The Obauguration

I am already sick of this new administration, and The One™ hasn't even been sworn in yet.

Is it really necessary for NBC to run stories about the inauguration with inspiring music on the soundtrack? How many times are we going to be told that this signifies the end of racism in America? How many times are we going to be told, in so many subtle ways, that everything is different now, that Obama will change everything, turn this country around, bla bla bla?

Turn what around? The economy? Here's the deal with the economy.

For decades, I can remember economists and commentators warning us that we had to go back to being financially responsible in this country. You can't keep buying on credit, they said, on a national basis anymore than you can in a household. Sooner or later you have to start paying it all back, and longer you put it off, the more it's going to hurt.

After a decade or so of these warnings, which I had heard since a tow headed boy in the 50's, they began warning that we were putting off the payback for our children to deal with - that we were spending our children's future. That would be me they were talking about.

Eventually my generation grew up and took over. And we did the same thing. There were still voices among us, still giving that warning, just as there were with the WW2 generation. Soon they were warning that we were postponing the problem for our children to deal with, and that it was going to be much worse the longer we put off re-payment.

And it has continued until this day. Congress after Congress, president after president of both corrupt parties, spending to keep in office, and letting the Fed print more paper money each time the economy slows down. Let me explain that. It does work to print more money and spend it when the economy slows down. It works just like an injection of amphetamines. But you're supposed to then remove the drugs once the economy kicks in - you allow it to slow back down, rather than let it keep roaring. So the economy has been growing in spurts and leaps, much like the blob in those old horror movies.

And the debt has been growing, too - it's kind of a double whammy, with increased debt and dollars worth less and less. And the generations after mine, generation x or y or whatever Time magazine has been calling them, has been hoping - no, assuming - that they can simply pass the bill on down to their children, just as we passed it down to them.

Well, that monster of a credit card bill is now due. The bill, with a row of zeroes that won't even fit on the page, has been delivered to us all, now, now, now - not next decade, but now. And the Bush administration has been kiting checks, printing more money, borrowing money from China, and generally looking for revenue under the seat cushions.

Now comes Obama, The One™. He, peace be upon him, is going to Change things. We have Hope. With a soundtrack of love and racial equality and little bunny rabbits, he is going to turn this country around. What is he going to do to accomplish that?

Well, he hasn't really given us a lot of details, and the press, the Guardian of our Liberty and our Right to Know, hasn't really asked. In fact, they have ridiculed anyone who has tried to ask in order to make sure he got elected, and they have failed in their duty, but then they have been failing in that duty for a very long time. In the few proposals he has hinted at, and in his campaign rhetoric, it appears to be a simple matter of Income Redistribution, spreading the wealth, "asking" the rich to pay their "fair share" whatever that may be - or else.

But there is a problem with that - a big one. Oh, I know it has been working for the last forty years, but remember that the bill is now due - the Big One. The credit card company from hell is now demanding at least the minimum payment, which I assure you is a hefty amount. The Bush administration has been balancing on the high wire for some time. Let's sit down at the kitchen table with the family and see what our options are.

Raise taxes? We could do that, but the result will be an immediate crashing of the economy, or what's left of it. You may hear the talk about the rich paying more taxes, but the numbers won't support it. There aren't enough rich people out there, so you would have to tax them at nearly 100% to make any difference at all. No, the big bucks from the few won't do it - the numbers only add up when you raise taxes on the many, meaning you and me, the families, the working class. But when they do that, we have to spend less. And that in turn hurts the big corporations, and they have to lay people off, and there you go.

By the way, the real reason for all these bailouts? Those are because the two parties owe favors to the big corporations, and they intend to get theirs before it all falls down for the rest of us. There is no other reason for doing what they have done.

So... borrow more money from other countries? No can do. That barrel has been completely tapped. It's empty and dry, throw it in the alley behind the bar.

Print even more money? He might try that. But every nation that has done that has found itself experiencing hyper-inflation, that curious economic state where you take your grocery money to the store in a wheelbarrow, and try to spend it before it loses its value again. They've done all of that they can afford to do, too.

Stop spending? Obama isn't going to do that if he can help it. But maybe he can't help it. When the credit card company won't raise the ceiling anymore, can't raise it anymore, and when you can't even pay the minimum balance, and nobody will issue you another card.... it's over. You have to stop spending like a drunken fool, and then you have to make payments and get nothing fun in return - just like real people.

He could do what Ron Paul tried to get us to do last year: pull in the military and stop being the world's policeman. Obama will almost certainly have to do that, and if so, we will stop interfering with the internal affairs of other nations simply because we no longer can. Don't be shocked - this is precisely how we won the cold war. The Soviet Union could no longer afford to spend money on its military excursions, and they pulled the troops home. We may have to do the same, and this is very likely what Mr. Obama will do, if only because military spending is such a huge part of our budget. Budget? As if we have been following a "budget."

But in any case, The One will not be able to fulfill all those promises, because the money is gone, and the credit is gone, and the eBay closet is empty. The Bush administration spent it all. I guess they misunderestimated him again, ha ha.

He will either bring the military home and close those foreign bases all over Europe and Asia... or he will institute military rule, and abandon the pretense that we are self governed. If he does the latter, it will be appropriate that he has been compared to Lincoln so often during his campaign, only it won't just be the South that is crushed this time.

I hope he chooses the former. If he does, he may yet have something to brag about after he retires a gray haired old man in eight years.

Hope and Change - I hope I get to keep the change

Last night's speech at the Obamopolis was pretty much the same formula followed by both parties for the last forty years. It's tried and true, and they've learned it well and will not depart from it.

It's also meaningless. If you found yourself inspired by it, you really need to investigate this thing called reality.

In the first place, he cannot keep any of those promises. It is literally impossible at this point to either lower taxes or increase social spending. How in the name of all that is sane can we do both? The economy in this country is stretched to the breaking point. Eight years ago, I would have said "he can't do that without printing more money and saddling us with inflation." But that is already happening to finance the war in Iraq. To squeeze any more out of that sponge, we would have to go into hyperinflation, which cannot last - just ask Mexico, or any other pitiful country that has tried it. You didn't know your dollar is worth less? Bucky, it lost 14% of its value last year. Why do you think the price of groceries went up so much?

We can't raise taxes because that will trigger the rest of the recession that we've been warding off with garlic and silver crosses. I won't use the D word (depression), because that would cause widespread panic.

We can't borrow the money, because we've already borrowed about all we can from our friends in China. Yes, folks, we are in debt to our eyeballs to the only major communist nation on Earth.

And yet we're going to start paying for college educations for anyone who wants one? That's not even close to being possible. We need - or rather, our government needs - every filthy little penny it can scrounge off the Walmart parking lot, just to avoid bankruptcy. Ron Paul is not the only politician who understood this, but he is the only one willing to tell us the truth about it. The others keep assuring us that, yes, we can! Folks... we can't!

I want to be sure that you noticed the Surely we can agree part of the speech. You know, we may differ on abortion, but surely we can agree that abortions should be as few in number as possible. This is a technique that has been developed over the years, and it's absolutely necessary for this kind of speech.

You see, most of the public doesn't pay any attention to politics. They will hear only two speeches that have to do with politics, and those are the State of the Union address, and the Nominating Acceptance speeches. When a politician makes either of those speeches, he must keep his voting base comfortable with what he says, and yet somehow make every one of those politically sleepy voters hear what he wants to hear. So he must never take a bold stand in those speeches, even if his stand is already well known to those who have paid any attention at all. So he says "surely we can agree," and those folks out there hear "I agree with you about abortion, war, taxes, spending, and your mom, and anything else you care about."

So you see Obama's deception? So you'll vote Republican? Wait til you see McCain's speech. He will do the same thing when he accepts his nomination. He'll be as humble as Obama was, if not more, and he will promise tax relief, fiscal responsibility, and new programs.

It remains a mystery to me how someone can declare that he is going to lower taxes for 95% of us, and be believed, and then tell you he is going to create a truckload of new entitlements, and again be believed! I think my problem is that I continue to overestimate the intelligence of the average voter - something that Obama or McCain will never be guilty of.