Pentagon says space-based death star needed to fight pirates

In an emergency meeting of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Pentagon officials said they urgently needed a space-based death star to fight the emerging pirate threat.

"With a spheroid battleship about half the size of Earth's moon, we should be able to contain the pirate threat for three to five years," said Gen. Dennis Tully.

"However, we must act with maximum haste," he added. "Right now, the pirates are using small speed boats, but if we wait until the acquire cabin-cruiser technology, there's no telling what kind of devastation they will leave in their wake--and I mean wake literally."

"Even with their current speed boat fleet, if they coupled that with water skiing suicide bombers, they could ski right into the side of a ship or go off a jump and engage aircraft. The pirates would literally be able to blackmail the entire world."

The general went on to say that while nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers, and stealth bombers have been adequate to fight terrorists, they are not enough for the new pirate threat.

"Al Qaeda is a formidable threat, but they don't have their own ride. Hell, they had to hijack planes to do 9/11," Tully said. "These pirates have their OWN boats--really, really fast boats, like maybe 35 knots. We don't have anything like that."

The general added that with some modifications, the death star could be used to fight rabid dogs or a re-emergence of Neanderthals with their precision-flaked cutting tools.

Gen. Tully said the projected cost would be half a trillion dollars spread over three years.

When Democrats questioned the need for the death star, their republican colleagues were quick to point out their lack of patriotism and concern for their country's safety.

"They would like the see the pirates swing in on their ropes with their poofy shirts and rape and pillage at will," said GOP senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, whose state would manufacture all the toilets for the death star.

He was joined in his criticism by erstwhile Democrat Joe Lieberman. "I cannot tell you how pained I am that my sometimes party does not see the clear and present danger posed to our country by illiterate pirates in speed boats halfway around the world." Lieberman's state of Connecticut is home to the Electric Boat Company whose expertise making submarines will be invaluable to them as the prime contractor on the death star.

All concerns about the cost and practicality of the project were swept aside though, when Tully suggested an alternative solution: stop selling American speed boats, outboards, and gasoline to pirates, something all the senators agreed was too extreme.

Neutering trust fund babies will not make America safer

Given the epic financial damage caused by Wall Street and the presidency of George W. Bush, scientists and security experts have been studying how to limit the damage trust fund babies can do to America but concluded that sterilizing them will not solve the problem.

"Trust fund babies were once thought to be a benign species because of their small numbers," said forensic psychologist Craig McCann. "However, recent history has shown otherwise, and we are beginning to understand why. They grow up without having to wonder how they will pay their rent or how they will afford to take their kids to the doctor. Their nagging subconscious awareness of their pampered incompetence leads them to act out with their money asself-appointed "masters of the universe" hoping to prove their self-worth by accumulating more than their distance ancestors who actually had to work to make the original family fortune."

"Unfortunately, they have no real knowledge of how to make anything or provide any service, so they fall back on bookkeeping tricks they learned in their MBA programs to create the illusion of success. While this creates paper profits, when coupled with their lack of empathy for those who actually must work to survive, the effect on the real economy is equivalent to an ebola outbreak or dropping an atom bomb."

McCann and his colleagues thought neutering trust fund babies, possible by posing as servants at a country club and sneaking some pruning shears into the sauna, or even using scuba gear to lay in wait at the bottom of the jacuzzis, would get the job done.

There was just one problem: most trust fund babies are not the children of their legal fathers.

"We stumbled upon it quite by accident while examining a blood sample we took from one we shot with a tranquilizer dart and tagged for observation," McCann said. "We had a reference sample from some fraternity oath his grandfather had to sign with his own blood. They were not related."

To insure that this wasn't a fluke, they did paternity tests on all the samples they had taken in the past and found that 91% were not related to their legal fathers.

The culture of trust fund babies offers clues to why: most of them join exclusive secret societies in college that have homoerotic, sado-masochistic initiation rituals. Although the percentage that are actually gay is probably the same as the rest of society, since these "men" could use their wealth to buy the finest prostitutes and are used to being fawned over by less wealthy women, the furtive, forbidden violation of those initiations holds a lasting appeal to them and becomes their primary sexual outlet.

Their wives are left to mate with golf and tennis pros or even gardeners.

"While this avenue has proven to be a dead end," McCann said, "We will not give up, anymore than we would give up if a giant meteor was heading toward the earth. The fate of the world could depend on work."