This is Chapter Three of "The Adventures of Barry O and Tailgunner Joe", a political satire. I still haven't heard from the Saturday Night Live writing staff. I thought maybe they'd try to call me because they need some tips on writing comedy sketches about the Obama administration. Apparently, they've just decided this is too hard and have decided to just recycle old nod-nod-wink-wink jokes about conservatives and Fox News. Now they're on summer break, I think. If you know anybody there at SNL ask them to track me down. I'll talk to them. I'll tell them to get off their lazy butts and do their jobs. After all, Obama is the current president. What kind of television show thinks of itself as a successful satirical platform if they don't take any real stabs at the current president?
Let's all get involved this year and show George Clooney that his political instincts stink, and that he and his friends just wasted $15 million on the wrong guy, at the wrong time, with the wrong ideas and policies. -- Austin Speed
Chapter Three
WE SHALL GET TO THE BOTTOM,
OR ARE WE THERE ALREADY?
“I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.”
-- Charles De Gaulle
“Krrrrrk llllddrrr, Mmmmtttttt Zzzzzzdtttt,” the intercom blasted.
Obama looked at the intercom speaker hopelessly. “Can anyone fix this goddamned thing?”
Axelrod said, “Sounds like Eric Holder is here, Mr. President.”
Obama hit the intercom speaker button. “Let him in, please.”
“Sssss zzzzrrr,” the intercom crackled.
Eric Holder walked into the Oval Office. “Mr. President, Bill, David, Mr. Vice President. How are you all?”
“We’re great, Eric,” Obama said. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”
“Well, sir, there are a couple of pressing issues we need to talk about.”
“I’m sure there are,” Obama said. “How are the investigations going?”
“Ours or theirs, sir?” Holder asked.
“Theirs? Oh, yes, theirs,” Obama said. “Congress. The congressional investigations. Yes, how are those going?”
“Well, sir. The Fast and Furious investigation is not going well.”
“Not going well?”
“No, sir. They’re beginning to find out what happened,” Holder said.
“That sounds good,” Obama said sounding hopeful.
“No, sir,” Holder said. “I don’t think it’s good.”
“Shouldn’t an investigation find out what happened?” Obama asked.
“I don’t think we want that in this case,” Holder said.
“Why not?”
“Well we don’t want them to know things we don’t know,” Holder said.
“What is it we don’t know?”
“Well, Mr. President,” Holder said while groping for the right words, “we don’t… uh… exactly… uh… know what happened.”
“What do we not know about what happened?” Obama asked.
“Well, sir,” Holder said while looking around at everybody in the room, “uh…we don’t know what happened to the guns. Well, to all the guns.”
“What guns?”
“Well, sir, uh…the operation was designed…uh… intended to track guns that went to Mexico.”
“That sounds good.”
“Well, Mr. President, we lost track of most of them until they turned up later.”
“I see. At least they turned up,” Obama said.
“Well, sir, that’s not necessarily a good thing. They turned up at murder scenes, and gunfights, and in trucks coming back across the border,” Holder said.
“How did we lose track of them?”
“Well, sir,” Holder stammered, “we… uh… sold them to dealers who sold them to the cartels. We had tracking devices in the guns, but as we tracked them to the border the cartels, who own the Mexican customs people and who know almost all of our federal agents, they managed to detain all of our people at the border while the guns headed on south.”
“But, we could still track them, right?”
“Uh, well, sir we tracked them to a river in northern Mexico.”
“A river?”
“Yes, sir.” Holder said. “The cartels pulled the tracking devices out of all the guns and buried them in a tributary of the Rio Grande. We got the devices back.”
“But the guns were gone?” Obama asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“So how’d we ultimately get the guns back?”
“Well, sir, the Mexican government found many of the guns after they’d been abandoned at one of the dumps in Tijuana along with the bodies of a number of unfortunate victims.”
“So the guns were used to murder people,” Obama said.
“Yes, sir. But now we have solid evidence of the violence that the cartels are responsible for,” Holder said.
“Really? We didn’t know that before?” Obama asked.
“Well, we certainly had our suspicions,” Holder said, “mainly because of the thousands of victims that turn up every year, but now we have real solid evidence.”
Obama rubbed his forehead. “So what is Congress’ take on this?”
“Well, sir, Representative Issa says that we don’t even qualify to be the gang that can’t shoot straight if we can't keep track of our own weapons.”
“How are we trying to position this story?” Obama asked the group.
Daley answered, “We’re telling the public and Congress that this was a complex intelligence gathering operation that yielded a lot of valuable information.”
Obama asked, “Is that selling well?”
“Well, sir, the broadcast networks and the Times and Post are okay with it,” Daley said. “Fox and Breitbart are skeptical and they’re asking a lot of hard questions.”
“Have we been trying to answer them?”
“No, sir, our normal media policy is to respond to mainstream media, CNN, and MSNBC only.”
“Okay, Eric. What else have you got?”
“Well, sir, we’re going to have our hands full with Solyndra and some other solar panel companies going under.”
“Some businesses fail. What’s the problem?” Obama asked.
“Well, sir, Representative Issa is saying that Solyndra was a naked backroom lobbyist deal that resulted in contributions to the Democratic Party and bills to the taxpayer. He says the White House didn’t do its due diligence and, in fact, enabled a transfer of taxpayer dollars to people who immediately benefitted and made political contributions without many steps in between.”
“How are we handling this?” Obama asked.
Daley answered, “We’re using a number of tactics here, Mr. President. Executive privilege is one because we’re conducting our own investigation.”
“We are?” Obama asked.
“Not really, Mr. President,” Daley said. “We’re also pushing out some old dirt we have on Issa, and doing opposition research on other members of the committee.”
“Anything else?”
Axelrod said, “We’re selling surplus solar panels from the Solyndra bankruptcy liquidation to benefit the Wounded Warriors foundation. We’re selling it as a Stimulus Plan effort that, even though the business failed, is benefitting our troops. We’re also working on an angle to donate them to schools. Benefitting troops and kids. Can’t miss.”
“How many solar panels did Solyndra have after the failure?” Obama asked.
“Several million, I think,” Axelrod said.
“Several million?! Did they ever sell any?” Obama asked.
“I don’t think so, sir. They actually didn’t seem to have a sales force when they failed,” Axelrod said.
“No sales force?” Obama asked. “How did they plan to sell their solar panels and other products?”
“They had a website, sir,” Axelrod said.
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