Always Leave 'Em Laughing

As thousands of angry journalists shook their shoes in the crowded streets of Washington DC, embattled Whitehouse Spokesman Robert Gibbs finally stepped down yesterday.

Questions immediately arose about who would fill the vaccuum left behind, with many speculating that the radical "Chicago Brotherhood" might use this opportunity to further solidify their power, and impose their barbaric form of "law" on the country at large.

Gibbs, who left the position in order to work full-time on Barack Obama's re-election campaign, is being replaced by Jay Carney, a reporter for TIME Magazine. The same TIME Magazine that thought the biggest and most important news story of the past year was "Facebook."

It is too soon to know whether the power shift from Gibbs to Carney will, in the end, be good for the embattled forces of democracy. But we can say definitively that this is, indeed, an historic incidence of transitional change...and that we're not taking any other questions at this time.
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Staying Power

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak threw the world for a loop when he announced that, despite earlier speculation, he won't step down until after elections currently scheduled for September.

Besides turning the angry mobs in the streets of Cairo into angry, shoe-waving mobs, President Mubarak's declaration presented tough new challenges to Barack Obama who has labored mightily for the past 17 days to make authoritative statements without actually saying anything.

During the ongoing Egyptian crisis, Mr. Obama has alternately voiced strong support for Mubarak, the protestors, the Egyptian military and, deep in the fourth quarter, the Green Bay Packers. And believing that Mubarak was finally heading out the door, Obama had already declared that "we are witnessing history unfold," as well as adding the great insight that this time of change is "a moment of transformation."

Given the latest turn of events, Whitehouse spokesman Robert Gibbs says the president is adopting a new policy based on "the fierce urgency of waiting to see what happens," while his speechwriting staff looks up any additional synonyms for "time" and "transition" which will be sufficiently meaningless to cover events as they unfold.

Or don't.
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Loco Motion

To make every single aspect of American life better and turn the economy around, Barack Obama is asking taxpayers for another 53 billion dollars to build really, really fast trains.

The plan was officially announced by Joe Biden, wearing an adorable engineer's cap, who explained that high speed rail is vital to our national interests because it will play a key role in "seizing the future."

And go "woo-woo!"

The proposed trains will be capable of carrying thousands of passengers, all of whom will need their junk checked...but any security delays will be more than made up for by the trains' ability to rocket along at speeds up to 240 mph in complete safety, as long as Al Qaeda doesn't think to put any pennies on the tracks.

Moreover, constructing this exciting and tremendously expensive new rail system is expected to give the economy a much-needed jolt by creating thousands jobs for high speed train builders, just as soon as they can get here from Japan.

Best of all, the president's high speed rail proposal has given him the chance to float another possible campaign slogan, after "Winning The Future" (WTF?) failed to take off:

"Obama 2012 - Going Nowhere Fast!"

Barack to the Future - Part Two
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It's A Bird! It's A Plane! It's 2000 Pages!

Jonathan Gruber, the alleged MIT economics genius who developed the financial strategy behind Obamacare ("we'll bend the cost curve down by driving prices up") is concerned that people don't really understand how great it is because they aren't willing to read a boring and convoluted 2400 page bill. And that's just the politicians who voted for it.

Which is why Mr. Gruber has just signed a deal to turn the whole thing into a "graphic novel," which is the official term for any comic book which is longer than "Lord of the Rings" and requires an OSHA permit to lift without a kidney belt.

Presumably, the comic book (which carries the catchy title “Health Care Reform: What It Is, Why It’s Necessary, How it Works”) will be filled with exciting scenes in which Evil Doctor Pediatrician is ripping tonsils out of perfectly healthy children, and Greedy General Practioner is sawing the feet off diabetic patients rather than advising them to buy Michelle Obama's cookbook.

And we can't wait to see how Mr. Gruber will explain, in Wham! Pow! Crash! fashion, why hundreds of business and unions are demanding and receiving presidential waivers to get out of paying Obamacare's costs. And do those waivers make Alleged Presidentman a good guy or a bad guy in this comic book scenario? And will we finally find out if his birth certificate was destroyed when Krypton exploded?

We can't imagine that many people will actually want to buy this graphic novel... but we can rather easily imagine (as the publisher surely does), that the government will probably purchase these things by the truckload and pass them out on every doorstep like phonebooks.

Only larger.

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Blatant Plug: Hope n' Change wishes to thank Johnny Optimism for his guest appearance in today's comic. Johnny has his own comic which is updated on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday each week.

But if you don't want to go there and pay him a short visit, that's fine. He's been hurt before, and your unfeeling rejection won't kill him. Probably.
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Radio Activity

The FCC has announced plans to test a new addition to the "Emergency Alert System" in which the president will be able to interrupt all communications and speak to the American public directly in the event of a national emergency which doesn't occur during a vacation, round of golf, or pickup game of basketball.

Of course, this begs the question of exactly what kind of live message we could expect to hear from the alleged president if the feces hits the fan. If a nuke takes out an American city or two, will Mr. Obama hurriedly remind us not to "jump to conclusions" about who to blame? If passenger jets are again used as suicide weapons, will the president seize the airwaves to assure us that "we can absorb a terrorist attack" and that 9/11 made us "stronger" (as well as opening up cheap real estate for Islamic community centers)?

Of course, under extreme pressure it might not really be a great idea to give Mr. Teleprompter a live microphone for unscripted comments. America will not take much comfort from the president's assurance that "all 57 states are safe," jokes about bowling and the Special Olympics, accusations that the Cambridge Police may have again acted stupidly, his confusion about the pronunciation of the words "corps" and "corpse," or a lofty and long-winded lecture on the virtues of quick and abject surrender.

In all seriousness (perhaps even dead seriousness), it's frightening to think that in the event of a truly catastrophic national emergency, systems are being put into place to kill Americans' access to Internet news sources...but make sure that we can instantly get the president's version of events.

Because the only thing we can imagine that would make such a catastrophic day worse is Barack Hussein Obama's assurance that he's in complete control.
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There You Go Again

It's getting increasingly difficult to spot a difference between these odd times of Hope n' Change and The Twilight Zone. How else to explain the mainstream media's sudden flurry of news reports that Barack Obama is striving to become more like Ronald Reagan?

Of course, the alleged president doesn't actually want to go so far as embracing any of Mr. Reagan's policies, beliefs, strengths, or virtues. But he wouldn't mind borrowing some of the popularity that his own elitist socialism just hasn't generated.

So Mr. Obama is trying to emulate Ronald Reagan in more personal, less political ways. For instance, he's coloring his hair and not admitting it. He's shooting a family-friendly film comedy called "Bedtime for Biden." He playfully joked in a news conference that he signed legislation that "banned Israel forever" and "we begin bombing in five minutes." And he's even considering funding a barrier along the Mexican border, just so he can later say "Governor Brewer, tear down this wall!"

It may seem like a lot of work, but Mr. Obama is dedicated to proving once and for all that he has genuine leadership...no matter who he has to imitate to fake it.

"You can't go wrong with 20 Mule Team Barack's!"
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Light 100 Candles

Today, on the occasion of President Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday, Hope n' Change would like to share two stories. One is about a great man, and the other is about a fool. But hopefully both offer cause for optimism about our country and future.

The great man, of course, is Ronald Reagan. Much will be written about him today, speaking of his intellect, his principles, his many accomplishments, his rock-solid belief in America, his strength, his optimism, and his ability to not just lead...but inspire others to greatness. He said of himself "I am not a great communicator... but I communicate great things." Indeed.

Not long ago Newsweek magazine asked if the Presidency is "too big a job for one man." And of course, they were simply ducking the easily-answered question, "is Obama too small for the job?" It would be easy to think that no man could really rise to the task...unless we'd already seen it done. Leadership exists. Strength exists. Principle exists. And that means that it could one day return to the Whitehouse...perhaps as soon as 2012.

The contrast between Reagan and (alleged Reagan-wannabee) Barack Obama couldn't be greater. Ronald Reagan thundered to the Russians "tear down this wall!" Barack Obama told the Russians "if you sign the START treaty, I'll tell you England's nuclear secrets."

So by now, you're probably thinking the "fool" I mentioned earlier must be Mr. Obama... but it's not.

I was the fool.

When I was young (a long, long time ago), I lived through the Reagan area thinking like all of my peers: Republicans are bad, Democrats are good. Reagan is a stupid actor who just reads off a teleprompter. And why would I question my liberal assumptions? The three (count them!) TV channels all seemed to agree with that assessment, as did the newspaper in my small college town.

But life happens...and experience instructs even those who are slow to learn. I got a job, paid taxes, married, had a child, bought a home, had to think about schools, started my own business. And suddenly, politics wasn't abstract anymore. It wasn't theater. Politics had an impact not only on me, but on the world in which my daughter would live.

And over the decades, I could also see the good things in my world that were being lost. Things I'd always taken for granted. Quality schools? Availability of jobs? Fairness in the workplace? Honesty being the best policy? And I saw the programs of the Great Society playing out...and destroying the people they were meant to help.

And eventually I "got it." I understood the difference between intentions and results. I found out that the "news" frequently has an agenda...and that the only way to get an accurate picture is to gather information from many sources. And I also came to understand that it was my (and our) responsibility to try to educate others about all of this...because it's what's best for our country and everyone in it.

In summary, what we learned from Ronald Reagan is that the job of the Presidency isn't too big for one man. But it takes the right man. And what we can learn from my own experience is that, given time and enough information, even fools may eventually see the error of their ways and start doing the right thing.

So best wishes to Ronald Reagan on this 100th anniversary of his birth. I may have been late to the party...but I'm delighted to be here now.

Today is Ronald Reagan's birthday. But this gift is for you.

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