Wow. Ground Control finally got through to
Major Tim, and I have come down a little bit from the feeling of being
on a different planet since the election. That one was something else. I don’t remember
ever just beginning to sob in the middle of a non-sobbing sentence over a presidential win. But I did it. America, I
apologize for most of the bad things I’ve said about you and for not having 100 percent faith that we would pull this off. I guess I was too scared to think that we would finally do something right after all these long, long years of having Thing in office. And I haven’t analyzed one iota of any of it. No state-by-state looking back. No questioning President Obama’s cabinet selections. (Editors: Please don’t change that to “President-elect.” Just let me start saying it now.) No wondering whether Hillary will be a good secretary of state. No wondering why most of his picks are Beltway veterans. I don’t care. He got elected. A black man in the United States got elected to the office of the presidency. And he didn’t get elected because he is black — or at least that’s my opinion. He got elected because he is smart and likable. That certainly changes the course of history for the country.
But President Obama (there, I wrote it again; I’m going to love this), as everyone knows, also inherited one of the biggest messes in American history, and it’s now up to all of us to do what we can to make things better. So I have a few tips on the economy that I hope will be helpful. It’s an outsider’s perspective, since I don’t even know how the stock market works other than it goes up and down faster than Paris Hilton on that “leaked” video.
1) Shut down the credit card companies altogether. These companies are the most evil, greedy part of the American corporate world. They will do anything to see to it that you have a credit card, and then they will do anything to see to it that you are permanently screwed for having it. Start by making it a law that no one under 30 can have a credit card and that everyone over 50 gets a statement in really big type so they can read the little line that says if you are one day late on a payment your interest rate jumps by 30 percent and the late charge is roughly half of your monthly salary. In fact, you might want to imprison the CEOs of these companies and have stacks of credit card offers delivered to their cell every day. Then they would know how half of the people in the country feel in their own homes.
2) Allow gay marriage. For heaven’s sake, let these people spend some money on a wedding and help stimulate the economy. For whatever reason, gay people (especially lesbians!) know how to make and save money. Just walk into a gay man’s house and look around. There’s expensive shit in there. Throw pillows that cost a fortune. Sculptures and stuff like that. Don’t you think that if they were allowed to get married their weddings would fuel the economy like wildfire? Think of the Champagne industry. Think of the extra jobs that would be created in the catering businesses.
3) Give me a million dollars. I swear, if the government gave me a million dollars, I would donate at least a quarter of it to charity (because I would have to offset the taxes I would owe!) and I would live for the rest of my life on the rest. I am not greedy. I don’t need the $40 million package the average bank CEO gets when he or she finally bankrupts their company. Just a measly million. A third pair of pants would be nice. I could replace the missing window in my middle bedroom where the tree is now growing inside, and I could find out what’s been vibrating so loudly in my car engine since June 2006.
4) Manufacture and sell Sarah Palin dartboards for the masses. Round up all the homeless people in the country, get them in some housing, and set up an assembly line to make these dartboards bearing the image of the moose murderer and sell them at a reasonable profit. Yes, make Sarah Palin useful but please don’t let Google know about it. For a while there, the Google news page had her name as one of its hot topics on that little list every single day. Now it’s finally started to go away.
So there. That’s just a few simple things to help get us out of the financial black hole President Bush and company got us into. Oh, I know it wasn’t just him and his cronies. And yes, he will be back at the ranch soon, doddering around and asking Laura if he can get a tattoo of a beagle chasing a rabbit up his ass now that he’s retired. But, President Obama, if you need any help with any of this, you let me know. I’m a wiz when it comes to finances.
