"It's a growth economy, Gus. We've already made, like, 500 rupee." - Shawn, Psych

 

President Roosevelt, showing that he was actually a Terminator sent from the future to eat George Patton.

I had intended to actually write this post about something other than politics. Most people had been focused on that for the past two years.

My friend, however, wouldn’t let me rest. He called me and said, “You watch, within a week of the election the banks will be closed and troops will be in the streets.”

I said, “John (I surround myself with people also named John), it won’t be that bad.”

“Well, Tuesday is Veteran’s Day.”

I do have some significant (you can’t hear me screaming in panic as I push the couches against the front door and polish my ammo over the Internet) concerns about the economy – I think that President-Elect Obama will face Change He Wasn’t Ready For. Hey, what do you expect, the guy’s a lawyer, and the only training in economics that they teach in law school is how high you should set your fees (high enough to drain most of the blood of the client, not high enough to actually turn them into a legal vampire like yourself). President-Elect Obama understands the economy the way the average man understands the emotional motivation of his wife, which is: Not At All. I tend to think that his advisors will bring out piles of M&M’s©, and use them to simulate international trade using a Risk™ board. They may simulate international banking by using a Monopoly™ board with Skittles™ as counters and pretending to be China and France. Let’s face it – the man has no idea what he’s doing, unless he gets to be the shoe. Then he might be okay.

It’s not that we would have been in a better place with McCain. As a fighter pilot, his first instinct would likely have been to launch all of his missiles and then hit the afterburners and then kiss Kelly McGillis after a beach volleyball game. Unfortunately, the Oval Office doesn’t have an ejector seat.

Don’t feel sorry for Senator McCain. He has never been married to Madonna®. He has several bunkers in Arizona stacked high with Campbell’s Chunky Soup®, hydrating body wash, gold coins, and Pez™. It’s not nearly as cool as being the nominal leader of the free world, but he has a big screen TV that you can see from space, and all of the beer he will ever want to drink, and will never have to have PhD’s explaining how the world works using outdated board games and candy.

The economy? Was it my imagination or were things working better before the majority of our elected representatives voted $700 billion dollars worth of pantyhose and frilly things to the bankers? Didn’t my Econ 101 professor say that the beauty of the free market is that those who do well are rewarded with profits, while those that act like six-year-olds sugar-drunk after eating sixteen chocolate Easter rabbits are punished given $700 billion? I may explain in detail why this was stupid, if the nice policemen who want me to unstack the couches and come outside and talk will let me go about my business.

Thankfully, those controlling Congress added $150 billion in pork so that they could assure passage of this economic version of Freddy Meets Jason.

Back to voting. As always, my concern is that (for some reason) it seems like the American people are nearly goaded into voting, regardless of their ignorance on the candidates. Commercial after commercial, including commercials from heroin-addled rock stars and Valium®-addled movie stars encouraging us to vote. Because they’re such good role models for responsible citizenship.

Did any commercial say, “learn about the issues and candidates”? No. Voting is a right. The unmentioned part is that voting is a responsibility – not just a responsibility to haul your hiney off to the polls: voting is a responsibility to cast a meaningful ballot. I didn’t vote for candidate after candidate, simply because even with my massive cranium I simply wasn’t informed enough about the issues related to those candidates. Voting down the party line? No. Not for me. I might be voting for a modern-day equivalent of Millard Fillmore – and our Republic is still living down the horrors of his administration, namely, admitting California as a state. Were California still a territory, we could sell it off to France in trade for Fiji or something cool and keep a straight face.

I think we haven’t had a decent candidate in years. If Jefferson was running today? The whole “having sex with his slave” thing wouldn’t have played well in Iowa. If Lincoln were running today? Tall, ugly, wife that’s batsnot crazy. Washington? Well, okay, Washington would have just stared down his opposition with his heat-vision and melted their souls. There is no debating Washington.

I, for one, welcome the time when Washington will wake from his multi-century slumber and put things to right with his fire-breath and laser-eyes.