Reflections on Hope and Change in the Age of Balloon Boy and Cheetos

11/15/2009 | Justin Washington

[wayne_shrugged]

On January 20th, 2009, I hoped for change — now 9 months later, I am just hoping for a little spare change. I feel like I have been reliving my own version of Balloon Boy; as the country has been spellbound with rapt attention to a Jiffy-Pop hot-air balloon carrying off our hope-and-change President, we come to realize that while we have been anxiously watching shiny objects in the sky, our very own “Urkel Goes to Washington” is holed up in a smoke-filled back room playing three-card monty with Rahm and Axelrod while Geithner greases up the government printing presses. (By the way, Rahm and Axelrod sound like appropriate names for two of Capone’s sidekicks — picture extras from “The Untouchables” with cigarettes dangling from upturned lips while holding tommy guns standing at the entrance to the senate chambers, “monitoring” democracy in action much like ACORN “community organizers” monitor voting booths during elections.)

Speaking of three-card monty, “San Fran Nan” aka Nancy Bela Lugosi has been swooping around Congress on her broomstick, cackling incessantly about health care while unemployment tops 10% and all the while threatening to use the broomstick to take the temperature of any politician who doesn’t willingly become one of her flying monkeys.

Gagged and bound, the country is forced to watch the spinning healthcare roulette wheel on which the numbers have been replaced by 2,000 pages of drivel. The sheer arbitrary insanity of it is enough to make a person physically sick! (Which begs the question: will sickness due to politicians’ bad decisions be covered in the healthcare bill? Probably not, as it is nothing that a little visit to a re-education camp couldn’t cure, coming by the way to a neighborhood near you compliments of the Stimulus Bill; no doubt such an experience would make Club Gitmo look like a walk in the park sans the endless looping of Britney Spears’ greatest hits…)

Where the healthcare roulette wheel stops is anyone’s guess, but when it does, only Balloon Boy wins — and the rest of us taxpaying pack mules lose. Crowned emperor of a country he apparently loves so much, Obama can barely restrain himself from completely dismantling the US and rebuilding it into his very own version of “The World’s Biggest Loser.” Oddly enough, Obama is starting to feel like a Cheeto tastes — a little zesty with a lot of crunch and full of air and empty calories.

Obama has spent so much time traveling the world and dropping the soap in front of every tinpot, third-world dictator, I expect to see perky Katie Couric in a series of “special interviews” with every despot from pillar to post, discussing how much better each one likes the USA while each greasy dictator, blowing smoke rings from a Cuban cigar, spoons our Cheeto-in-Chief in the afterglow of mutual admiration and self-satisfaction.

In a world of cheesy, cheaply-made reality tv shows, it’s little wonder that we ended up with this unscripted mess filled with narcissitic, self-centered and self-promoting Munchkins eagerly grasping for their 15-minutes of fame without regard to the mess they will no doubt leave behind.

[douginthearmy]

Didn’t Rush write a book about this?

[ZRicochet]

Very funny, I particularly liked “threatening to use the broomstick to take the temperature of any politician who doesn’t willingly become one of her flying monkeys.”