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WAKE UP, MR. PRESIDENT, published 01.24.15


My column from today's newspaper:\

Wake Up, Mr. President

Wake up, Mr. President. You’ve got to stop hitting the snooze button.
You had a good long night’s sleep but morning is coming. By the way,
we know you had a good dream because you talked in your sleep for over
an hour Tuesday night and it was so funny. Just wait until I tell you
the silly things you said.
You will love this one. You actually said the shadow of crisis was
over. You are so good with words. I can’t believe you messed this
one up. A shadow is a dark shape that appears on a surface when
someone moves between the surface and a source of light.
Our national crisis is real and highly visible to all of us. You are
the only one seeing the shadow because you yourself are blocking the
light by not being truthful with the American people.
Then you said that our greatest national challenge was global warming.
I know you meant to say the threat of Islamic terrorism.. Sometimes
dreams can be really silly, depending on what one eats before they go
to bed or how tired they are. Those chili pepper meatballs you had at
bedtime must really have messed up your system. They were pretty hot
and looked like little round globes. I can see howyou might have
got them mixed up with globes of warming.
After the cobwebs of sleep fade away, your mind will clear and you
will remember that global warming, or climate change as you used in
your dream, has not been proven. Just to make sure I wasn’t dreaming,
I googled the subject and found the names of at least 60 very
prominent scientists from all over the world who take issue with the
overblown fears of global warming.
Oh, and something else you will find hilarious about this climate
change thing. You said that China had come on board with the US to
reduce green house gas emissions. Of course, they are going to wait
another fifteen years while you want us to continue on a course of
full speed ahead. Those Chinese leadership guys. They love a good
joke, especially when they pull one over on Americans.
You must have had another fundraising trip on your mind before you
went to sleep because you said that the constant fundraising had to
stop, that it wasn’t the way we needed to do politics. But I heard
today that your Democratic Committee sent out a fundraising letter
while you were still dreaming. Fundraising is your life. It’s the
reason you came to the White House. You would never have talked about
giving it up.
But while we’re on the subject of money, you said something about
raising taxes to provide a free college education to young people. I
guess maybe you forgot about the 529 college fund plans that are
already available where parents can put money away for their child’s
education and it grows tax deferred and as long as it is eventually
used for college, that money will never be taxed.
I kind of got the feeling from what you said that you might take away
that tax exemption from parents who had scrimped and saved for years
for their children so that other students whose parents had not saved
up could have a free ride to college.
I’m sure I misunderstood that part. I mean, you would never do that,
would you, Mr. President? Gosh, I sure hope not. That would not be
fair and would fall into the category of redistribution of income and
nobody wants to see that happen in America where people are rewarded
according to their own work and not just given a hand-out.
I will close with the one thing that you talked about in your sleep
that I am sure you will be most embarrassed about. It has to do with
a woman called Rebekah Erler whom you described as your “normal
everyday average young wife and mother”. You said something about
her writing a letter to you just out of the blue about her husband and
kids, and how they lost their jobs, and struggled to make do, and then
found another job and things were beginning to look up for them. You
used her as an example of good old-fashioned thrift and hard work and
never giving up and all that stuff.
I guess this came to be a part of your dream because she has been on
your mind ever since that day a few months ago when you flew to
Minnesota to meet her for a political lunch so the two of you could
discuss Democratic talking points. In real life of course, she is a
Democrat political activist who worked on the staff of Patty Murray,
U.S. Senator from Washington.
I can only imagine how badly you must feel that you gave people the
wrong impression while talking in your sleep that you didn’t know her
personally and had just randomly picked out her letter from the
hundreds you receive every day. Just a matter of luck on her part.
I’m sure the American people will understand that it was just the
workings of an active imagination after eating too much. Those
meatballs again. We just won’t mention it and people will probably
forget about her political dealings with you and Michelle and the
Washington senator.
You said a lot of crazy things while you were talking in your sleep,
about the economy, and gas prices, and job opportunities, and raising
the minimum wage, just a lot of weird mixed up stuff that didn’t make
much sense. The usual ramblings of a tired and over-active
imagination.
Wake up Mr. President. Get to work. America has real problems to
solve and a terrorism crisis on our hands. No more sweet dreams for
you. They are giving the rest of us nightmares.

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