Yes, You Can Make This Shit Up!

(With just a wee bit of help from real life.)

Japanese automaker Toyota, stung by criticism from the Department of Transportation and safety advocacy groups, has decided to recall 43,000 of its hourly workers and middle managers.

The massive recall, hailed by former Senator Trent Lott and Toyota executives, is expected to shift tens of millions of dollars of blame and bad publicity from Toyota's Board of Directors onto the shoulders of its auto workers effective immediately. The company's recall from the production line and transfer to the unemployment line of the workers in both Japan and the US is the first sign of any civic responsibility the company has shown in the wake of the problems they'd experienced in the sticky gas pedals of their hybrid Prius.

Toyota's executives and former Senator Lott lauded the move as "a bold step toward crushing any impunity granted by those through unionization" in spite of Japan's workers not being represented by any trade union. They then celebrated by handing themselves a 35% pay raise for their quick thinking.

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Congressional Republicans have universally agreed on a health care strategy: The rapidly shrinking minority party will hold its breath and hope that President Obama notices their absence at the upcoming health care summit.

House Minority Leader John Boehner, speaking through a sign language interpreter as he held his breath, said, "If the President doesn't think that our plan to cover only 6,000,000 out of 47,000,000 uninsured people isn't a good start, then our counter strategy is simply to hold our breath until he notices there's another sheriff in town and that's the GOP."

Rep. Boehner and Minority Whip Eric Cantor did not rule out the possibility that the breath holding strategy would not be followed up by foot-stamping or pants-wetting.

"All options are still on the table," a purple-faced Cantor said through the interpreter.

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An Army sergeant has been accused of waterboarding his four year-old daughter because she did not tell him where the remote control was before the Super Bowl. The widely-banned and criticized enhanced interrogation tool was defended by Sgt. Rob Carlson and former Vice President Dick Cheney as a necessary response to acts of youthful defiance.

"Look at it from my point of view," Carlson barked at reporters as he was hauled away by police, "We have just the one TV and she wanted it all to herself. No f*cking way were we gonna have a Heidi repeat." The GOP and PNAC, or Progress for a New American Century, have thus far contributed over $2,000,000 to Sgt. Carlson's defense fund.

"Based on what we know, the waterboarding technique on the tiny little tot, who lasted for almost five minutes, by the way, provided one of our brave men in uniform with actionable intelligence, including the location of the remote and the pork rinds and Bud Light. To me, that constitutes enormous progress," Mr. Cheney said Sunday on Face the Nation.