Noodlevilles

Devin McNoodle sat alone in his cardboard and plywood flimsy lean-to shelter. What did he do to deserve this? Why had his family abandoned him? Why was he not even invited to his hometown Bakersfield Lions and Kiwanis Club meetings anymore?  

Why, oh why, were these wretched shantytowns all across the nation called Noodlevilles? 

He opened his can of beans (thank God for those pull-up ring tabs!) and scooped up little bites with his fingers. Why wouldn’t anyone talk to him, not even the ones he sold his soul to for their speakership votes? He gave them everything they asked for – limiting the next fiscal year budget to 2022 levels and 1% increases every fiscal year thereafter. He brought it up for a vote and it only passed the House by a 217-215. Four people in his own party betrayed him by voting against – including Nat Nutz, the slimy bastard.  

Nonetheless, he proclaimed a massive victory for the American people, who supported it until they did not, once they learned what the budget cuts meant for their own communities – veterans losing healthcare; poor young mothers losing Woman, Infants, and Children (WIC) benefits for feeding their babies; cancelling funding for infrastructure projects that benefited constituents; ending Pell Grants for college students; kicking toddlers of Head Start programs; and on and on. 

Well, he had known all along anyway that the proposal did not have the proverbial snowball’s chance in hell to pass the Senate. Well, Democratic Senator Moe Jansen might vote for it, but a few lame-ass Senate RINOs would sink it – pussies. Whatever, it would not survive a Presidential veto anyway. 

Throughout it all, President Bo Jivin refused to negotiate. He kept saying, propose these cuts through the regular legislative process and then we will negotiate. I always replied, Bo, you know we could never make these cuts through regular legislative order, we’d get massacred in the midterms! He would just grin and say, “Take your chances, moron.” 

Devin tried to reason with his caucus to raise the debt ceiling anyway after the budget bill bombed, but each time Gym Jordache would threaten to call for a vote of confidence for him to remain Speaker. He was fucked and he knew it. After all, he had agreed to allow only one member to be able to call for a vote of confidence. 

So it was that one day in June that he called for a vote to raise the debt ceiling and of course it failed, all members of his caucus voting against it. As widely predicted, the global markets collapsed, sealing his fate to go down in history as the worst House Speaker ever. One nation after another lost confidence in the dollar as the global currency of choice and switched to the yuan. The race was over – China now dominated world markets. 

But he was still Speaker – that’s all that mattered, Noodlevilles be damned! 

It started thundering outside. He pulled on his 99-cent poncho he stole from Dollar General and hoped for the best.