I received the following email this afternoon.  I’m honored that His Excellency, President Obama, would take the time to reach out to little old me to explain his new initiative to make McDonalds hamburgers and ammunition at Walmart more expensive.

My remarks are in italics.  And yes, I know this got very, very long.  I just couldn’t find the bottom of this particular cesspool.

The White House

Washington

Hello everyone,

Howdy, Mr. President.  It’s nice to hear from you.

Earlier today, I signed an Executive Order to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 for federal contract workers.

How nice of you to do that.  I really appreciate you unilaterally doing things like that.  Nothing like going above and beyond the requirements of a signed contract.  How much of your own paycheck are you giving up to make this happen?

It’s the right thing to do. But what’s more, companies have found that when their employees earn more, they’re more motivated, they work harder, and they stick around longer. You should expect the same of your federal government.

Companies have found that what motivates people who make minimum wage is the chance to get the heck off the bottom rung of the economic ladder and quit making minimum wage.   You’d know this if you’d ever had to struggle.  By that, I mean ‘hold down a low-paying job in order to put food in your mouth’.  I’d really love to know how you managed to not starve while you were in college.  My guess your job didn’t involve brooms or deep fryers.

The bottom line is this: We are a nation that believes in rewarding honest work with honest wages. And America deserves a raise.

Sure we do.  Why don’t you give us one by cutting or eliminating income taxes?  What?  That’s not what you’re talking about?  How rude of me to suggest that you quit taking a good chunk of each and every mouthful of food that goes on my children’s plates.  Sorry.

The order I signed today will help folks across the country. But it’s not enough.

Right now, there’s a bill in Congress that would raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour for all Americans. It would lift wages for more than 28 million current workers, and would move millions of Americans out of poverty. That means businesses would have customers with more money to spend.

Raising the minimum wage would grow the economy for everyone.

Especially for people who figure out a way to make the same amount of food, wash the same number of dishes, or clean the same number of buildings with fewer people.

You don’t need to believe me: Believe the 600 economists — including seven Nobel Prize winners — who wrote both houses of Congress last month to remind them that the bill before them will have little or no negative effect on jobs.

Since you’re a Nobel laureate yourself, and we all know how much respect I got for the Nobel prize system when you got that, this means a lot to me.  

When I stood before both chambers of Congress and said that I intended for 2014 to be a year of action, that wasn’t just a nice line in a speech. It was an acknowledgment that we’ve got to restore opportunity for everyone in America — the idea that no matter who you are, or how you started out, you can get ahead here if you’re responsible and willing to work for it. That’s what this “year of action” is all about.

Funny, everyone I know who started out at minimum wage, busted their tail, and kept their nose clean seems to be doing OK at the moment.  It’s like the minimum wage wasn’t a hinderance to them getting ahead.  It’s almost like making crappy wages was a stimulus to do something that made more money.

And since that speech, I have taken actions on my own to make it easier for folks to save for retirement, help working Americans get the skills that good jobs demand, and assist millions of Americans who have been looking for work for several months. I’ve announced a major new commitment toward connecting our schools to 21st-century technology.

Right, because people couldn’t get an IRA, or get into a college or a tech school, or bust their ass to find a job before your speech.  And I hate to tell you this, Mr. President, but the only use I’ve seen most of the high schoolers I know put high-speed internet to is to download pictures of naked people, play games in class, or text their BFF’s about how much chemistry sucks.  A fractional T1 and some new iThingies aren’t going to make sure our children get a good education.  Right now, I’ll trade the ability to circumvent a proxy so they can get to pr0n for basic literacy and math skills, which we were able to impart upon our children way before Jobs and Wozniak started their little produce company.

That action continues today, and in the months to come.

Oh, praise Cthulhu.  It’s only been 5 years since you first mouthed the words to the oath of office, and we’re finally going to see some action out of your office. 

Take a look at what we’ve done already and what’s to come.

DB Note – That’s a link to a webpage detailing the things that the Grand Exalted Grand PooBah has done since the State of the Union address.  Here are the highlights:

Raising the Minimum Wage – I’ve already had my say about this, so I won’t beat this particular dead horse anymore.  I’ll leave that in your more than capable hands.

Helping Americans Retire With Dignity – Like I said above, nothing’s been keeping the American people from buying into a private retirement plan if that’s what they want to do.  All this does is funnel more of those sweet, sweet taxpayer dollars into the general federal budget.

Building 21st Century Workplaces – I was surprised by this one.  I honestly thought it might be a proposal to use federal funds to modernize failing industries, or subsidize the cost of bringing high-speed data links to rural businesses.  Imagine my shock when it talked about how the government is going to work toward “Revamping workplace policies in areas such as discrimination, flexibility, and paid leave will make our workplaces more inclusive to working families and ensure America’s global economic competitiveness in the coming decades.”  Seriously?  We’re going to waste cycles trying to make it easier for people to have a flexible schedule PTO?   Don’t you people have anything better to do with your time?

Investing in High-Tech Manufacturing – Did the President get dropped on his head as a baby or something?  Didn’t we just go through five years of the government ‘investing’ in places like Solyndra and Fisker?  We should have taken all of that money and set it on fire.  We would have at least gotten some light and heat out of it.  

Training America’s Workers – I’m sorry, I thought that was what my federal tax dollars that go to the Department of Education went toward, or at least my local property and sales taxes did, for like my entire adult life.  You inbred, twinkle-toed, half-wit excuses for public servants have royally screwed up the best public education system the world had ever known, and now you want to do more?  I wouldn’t trust you jokers to teach wild dogs to eat raw meat, much less teach Billy Ray or Laquisha how to use a plasma torch.

Helping the Long-Term Unemployed – How about we help the long-term unemployed by not doing things we know will discourage employers from hiring new people, like forcing them to pay a huge amount for health insurance or raising the minimum wage?  How about you all get the heck out of the way and let business owners make better profits, thereby giving them an incentive to expand capacity and hire more people?

Expanding Apprenticeships – Wow, you finally said something that makes sense.  Of course, you can have all the slots in tech schools and apprenticeship programs you want.  They won’t mean diddly over squat so long as you keep making noises about how no-one ever makes it in life without a degree in underwater upside-down race baiting or whatever it was that you ‘studied’.  Quit making it easy for Little Johnny to go hang out and play XBox with his friends for four years while racking up $50,000 in debt, and maybe he’ll discover that he has a talent for wiring houses or fixing cars because doing so will keep him off the streets.

Increasing Fuel Efficiency – Right, because trying to squeeze another drop out of that particular dried out husk of a lemon is going to make it more likely for the American auto industry to hire more people.  Apparently you never heard of the law of diminishing returns, nor did you ever learn that industry loves efficiency, and would have developed and bought  large fuel-efficient trucks if that could be done economically.  Of course, I’m sure this is going to cost me and my great-great-grandchildren money as you translate “incentivize” to mean “subsidize”.

Cutting Carbon Pollution – And here we go with the “cut carbon emissions, because they’re icky and magic fairy money will fall from heaven”.  Quit conflating your economic and fiscal policies with your fixation on a single environmental issue.  If your goal is to make Americans better off financially, quit trying to shove higher costs for energy, food, and transportation down our throats.

Connecting Our Classrooms – Because little Johnny and little Susie need the opportunity to get on FaceBook during English class that much quicker.  See my above comment about basic literacy.

Increasing College Opportunity – Well, which is it?  Are you going to encourage more people to get what for most of them will be useless degrees, or are you going to encourage them to go into apprenticeship programs?  

Redesigning High Schools – Again, see my earlier comments about literacy.  You know what works for education?  Let’s try a classroom of students that know that if they don’t learn what’s put before them, they run a pretty good chance of starving to death in the cold because they can’t get a job.  Let’s try a classroom where the teacher is not only allowed, but encouraged to cause pain in the life of some jackass who wants to test his manhood by being a little shit?  How about we stop spending a good third of their time learning about sensitivity, down-trodden people, and the evils of capitalistic caucasian males and force the little darlings to learn their multiplication tables again?

DB Note:  At this point, exhausted just thinking about the damage that this guy can do in such a short amount of time, we get to the end of the web site and return to the email.

Thank you,

President Barack Obama

No, thank you, Mr. President.  That was cathartic.  Say hello to the wife and kids for me.