Well ladies and gentlemen, we’re a matter of hours out from a fundamental change being exacted on this great country of ours, and I feel it’s necessary to write something about it.
Let’s face it people. We’ve spent the last 8 years acclimating to a whole new paradigm of the way things should be. We’ve become complacent in that operating method, and now shit’s about to get real in a whole new way. I could spend the next thousand or so words explaining who will react and how, but that’s a big ole left field non sequitur which will take us nowhere. Taking us nowhere is fine, as that’s one of the many reasons you’re here. The difference is that I’m your current guide to nowhere right now, and I have a different route in mind.
Technically speaking, I wrote this piece one day last month while sitting in a cubicle waiting for an extract to come back via a database query tool in MS Access. Sure I looked busy with my face buried in a couple of monitors while aggressively kegling that which is kegled in an effort to satisfy an itch, but rest assured I’m furthest from such an atrocity as being productive on a Friday afternoon for any purpose other than my own.
*grunt*
At the time this particular dispatch to the internet has been published, America is still under the grips of its 44th president. Any regular reader of this site (the greatest one on the web) will know that I’ve never really shown the man any respect either out in real life or planted right in front of your face in the vast collection of verbal brilliance which sits at your beckon call under the glorious banner of TharpSter.Org.
I should probably let it be known right now that you, my beloved reader, have just experienced a minor hic-burp in the space-time continuum. I’m hoping it was as transparent to your lower gastrointestinal system as it was meant to be.
As I finish writing this piece now and put the finishing touches on it, it is no longer that lazy Friday afternoon in December where I sit at the mercy of a poorly coded extract (written by yours truly) in misplaced hopes of getting results back before quitting time. Certainly the use of strategically placed profanity salted with uncommon wordplay work well in Homerically expansive run-on sentences when they translate from my cavernous skull to the keyboard for purposes of publishing them here on the website, yet incorporating such paradigms within SQL (Structured Query Language) to find out how many investors in the mutual fund industry like to have their sore tootsies massaged with butter versus Parkay produces questionable results and increases the margarine of error.
*pause for effect*
It’s now January, ladies and gentlemen. It’s MLK day, and I’m sitting here in my own little happy place doing the Lord’s work here on TharpSter.Org. I have the Apple TV playing Guns ‘N’ Roses on the iHeart Radio app and the remaining few ounces of a Monster Mean Bean just to my left.
That’s right people. Last month I laid down the basic framework of this piece, and set it aside for later.
What else was I going to go do today? Watch Netflix and go see Rogue One again?
Quick spoiler alert for all of you movie-going Star Wars fans.
If you go see Rogue One and express shock over the fact that no one gets out of that one alive, then you were probably gobsmacked when you saw Titanic and found that the damn boat sank.
Just sayin’.
Okay now that you know that today’s dispatch of verbal brilliance was uncharacteristically composed in more than one sitting, let’s move on.
Whereas our new president will do some great things for this country, I would be an ideological hypocrite if I were to fail to point out some of the great things which have happened to this country as a result of the efforts of our current president.
Quick, pick a number between 1 and 300,000,000.
Got it?
Good.
Mine is 252,460,800.
By the time he leaves office this afternoon, Barack Obama will have spent that number of seconds (with a margarine of error +/- 30 seconds) at the helm of the greatest country in the world. In that time, he’s used resources made available only to those in his position to dispose of a gaggle of the bad things that plague our lives.
He used a pen and a phone to dispense with the rule of law.
He used bad judgement to dispense with border patrol agents, CIA operatives, and an ambassador to Libya.
He used Seal Team Six to take care of the likes of international bad guys like those Somali pirates in that Tom Hanks movie, Hugo Chavez, Osama Bin Laden, Harambe, and Fidel Castro.
Of course offing the bad guys wasn’t the only thing that Number 44 achieved in his 4,207,680 minutes in office. Aside from being deadly to his foes, dude also managed to redefine math and how it works when calculating things like national unemployment rates and the strength of our economy.
Turnover!
Don’t forget turnover. In the 70,128 hours he held power, he took ownership (in the name of the gubment) of a major auto manufacturer and turned it over to the very entity that brought it down in the first place. Of course that’s not all though. In that time, he turned over control of the Congress along with several governorships and state legislatures to the opposition party.
Way to go Barry!
Naturally, there are plenty of other things to feather the lid of the outgoing Chief. In his early days, he successfully did away with the ill-conceived concept that the government couldn’t boss us around and force us to buy stuff. Just to drive that home, he made government bigger and more powerfuller by issuing 7 1/2 regulations a day (on average) for every day he was in office.
What a kick-ass dude!
All things being equal, if I were to rank Barack Obama among all other presidents who have served, I would have to put him in the top five.
It occurs to me that I’ve never really shared my POTUS rankings here. At this occasion of watching the man leave office in the same manner we watched Navin leave his empire, I think it’s only fitting to share these rankings with you.
Top seeds tied for #1 – George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Ronald Reagan
Tied for #2 – John Kennedy, Harry Truman, Thomas Jefferson, and 34 others
Tied for #3 – Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Jimmy Carter
Owning #4 like a boss – Barack Obama
By the end of the day, ladies and gentlemen, we’ll be on to other things.
Let’s hope the next term or two will be just as exciting as the last one.
Boom-shanka y’all.
