Ercille I. Christmas

Change Is Good...and "People Are Crazy"
July 12, 2009

I recently heard a song, “People are crazy,” by country music crooner Billy Currington, and voila, an article was born! The chorus of the song states that “God is great, beer is good, and people are crazy.” For whatever reason, “change is good” popped into my head, and I began coming around to accepting the change that the new president has brought to us. We should all be proud of the rapidity and almost total annihilation of the status quo...change is good! Not many leaders can accomplish in six months what President Obama has accomplished. Only God, Who created the world in six days, has succeeded in outdoing the president!

The president is receiving quite a bit of criticism and I am going to now publicly announce that I am on board his “change and hope” train! While others are deserting, I will drive that train if I have to. If I fail in my quest to provide an impeccable rationale for my support, I will join the “beer is good” brigade, (although I’m not an imbiber of strong drink). I suspect that some readers may be choking on their beers as they read about my “conversion,” but please hear me out as I attempt to outline some cogent reasons why I now believe in “change,” in all of its meanings.

One reason that I am very pleased with the new president’s “change” agenda is the closeness it has brought about with my friends and acquaintances, and I. Before the new president began his term, friends commiserated with me because I had lost my house after “encounters” with two mortgage companies, one of which got a nice bailout, the other one which bailed out of business. Those friends and acquaintances still had their homes, but now that the “change” of bailout dollars is not going towards funding loans for the general public, I am the one commiserating with them, as their homes are now going, going, gone. We are all now sharing our (lack of) wealth experiences, our changed circumstances, and our hope that things will improve.

Another “change” that is being proposed is in the delivery system and ownership of our nation’s healthcare. This plan is a stroke of genius, as it will tackle not only healthcare but our dependence on foreign oil at the same time. There will be savings on gasoline because of the expected proliferation of hybrid vehicles. Huge carbon footprints will be a thing of the past. Even more important, there will be increased health benefits from increased exercise. When government-run healthcare is the law of the land, we can all drive down – in Government Motors hybrid cars – to the government-operated clinics.

Based on the prototype of new cars floating around the Internet, no one will have to worry about speeding tickets anymore. Lots of folks will get exercise from pushing those cars from street to street. Sweating and pushing a car on the heated cement, not only cements the bonds of friendship, but it provides great exercise! No one will have to scramble to pay for a gym membership. Friends can take turns being the driver and the passenger. While one person “drives” the car, the “passengers” can push. After half an hour, the passengers will be buff!

Friends, one caveat though...be careful on the highway with those prototype hybrids. There would be no danger if everyone drove those thingies, but there will always be some stubborn, reckless individualistic folks who will insist on driving those cool “carbonated” muscular cars, manufactured when the American motor industry was privately owned! With you and your friends in your non-carbonated, really, really low-rider vehicle,” you may not be seen until it is too late, and then you’ll be “knock, knock, knocking on Heaven’s door.”

The new president promised transparency and I do believe he has delivered. The queries of two White House reporters, Helen Thomas and Chip Reid, gave the White House spokesman Robert Gibbs quite a grilling on the transparency issue because of suspected plants in the Townhall meeting the president held to discuss the issue of healthcare. Ms Thomas was “amazed” and “shocked” at the apparent planting of questions and questioners. She labeled it a “pattern of controlling the press.” She was not happy. It is not good to make Ms Thomas unhappy.

But I part ways with these two reporters. In defense of the president, I know of at least one area where there has been absolute transparency, i.e., all of the president’s men and women who took a stand against paying their taxes but then changed their minds when that pesky issue came up at their confirmation hearings, were transparent about their original sin and their subsequent reformation. It was almost like a religious moment! The president could have made this an opaque/covert/clandestine situation, but he let the entire world see the tax-cheats’ problems. He demonstrated why that reporter from Newsweek, what’s his name, considered him “sort of like god.” The president saw the sin. He forgave it. The reformation of the “sinners” followed. The confirmations went through. We moved on. It was beautiful.

The president took his wife on a date to New York and the critics were incensed! How dare he spend so much money in the midst of our economic turmoil and then have taxpayers foot the bill of nearly one-million dollars? My question to the critics is: Would you have preferred him to take a mistress instead of his wife, as some of his political peers have been caught doing – and actually confessed to doing? Should he have been allowing an intern to perform “oral services” In the Oval office? I view this date with his wife as a real example of family values for the rest of us to emulate! You go, Mr. Prez!

Mr. Prez, I have a confession to make. I made fun of the bailout bingo and scoffed at the notion that millions of jobs would be created. I laughed almost hysterically when I heard that employment was going to be down. Although I am now onboard with your agenda, that bailout deal needs to “change.” To be honest, the unemployment rate is approaching 10%. The bingo bailout beneficiaries are hoarding the dough and not lending, except for being beneficent to their foreign partners. I hope you can change that, turn it around, as a demonstration of your “compassionate conservatism.”

Another “change” that has come about is in relation to you and the press, It appeared to culminate with the “sort of like god” comment and pointed to the perfect synergy between the White House and the Fourth Estate. I had gotten quite accustomed to the “he can do no wrong” coverage from a subservient and admiring press. Heck, I was now beginning to think that if the Fourth Estate says it is so, it is so, and if a reputed 90% of our press could see god-like qualities in our president, then I have to become a believer. After all, the members of the press are the guardians of truth and honest reporting and would never deceive the rest of us, right? Just as I had given up my antagonistic stance about this overt synergy, along came Helen Thomas and Chip Reid to shatter my confidence. You know what? I am going to refuse to believe their challenge of the White House Press Secretary. Our president promised “transparency” and I now believe him! Coincidences are very possible.

Some folks, who were not in favor of the choice made for president, went so far as to describe the new president as the first “affirmative action” president. In an attempt to bolster their case, they gave as “evidence” that no one has been able to get access to the president’s birth certificate, his college records, and other assorted records of movement, mobility, and achievement. I say to those people: He has produced the certificate, for crying out loud! It was/is on the Internet. I know that those folks are going to attempt to refute that by saying that his Kenyan grandmother supposedly stated that she was there at his birth in a Kenyan hospital. Those people, instead of egg on their faces, will have their faces splattered with birth certificate ink when the president is finally fed up enough and calls in Helen Thomas to see and vouch for the real certificate of live birth!

Dear readers, I apologize. I misled you. Unless I get a “change transplant,” I cannot continue the charade. When even the keys on the keyboard are tapping out of their own volition, “liar, liar, pants of fire,” I know that I have to give up this attempt. Excuse me a minute. I am jumping off of the “hope & change” bandwagon until I get some answers to my own questions.

Mr. President, call me to the People’s House. I will bring Ms. Thomas along as back up. The American people will believe her, especially after her “pointed” comments of a few days ago!

▪ Show us the college records.

▪ Show us the certificate that you were born in the U.S. If, as your critics suggest, you were not born in the US and are Constitutionally ineligible to be serving as president, maybe you can work out a deal.

▪ Pledge that you will stop “husbanding” the resources of “We the people” and will turn off the government (money) printing press.

▪ Pledge that you will leave our healthcare alone, especially omitting that “government option” that is already giving me chills. I know folks who fit that “comparative efficiency” model. I am not ready to say farewell to my 84-year old stepfather. He is now filling the role of both father and mother to me. That dual role ought to count for something on the “comparative effective” scale, right?

Help me disprove the notion that “people are crazy” for having elected you, by considering my request. But keep dating your wife. I like that fidelity-to-the-marriage-vows approach, and not giving into the temptation to unleash any “weapons of marital and reputation” destruction.