Secretly recorded State of Union address, just before extensive edits and rewrites:
Last week, combat operations in Iraq finally wound down. I say “wound down,” because I took no concrete action to end operations until we had established a permanent presence there. As I swore that we are not engaged in nation building, and vowed to stop overseas military occupations, the three extra years of forcing Americans to stay in combat positions was needed to build an embassy larger than the Taj Mahal. Like Korea, we will be there forever. Additionally, it is politically useful to be seen as a war time president. Luckily, I still have Afghanistan to use to pretend that I am ‘tough enough’ to lead. Just in case that should prove to be insufficient, I have tied up the US military with new, potentially volatile situations in Egypt and Libya. Our involvement in neither situation garnered the constitutionally required Congressional approval. We are there, by my fiat. I am the decider.
Hard work should pays off and responsibility should be rewarded, but I have shirked responsibility at every turn. We have two options. I have done nothing in my three years to promote either one, but these are you only options: we can have a world where everyone has their ‘fair’ shot, but if they perform above par, they will be taxed punitively until there is equality, or we can socialize all companies to save them and save the people from them.
Last year, we agreed, in bipartisan fashion, to ‘cut’ spending by two trillion dollars. 4% GDP growth predictions aside, even with fed predicting less than two percent inflation for next three years, we are cutting zero dollars from any area of the budget. I use the word ‘cut’ to try and create the illusion that we made some tough sacrifices and actually cut spending anywhere. In reality we cut nothing. We cut certain areas of defense next year, but defense spending still goes up. We, in fact, do not cut one cent. That would make no sense. We are attempting to use your money to buy votes, coupled with the lie, if the federal government does not take care of a problem nobody else will help. We employ this grand fabrication to distract the American people from the fact that we have absolutely no new ideas to create any jobs or economic growth. I say ‘in fact’ because we are both aware I lie almost all of the time. In this speech I am, for the first time in my political career, telling the truth.
Today I propose the creation of a massive government bureaucracy to invent excuses for me to use protectionism to pretend that I am saving people’s jobs from foreign competition. I know that free trade is absolutely essential to our economic growth, but, like real war, the illusion of a trade war will make me look tough. Also, if it seems useful, I am willing to sacrifice economic growth to garner political favor by starting a trade war. The United states’ insane corporate tax rate does make it difficult to compete with businesses anywhere else in the world, and protectionism always costs jobs, unless they are contractually obligated through union contracts. So, everyone will be hurt except for the unions and Barry Obama, who will look tough and presidential. If a trade war helps me win reelection, it will be worthwhile.
I am comfortable sacrificing growth and jobs for the unions’ gain because unions only donate to my side of huge government.. This of course is crony capitalism in its purest form: we watch each other’s backs. They send me money, I make it impossible for large corporations do business with anyone but our political donors/sponsors, the unions. I will also promise that the environmental groups in my pocket will only protest and picket power plants built without union labor. This should make the decision easy for companies considering building anything. I call this policy ‘the only use union labor fiat.’
I care more and more effectively than anyone else. That’s just a fact. For instance, teachers matter, and if everyone cared as much as me, they would be the highest paid people in the world. I also think we can all believe that without massive federal spending, good teachers would not exist.
I am proposing that , by fiat, everyone stays in school until they are 18. The fact that states can not mandate that everyone stay in school because state constitutions protect citizens’ rights. Constitutional rights should override my fiats, except that my fiat wins. If you place any bills on my desk challenging my fiat, I will veto them.
College tuition will not go up. Another fiat has been laid. Price fixing will make school affordable and plentiful for all, just like it did with gas and pharmaceuticals.
Women will be paid equally. This is another fiat, called women are fifty percent of the vote fiat. Again, I am pretending that without me woman would be taken advantage of by sexist men the country over. I am pretending that some of the most qualified and best paid workers, chief executive officers, executives, directors, and leaders in the country are not women and they would not be a real score for their respective companies to hire at any price. Politically, it would be awesome if every women in the country was grateful to me and my point sank deep into their subconscious and made them all hate white men.
I will institute a ‘small fee’ on financial institutions. Let’s pretend that, for the first time every, they will not pass any fee hikes onto their customers. Let’s also pretend that the costs of all of my anti-business regulations were never passed onto consumers. OK. Now that we agree on that, we can pretend that I never raised taxes on the middle class.
Because of government investment, we have doubled our use of alternative energy to almost 1.5% of national energy usage. Like the fact that we have doubled our level of trade from a level that was unnaturally low due to a deep recession, due to a natural cyclical snap back, due to trade pacts that i actively blocked for three years, I am attempting to take credit for something that I hindered as much as conceivably possible. In this whole speech, there will be no causal relationship between anything positive that has happened and anything I have done. I am still waiting for real reform to be placed on my desk so I can sign it. I proudly admit that I have done nothing real. Like Bill Clinton’s ‘micro policies,’ I have done a lot I can point to, but nothing to help solve anything. How do you scare people into voting for you if there are no problems?
I will also stop giving ‘incentives’ and massive tax breaks to fossil fuel companies. I will verbally pretend to support them, because I know that low energy cost would enable US companies to create millions of jobs. I will pretend that they are not, by far, the most highly taxes industry in the world and the vast majority of our subsidies do not just slightly ameliorate their onerous tax burden. It would be wonderful if you believed that I wanted fossil fuel energy companies to succeed. Of course, I don’t believe that they will create all those jobs. They will be replaced by alternative fuel companies who, doubling in production every four years, should provide all of our energy in thirty years, plus ten more years for the transition. Anyone who asked about energy costs over the next 40 years, is short sighted, stupid, uneducated, probably conservative, and insane…like Ron Paul and Sarah Palin.
I have approved fewer regulations in my first three years, than Bush Jr., aka Shrub did in his first three years. If it seems that this flies in the face of the lie that imaginary Bush deregulation caused the financial crisis, that is only because lies do not stand up to scrutiny. Glaring factual discrepancies will be overlooked, by my fiat.
I will require a plan by every business to deal with every eventuality for failure and to give all their money to the poor in the unlikely case of business success. This will cost a lot of money and thousands of man hours. This will drive small business out of business. That is OK. Large businesses understand that avoiding crippling taxes and regulations from Washington is necessary. Correspondingly, they donate a lot of money.
The word ‘fair’ means nothing. It is like calling a woman a whore: strictly based on my own prejudices and self righteous judgments which reflect more about me than the woman in question. ‘Fair’ bears no relationship to our current reality. If life were fair everyone would be happy and money would be irrelevant. By legislating fairness we are hamstringing the mechanisms that allow individuals to excel and achieve anything. This stems from a fundamental lie of the left: nobody succeeds without government help or family money.
The wealthiest Americans are paying more today as a percentage of any and all aspects of the US economy, but if you still feel jealous of them and believe that they are the source of all of our problems, and I hope you do, let’s tax them a lot more. Taxing away all of their wealth would not come close to closing the budget gap for this year much less address our entitlement fiasco, but polls suggest that it will make a lot of people feel better and like me.
The state of the union is strong, even though I have been able to get nothing through an intransigent congress in the past two years. It may seem that the federal government has done nothing productive to help, and that the economy is still slowly repairing itself. That was true…until I just changed the facts by fiat.
Notice that I have not offered one single plan to accomplish anything, and that I am asking for congress to reach consensus and drop it on my desk, because I believe that building consensus is the job of the centrists Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Also, you may note that I have still not addressed the total insolvency of all of our entitlement programs not proposed one single tax hike. I have never done any of those things, or addressed anything specific. This goes back to the perception of accountability: it is nice to be thought accountable, but it is no fun to make the sacrifices necessary to justify that title. So, I am accountable by fiat.
I understand that inequality has expanded during my tenure…even with my commitment to punitive taxes and regulation for the successful. Power is concentrating in Washington DC. Whenever power consolidates in the hands of a few the potential for abuse and corruption is elevated. My party has never been shy about doing anything for money, so is selling our votes really even corrupt? If a business person donates enough, they will be prosecuted for nothing. It’s ironic that we are redistributing wealth, in circles, around the top one percent. We just gave trillion of dollars, to Wall Street, our biggest donor, and now we are pretending to crack down on those donors while giving as much as possible to unions, universities, green companies, and environmental groups. This is all justified as our priorities remain crucial. Any means is justified by the ends: we remain in power.
The most shovel ready ‘stimulus’ I have provided to this economy is to pay for security and staff during my almost four year campaign for reelection. I am the change that is needed. I am needed in every state around the country, giving the same blame and skewer the facts stump speech. I better get back to stimulating.
My name is Barry Obama. I really like your money and the state of my ego is strong.
