State of Mind

In other Earth news, the President of the United States of America delivered a masterful oration tonight entitled I, Barack. The speech, given in place of the traditional State of the Union address, was completed despite the planet rolling into an unexpected wrinkle in the fabric of spacetime which made the monologue appear to last merely seven hours (including the continual, Pavlovian eruptions of applause) instead of its actual length of twenty.

In the speech — which top physicists claim was probably shorter than a Soviet missile parade at the height of the Cold War, although more pompous — the Nobel Laureate made clear that He is extremely engaged in the process of giving speeches. He punctuated this fact with a litany of personal activities that consume His days, such as:

• answering history’s call (only to find out that, sadly, history had misdialed)
• acting — immediately and aggressively
• knowing the anxieties that are out there right now (in the same sense as His occasional blunt fear that the urban legend about the existence of a people who eat lettuce rather than dine on arugula may, in fact, be true)
• running for President because of struggles witnessed on the mean streets of Elkhart and Galesburg
• reading nightly the tough letters written by wunderkinds who quite naturally correspond with the leader of the free world regarding their living accommodations and parental employment concerns
• never being more hopeful about America’s future thanks to the Hope™ that His immaculate coronation has provided to America and the world and, possibly, the Universe
• hating the bank bailouts (twice)
• supporting the last administration’s effort to create the financial rescue program, while at the same time compounding the farce by promoting that lovable Washington canard known as ‘more transparency and more accountability’
• proposing fees on the ‘biggest banks’ or, as they are known in the rest of the country, ‘depositors’
• repeating the phrase “we cut taxes” as an acceptably humorous alternative to actually doing so
• thinking He would get applause by repeating the phrase ‘we cut taxes’ — and being correct
• being the vanguard of the obvious and boldly calling for a jobs bill in an economy stalled by high unemployment
• urging the Senate to pass a bill and knowing they will, they will
• wanting a jobs bill on His desk without delay because the problem with this country is its shameful lack of hastily drafted, poorly reasoned, do-anything-rather-than-nothing-for-the-sake-of-appearances legislation
• refusing to accept second place for America because words alone determine rankings
• feigning disinterest in punishing banks
• feigning interest in protecting the economy
• rejecting bills that do not meet meaningless semantic constraints such as ‘the real test of reform’
• knowing that there are those who disagree with Climate Change™ (formerly known as Global Warming™)
• urging the Senate to pass bills on student loans which contain provisions magically untethered to fiscal reality
• asking Vice President Biden to chair a task force on middle class families (an appointment so laughable to a position so unnecessary to an organization so utterly pointless, that no words currently exist in the English language to properly celebrate it)
• taking on health care because of stories He’s heard from Americans being hunted to extinction by the conjoined cabal of Big Medicine/Big Insurance, which can perpetuate its survival only through the systemic extermination of patients/policyholders
• acknowledging His wife and her tackling of chubby children
• bravely taking His share of the blame for not explaining more clearly to the American people his various and deliberate obfuscations
• liking nothing more than to start bringing down the deficit but
• instead being absolutely convinced that adding $1 trillion to it was the right thing to do
• taking specific, unquantifiable steps to pay for that $1 trillion in the form of words in a speech
• agreeing that a mythical spending freeze cannot take place until next year to allow enough time for it to be rescinded in the face of a new, improved crisis
• coming to Washington to give people the government they deserve (and seeming totally oblivious to the exquisite irony in that statement)
• not thinking that American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests (as evidenced by the fact that His campaign reportedly spent over $760 million, donated one dollar at time from America’s 760 million citizens)
• reforming earmarks, as opposed to simply eliminating them — which is akin to reforming an alcoholic by forcing him to drink his booze through a straw
• not being naïve — made easier by the fact that, as the Son of the Most High, He possesses all knowledge
• waking up every day knowing that His political setbacks are nothing compared to the setbacks faced by families as a result of His political policies
• not quitting, unfortunately

Despite His inhuman schedule, the President still found time to bake this concise summary of His speech right into the speech itself:

No wonder there’s so much cynicism out there.

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves. Given the current state of the human condition, things are naturally very busy here at Applied Cynicism HQ. So, thank you, Mr. President, for saving us the effort of summarizing your words. You’ve certainly earned a smoke break. Please light up and enjoy the full flavor that comes from less tar. And as we watch you, we’ll remember that… you. Light up our lives. You give us Hope™. To carry on.