Madame Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, faithful readers, fellow citizens, and the First Lady of the United States:
I’ve like to address the distinguished men and
women in this great blogosphere (a series of tubes, actually), and to speak frankly.
I know that for many of you reading right now, the state of our
Weakly Weekly Meat is a concern that rises above all others. And rightly so. If
you haven’t been personally affected by this blog, you probably
know someone who has — a friend, a neighbor, a member of your family.
The impact of this
blog is real, and it is everywhere.

But while our writing may be temporarily weakened and our confidence shaken, I want every American to know this: We will rebuild, we will recover, and The Weekly Meat will emerge stronger than before.
The weight of the present crisis will not determine the destiny of this blog. The answers to our problems don’t lie beyond our reach. They exist in our laboratories and universities; in our fields and our factories; in the imaginations of our entrepreneurs and the pride of the
hardest-working people on Earth. Those qualities that have made America the greatest force of progress and prosperity in human history we still possess in ample measure. What is required now is for this community to pull together, confront boldly the challenges we face, and take responsibility for our future once more.
If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that for too long, we have not always met these responsibilities — as a blog or as a people. The fact is, our work did not decline overnight. Too often, short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next posting, the post after that, or even the post after that one. A surplus became an excuse to sit back and count our number of hits,
our Facebook fans, our hyper-inflated profits. And all the while, critical discourse was put off for some other time on some other day.
Well that day of reckoning has arrived, and the time to take charge of our future is here.
Now is the time to act boldly and wisely — to not only revive this blog, but to build a new foundation for lasting prosperity. Now is the time to jump-start job creation, re-start lending, and invest in areas like ice hockey, art, leisure, food and drink that will grow our audience, even as we make hard choices to bring down our debt. That is what my agenda is designed to do.
None of this will come without cost, nor will it be easy. But this is
The Internets. We don’t do what’s truthful. We do what is necessary to move this blog forward.
I suffer no illusions that this will be an easy process. It will be
hard work. But work we must.
As we stand at this crossroads of history, the eyes of all people in all nations are once again upon us, waiting for us to lead. It is a tremendous burden, but also a great privilege — for in our fingertips lies the ability to shape our world for good or ill. I know that it is easy to lose sight of this truth — to become cynical and doubtful; consumed with the petty and the trivial.
But I have also learned that hope is found in unlikely places; that inspiration often comes not from those with the most power or celebrity, but from the dreams and aspirations of Americans who are anything but ordinary.
I think about Gertrude Hoofenmouth, the girl from a school I visited in Bibleton, Kansas — a town that was completely destroyed by a tornado, but is being rebuilt by its residents as a global example of how good will, clean energy, and Christ can power an entire community — how it can bring jobs and businesses to a place where piles of bricks and rubble once lay. And let me tell you something. That young lady said this: “We've got spirit, yes we do. We've got spirit, how 'bout you?”
Indeed, people. Young Gertrude's resolve must be our inspiration; your own concerns must be our cause. And vice versa. Ipso facto lorem ipsum. And we must prove that we are equal to the task before us.
I know that we haven’t agreed on every issue thus far, and there are surely times in the future when we will part ways. But I also know that every casual reader or
Google search stumbler loves this blog and wants it to succeed. That must be the starting point for every piece we post in the coming months, and where we return after those posts are done. That is the foundation on which the global community expects us to build common ground.
And if we do — if we come together and lift this blog from the depths of this present crisis; if we put people back to work and restart the engine of our prosperity; if we confront without fear the challenges of our time and summon that enduring spirit of an Internets that does not quit, then someday years from now our children can tell their children that this was the time when we wrote
something worthy of being satirized.
Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless America The Weekly Meat.
Vaya con carne, mis amigos!