ARE WE STIMULATED YET?

I am sitting here in happy anticipation and a great deal of unprecedented joy awaiting my stimulus check. Yessiree, George Bush is sending me $300 dollars and telling me to spend it. I have always been good at spending money. It's a talent I have. In my lifetime, I would probably have garnered trophies for spending if I had not become the Herma Savings and Loan Department, servicing all of my children. I saved and I loaned, while the Collection Department was a complete bust. Sometimes the word "Borrow" has a completely different meaning. It can be defined as a handout....and it seems their hands were always out.

Those years have passed and now the Herma Savings and Loan Department is defunct, awaiting this government bailout, awaiting my share of the bonanza we may well have borrowed from China. Well, why not? We've sold off our toll roads and our port security and our passport information, why not give us all a little stimulation? I'm just hoping they don't get confused and ship off my stimulus package to Taiwan, where it mightt sit around with those missile parts and never be heard from again.

When you have been privileged with the gift of spending freely, one must have money to spend. I think I inherited this gift from my Uncle Asa, who ran out on all of his many bills, as well as his wife and children, and disappeared for seventeen years. He was a spender, too, and my DNA would undoubtedly reveal that my spending talent came from him. Now that I can combine my talents with a feeling of patriotism, while knowing that I am rescuing my countrymen from economic disaster, my happiness knows no bounds.

The thing is, President Bush, it just isn't enough! Three hundred dollars will hardly take me on a trip to the Caribbean. Vice President Dick Cheney was swimming off the deck of a luxurious yacht owned by an Arabian sheik at the same time the American death toll in Iraq reached four thousand American soldiers. You can bet he was spending more than a few hundred dollars. You can bet he wasn't visiting a Dollar Store trying to stretch an unemployment check a little further!

Figuring out how to get this stimulus check has been a bit confusing. First, you have to file an income tax check, even if you didn't earn any money. I don't know why they don't just mail out that check, since our new Driver's licenses have computer chips that tell them everything they want to know about us. Our passports do the same. From what I hear, since the computer chips are made by a foreign entity, my personal information is not only well known in Washington, D.C., but it may be the talk of the town in Shanghai, so why should I have to fill out more forms so that I can do my part in making the United States solvent again?

Then, too, it is said that...unless you made $3,000...you will not be allowed to help stimulate the economy. This seems strange to me. It appears to me that, if you don't make $3,000 yearly, you definitely need stimulation. I guess I just don't understand these things, but why aren't we stimulating those who really need stimulation? Don't they buy food? Don't they pay rent? Don't they keep the economic ball rolling, just as you and I do?

The thing is, Mr. President, if you are going to stimulate the economy with these checks, you have to continue to do so. I cannot keep on spending if I spend all of my money and there is no more money arriving to spend again. So, plan on keeping up the stimulation. Borrow a little more next time. Here in Michigan, we need every penny we can get. So many of our homes are vacant that we have become a mecca for vagrants. The Detroit Mayor may have a Defense Fund, but most of us are looking for jobs.

Many of us are leaving Michigan, but most of us stay because we simply can't afford the airline ticket. To travel on a plane these days, you have to take along food, water and a Porta Pottie, just in case you get stranded on a tarmac for days. The Court of Appeals said that providing these basics is a matter for the federal courts and not for the states to decide. So, we must depend upon the Feds and try not to remember those thousands in New Orleans who were doing the same.

Actually, I don't know why the President decided to try to jumpstart the economy with stimulus checks when he just said that economy in our country is fine. Is he confused? Or did he get swept away in the Surge? It's for sure that his pocketbook doesn't need stimulating! It's for sure that Dick Cheney's pockets are full! Besides, when an American reporter mentioned to him that three-quarters of Americans disapprove the Iraq War, his answer was "So?"

So? We are being manipulated and led by Corporate sharks whose only worry is that the profit structure remains intact. They will bail out huge banks, but leave the homeowners to be devoured by the wolves at the doors...and they are doing it with our money. The President called some of these homeowners "speculators." Republicans say, "We don't feel sorry for them. They were greedy!" Greedy? Take a look at our leaders. Take a look at the Corporate executives! Take a look at automobile manufacturers, laying off thousands so they can take our technical knowledge to India or China, saving on salaries and health care!

So? So our political leaders deal in billions, much of it borrowed, and hand out checks to try to pull us up out of the mess they have made. They want us to run down and spend those dollars on Chinese merchandise, which is about all you can find in any store these days, so that China can continue thriving and possibly build a few more elaborate structures for the upcoming Olympics, after squashing a few more Tibetan monks. It's all so intricate, it's enough to make me heave my lavish, utterly delicious lunch of Ramen noodles.