WASHINGTON, D.C. In response to threats by America's major electric power companies, Samuel Wright Bodman, Secretary of Energy, has demanded 800 billion dollars from the U.S. Treasury to be used as he sees fit or he will turn the lights out on the United States of America. "Look, if you don't pay up," he warned, "things are going to get very dim, very dim indeed."

The U.S. Senate and House pulled together a special session to review the demand which quickly devolved into a discussion of how best to take advantage of the unusual request. Excited U.S. Senators and Representatives feigned concern and postured as they mulled over options that would increase their chances of being reelected. Absent was any discussion on the obvious and less expensive option of just saying "No!" to Secretary Bodman's extortion.

No where could the panic be felt more than in the U.S. Media which feared losing its ability to transmit. Fox News responded by parading a circus of hand-picked mafioso types skilled in painting vivid scenarios of what would happen if Bodman wasn't paid and paid fast.

On the political front, presidential candidate John McCain suspended his campaign indefinitely and called upon his opponent, Barack Obama, to do the same and join him in paying homage to the energy god in the hope that bending over and displaying his butt would take eyes off the polls in which his support was plummeting. President Bush called upon both candidates to meet him in Washington for a private discussion on the matter. Word has not yet come out on whether McCain's suspension of the presidential campaign conjoined with Bush's closed-door meeting with both candidates during the manufactured crisis is in any way related to the deployment of U.S. Troops on American streets planned for October 1, just a month before the election.