President Bush Details Plans for War on Poverty

Wakaya Island, Fiji, April 22, 2006 -- President Bush unveiled sweeping plans for a new "War on Poverty" at a gala $50,000 per couple Republican fundraiser held this weekend at Fiji's stylish Wakaya Club, one of the world's most exclusive beach resorts.

The goal of the poverty initiative, according to Bush, is "to wipe poverty off the face of America within 10 years", an objective embraced by liberals and conservatives alike.

The tuxedo-clad Bush used the interval between the second and third appetizers, a purée of truffles topped with Caribbean lobster tails and followed by Beluga caviar with blinis hand-flattened on the taut stomachs of 18-year-old virgins, to outline the details of his ambitious plan.

"What hurricane Katrina exposed," Bush said to the audience of roughly 1,000 friends, Republican colleagues and supporters, who had been flown in at taxpayer expense on eighteen private jets, "is that there's still poverty in America, even after all what my administration has done for poor people. So I'm going to declare a new war, a War on Poverty, and we're going to win it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not for a long time. But someday, we're going to win the War on Poverty. You can bet on it. Maybe bet one of your summerhouses, something you can do without."

While an army of sommeliers bustled through the crowd pouring vintage Cristal from silk-wrapped hand-cut crystal carafes, Bush sketched some of the plan's highlights.

"One of the biggest problems in America is that there's a lot of poor children," said the president. "There's kids in poor families who maybe don't get enough to eat, don't have enough clothes and shoes. Don't have no health insurance. So we're going to do what we can to reduce the number of poor children by implementing what we call a "superfluous birth reduction program", it's a mandatory sterilizing program for poor women. A real simple thing we can do, don't cost too much money. That way, there's less poor children going to get born, and right there there's less poverty. It'll only cost the poor women a few hundred dollars to get it done, and it's going to be mandatory. Decided by income. So everyone's equal."

During the interval between the fourth appetizer, a unique carpaccio made from paper-thin slivers of African Rhinoceros hoof and dusted with dehydrated shark fin, and the first of the entrées, president Bush touched on the issue of homelessness:

"There's also a lot of homeless people, people got nowhere to sleep, no roof under their beds," said President Bush. "So we're going to find those people and make sure they can be productive parts of society again. What we're going to do is build a whole lot of sort of outdoor production facilities, kind of like camps, where the homeless people can go, we'll round them up, and they go and work and also have a place to live."

"And they can live in these work camps," the president continued, "and make products, and that way become productive members of society again. And we'll ask them to stay with us as long as they want, and if they want to leave, we'll ask them to stay a little longer, because we want to make sure we take care of them and they become productive members of society again."

"Health care, now that's important, too," said the president, briefly interrupting the native pygmy dance that heralded the presentation of the second entrée, star-shaped slices of kobe beef smeared with a succulent layer of foie gras and accented with loon bills. "We got, I think, near 50 million people in the United States got no health insurance, and I think that's a shame. These people get sick, they got nowhere to go, maybe they get bankruptcied."

"So we're going to send out a bunch of medical doctors," said the president, "and they're going to look at all these people, test these people. Armies of compassion, compassionate doctors. And if they find people look like they're going to get sick, the armies of compassion'll have some other people with them, soldiers in the War on Poverty, I call them, and those soldiers will take the sick people away, we got some countries can use them for some things, and there won't be any more sick people to worry about. And that way there won't be so much sick people ain't got no health insurance, and America'll get healthier, and the economy'll get stronger. And I think that's just great. And that's how we're going to win the War on Poverty."

While conservatives attending the fund-raiser were quick to embrace President Bush's groundbreaking new initiatives, a liberal sympathizer who had somehow infiltrated the meeting managed to ask "Isn't this more like a war on poor people than a war on poverty?" before being clubbed senseless by Vice President Cheney and thrown into the ocean by Tom DeLay, who was attending the fundraiser in an unofficial capacity, where he was swiftly eaten by sharks.

"Is there a difference? 'Cause I really don't see what the difference is," President Bush responded.

Dessert included a white chocolate mousse served from the beaks of live pelicans, accompanied by Cognac fine Champagne Reserve Domaine de Montpeyron 1865 served with Cuban cigars. The event raised an estimated $20 million for the Republican party, most of which will be spent on the purchase of roughly 500 "I Support Bush's War on Poverty" custom-emblazened Hermès handbags.

By Ion Zwitter, Avant News Editor