THE STATE OF THE UNION translated to English:

"I want you to know that I'm all for the middle class and for expanding it when I'm not taxing it to death, and that goes for small business, too, when I'm not loading it down with taxes and penalties and forms to fill out. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act (none dare call it Obamacare in my administration), health-insurance premiums are increasing dramatically, and our entire approach to better medicine is being carefully wrapped in red tape, mountains of it. What's more, I promise there'll be more of it once we find out all that's in Obama -- I mean the Affordable Care Act.

"I want to assure you, as I go down the list of challenges facing this great nation, that there's not a one that more government spending won't fix. Why, the economy is already improving noticeably thanks to my ministrations. Pay no mind to those unemployment figures. I'm certainly not going to mention them tonight, just make a passing remark about the need for more jobs. I'm sure the next economic stimulus I get passed will be as effective as the first in getting this vibrant, improving economy started again.

"Why, under my administration, we're producing more oil and natural gas than we have for years. For decades. No need to mention a forgotten historical figure like George P. Mitchell, a wildcatter-engineer-entrepreneur out on the Barnett Shale who pretty much invented fracking, which now has made all the difference in our and the world's energy picture. The man persisted in his crazy idea for years, being just the kind of wicked capitalist we've got to tax and discourage more.

"I want to assure all of you that I'm as completely committed to Comprehensive Tax Reform as I was during my first four years in office. Which may be why it hasn't gotten anywhere, but never you mind all that. We've just got to stop creating the kind of manufactured crises every few months that I invented with a little help from my friends in Congress. As for the arbitrary, indiscriminate sequestration of government spending now hanging over our heads, that's the worst idea I've heard since I introduced it, confident nobody would be damfool enough to call my bluff."

"Let the word go out from this time and place: I stand with our brave troops and diplomats around the world, except maybe at Benghazi. And we will do everything in our power to support the rising tide of freedom throughout the Arab world, except maybe in Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia.

"I don't know why we can't make it easier to vote in this country. Let's follow the example of my hometown, Chicago, that paragon of clean elections. Why, in Mayor Daley the First's time, or Boss Hague's in Jersey City, even the dead were voting. And nobody ever asked them for any steenkin' ID...."

Compliments of Paul Greenberg.