This just in: peace in our time

From Ida Tarbell
Spy Washington Bureau

Pulling back from the brink of all-out war, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer today accepted assurances from Senate Leader Mitch McConnell that Sen. Schumer predicted would bring “peace in our time” to Capitol Hill.

Chuck Schumer, shown at his moment of triumph

For days the nation had been transfixed on watching the Patriots pull another championship out of their helmets [Surely, the ominous news from Washington? – Ed.], increasingly fearful over the prospect of a government shutdown that could destroy everything from admission to National Parks before fracking begins to concealing overruns on future weapons that will never work.

Summoned to the Leader's office for last-minute negotiations, and pressured by allies who could not stomach the idea that they might have to work consecutive weekends, Schumer emerged, weary but triumphant, clutching a pizza box that he said contained binding commitments from the Leader that would avoid “the outbreak of further hostilities that could threaten the peace and harmony of the Senate Gym.”

A few bitter-enders, apparently eager to send their aunts and uncles back into the legislative trenches, complained that the so-called agreement was little more than a sell-out of the legitimate aspirations of the 890,000 young men and women who had had their tenuous legal immigration status snatched away by the Supreme Leader in yet another savage act of cruelty and bigotry.

The extreme left-wing pro-war organ The New Yorker complained that “This afternoon, the prospects for the Dreamers look worse: the immediate crisis of the shutdown has passed, the President no longer seems a plausible ally, and their status has not been secured.”

But such captiousness was by far the minority opinion, with almost all the wisest leading figures in Washington celebrating the last-minute peace agreement. Senator Blanche du Bois (R – Fort Sumter) rhapsodized, “if we can solve the question of the Dreamers without conflict, it could be a turning point in relations between the Democrats and the Supreme Leader.”

Schumer has told his incredulous caucus that he “believes the Leader” when he says he has no further demands to terrorize non-citizen residents of the United States.  He said that the Leader had spoken to him “with great earnestness.”

Referring to the Supreme Leader's rants demanding $60,000,000,000 for a 28-foot-tall see-through border wall running along the Mexican border from the Pacific to the Rio Grande,  a 50% cut in immigration quotas, and preventing reunification of American citizens with their immigrant families, Schumer would only say, “I have read the Tweets of the Supreme Leader and appreciate his references to the efforts I have made to save the peace.”

Only a few illegals dissented from the general relief

This afternoon, the Senate, after hearing Schumer's announcement that he had reached an historic agreement with the Leader, erupted in cheers.  Exulted Sen. Susan Collins: “Thank God for Senator Schumer and our Leader!”

Echoed Sen. Jeff Flake (R – Situation Wanted): “It is inconceivable that we should be plunged into war over a quarrel between faraway people of whom we know nothing.”

The pro-war party was left near speechless, reduced to sputtering that the so-called “assurances” from the Leader were a mere scrap of paper that made no commitment to protecting the Dreamers from life in the shadows or prison in contemplation of deportation to countries they never knew, all at the whim of the Supreme Leader's dreaded ICE squads.  They noted that the assurances did not bind the Supreme Leader or his thug-like “Representatives.”

Some like California Senator Kamala Harris were near tears.  She told a few bored reporters milling about the corridors that the agreement was “sordid, squalid, sub-human, and suicidal.”

Senator Kirsten Gillebrand spoke of her final discussions with a small group of despairing Dreamers huddled in her office: “They wished to register their protest against a decision in which they had no part.”

With the dreaded specter of political war put off for a full three weeks, Schumer and his embattled allies are placing great weight on an agreement with the Leader that says no more than the two sides will “continue our efforts to remove possible sources of difference” that might vex the peace of Washington.