Newspapers Added to Endangered Species List

Yeah…I beat up some hooker so now I have to sell newspapers: They’re made in Germany; you know the Germans always make good stuff!

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Citing a patriotic duty to save community newspapers from themselves, the Senate, authorized by the president, exercised special emergency powers today, taking the extraordinary move of adding all newspapers to the endangered species list.

"We need to save our community newspapers and the biased journalism they provide," said Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md. “After all, how many Democrats in Congress -- for that matter in the White House -- owe their elections to fine journalists, their smearing political coverage of Republicans, and their cheerleading for even the most brain-dead and criminal candidates from the Party of the Ass?”

Newspapers will take the place of the gray wolf, which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed from the endangered list yesterday. Effective immediately, it is a federal hate crime to hunt and kill newspaper reporters, notorious predators themselves known for preying on unsuspecting hard-working Americans, calling tax cuts “earnings increases” for the 50 percent of us who actually pay federal income taxes, and exalting to deity status lazy politicians with slick bumper sticker slogans like: “Yeah. We Can. But We’re Only Using You to Get Elected, So We Won’t.”

The good news, however, is that permits for new wolf hunting are expected to generate an extra $5 million annually for the federal government. The Congressional Budget Office predicts the added revenue will help the U.S. pay off President b. Hussein’s projected federal $400 googillion deficit by the time Earth’s molten core cools or the sun explodes, whichever comes first.

Layoffs, closings, and cutbacks had turned the nation's newspapers into an "endangered species" as readers and advertisers rushed to Web sites, said Sen. John Kerry, Dumbass, a strong advocate for moving every private business possible under federal control. “Now people won’t have to be subjected to reading real news, for free, from unbiased sources, such as community journalists and those awful, just awful, people they call bloggers.”

Endangered status gives all newspapers in the country, even the Penny Saver, non-profit status, the equivalent of the current business model of public radio stations. It also means that, for the first 11 weeks of every quarter, newspapers will now fill 95 percent of their pages with pleas for funding “from you, our loyal readers, so that we can bring you such wonderful running feature articles as Teddy Kennedy and his dog Splash and ‘My Nickname’s only KKK on the Plantation’ Robert Byrd and Rotting Air with Someone Really, Really Gross" -- in place of the advertisements that previously filled 95 percent of their pages.

“This non-profit business effectively gives all newspapers the equivalent of church status,” evil conservative pundit Dick Morris said today during Sean Hannity’s afternoon radio broadcast. “We’ll now be reading stories in the St. New York Times about the president’s date night and his holding hands with the first lady, how First Dog Bo and the president’s children spend their time playing Frisbee on the South Lawn, and the president’s fast-food trips with Vice President Biden to Ray's Hell Burger in Arlington. Oh. Wait. We already have been reading those stories in the Times.”

Annual government appropriations for all newspapers could run higher than the current $700 billion TARP bailout of the financial and insurance industry.

The president, interviewed while standing in line at Ray’s Hell Burger, downplayed the cost. “Psshaw!” he said, before looking for his teleprompter. When TOTUS was unavailable, the president referred comment to Treasury Secretary Tax-Cheat Tim Geithner. “Aw, shucks. We’ll just ask Ben (Bernanke) over at the Fed to print some more money. Tain’t nuthin’ but a thing,” Geithner said, before placing back on his ears headphones through which this reporter could clearly hear the lyrics “Ice, Ice, baby!”

When asked if he even really had the authority to grant the Senate emergency powers to make such stunning changes in the newspaper industry, the president shoved a burger in his mouth, held up his hands as if to say, “I got nothin’ for ya,” and offered this reporter White House Press Secretary Robert Ahhhh! Gibbs’ job. Gibbs could not be reached for comment.

Interviewed earlier, Kerry said these steps by the Senate will ensure the media remains biased, becomes state-run like media within every other self-respecting socialist dictatorship, and preserves the right of all 300 million Americans to receive “only the news the government sees fit to print.”

"As a means of conveying news in a timely way, paper and ink are less in vogue, eclipsed by the power, efficiency, and technological elegance of the Internet," Kerry said, talking through the side of his mouth, as usual, while about to toss his war medals at the Washington Monument. "But just looking at the erosion of newspapers is not the full picture; it's just one casualty of a completely shifting and churning information landscape."

[This reporter asked Kerry to translate his doublespeak into English, but he simply repeated himself over and over and over. Unfortunately, our expert government bullshit translator was unavailable for comment, so we just decided to print Kerry’s ramblings…along with this disclaimer.]

Kerry said he was concerned that traditional journalistic standards of bias and inaccuracy would have suffered if newspapers faltered, were forced to become leaner businesses, and, as a result, embraced free-market principles of competition, such as truth, fairness, and completely eradicating b. Hussein press idolization.

"But now, by adding newspapers to the endangered list, how cool is it that b. Hussein worship will continue?" he said. "And now we don’t have to worry about the important question of whether online journalists will teach traditional journalists the values of professional journalism, values the newspaper industry never has known…and now, thankfully…never will."

The Boston Globe in Kerry's home state was the latest major paper facing the threat of closure, but endangered species status effectively erases the Globe’s financial worries, transferring all of its debt to the American taxpayer, the nuevo poor in the time of B. Hussein.