Obama Thinking Out Loud

Bottom line: We’re flat broke. We don’t have the money. We’d like to carry on as before. We’d all like to stop at Starbucks for our morning coffee, but our wallet is empty. We’ve turned off the cell phone, because creditors are calling us every hour. They’re worried they won’t ever get paid back.

We’ve been broke for a long time. If I remember correctly, it started with Bush. The point is, it didn’t just happen overnight. For a while, friends would still spot us a couple of bucks for that cup of brew. If nobody happened to be around, the girl at the counter would let us have one simply for a promise and a smile.

Gotta cut back, but we also gotta keep up appearances. We’re the recognized leader of the Free World, after all. It simply won’t do to suddenly show up dressed in sack cloth.

Everybody agrees the economy is heading south. In fact, it’s so far down already, there’s really no longer any fix - nothing the public would go for anyway.

When things get this bad, the trick is not to give in to it. You do it with smoke and mirrors (Did I say ‘smoke‘? God, how I hate being married!); you try to give the impression that everything is still on the up and up. Sometimes, you’ve got to tell lies - like the one about ‘jobs saved’ (boy, was that one was a doozy!) The folks bought it all the same, at least I think they did - and now I’ll tell them we reduced the budget by a trillion while only increasing it seven times as much. (Damn! I’ve run out of space.) It’s technically true; we could have increased it by eight.

Checked in with ‘The Man’ this morning. He said, “Just keep going. You’re doing fine. Tell them about high-speed trains. They’ll like that.” Actually, I’m beginning to wonder just exactly what he’s up to.

Anyway, I still got the press drones out there, endlessly repeating that bit about ‘green’ jobs and how the economy is turning around; and how everything will work out as soon as Bush’s tax cuts expire - say what?

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