Hurricanes cannot be beaten by domestic measures alone. President Bush announced a preemptive attack strategy to stop hurricanes before the threat becomes imminent, “Hurricanes originate based on warm water off the coast of West Africa. Today Navy SEALs have toppled the government of Liberia and installed fisherman Humid Cross-eye as the new President in Monrovia. He just called me on the phone and said, 'No more hurricanes from West Africa, we promise.'”

President Bush announced a new alliance member would be given an important role, “Our allies in Antarctica have promised us millions of tons of ice which we will melt off the coast of Africa.”

In a move designed to placate the international community the administration sought international cooperation, “We have applied to the World Court for a legal opinion to see if we can put up an immense wall in the middle of the Atlantic to keep out Hurricanes.”

The other prompt and sweeping actions were a mere prelude to the most important announcement from President Bush, “Finally, I have ordered the invasion of the Netherlands. Hurricanes are wind and the Dutch are allied with wind.”

President Bush won a strong international mandate for the action, “I have obtained the backing of the UN Security Counsel by promising to impose a Wind for Food program to be administered by the UN.”

The opening salvo in the war was awesome, “I have ordered the bombing of the Netherlands Institute of Space Research. Since Hurricane Frances blew through Cape Canaveral, I could not let their space headquarters remain standing.”

The Kerry Campaign responded, “We need more international cooperation in the fight against windmills. Use of military force against wind should be a last resort, not a first resort.”

By noon eastern time, the invasion was complete. Bush's invasion force consisted of one division with one soldier and 9,999 press embeds.

When the invasion force arrived at Parliament, the Prime Minister of the Netherlands said, “Of course we surrender to America. Did you know mentally ill in the Netherlands are visited by prostitutes once a month? Can I have the gun please?”

The fact that the operation took one minute was criticized by reporters. They thought it should have taken one second.

All war planning was outsourced to the Netherlands which was paid $26B for allowing an invasion base within the Netherlands. The deal was pushed through Congress on a voice vote along with $100B in Netherlands reconstruction aid.

The invasion was an instant success. President Bush addressed the nation again from the oval office, “The Netherlands is completely different from Iraq. We have brought in our NATO ally, the Netherlands, to govern the Netherlands and we handed off power today, a full 2 years ahead of schedule.”

In a brewing scandal, however, Netherlands prostitutes are being threatened with publication of pictures of themselves fully clothed with no makeup as a way to get them to tell everything they know about windmills.

Sources in the Pentagon say that they are completely prepared for the post-war environment. For post-war planning, everyone in the Pentagon is reading Cervantes's Don Quixote, the Bible on attacking windmills."