Howard Dean, who has been under fire for keeping records of his governorship under seal, has backed away from his earlier statements that he would review the records with a mind toward making them public. Instead, Dean plans to move his records to the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library in Texas, "so that they can remain sealed forever," said Dean.

Dean's papers will be placed next to the records of George W. Bush's Texas governorship.

"If it's good enough for President Bush, it's good enough for me," said Dean. "The more I thought about it, a ten-year seal just doesn't seem like long enough.'

Howard Dean's papers will thus join, in spirit if not in location, the records of Reagan, Bush I and Bush II, all of which have been squirreled away to protect them from the prying eyes of the public.

"Secrecy may be the enemy of a democracy," said Sue Polliwog, a prominent GOP pollster, "but it is a great friend of the politician."

Manipulate Blogosphere Ecosystem To Make a Point

Not only is the country's leading touch-screen voting system so badly designed that votes can be easily changed, but its manufacturer is run by a die-hard GOP donor who vowed to deliver his state for Bush next year.

Liberal bloggers, in an attempt to demonstrate that Diebold voting machines are flawed and need paper trails, manipulated N.Z. Bear's famous Blogosphere Ecosystem to make their blogs appear more popular than Britney Spears' official website.

The so-called "League of Liberals" hacked into the Diebold software underlying the Ecosystem, which ranks blogs by importance, visibility, traffic, and readership, collecting electronic information about each blog on the web. N.Z. Bear, proprietor of the ecosystem, said that he was installing paper trails immediately.

The lack of a paper trail has been wreaking havoc in other electronic systems.

In Nebraska, marriages are conducted electronically in "paperless" ceremonies. As a result, numerous husbands and wives have been caught attempting to hack the marriage database.

In one extreme attempt, Wendy Luskin was forced to collect receipts from romantic dinners just to demonstrate that she and her husband dated, after he had deleted their marriage entirely and altered the database to indicate that he had instead married 27-year-old bikini model Bambi Tarkington.

In another incident, Samantha Thud deleted husband Brad's birth certificate from central government computers, showing, as she had often told him, that he did not exist.

"Electronic votingsk system is not problem," said The Commissar, an election systems expert. "Problem is voting scheme where you do not know results before election, da?"

The US military has said it believes 54 insurgents were killed in intense exchanges in the northern Iraqi town of Samarra on Sunday but commanders admitted they had no bodies. . . .

Lieutenant Colonel Ryan Gonsalves, who commands the 166th Armoured Battalion in Samarra, also said his troops were not in possession of the bodies. The death toll, he said, was "based on the reports we got from the ground."

General:

I have reconstructed the number of enemy wounded and killed in action during the recent engagement in Samarra. At least fifteen Iraqis were shot by soldiers with their M-1 rifles. No surprise there. But it is truly amazing what the rest of our soldiers did , and I myself would not beleive it if I hadn't heard it with my own ears.

Cpl. John Frolick shot two Iraqis, ran out of ammo, and constructed makeshift bullets out of chewing gum, MRE's, and tobacco -- then killed seven more. Pvt. Enrique Johnson bayoneted seven Iraqis, and then constructed an elaborate booby trap made from the deck of 52 wanted cards that exploded if an Iraqi picked the Ace of Clubs. He tells me he killed fifteen with this device. Sgt. Sheila Carnahan informed me, while we were talking about her otherwise poor performance in the platoon, that she strangled twenty-four Iraqis with her bare hands and bayonetted eight with a hairpin. I now can recommend her for an immediate promotion and a swift commendation. And Johnson told Carnahan that he heard that dumb Joe Flannery -- you remember? The guy who accidentally blew up the canteen stateside? -- fell on several Iraqis and crushed them with some heavy ordinance he was carrying at the time of the ambush. I figure that that adds up to about 56 or so.

I am absolutely proud of the job that our men have told me they did. We may not be as good at counting as we are at killing, but next time, we hope to have a body or two around to assist us in our mathematical endeavors.

Sincerely,
Lt. Col. John Festering, Extremely Commanding
166th Armored Battalion
U.S. Army

Shares Thanksgiving Dinner With Grateful Undisclosed Personnel

Vice-President Dick Cheney, on Thanksgiving Thursday, surprised dozens of secret undisclosed location personnel, who have not seen their families for years, dropping in suddenly and sharing a dinner consisting of undisclosed items which "may or may not have incldued a turkey," leaked a White House spokeswoman.

The grateful personnel usually live on food squeezed out of tubes, undisclosed people said.

Cheney was reportedly happy to make the trip, since it was he who had suggested, along with Karl Rove, that Bush make the dangerous journey to Baghdad, just as he had suggested that Bush make dangerous landings before.

"I like it when he makes a really spectacularly dangerous landing," Cheney grimaced. "It's damn exciting. You know -- wondering if he will make it and so on."

Under questioning by reporters, Cheney responded, "No, no, no, you have it all wrong. I would not put the President in harm's way just for a political photo opportunity. In this case, we also gave Rupert Murdoch's Fox News a really great scoop."

Rest Of Family Presented On Dining Tables Throughout America Today

Stars, the turkey pardoned by President Bush just days ago, is having extreme difficulty adjusting to his "survivorship," according to prominent animal psychologists.

Dr. Frank Giblet said that Stars is liable to be an underachiever, to experience low self-esteem, will have difficulty coping with success, and has a much higher likelihood of becoming addicted to steroid- and antibiotic-laced feed.

"You can see it already," said Giblet. "His gobble is weak and dissolute. It's more like a gooble." Giblet added that Stars' turkey "trot" had become little more than a meander.

Stars will soon be taking part in group sessions with other survivors, including Colleen Haskell and Rupert Boneham.

Happy Thanksgiving! (Don't be too guilty about tucking into Stars' cousin Joey.)

Despite wake-up call after wake-up call, "movers" and "shakers" in the Democratic Party have elected to sleep in for "a good part of the 21st century," said Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Ca).

"We've received so many wake-up calls that I've disconnected the phone," said one senator.

Democrats received a wake-up call during the midterm elections, but most of them simply ordered room service. Tom Daschle installed a DVD player in his room and has watched "many enjoyable movies." Richard Gephardt wandered the halls aimlessly, telling anyone he ran into that he "meant well."

After bungling the handling of the Florida recount in 2000, Democrats managed to sleep through round after round of tax cuts ballooning the deficit, gave Bush the authority to invade Iraq -- nuking the economy and any hope for Middle East equilibrium -- and have now successfully passed the largest entitlement program for insurance and pharmaceutical companies ever proposed.

Senators Hilary Clinton, John Breaux, and Joe Biden responded forcefully to the dramatic, watershed failure of the party, ordering extra pillows and asking that the minibars be immediately restocked.

"We did do something, " protested Senator Barbara Mikulsky, while feeding herself at the local trough. "We gave ourselves another pay raise."

As a grim John Breaux looked on, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist revealed that a prescription drug container -- that Frist has appeared to be "holding" continually during the past six days -- had grown on his hand last week while he was sleeping, and does not appear to be removable.

Sen. Frist has appeared in approximately 7,241 photographs "holding" the bottle.

"I woke up one morning while we were considering this Medicare Reform Bill, and this pill bottle-shaped growth had completely taken over my fingertips," said Frist. "That's when I had the idea to tell people this was a 'Prescription Drug Benefit Bill.' That way I could show my face at these press conferences."

Doctors have concluded that attempts to surgically remove the growth could prove fatal. "We could slip," said Dr. Shevardnadze, who has recently joined the staff of the NIH.

"Just by trying to take care of this bottle of pills, we could kill the whole patient."

Determined To Lead By Following

The Senate Democratic leader, Tom Daschle, said Friday that he would not support a filibuster against a bill offering prescription drug benefits to the elderly. His decision increases the chances for final action on the bill within days.

Senator Tom Daschle announced today that he would filibuster himself for the rest of the Senate term, if not longer, a spokesman said. Daschle, who speaks softly and carries a tiny baton, said he was determined to "remain calm" during the filibuster and aims to avoid making "any sudden moves."

Daschle planned the filibuster in order to stop himself from "precipitously opposing the Republican majority."

"There's a need to counter those voices in our own party," Daschle whispered, "who might want to speak loudly."

Loud voices are said to cause Daschle intestinal discomfort.

Daschle pooh-poohed suggestions by Darla Whirligig, a senior from the South Bronx, New Mexico, that Daschle's failure to support a filibuster over the GOP's Medicare bill would mean giving drug and insurance companies a stranglehold on increasing healthcare costs.

"Oh, no," Daschle could hardly be heard to say, "If Democrats stopped this bill from passing, then Republicans would say we were against it."

Below the fold»

President Bush gave a press conference in London recently.

Asked if he would keep a fixed number of troops in Iraq for a longer time, Bush replied: "We could have less troops in Iraq, we could have the same number of troops, we could have more troops in Iraq . . .

Bush went on: "There might be more terrorists in Iraq. There might be less democracy in Iraq, or Iraq could have the same lack of government that it has now. This is all very complicated."

"I could be reelected or I could lose. The sun could come up or the sun might not rise again. David Letterman could best Leno or his ratings could remain low. Ann Heche could be gay or straight. You should sell or you should buy. But whatever you do, you should borrow. A stitch in time saves nine."

Later a top aide to Bush, who wished to remain anonymous, Cory Alastinomium, told reporters on condition that he not be identified, that Bush was not announcing a change in policy and that expectations remained that troop levels would be reduced.

"What the President said is actually quite meaningless," said Alastinomium. "It all depends on the moon and whether his house is in Saturn and aligns with cars."

Limbaugh Willing to Pitch in, Too

Michael Jackson, charged with molesting a child under the age of fourteen by authorities in California today, said only that he was proud to be able to distract the country from any actual news.

Indeed, the story of Jackson's imminent surrender to police and Rush Limbaugh's legal problems took up most of the hour-long Newsnight on CNN, while coverage of the first state visit to England in almost 100 years, and a major speech by President Bush on the war on terrorism, was covered in less than two minutes.

Of the scant appearance of real news on television, Rush Limbaugh had this to say: "I didn't launder money. I made withdrawals of cash."

Hundreds of thousands of British protestors were featured on news programs for approximately one second, prompting protestors to reconsider the manner in which they voice their opposition.

"I could become an expert on the life of Scary Spice," said Brendan McAnifstan.

Other celebrities said they were "happy to help."

"Entertainment is entertainment, whether it's a major summer blockbuster or a news show," Tom Cruise said. He was said to be torn between doing Mission Impossible 3 or being caught doing blow with a "really buff" naked man.

Bush Says U.S. Will Not Retreat From 'Band of Thugs' in Iraq

President Bush today announced that the "Band of Thugs" is now the deadliest group of terrorists in the world and they, and a large group of other terrorist organizations that have been nurtured into existence by the U.S. occupation of Iraq, are now the preeminent threats to the security of the U.S, Britain, and the rest of the world.

"I reckon al Queda is a measly number ten, at best," President Bush said in a major speech during his visit to England.

"We're quite concerned about the "Band of Thugs," and indications are that they may have been involved in 9/11," said the President.

Bush said that he was also concerned about the "Can O' Worms," the notorious "Shisk Ka'Bob," the "Counsel of Nine," the "Gaggle of Grunts," the "Cluster of Cashews," the "League of Liberals," the "Loose Association of Malcontents," the "Gang of Four," the "Rogues' Guild," and the "Little Rascals."