Dear President Obama,

If you haven’t already enlisted Jon Stewart and P.J. O’Rourke to become cabinet-level advisers, please consider it. P.J. just made a hell of a lot more sense on a comedy show than you did explaining why I now own 60% of General Motors.

The reason we’ve always had a love affair with big, strong, powerful cars is simple: They represent a fantasy, a virility, that mortal men simply do not possess. It’s the same reason idiots buy tigers as pets.

So please, Mr. President, instead of purchasing a company that has ignored common sense and built bigger, more gas-sucking (and generally sucking) scrap heaps, can we purchase something that will reinstate our vicarious virility? To belabor the sex-appeal analogy, buying GM is like getting a boob job for an 80-year-old woman.

Why can’t we make Tesla Motors our new girlfriend? They’re not just an American car company, they’re making electric vehicles sexy. Like 0-60 in under 4 seconds sexy. Like fast enough to tear your clothes off but quiet enough not to scare the neighborhood sexy. In fact, I have only one question:

Which would cost the taxpayers more?

1. Paying for GM to design better cars, retool all of its factories to make better cars, wait while they take the time to make a new fleet of cars, and then hope they can actually sell enough of those cars to become profitable again.
2. Pay for Tesla to hire most of the old GM employees and subsidize battery costs for cars they’re already making and selling right now.

I await your answer, Mr. President. Whether or not we’d see any short-term profit from owning most of Tesla, I can guarantee we’d redefine what American car enthusiasts see as “sex appeal”. This is the new girlfriend we need, and she smells a lot prettier than her predecessor.

Sincerely,
Matthew Ebel
Taxpayer

Update: Apparently Tesla IS getting some money from the bailout.

Like a lot of my friends and colleagues, I woke up this morning feeling like I’m in a new America. After suffering the incompetence of a guy I’d wanna have a beer with, I look forward to working with a man who I want to follow into the future.

I voted for Barack Obama not because I believe he can change America, but because I believe he can inspire me to change America. I believe that his election signals a change in the American outlook. The people of this nation are ready to do what’s necessary to make America great again, and they know it will not be easy.

I must mention, of course, that I am proud to have voted for our first non-white president. I’ve touched on this a few times in Twitter and other conversations, but some people just don’t get it. More than one person has heard me comment about our first black president and immediately assumes that’s why I voted for Barack Obama. Do these people think I voted for Al Sharpton in 2004? Are they really that naive?

Let me be clear: I voted for the man I thought best suited for the office, but I am also capable of grasping the magnitude of what we have just done. To assume that I voted only for a black man or only for a Democrat is to suffer from a very narrow mind. I would hope that my readers/followers/subscribers/fans have a larger grasp than that.

So now it is November 5, 2008. The first day of the struggle to pull my country out of the hole. Where do I begin? I believe that our president-elect, Barack Obama, will have the right answer.

My good friend Whitney Hoffman just stitched together a really cool photo show from some Obama rallies… and she laid it all down on top of “Join The Conversation“. Check it out!

And yes, I want one of those Obama cookies. Mmm, smells like Hope.

One of the panels I was on was led by Mr. Dan Patterson, UN Correspondent for the Talk Radio News Service and host of the Creepy Sleepy Show. The other panelists were none other than CC Chapman, Whitney Hoffman, and Chris Penn. Dan was kind enough to record the entire session, so if you’re interested here’s the show:

Download MP3
Subscribe to the Creepy Sleepy Show

I really don’t want to get political on my own website this year, but I’ll put it this way–
Anyone remember what the most prosperous part of the Clinton years were? When one party had the White House and the other had the Congress. Maybe now that we’ve got real power-sharing happening, half the country won’t feel like they’re getting screwed with their pants on.

Oh, and we really need a vote-by-mail system in TN like they’ve got in OR. Badly.