The iState of the Union
Steve Jobs delivers the annual presidential address.
Posted Monday, Jan. 25, 2010, at 10:37 AM
Read all of Slate's coverage on the expected announcement of Apple's tablet computer.
OK, I know what you're thinking: Afghanistan. That war's not going so well. Kind of a quagmire. So what do you do? You get a better strategy. The 2010 Afghanistan war is newer, better, and cheaper. Want to see what it looks like?
(DELIRIOUS SCREAMS.)
OK, let me call up iMovie. See those drones? They were doing OK, taking out some of the top guys in the Taliban. That just wasn't good enough. We took them apart, totally redesigned them. They've got multi-touch, 3G, and augmented reality terrorist locators. Starting tonight, you can buy them on apple.gov. Just kidding. We wouldn't do that. But we could do that, if we wanted to. And boom—just like that, we've changed warfare. How do you like that, America?
(CHANTS OF "USA! USA!")
Oh, I almost forgot. Last year we unveiled our health care plan. A lot of people didn't like it, said that it was socialist, that we wanted to have these complicated, hard-to-understand death panels for Grandma and Grandpa. We heard you. Loud and clear. We've honed this plan to its core elements. No discrimination for pre-existing conditions. If you lose your job, you keep your insurance. And we'll do the death panels in iLife—couldn't be easier. Cost savings. Bipartisanship. You won't like this new health care plan. You'll love it.
(APPLAUSE. STOMPING.)
And that's only the beginning. We've got a lot more exciting announcements coming up. Take the judicial world. All I can say is that the Supreme Court will be younger and hipper than ever before. We're also working on transparency. Take data.gov. Wanna know how many toilets there are in the Capitol? Now you know. Magic. Also, climate change. We're gonna fix that, too. People say it's hard, but we've got it down to two easy steps: Cap. Trade.
(MURMURING)
Cap. Trade.
(LAUGHTER)
Christopher Beam is a writer living in Beijing.
Josh Levin is Slate's executive editor. You can email him at sportsnut@slate.com, visit his Web site, and follow him on Twitter.
Photograph of Steve Jobs by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.



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