Read all of Slate’s coverage on the expected announcement of Apple’s tablet computer.
“President Obama will deliver his first State of the Union address on Jan. 27. … In the televised speech to the nation, Mr. Obama will outline his priorities for the coming year as well as recount what he believes are the achievements from his first year in office.”—New York Times, Jan. 18, 2010
“Yes folks—the rumors are true. Apple is holding an event on January 27th to show off something the company is calling their ‘latest creation.’ “—Engadget, Jan. 18, 2010
Thank you for coming. And thank you to President Obama for asking me to deliver this year’s speech. We’re going to make some history today.
You know, it was just a year ago that we announced our economic plan for 2009. We said we were going to turn around the recession. We said we’d create jobs. And we said we’d do it in 12 months. What happened? We did it in three. It was the most successful period in the history of the United States. And 2010 is only going to be better. How awesome is that?
(APPLAUSE.)
How did we do it? Simple. We made a stimulus package. It had the most features of any package we’ve ever created—more jobs, more money, more everything. We could have stopped there. We could’ve said, Hey, that was great. Let’s go do something else. But you know what? It wasn’t enough. The American people deserve something even better and more revolutionary.
So today, we’re introducing a new plan. It’s called Stimulus 2GS, and it’s sleeker than any economic recovery package ever created. It’s got bridges, it’s got schools, it’s got broadband Internet. All that, and it’s super easy to use—you can control it from iTunes. Pretty cool, huh?
(APPLAUSE.)
Now let’s take a look at national security. When we got in here last year, torture was basically OK. We were water-boarding people and doing all sorts of terrible things. If you’re the president of the United States, how do you solve this? Hmm. Oh wait, we have solved this. We banned torture. Boom. Now that’s what I call an amazing breakthrough.
(APPLAUSE. HOOTING.)
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)
Cap. Trade.
(STANDING OVATION.)
Amazing, right?
