Michelina

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(Thoughts while waiting for the Obamacare website to come up)

If ignorance is bliss, there must be an awful lot of happy Americans out there. The Bible is wrong. It is not the meek who will inherit the earth because the ignorant have already beaten them to it.

Yes, I know more Americans today are college educated than when I was a callow youth, but then watch Jay Leno on a given night when he interviews a trio of campus morons who believe that Abraham Lincoln was a wartime president — World War II. There would be no Ted Cruz in the United States Senate if the favorite game in Texas weren’t It Pays To Be Ignorant. Cruz is the Don Quixote of the Tea Party. He dreams the Impossible Dream of defunding the Affordable Care Act, and defeat hasn’t deterred him. In point of fact, the only real people who have the power to destroy Obamacare are the ones who set up the website. My grandkids could have done a better job and would have included a feature that would have allowed customers to play Xbox 360 while choosing an insurance plan.

The government just avoided default by raising the debt ceiling, which allows us to pay for money that Congress has already authorized. That’s right, pay for money already authorized. It’s like you spent a lot of money using your credit card and now here’s the bill. You don’t like paying it, but it’s pay or have the credit card company turn you into financial a eunuch (ouch!!). The debt ceiling is not something you notice when you get bored during sex (“Sam, the debt ceiling needs painting”). The need to raise the debt ceiling is not something our “Kenyan” president invented. Under our Obama, the debt ceiling has been raised six times while under Saint Ronald Reagan, the debt ceiling was raised 18 times. The better question is why do need a debt ceiling anyway?

Why not do away with a debt ceiling? If we did away with it today, that would be a good thing — think of it as being one fewer opportunity for Michele Bachmann to speak. There is only one other country in the world that has a debt ceiling, Denmark, and you know how depressed the Danes are all the time.

Before the financial crisis was temporarily resolved last week, pundits, such as New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, were suggesting that what President Obama had to do was, in the vernacular of the street, “grow a pair.” Dowd has been an unhappy woman because she has found our last three presidents wanting — Obama because he lacks cojones, Bush 43 because he lacks a brain, and Clinton, well Clinton has a brain, but apparently Maureen located it in Bill’s genital area. Anyway, Dowd wanted Obama to lock the key leaders of Congress in a room and not let them out until they agreed to reopen the government and raise the debt limit. But it wasn’t a lockdown that got the House Republicans to cave; it was a stare down by Obama.

We Italians know the power of the stare down only we call it the “evil eye” or “malocchio.” Unknown to the rest of you, the president called my Uncle Nunzio on the hot line to seek advice. Uncle told Barack to send for Michelina. Even the National Security Agency doesn’t know about Michelina, who is reputed to be 102 years old with a wart with tiny dark hairs sprouting out of her upper lip. Michelina is the foremost practitioner of the evil eye (after staring down the manager of a supermarket, she once caused the entire chain to go out of business because they refused to carry De Cecco pasta). There is a report that John Boehner’s tan faded after looking into the right eye of Michelina. The president is considering using Michelina during talks with Iran in the near future.

Because of Michelina, Uncle Nunzio has gained favor with our president. He visited the White House recently to chat over lunch with Mr. Obama. I understand Obama has now given up beer in favor of Uncle’s homemade wine. Uncle intentionally stayed away from politics during their lunchtime conversations, preferring to philosophize about subjects such as why the sales women behind the Clinique counter always wear white coats. I was surprised Uncle noticed that kind of thing, but he apparently told one such salesperson to stop showing off. After all she is just a saleswoman trying to find the right shade of makeup for her customer, not cure cancer.

Uncle also found out the president is a hockey fan (Note: even Obama addresses Ed Snider as “Mister” and also worries about whether the Flyers will ever score more than three goals in a game again). He had no comment when Uncle said that the best case for birth control is Britney Spears wanting more kids. Uncle reports that the president is rooting for Snookie on “Dancing with the Stars.” Obama told him he only pretends to like kale because it pleases Michelle, who grows an awful lot of kale in her White House victory garden.

I don’t believe any of Uncle’s chitchat with the president. But what I do believe is that we have finally found the answer to the Tea Party — Michelina. 

Contact the South Philly Review at editor@southphillyreview.com.

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