In the year 2000 a “man of the people” came bearing gifts. The Supreme Beings decided he was the best for America, even though he had not won the most votes. But, he spoke of tax cuts, cheap credit, compassionate conservatism, no child left behind—and the people bought into it. In our time of despair, when the Twin Towers were destroyed by “evil people” he rose to the occasion and promised us that he would bring to justice the “evil doers”. He threw money at the wealthiest people in the country stating that he was helping the economy and transformed a huge surplus from the past president into the worst deficit since Ronald Reagan. But the people loved the easy life—having to sacrifice nothing while our brave soldiers fought a war that was needed to help us heal.
He spoke to God and declared there was an “axis of evil” and by lying and manipulating our intelligence—after all the Supreme being was guiding him—he convinced us that we needed to attack a country for no reason other than they were “evil.” To this day there are some of us who believe that Iraq destroyed the twin towers. The man who came bearing gifts was so good to us that he became the only president in our history who would not raise our taxes in wartime. He sent too few people to this new war and once they destroyed the “evil doers” he had no plan to bring our brave soldiers home.
He was so generous that he decided that now that he had failed us in Iraq, he would start giving the Iraqi people presents. At the tune of billions of dollars per day, the good man who came bearing gifts had a guilty moment and convinced his good friends from Halliburton to shower the Iraqis with gifts; with American tax dollars, of course. Trying to be so generous with his new Iraqi friends the man who came bearing gifts forgot about his other friends in Afghanistan. More important, he never forgot about the good American people who had re-elected him because he was so good with his gifts. He never used his veto power because he wanted his good friends in the Republican Congress to build bridges to nowhere and give as much pork to their constituents as they could. The deficit continued growing and the man who came bearing gifts was happy.
After giving everyone in America a home with subprime mortgages, the man who came bearing gifts thought they would forgive him for screwing up in Iraq and for the fact that Osama bin Laden was nowhere to be found. Since the man who came bearing gifts had told Americans to max out their equity in their houses and go on a shopping spree—because God told him that what every American wanted was to watch football on his high definition 60 inch flat panel TV with surround sound—because the man who came bearing gifts did not understand—God forgot to tell him—that subprime mortgages can be a really bad problem for the economy.
When the dollar tanked and the housing bubble burst, God told the man who came bearing gifts that the economy was strong. So the man who came bearing gifts told the American people that the Federal Reserve Bank would save them because that was what he was best at—giving gifts.
Housing starts are at a at a 20 year low, all the major banks are being given gifts by other countries, one out of every seven Americans is either losing their home or about to lose it. The market is 10% down from the first of the year. The jobs that are left in this country are either disappearing or pay too little. The wealth inequity in the country gets worse by the year. The “surge” in Iraq is working but the political problems are not being addressed—they are now spreading to Pakistan, our main ally, and Afghanistan, the reason we went to the middle east to begin with.
Now, the man who loves to give gifts, will send you money for you to spend it on the economy. This will increase the deficit by another $150 billion. Again the man who came bearing gifts was happy.
I don’t know about you, but I blame the man who came bearing gifts for all the problems of our Republic.--or what little is left of it.
