“Clunker” Is Spelled O-B-A-M-A

In a manner consistent with having to report bad news that politicians want to go as unnoticed as possible, late Friday the Obama administration announced that it has revised its own forecasts of the U.S. deficit.  Their 10-year projection is now being aligned with outside sources, including the Congressional Budget Office.  The number?  An unfathomable $9 trillion.

Look at it: 

$9,000,000,000,000

That’s one hell of a lot of zeroes and one hell of a big, deep hole into which the Audacious One, his hand-picked, unaccountable czars, and unrepresenting Congress have thrown the American people.  And all the creative accounting that accompanies it, like removing $250 billion set aside for bank bailouts from this fiscal year’s budget, won’t make it go away. 

But Obama and the left-wing socialists and Democrats are pushing on relentlessly in their quest for more and more spending.  I heard House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer saying the other day that they just “have to pass” a health care bill this year; even if you set aside the unspeakably cruel end results of putting bureaucrats and Obama advisors like Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel into the position of inevitably rationing American health care, when the myriad “advisory” and “oversight” committees and federal employees required to attempt to manage 1/6th of the national economy are tossed into the equation, at bargain-basement prices the whole notion of the attempt at “health care reform” is nothing but a trillion dollar-albatross and my reaction to his words was, “Why?”  Why do we “have” to do this? 

Obama recently told America’s religious leaders to encourage their congregations to label anyone who understands and supports the United States Constitution and therefore sees that socialized health care is wrong as someone who is “bearing false witness”.  He brought out yet again the old liberal saw of “moral imperative” to disguise the fact that this push for health care “reform” is really an attempt to legislate morality, and those who know even a little bit about history know how well that worked out during, say, the Inquisition.  The truth is that American taxpayers should never be asked to pay for those things that are the responsibility of the individual and the Founding Fathers did a brilliant job of setting up our government to help insure this.  It is up to individuals to make the choice to help their brother; government as Big Brother has been proven time and time again to be not only inefficient and therefore ineffective, but ultimately the root cause of corruption.  The Obama administration, in the guise of “economic stimulus” has already forced us to help pay the mortgages of our more stupid fellow Americans and to keep the more stupid of our automotive company employees (including union members; or is that especially union members?) employed.  They have forced us to help our fellow Americans to buy new cars via the “Cash for Clunkers” program, to the tune of some $3 billion (if you don’t include the existing costs of keeping all those federal employees occupied with busy work).  And in yet another show of big government competence, the auto companies are the ones paying the dealers because all those federal employees working for the administration can’t seem to manage to get rebate payments processed.

But what brilliance on the part of President Obama!  What a stimulus to our economy!  If you listen to the administration, you might get the impression that those auto companies the government bought for itself with billions of our hard-earned tax dollars would be reaping the benefits of such bright, Ivy League minds, right? 

Wrong.  Clunker again:

TOP SELLERS

1. Toyota Corolla
2. Honda Civic
3. Ford Focus front-wheel drive
4. Toyota Camry
5. Hyundai Elantra
6. Toyota Prius
7. Nissan Versa
8. Ford Escape front-wheel drive
9. Honda Fit
10. Honda CR-V four-wheel drive

I’m not seeing Government Motors or Chrysler here, folks.  Are you?  And only two of the top sellers are American.  Where we do see GM and Chrysler, though, is in the list of clunkers being dumped:

TOP TRADE-INS

1. Ford Explorer four-wheel drive
2. Ford F-150 Pickup
3. Jeep Grand Cherokee
4. Jeep Cherokee
5. Ford Explorer two-wheel drive
6. Dodge Caravan/Grand Caravan two-wheel drive
7. Chevrolet Blazer four-wheel drive
8. Ford F-150 pickup four-wheel drive
9. Chevrolet C15000 pickup two-wheel drive
10. Ford Windstar front-wheel drive van

Half the “clunkers”, in fact.  This speaks volumes about the faith of the American people in our government-ruled, union-driven automotive industry.

I suspect more faith will be shattered when the news finally gets around that Social Security cost of living increases probably won’t happen for the next two years because of “negative inflation”, though premiums for Medicare Part B and Medicare drug coverage insurance are going to go up.  Not to mention that the way things stand today Social Security will be paying out more than it receives by 2016 and the fund will be completely wiped out by 2037.  (Though rumor now has it that Congress may be scheming to to appropriate every state’s pension plans into the bankrupt system.  That ought to be interesting….)

But the administration remains oblivious to such things, for it doesn’t fit within their reality.  That is why the United States has now agreed to loans and guarantee to Petrobras, so Brazil can drill for oil off its own coast.  Of course it’s merely coincidence that just a few days before the U.S. deal with Petrobras was announced, Obama’s big supporter, George Soros, shifted his holdings in Petrobras to preferred shares.

Nine trillion dollars and counting.  Yet ignoring the huge August recess outcries against his administration, Obama and leading Democrats are talking seriously about forcing socialized medicine on America by abusing the (budget) reconciliation process to pass their idea of health care reform legislation and putting even more huge debt onto America.  My first thought is that President Obama and his administration are, indeed, something that starts with the letter “C” but I’ll be polite and say they are the real clunkers.