WAITING FOR SARAH

Dear Readers,

President Obama has been in office a mere 9 months, but the impatience over his lack of progress in cleaning up the frat-party mess of the Bush regime is growing. It was to be expected that the GOP would start whining and backbiting as soon as the inaugural parade was over, but now, liberal and moderate Democrats seem to be adding to the national grumble as well. Unemployment is still about 10%, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq still grind on, Gitmo is still an operational prison, Wall Street remains largely unregulated (and their bonuses are as big as ever) and the health care-reform bill is beginning to look like a soviet-era Lada that's been hammered out of all recognition by a group of Japanese Kodo drummers (and about as useful). After years of disastrous decisiveness, we seem to have forgotten that just because decisions are taken quickly, that doesn't mean they are correct. But fear not, dear readers, for help is on the way.

Yes, we only have a few more weeks until the public re-emergence of America's new sweetheart, Sarah Palin. Her new book is already a best-seller- thanks to preorders- and soon, she'll be on every television and radio talk show (including Seasame Street, probably) in the nation, hawking the thing. I'm sure American hearts will quicken as our Sarah reduces major and complex issues to George W.- level understandability and we can all relax at being reminded of how simple it is to run the country. I'm sure she won't immediately announce her intention of running for president in 2012, but the implication will be there as she succeeds in appealing to our intellect-reductive impulses, and positioning herself as the anti-Obama. No snob, our Sarah, she's one of us.

So, those of you who miss the good old days of ignoring terrorist warnings, complete de-regulation of Wall Street, hanging out at a #$%&*ing ranch in Texas while a major US city gets wiped out by a hurricane, cooking up wars based on phony 'evidence', putting psychopaths in charge of the Defense department and other such simple solutions, don't worry, we only have about three years before Sarah puts it all right again. I imagine somewhere, Dick Cheney must be rubbing his hands and salivating.