"We have this system of bribery. You do realize that you are represented by soulless cash whores. And when I say that, I mean no disrespect to actual whores." - Bill Maher, 2000 HBO Special.

Imagine that a transglobal corporation pays off the ten-trillion-dollar national debt of the United States. (It's $2.7 T now) And demands nothing in return. Well, very little in the grand scheme of things.

Now imagine that benefactor company is called Kittyland Corporation and spokesman and marketing masters Kathy and Kevin Cat (handy with global economics, too) hand out ears and whiskers for the president and his cabinet.

And they wear them.

Maryland resident, teacher and author Darryl Becker has imagined all this and more for the extended, 159-page punchline riff of a book called "All the President's Costumed Characters."

It's refreshing to read about how a fictional president sells himself out for the sake of the country. It's refreshing precisely because it's fiction. The book is crazy - and funny - in a "Catch the joke before another one comes along" way.

The setting is a time in the very near future (47th president - you do the math), where cats are strong and humans are weak. A time when Kittyland invades every aspect of humanity, from TV to amusement parks to salsa marketed to world leaders by the president, offering a blind taste test.

A time when the president - only once out of office - becomes a clown.

Samuel Tilden Neilson is the 47th president of the United States; a simpleton who likes to think those around him have his best interest at heart.

His wife, Christina, transformed by the Thighmaster, is a hyper-streseed, under-sexed fitness nut; one who'll ask her staff to "go on, punch me in the stomach. Go on wussy."

Gerald "pollman" Cleaner is the deus ex machina behind the president. He's got the power to change worlds on the spin of a whim.

Steve Jensen is a 94-year-old newsanchor who brings down the president with, not travelgate, Memoforgerygate, Plamegate or Contragate but Clothespingate.

Other, costumed, characters are: Jimmy Java, Doogie the Dog, Harry the Horse, Tommy the Turtle and Jerry-Jerry the Clown.

It's a book where you're the smartest person around, not least for choosing to read it. And perhaps this should have been mentioned earlier, but the book is not profane, yet, somehow still manages to skewers both the left and right sides of the political aisle.