With me, Ms. NBC, Rachel Maddow and the Reverend Al Sharpton, fresh from officiating at the Western Regional Olympic knockout game trials in Oakland, California.
MADDOW: Jay, what's the holdup in people taking their seats?
CARNEY: Someone phoned in a waterballoon threat earlier, Rachel. The Secret Service escalated screening and is now conducting body cavity searches on attendees. Here comes Justice Ginsberg, and she does not look happy.
You've seen the official transcript. Your impressions?
MADDOW: The president knows the public is finally on to him, so he's dropping the mask and saying what he really believes.
CARNEY: My take as well. Anything jump out at you?
MADDOW: About four minutes in, he warns the Tea Party, "You think Lois Lerner was bad? Wait'll I sic Holder on you. Or worse."
CARNEY: "Or worse," Reverend Al?
SHARPTON: He'll flay the Tea Privates, Jay, and spread their mulch on America's groundscape, unleashing a feeding fancy in the body politic that will subsume First Commandment zealots determined to Kaiser Permanente the status ho. In other words . . .
MADDOW: Jay, President Obama just appeared at the rostrum out of nowhere. How . . ?
CARNEY: Secret elevator from the subbasement, Rachel. No grand entrance. Word was, endangered Democrats planned to greet him with rubber hands and joy buzzers as he processed down the aisle.
MADDOW: Who's your source on the inside, Jay?
Um, why is New Hampshire Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte sitting on Senator Schumer's lap? No, she's . . . she's trying to get off his lap. What's that about?
CARNEY: Just Schumer pushing the envelope on the bipartisan seatmates initiative for a quick thrill.
MADDOW: Uh oh. Over there. Senate Democrats up for reelection in November are waving "You lie" signs.
Everyone is ignoring the blinking "Applaud, damn you!" prompts. Embarrassing.
Wait. Someone is clapping. It's, it's . . . Nancy Pelosi with her grandson on her lap; they're playing "Patty-Cake."
CARNEY: Warning light's on, Rachel.
And now, the president of the United States, Barack Obama . . .
PRESIDENT OBAMA
This is going to be short: Jay-Z's coming to the Residence at ten to watch the Bulls game with me.
I'd invite friends from Congress to join us, but I don't have any.
Mr. Vice President, Lady Macbeth [winks at Michelle], members of the Supine Court, fellow travelers, the roiled opposition, everyone I suckered in 2008 and 2012, and my special guest, head of Mexico's Alejandro Drug Cartel, Miguel Garcia, whose arrangement with the FBI and ATF has been mutually rewarding.
Tonight it is my task to report the state of The Onion is strong--and likely to remain so as long as I'm not in their sights.
As for the state of the union . . . not as bad as I expected, given my efforts since 2009 to transition America from capitalism to European-style socialism to Detroit on a national scale.
Yes, as some suspect, I've been promoting a nanny state Bloomberg can only dream about to collapse the economy over time. In the Forestry Service, they call it a "controlled burn."
The object? To spark a new American Revolution, culminating in a government released from the shackles of the Constitution.
Now, I know what you've heard from the right: Obama wants to redistribute wealth so that all may live their lives with dignity--at least until the great upheaval begins.
That's a canard. I want to redistribute misery, not wealth. I want the "haves" and "have nots" to become the "have somes" and the "don't have enoughs."
A mile marker on that road is ObamaCare.
I am deeply disturbed by the last update from HHS. Millennials are actually beginning to enroll in numbers sufficient to subsidize health care for the oldest and sickest among us.
This was never my intent. If you're between the ages of 27 and 45, maybe you didn't get the memo: you're virtually immortal. You don't need insurance, so avoid the PPACA. You will not be fined.
Private insurance companies are now irretrievably invested in the PPACA. Without your premiums, they'll go belly up when I renege on my promise to bail them out. And then, Inshallah, say hello to single payer.
Tonight, I'm kicking off a promotion to keep millennials out of the exchanges. Henceforth, the Affordable Care Act will be known as the Rewardable Care Act.
Those in the 27-45 age group who pledge not to enroll will be issued a voucher for a timely, no-questions-asked hip or knee replacement assignable to an elderly relative of their choice.
Defy me, surmount the barriers and purchase insurance, and expect to be targeted by my minions at the agency some call the I haRaSs.
Joe Peterson in Pittsburgh--the NSA tells me you spent last weekend at the computer trying to buy a plan. You're wasting your time, Joe: names beginning with a consonant are blocked in Pennsylvania.
Ann Burbank in Peoria--you've ignored Facebook for a week attempting to navigate healthcare.gov. Get back in the social whirl, girl.
Start-up costs for universal coverage will be offset by funds not allocated to dying insurance companies. Taking those savings into account, OMB's first draft for FY 2015 came in at $18.2 trillion. I sent it back and told Director Burwell to trim it with a chainsaw. Today she delivered a budget of only $12.3 trillion, almost $6 trillion off the original proposal.
Extrapolating similar budget cycles through FY 2019 and adjusting for inflation and debt servicing, we stand to spend, on average, only $1 trillion more each year than we can afford, enabling us to continue our slow, steady march toward insolvency.
Treasury Secretary Lew informed Speaker Boehner last week the debt ceiling must be raised again in February. Failure by the House to agree to my budget profligacy will force me to close the government once more and, with Brian Williams' and his colleagues' help, pin it on Republicans.
I promise you, this closure would be the worst yet: patients released from institutions for the criminally insane violating old ladies on the street; seniors discharged from nursing homes and dumped with relatives; nuclear subs scuttled at sea; toilet paper hoarded and becoming more valuable than gold.
All this, Republicans unleash on the country if they don't give in and do things my way in a bipartisan fashion. Otherwise, I'm helpless, aside from ensuring Fort Belvoir Golf Club remains a sanctuary.
On the jobs front: I am happy to report the number of Americans who have given up looking for employment is approaching 100 million. This eases the competition for our fifty million undocumented guest residents who need work until they are naturalized, register as Democrats, and get safely on the public dole.
I encourage the long-term unemployed who are unhappy with me to seek out opportunities in Central America.
I freely admit that pockets of prosperity continue to exist out there despite my best efforts. I've charged the Department of Justice to ferret out winners who are not bearing their fair share of the recession. I will not tolerate businesses that profit at the expense of their competitors.
Earlier today, I waived legislative consent and decreed into law the Election Transparency Statute, a long overdue update to the Freedom of Information Act. It rips away the veil of secrecy shrouding the voting booth.
Beginning in November, voters will be taped as they mark and sign their ballots before professional witnesses hired by the Justice Department. The information then becomes part of the public record.
Your friends, relatives, neighbors, union bosses, and interested thugs have a right to know if you voted the way they wanted you to or the way you said you would. The days of private cubicles and anonymous marks on generic ballots are over.
The Second Amendment remains a bone in my throat. I've realized, however, the need to be creative in expelling it. At my request, the United Nations has listed the U. S. a state sponsor of terrorism. This declaration will cut off the foreign markets of American firearms and ammunition manufacturers.
On energy: I was deeply disturbed to learn of the newly discovered 200 billion barrel oil field straddling North Dakota and Canada. Exploitation could eventually drive the price of gasoline down to one dollar a gallon, threatening the sale of plug-in autos and the development of windmobiles.
To stop this environmental outrage, tonight I declare the state of North Dakota a national monument.
Yes, Canada may flood us with cheap fuel from their portion. No, I won't raise federal gas taxes to thwart the predatory underpricing that would result. Times are too hard.
Instead I will order the EPA to develop costly, new eco-friendly formulations for all grades, tweaked to keep pump prices hovering at $4 or more a gallon without a tax hike that would hurt the middle class.
Now let me shift to international matters.
So much ink has been spilled about my role in Benghazi, I feel compelled to address the matter. Fundamentally, I agree with former Secretary of State Clinton's testimony regarding Benghazi at her Senate hearing last year: Ob-bla-di, ob-bla-da, life goes on.
Reporters who want a fuller response, come to my next press conference, ask your questions, and I will ignore them at length.
Recently, the World Health Organization declared American Imperialism a contagion. I tasked Defense and State to look into the charge. Secretary Hagel was able to identify the USS Stennis, Reagan, and Truman as carriers. He ordered them mothballed and quarantined ASAP.
People sometimes wonder if I am humbled by commanding the mightiest military force on earth. I am not. I've grown in office. The bin Laden raid, troops in Syria and Libya, drone attacks in Pockeestan, DNC agents disrupting Tea Party rallies--I'm comfortable using force to advance a progressive agenda.
Allow me to illustrate. Um, in the shadows, you, yes you in uniform with the briefcase chained to your wrist--come here, please.
All right, Captain, Major, whatever, open the briefcase so the camera can see inside. Now, which button takes out Orange County, a GOP stronghold? The red one? Put your finger on it.
I'm giving you an order, soldier.
I say the word and Republicans lose California by thirty points instead of twenty-five. Okay, HOOAH!, so forth. Go back in the shadows, Colonel.
I always get a thrill when I do that. Makes me feel like a god.
Good news from Ramsey Clark, my special Envoy to Iran. The Iranians are so focused on building a nuclear weapon, they've cut back on mischief-making in Iraq and Afghanistan. To encourage this behavior, I've offered to share "clean nuke" technology with Iran's military, and Ayatollah Khomeini appears receptive. This may be a breakthrough. After all, neutron bombs are good for the environment.
A heads-up to Netanyahu: should war between Iran and the Zionist state appear imminent, I will order a preemptive strike on the Israeli resort city of Eilat. Israel would then not have cause to vaporize Iran, saving millions of lives and denying the mullahs and ayatollahs their martyrdom. Call it a . . . nuclear firebreak, emboldening Iranian moderates and earning us good will on the Arab Street.
Our vessels in the area have standing orders to assist Israel immediately after such action. We'll warn the Iranians that American warships will brook no interference when they pick up Israelis drifting in the Red Sea.
And now, I ask this great assemblage to stand, place your right hand over your heart, and recite along with me:
I pledge allegiance to the president of the United States of America, and to our decline, for which he's planned, one nation, under him highly risible, with penury and animus for all.
Yes, things seem bleak at the moment. But I promise you we will postpone our fiscal reckoning until most of us are dead and gone. In the meantime, we must resist the siren call of painful choices; we must stop gazing longingly at the shore as riptides pull us out to sea.
Yesterday, after burgers and fries on the Truman balcony with the First Lady, I stood at the railing and looked south towards the Washington Monument, an unlit cigarette dangling from my lips.
I thought about Churchill's "sunlit uplands" metaphor. For a brief moment, off in the distance, I could almost discern the overcast lowlands where our country's future really lies. My fellow Americans, I need your apathy to get us there.
For those watching who would like to join my Civilian National Security Force and be a part of the action when it all starts going down, e-mail me at IMD1@whitehouse.gov.
I'll conclude with an uplifting poem sent to me by Rima Gleneagle, a tenth grader in Burlington, Vermont, and vice president of Young Democrats for Repeal of the 22nd Amendment. She writes,
Last year went well, the yahoos caved.
We've gotten mostly what we craved:
To gut our econ, sound retreat,
Color red our balance sheet,
Show lesser countries we'll self-screw
To keep a lid on CO2,
And borrow money (since we're broke)
To give to Gaia's poorer folk.
We've brought our country to the brink
And shown that Democrats don't blink.
Ahead: More change! Tricked-up reform!
And by these measures earth transform.
We'll cool the planet, save the whales,
Tell our kids tall climate tales.
And when we're done and temps are pleasing,
We'll warm to threats of global freezing.
Thank you, Rima.
Good night. And may God help America.
(Some material adapted from You Hear Me, Barack?)
