Bush Employs Actual Augurs at Inauguration

Taking the term 'Republican' back to its root meanings, newly-elected president George W. Bush today surprised the crowd that had gathered to witness his inauguration by including actual augurs, auspicors, and hecatomb necromancers in the ceremonies.

After swearing an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, President Bush then invited several toga-clad, bearded old men to the platform and had them read omens from cloud patterns, tea leaves, and cast shards of bone; later, one soothsayer learnéd in auspicy examined the flight patterns of wild birds overhead, while a veritable phalanx of hoplites sacrificed a hecatomb to gray-templed Zeus and examined the guts of the slain animals. Most signs were favorable, said the soothsayers in Greek and Latin through a translator, although one predicted that the Dow would fall a few points in the first quarter as Iraq election jitters played out in the financial markets. But, the man added, the second half of the fiscal year would be considerably more robust, Hermes willing.

After the spectacle was completed, President Bush vowed to cross the Rubicon at some point in the next four years; at this, great Caesar's ghost cackled menacingly from under the bleachers, but was quickly shooed away by the necromancers, who said they'd "had enough of that old fool in their two-thousand plus years in the divination business."

Later, Maya Angelou read some horrendously sappy poem filled with canned optimism and stock inspirational phrases, which the augurs predicted would not sell more than ten thousand copies nationwide.