Show your gratitude for gift givers by sending out thank you cards. It’s a great way to show your appreciation for the gift they gave as well as the thoughtfulness of their generosity. Whether you receive gifts for a wedding, shower, or birthday, all gifts and acts of kindness should be reciprocated with a thank you card.

-from Thank You Card Etiquette
by Concrete Abstract

Dear Bush Administration,

I received your gift of President Obama yesterday, and I LOVE IT!

Now don’t act shy. You’ve been too modest about your generosity in the past. Why, I remember when that Valerie Plame thing showed up on the front steps one day. You were all like, “Where did that come from?”

I knew it was you!

But not this time. You’re going to take a turn in the spotlight even if I have to shackle your legs and frog march you out there!

Because I want everyone to know that we owe the outcome of this election entirely to you.

You see, some people would say this election proves that America has changed. That we’re ready to acknowledge that complicated problems require nuanced solutions. That courage is trumping fear. That we’re finally stepping into a post-racial future.

Bzzzzt! Wrong!

What’s remarkable about this election is the mind-boggling amount of coercion, brow-beating, and finally the all-encompassing catastrophe that it took for America to even consider changing course!

What administration but yours could have kept its eyes on the prize and made it happen?

The storm warnings of your first term elicited yawns. The rising waters of the second term, shrugs. And even in the week before the election, polls showed that 12% of the bloated corpses bobbing on the flood you caused were still not sure how to vote!

It’s not for lack of effort on your part. You’ve been trying to give this gift since the moment you came to power. You tortured people, denied habeas corpus, committed election fraud, wallowed in corruption, and spied on your own citizens. You wasted hundreds of billions on a pointless war. You bungled attempts to get Osama Bin Laden. You sat on your hands while an entire city was washed away.

Any ONE of these things ought to have been sufficient to assure the election of ten Barack Obamas. And yet, at the end of the primary season, he was running no better than even with McCain. A candidate barely palatable to his own party!

You must have been wondering, “Christ! What is this going to take?!”

I know I was.

A better administration would have thrown in the towel. But you didn’t give up!

There were only two options left: to have the House Republican caucus drink the blood of Christian babies on prime time national television, or to hurl the country into a depression.

Personally, I think the former option would have shown a lot of style.

But that’s quibbling.

So, sure, special gratitude has to go out to all the politically-appointed heads of regulatory agencies who were supposed to be patrolling the financial sector, but instead, with a knowing wink, kept a protective vigil at the front door while a circle jerk of hedge fund CEO’s did belly shots from the navels of trashy mortgage derivatives.

You know who you are. I love you guys.

But ultimately, this was a team effort. And while the contributors were too numerous to mention here, I’ve got to give a special shout out to the committed few that did more than just break our laws and betray our trust. They made that extra effort required to rub America’s face in it, just to be sure we’d notice.

To Larry Craig, David Vitter and Mark Foley. You knew that anybody can get themselves busted with their pants down. So you were sure to be moralizing, holier-than-thou crusaders right up until the moment they snapped the cuffs on you. Way to dazzle ‘em with the depravity, then send ‘em to the canvas with the hypocrisy!

Take a bow!

To Karl Rove and his corps of political assassins. You could have just played dirty when the score was close. But you went for the groin again and again and again–cold-cocking Don Siegelman in Alabama, canning U.S. attorneys, outing covert operatives–even when you had the game in hand! Talk about dedication!

Take a bow!

To Dick Cheney–there just are no words. You are the ultimate bureaucratic ninja. You could have quietly dismantled our democracy and no one would have even noticed until the unopened mail at the Rayburn House Office Building started piling up. But you played out of your head for eight straight years! It was like you were everywhere at the same time! The overreaching, the surliness, the swagger. You lied us into a war. You tortured innocents. You crapped on the Constitution. And then, like some kind of geriatric James Dean, you looked us in the eye and dared us to do anything about it.

Wow. That’s giving 110%.

Take a bow.

OK. Now take another.

And last but not least, to you George.

For exhausting America’s seemingly-limitless reserve of cowardice by pressing the fear button over and over, so that when John McCain went to that well to warn of a black man named Hussein, the bucket came up empty.

For valuing intuition over intellect. We watched you thrust your arm into one political wood chipper after another. And each time you’d regard your mangled digits with bewilderment, and then commit the same boneheaded mistake again! What less-numbing display could have driven the great unwashed into the arms of some brainiac college professor to be drearily lectured on economics?

And finally, thanks for exhorting us to succumb to our basest instincts. For urging us to shop for trinkets, to suspect our neighbors, to get all we could get while the gettin’ was good. By offering not a scrap to quell our pangs for more wholesome fare, you ensured that an ethereal menu of hope, change and unity would be welcomed as the starving welcome biscuits and gravy.

When I think about the effort you made. The commitment. I just…

I promised myself I wouldn’t cry.

I will not cry.

Some people will say I should just display my new Barack Obama on a shelf. And sure, if I left the shrink wrap on, he’d be worth plenty on eBay in 2016.

But no sir! I can’t wait to start using my Barack Obama to reverse every policy and repeal every law you’ve supported in the last eight years. And each time he does something smart, something competent, something Constitutional–or even when he commits mere misdemeanors in the places where the felonies used to go–I will think of you. And smile.

There may come a time when the destruction you’ve caused seems no more than a bad dream. When agencies are run by skilled professionals rather than political hacks. When other countries laugh with us, not at us. And when, with the wiser eyes of a Jimmy Stewart saved by an angel, we delight in the modest charms of our old, exasperating, imperfect, break-down prone jalopy of a democracy as it chugs unsteadily into the future.

Indeed, there may come a time when my Barack Obama will have erased virtually every trace of the mess you’ve made.

But there’s one thing he’ll never erase: my gratitude.

Sincerely,

Me

p.s.–tell Barb and H.W. to send Thanksgiving pics!

Normally I would pass on responding to something like this–particularly since the specifics have been rebutted by others more effectively than I dilettante such as I could ever manage.

But this one is special–it comes from a person that I worked with very closely for many years. This person was a veteran of business affairs. A longtime senior executive. And I was his right hand.

We spent much time together in foxholes, but never talked about politics.

It turns out that was a wise decision.

I wrote lengthy replies to all the specifics in his missive, which included a potpourri of trite attacks on Obama’s patriotism, his Marxist political philosophy, and his thinly veiled revolutionary black anger.

In response, my critique of media bias was groundbreaking, my debunking of his supposed terrorist associations, irrefutable. My defense of ACORN’s voter registration efforts was a seminal work on the topic. I demolished the attempt to brand him a socialist. And my treatment of the issue of race was so nuanced and sensitive, that it brought even me to tears.

Yet none will ever bask in that brilliance. Because it was too long, and boring as hell. So I deleted it.

Tragic, really.

Yet I think that enough remains below, that were my former boss ever to read it, he still would never speak to me again.

And so…

Dear friend, what the fuck? You’re smarter than this.

I can’t respond to all the points in your email. I tried and it gave me writer’s cramp. You listed a host of smears that you suspect bespeak the tips of icebergs, and which I think point only to desperate Republicans with their backs to the wall.

I don’t think either of us is likely to persuade the other.

But all these little points you make. You seem to be winding up to deliver the lethal blow. To say that Obama is anti-American, some kind of alien mole trying to worm his way into the White House so he can execute a long-planned Manchurian Candidate strategy to destroy America from within.

Is that it?

Than why don’t you just say it?

Why all this veiled suggestion, this collection of minutia worth nothing individually, adding up to nothing when combined?

Colin Powell, Richard Lugar, and Chuck Hagel, all seem pretty comfortable with Obama’s intellect, loyalty and patriotism. If these impressionable innocents are being conned, hadn’t you better reach out and show them all the startling truth you’ve discovered on the Internets? Before it’s too late?

Bad enough to attack someone’s character rather than their policies. But to do so in this roundabout way, and then refuse to own it. Well, as you were always so fond to say:

For shame.

I know you prefer traditional conservative policies to what you perceive as liberalism. I can respect that and find plenty of room for dialogue.

But what about competence?

Nobody knows better than I how you do business. The attention to detail. The steadiness. Your respect for ability.

Is that really what you’ve seen from McCain and Palin?

What goes through your mind when you see McCain swing from talking about cutting taxes to offering to buy a country’s worth of worthless mortgages? When he trumpets the importance of experience over all, and then selects a small-town Alaskan mayor whose biggest strengths are her boobs and her appeal to religious extremists to be his running mate? When he sacrifices the national interest in favor of petty political gamesmanship, suspending his campaign and rushing to Washington where his indiscretion promptly torpedoes a deal to resolve what you yourself just said was a genuine crisis of the highest order?

I know what you would have said about a business associate who behaved this way. Your disdain would know no limits.

Meanwhile, Obama runs an efficient juggernaut of a campaign, puts out some of the most detailed policy proposals that we’ve seen from a presidential candidate in ages, and demonstrates nothing but sense, stability and competence.

But you find that “empty” and “confusing.” I don’t think it’s the message you have a problem with. It’s the messenger.

You say it’s not racism. I won’t say it is.

I think it all comes down to your last words: You’re scared. And what you’re scared of is not policies you don’t agree with. It’s people who aren’t like you and ideas that differ from yours.

I’m sure you would say that the mess the country finds itself in right now is not the result of your philosophy. I think you would argue that the underlying philosophy is sound. That the problem has been incompetence.

I don’t buy it.

You have no problem with the opacity of conduct, with the authoritarian style, with the unalloyed rule of wealthy white guys who hire their fishing buddies for cabinet posts.

Well I’ve got news for you. That’s the petrie dish that bred the incompetence. And that petrie dish will breed incompetence 100 times out of 100.

The fact that you would have the gall to suggest you know what’s best when what you think best is such a monumental and self-evident failure is beyond presumptuous.

You’re scared of what will happen if Obama gets his way? Well, I don’t need to agonize over some ill-defined fear of what might happen if the country was run your way. I’m living it.

And frankly, it blows.

No Job? No Family? Sounds like you’ve got time to burn. Read the way-too-long version of this post so you can impress people at parties. If you’re ever invited to one.

From the moment Palin entered the race I’ve maintained unswerving confidence in her ability to kill the Republican ticket. I don’t know how anyone could say anything negative about this woman. She has exceeded my wildest expectations, and I will be indebted to her until the day I die.

The media was slower to take her proper measure, but it’s easy to see why. She presents a baffling array of conflicting cliches, this feminist dominionist with the smart glasses, sweet ass, and reality-tv family. Even now it’s not clear whether she can best be used to sell advertising for bibles or lingerie.

So they poked her warily with sticks until she showed her true colors. She’s a talking bobble-head figurine! And if you keep pushing the button, there is no end to the riotous absurdities she will utter. The pretensions of foreign policy expertise. The cringe-worthy attempts to don the ill-fitting mantle of reformer and maverick. The tortured fragments of syntax spilling off her assembly line like forgings from no mold.

And now, to keep this story on it’s wobbling legs, the media informs us that our mockery on all these counts must cease. Jocularity has its time, but this matter has passed from farce to threat, and nothing less than the future of our democracy is at stake. With that in mind, we must all pull together and henceforth mock her exclusively for her belief that the Constitution grants significant authority to Vice Presidents.

The press’ outrage is manufactured, but valid nonetheless. Constitutionally, the vice President is our great government’s sole spare part. Its job, like all spare parts, is to sit on the shelf and to cost too much. Thus, historically, those who have been most comfortable in the role are those that don’t feel the need to be productive… well, pretty much ever.

So let us do our patriotic duty and mock Mrs. Palin. She may not have been smart enough to demur when McCain asked her to be his running mate, but I’m pretty sure she’s not mentally disabled. And that means we can laugh at her with a clear conscience.

But remind me what exactly is so far-fetched about the possibility of Vice Presidential authority? Has everyone forgotten old you-know-who? The most powerful person in the world for the last eight years?

True, Dick Cheney had and has no formal authority. But like some diabolical political acupuncturist, he has altered history with a few pin pricks.

Who was the prime mover of the wars that cost trillions? Of the belligerent anti-diplomacy that has destroyed our international standing and which hastens the twilight of pax Americana? Of an altered balance of power that favors an authoritarian executive?

Sure, the orders came from a smiling puppet with a Texas twang. But in this production, Lady Macbeth is the one with a pace maker.

So it’s embarrassing to watch the media haggle over Constitutional fine print like rabbis hashing out Talmudic arcana. Would somebody please ask the only question that matters?

How the hell did Dick Cheney happen?

The answer of course, is that Vice Presidents can wield exactly as much power as their wit, charm, connections, experience, and evil powers of sorcery can command. And as the President will cede.

Thus, Dick Cheney’s successful conquest of the universe prompts two conclusions.

First, has there ever been a President more suggestible than George Bush? Mother of God, who reminds him to breathe out after he breathes in? Does he get hypnotized by the windshield wipers when he drives in the rain?

Second: Dick Cheney must have wit, connections, experience, and satanic power in spades, cuz’ he sure didn’t do it with charm.

Our experience with Mr. Cheney is germane. It tells us that Sarah Palin is more than just ignorant about the Constitution. She is also deeply deluded about her potential authority as a VP.

Sarah Palin is a simplest of one-trick ponies, a mere tool for getting John McCain elected. Her job is to smile, wave, praise Jesus and bash liberals. In the increasingly unlikely event that the guy that’s always standing next to her–the one that looks like her grandfather–actually wins this thing, she will become invisible. Not because of anything the Constitution says, but because of who she is: an unconnected, unconvincing half-term Governor of an insignificant state who can’t use the word “Machiavellian” in a sentence. No one in Washington knows her, respects her, or fears her. John McCain least of all. She’ll be lucky if she can score Redskins tickets.

Sarah Palin the next Dick Cheney? As any movie goer knows, only the Dark Lord can wield the One Ring.

So if McCain is elected, and miraculously manages to keep senility and cancer at bay for the duration of his term, we won’t need the Constitution to insure that Sarah Palin is one of history’s most irrelevant Vice Presidents.

Though if John McCain is elected, Palin will be the least of our worries.