Tag Archives: state of the union

Humor, Politics, Satire

Obama back on track after new rule bars texting while presidenting

President Barack Obama’s year-old administration is back on track this week, after the advent of new federal rules that bar texting while presidenting.

The January 25 rulemaking modifies a 2002 regulation issued by the Bureau of Inertia that required commanders-in-chief spend at least 10 hours a day on the then-new social media websites such as Friendster and Cyworld. President George W. Bush put the rule to good use immediately in 2002, logging on at AsianAvenue.com (now AsianAve) to apologize to China for laws of physics that allowed a U.S. surveillance plane to become airborne, collide with a People’s Liberation Army interceptor jet, and crash land on Hainan Island.

“This change brings federal regulations into line with what we now know — that while it can be a convenient and fun way to communicate, texting is a significant distraction. It takes a president’s eyes off the road ahead and affects reaction time,” said Michele Obama of the powerful White House Office of Michele Policy. She gave reporters several examples of the effect of distracted presidenting, including President Obama’s decision to let Congress take the lead on health care reform, forgetting to end Don’t Ask Don’t Tell during 2009, and the entire eight years of the Bush administration.

The benefits of the texting restriction were readily seen last week, as the president was persuasive and on-message for his first State of the Union address Wednesday. Then on Friday at the House Republicans Retreat he was focused, and did not shy from pointing out inconsistencies and factual errors in critics’ arguments. “OMG- BHO totes pwned us. C me n Billo face on Factor 2nite,” Minority Whip Eric Cantor acknowledged to his Twitter followers.

Old habits can be hard to break, however. President Obama picked up his Blackberry on Saturday while taking in the Georgetown-Duke basketball game. As a result of the distraction, he failed to take preemptive action to prevent television coverage of Rush Limbaugh dancing at Sunday’s Miss America pageant.

In other news, conservative Tea Party activists outraged over Senator-elect Scott Brown’s support for Roe v. Wade were frustrated today in their efforts to lynch Brown in effigy using teabag strings.

Government, Humor, Politics, Satire

State of the Union – Obama expected to outline failures for the rest of 2010

President Obama will use his first State of the Union address tonight to say he has learned a great deal in the first year of his administration. An advance outline of the speech reveals he will tell the American people and a joint session of Congress that lessons learned from those failures will help shape failures during his second year in office.

The theme will be ‘if you are disappointed by the failure of health care reform, you ain’t seen nothing yet.’

The president is still fine tuning his remarks, but true to his reputation for bipartisanship he is expected to include many Republican applause lines. The text is said to currently include the sentence, ‘our failures will get bigger and stupider, each more maddeningly boneheaded than the one preceding it.’

Foreign policy

• The president will ask Israel to allow a homeland for the Palestinians, but will settle for a disused mini-golf course in East Jerusalem.
• The CIA will orchestrate a separatist movement in the Burgundy region of France, straining relations with the European Union.
• The State Department will act to negotiate peace between Apple and Amazon in the tablet war.

War on Terror

• Obama will propose uniting Pakistan and Afghanistan into one country, ‘Pakanistan,’ so U.S. Predator drones will no longer need to worry about which side of the border they’re on.

• Air travelers concerned about being recorded by whole-body millimeter wave scanners will be offered new privacy protections: scan-reflecting thongs and, for women, tassels.

Economy and Trade

• Covert funding of the aforementioned Burgundian separatist movement will result in guerrilla action in the vicinity of Dijon. Supplies of mustard will be interrupted, rippling through the U.S. hamburger, hot dog, and stadium concessions sectors.

• The president will announce that leading economic indicators are predicting the only thing stimulated in the economy this year will be John and Elizabeth Edwards’ divorce lawyers.

Discussion of domestic policy must include the issue that bedeviled the first 12 months of Obama’s administration: health care reform, which he is almost certain to relate to the recently announced three-year non-defense spending freeze.

Obama is likely to sell the freeze as a way to guarantee there will be no way to fund any public insurance solution. This pledge will be called ‘insurance for insurance companies.’

He will also call on Congress to allow banks to review and edit legislation on banking regulation and investor protection. A proposal for federally-funded investor protection helmets, with decals designed by Sasha and Malia, could be a big hit with Republican skateboarders.

inews9kRelive Eritas’s SOTU tweets

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