As Gasoline Prices Soar Out Of Control, Yet ANOTHER Obama Energy Boondoggle Pisses Away Taxpayer Money By Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars

Barack Obama giving away $2 billion in stimulus money on July 4, 2010:

“In fact, today, I’m announcing that the Department of Energy is awarding nearly $2 billion in conditional commitments to two solar companies.

The first is Abengoa Solar, a company that has agreed to build one of the largest solar plants in the world right here in the United States. After years of watching companies build things and create jobs overseas, it’s good news that we’ve attracted a company to our shores to build a plant and create jobs right here in America. In the short term, construction will create approximately 1,600 jobs in Arizona. What’s more, over 70 percent of the components and products used in construction will be manufactured in the USA, boosting jobs and communities in states up and down the supply chain. Once completed, this plant will be the first large-scale solar plant in the U.S. to actually store the energy it generates for later use – even at night. And it will generate enough clean, renewable energy to power 70,000 homes.

The second company is Abound Solar Manufacturing, which will manufacture advanced solar panels at two new plants, creating more than 2,000 construction jobs and 1,500 permanent jobs. A Colorado plant is already underway, and an Indiana plant will be built in what’s now an empty Chrysler factory. When fully operational, these plants will produce millions of state-of-the-art solar panels each year.

Obama’s “investment” today:

Earlier today I mentioned Energy Secretary Chu’s statement to Congress that the administration didn’t care about lowering gas prices, just pushing alternative energy. Now we have the latest failure as part of that scheme, Abound Solar Manufacturing, has announced it will lay off 70% of its workforce. The company received a $400 million loan guarantee through the Obama stimulus.

Oh, and by the way, Abound got that $400 million loan even though it was obviously a huge credit risk:

A month before Abound Solarannounced it would be laying off nearly half its workforce, Congressional Republicans alerted the U.S. Department of Energy that they had questions about the decision to loan the Colorado firm $400 million.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform asked Energy Secretary Steven Chu to explain how the solar panel manufacturer had qualified for the loan after the ratings firm Fitch had determined the company would make a “highly speculative” investment.

“Fitch describes Abound as lagging in technology relative to its competitors, failing to achieve stated efficiency targets, and expecting that Abound will suffer from increasing commoditization and pricing pressures,” wrote Rep. Darrell Issa, R.-California, the committee chairman. “DOE’s willingness to fund Abound, despite these concerns, calls into question the merits of this loan guarantee.”

Obama is demonizing oil companies (you know, the people who are the only reason ordinary Americans are able to get into their cars and drive somewhere) while he continues to give away billions of dollars to his crony capitalist fascist friends at the useless green energy companies.  Oh, and he’s demonizing the $4 billion in tax breaks to oil companies that keep this country going while he is proposing to give away $5 billion more to green energy that produces virtually nothing.

That should seriously piss you off, because gas prices – you know, the stuff that the oil companies Obama demonizes produce – have more than DOUBLED under this failed president’s failed policies:

The day Barack Obama took office, the average national price of gasoline was $1.84 a gallon.

As of today, March 1, 2012, the average national price of gasoline is $3.74 a gallon.

Oh, and gasoline may very well hit $5 a gallon by Memorial Day.

While even Bill Clinton is urging the Failure-in-Chief to “embrace” the Keystone Oil Pipeline that Obama has refused to alllow even though it wouldn’t have required ONE PENNY in taxpayer money.

Beyond Solyndra – which devoured more than half of a BILLION dollars in taxpayer money before going completely bankrupt – there have been many other massive Obama failures.

Just a couple:

Green energy company given federal stimulus funds lays off 125 workers, gives pay raise to executives
Published February 26, 2012 | FoxNews.com

An electric car battery company reportedly has laid off 125 employees since receiving $390 million in government subsidies, but is still handing out big pay raises to company executives.

A123 systems, which was touted as a stimulus “success story” by former Gov. Jennifer Granholm, D-Mich., had a net loss of $172 million through the first three quarters of 2011, according to the Washington Examiner’s “Beltway Confidential” blog, citing a report from the Michigan-based Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

A123’s primary customer, Fisker Automotive, is also struggling financially. “Yet, this month A123’s Compensation Committee approved a $30,000 raise for [Chief Financial Officer David] Prystash just days after Fisker Automotive announced the U.S. Energy Department had cut off what was left of its $528.7 million loan it had previously received.”

This month has seen significant pay boosts for other A123 executives, as well, including vice presidents Robert Johnson and Jason Forcier.

The raises were reported by the company in its filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, according to the Mackinac report.

“It looks highly suspicious,” Paul Chesser, associate fellow for the National Legal & Policy Center, told Mackinac. “It looks like they are trying to pad their top people’s wallets in case something really bad happens.”

Click to read the Washington Examiner blog.

Click to read the Mackinac Center for Public Policy report.

And far, FAR worse:

Obama Gave Billions to Green Energy Companies with Ties to His Administration and 2008 Campaign
Posted by Jim Hoft on Thursday, February 16, 2012, 1:13 PM

The RNC released this infographic today showing that billions in taxpayer dollars were were given to firms with close ties to the Obama Administration.

The Washington Post reported:

Overall, the Post found that $3.9 billion in federal grants and financing flowed to 21 companies backed by firms with connections to five Obama administration staffers and advisers.

Obama’s program to invest federal funds in start-up companies — and the failure of some of those companies — is becoming a rallying cry for opponents in the presidential race. Mitt Romney has promised to focus on Obama’s “record” as a “venture capitalist.” And in ads and speeches, conservative groups and the Republican candidates are zeroing in on the administration’s decision to extend $535 million to the now-shuttered solar firm Solyndra and billions of dollars more to clean-tech start-ups backed by the president’s political allies.

White House officials stress that staffers and advisers with venture capital ties did not make funding decisions related to these companies. But e-mails released in a congressional probe of Obama’s clean-tech program show that staff and advisers with links to venture firms informally advocated for some of those companies.

David Gold, a venture capitalist and critic of Obama’s investments in clean tech, said that even if staffers had been removed from the final decision-making, they had the kind of inside access to exert subtle influence.

“To believe those quiet conversations don’t happen in the hallways — about a project being in a certain congressman’s district or being associated with a significant presidential donor, is naive,” said Gold, who once worked at the Office of Management and Budget. “When you’re putting this kind of pressure on an organization to make decisions on very big dollars, there’s increased likelihood that political connections will influence things.”

Energy Department spokesman Damien LaVera said the companies won awards based on merit, not political connections. He said the staffers and advisory board members reviewed by the Post had no role in funding decisions, nor did they have any personal financial stake in the companies. One of those administration advisers had first been appointed to his position by the Bush administration, LaVera said…

…Thousands of agency and White House e-mails released as part of the Solyndra investigation show that venture capitalists who held advisory roles with the Energy Department were given access to Obama’s top advisers.

Read the whole thing. It will make you ill.

Obama is selling this country out even while he works to implode it by starving us of energy while spending us into bankruptcy.

Remember, Raising The Debt Ceiling Is A Failure Of Leadership. Vote No.

Democrats say that if Republicans don’t go along with their reckless spending increases, the world will end.

But let’s not forget what the messiah-in-chief lectured us a few years ago:

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”

And, of course, Americans DO deserve better.  They deserve better than a hypocrite, a demagogue and a disastrous failure.

As I previously pointed out about this:

“America has a debt problem,” Obama said in 2006.  That year, Republicans passed their last budget before losing power to Democrats until this year.  It had a deficit of $161 billion.  The next year the Democrats virtually tripled that deficit to $459 billion.  And in two years of Obama it has soared to $3 TRILLION.

The AP correctly pointed out that “It was a blast by the freshman lawmaker against a Bush request to raise the debt limit to $8.96 trillion.”

It was a personal attack by an evil fool against a president which history now proves knew what he was doing versus the current moral idiot who clearly does not.

That’s right, boys and girls.  The last time a Republican Congress passed a budget, it had a deficit of $161 billion.  And Republicans have been doing mea culpas ever since about their fiscal recklessness.  Meanwhile, the Democrats in Congress have heaped up $5.34 TRILLION MORE in debt – and they do nothing but continue to point the finger at Republicans who actually spent less by a rather silly percentage.

This is a game that has to end.  And now is frankly long past time.

I propose that we treat Obama as though he is/was a sane and honest human being and do what he said:  Vote AGAINST the debt ceiling.  Vote like Obama said we should vote.  Otherwise we should frankly treat Obama as a dishonest fool who needs to resign in disgrace.

And any vote to increase the debt ceiling should be a) temporary (i.e., valid for no more than six months) and b) accompanied by spending cuts that exceed the amount of any increase.

Budget Talks As Shutdown Looms: Games Deceitful Demagoguing Demonizing Democrats Play

Here is where the lying Demoncrats (that’s “Demonic Bureaucrats”) had been according to the Associated Press:

US House defy veto threat, pass stopgap spending

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Defying a White House veto threat, the Republican-led US House of Representatives on Thursday passed a stopgap spending bill to avoid a government shutdown as a deadline looms.

US President Barack Obama’s budget office had vowed to reject the measure, dubbing it “a distraction” from difficult, ongoing negotiations on funding the US government for the rest of the fiscal year that ends September 30.

And Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had vowed to block the measure, calling it a “fantasy” and “a non-starter.”

The bill, which cleared the House by a mostly party-line 247-181 vote, would also have funded US military operations for the rest of the year.

Republicans, relying on the measure to gain leverage in the spending cut battle, used that to argue that Democrats and the White House opposed funding for US troops in harm’s way.

Harry Reid says funding for Cowboy Poetry festivals even as we face a $1.6 trillion deficit this year, yes.  Funding for our troops, hell no.

Here’s where these dishonest, disingenuous lying rat bastards are now:

Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell talk short-term deal
By MEREDITH SHINER | 4/8/11 7:58 AM EDT Updated: 4/8/11 3:28 PM EDT

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Friday afternoon that he is in talks with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to get a short-term budget deal to the floor to stave off a government shutdown.

Reid said there would be competition for what bill gets considered, with a “number of competing continuing resolution” requests on the table. Because the clock runs out at midnight, Reid would need a time agreement — what Reid referred to a “unanimous consent request” — to cut through the normal procedural red tape.

The negotiation between the two Senate leaders is in addition to Reid’s ongoing talks with the House GOP, which still are at an impasse just hours before the government is set to run out of funds.

Reid said Friday afternoon the Democrats’ proposed “clean” extension would maintain the levels of the continuing resolution set to expire Friday at midnight, a measure that contained $6 billion in cuts over three weeks. Reid added that it also would include funding through the year for the military.

Republicans in the House passed a one-week measure Thursday that would slash another $12 billion in spending and fund the Defense Department for the rest of the fiscal year.

Without securing a time agreement on any bill, stopgap or otherwise, the government is likely to shutdown because 30 hours are required between a procedural vote to open debate and a vote for final passage.

“If we’re very close [to a broader budget deal], we will figure out a way to keep the government running. If we’re very close, within an inch or two of an agreement,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told reporters after a press conference featuring the entire caucus.

The Senate Democrats’ move toward a temporary bill Friday is a shift in strategy from earlier this week, when leaders insisted they only wanted a long-term deal. President Barack Obama had called the short-term approach a “distraction.”

By Thursday night, No. 2 Senate Democrat Dick Durbin placed the House-approved bill that funds the government for a week and the Department of Defense for a year on the Senate calendar while closing the floor. The formal action was taken when Reid (D-Nev.) was at the White House meeting with the president and Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).

Now that the House-approved bill is on the docket, Reid could offer the Democrats’ bill as an amendment in the form of a substitute, essentially replacing the House legislation with his, passing it and sending it back to the lower chamber.

Congressional Democrats and the White House have said emphatically and repeatedly that the House Republican short-term offering is unpalatable. It includes a policy rider limiting funds for abortions in the District, but GOP aides are quick to note that measure had been included in another omnibus package Democrats voted for when it first cleared Congress. Earlier Thursday, the administration issued an official policy advisement stating it “strongly opposed” the GOP measure and would recommend the president veto it if it were to make it to his desk. […]

Question number one: Which party is creating a government shutdown?  The Republican Party that passed a temporary fix to keep it running, or the Democrat Party – which by the way refused to do their jobs last year and pass this budget when they had total control of the presidency, the Senate and the House – which has done nothing but demonize and doesn’t even yet have a bill to offer in place of the Republican-passed bill?

Question number two: Which party is using tricks and gimmicks?  The Republicans, who passed a bill, or the Democrats who are relying on last-nanosecond chicanery?

Question number three: Which party is making abortion the issue: Republicans, who are merely requiring language that Democrats themselves have passed themselves?  Or Democrats, who demand that that the law continue to be ignored?  It is further informative that Barack Obama voted for the language that Republicans are using now when he was a Senator, and Joe Biden voted for it seven times as a Senator.

Question number four: Which party gives the slightest damn about our soldiers, sailors, Marines and Air Force personnel?  The Republicans who funded them and provided funding for Obama’s three wars, or the Democrats who want to use our troops for leverage in their reckless game of chicken?

See my article here for more on the history that got us to the ridiculous point where we are now at.

The Democrats’ tactics get even more ridiculous.  Harry Reid has spent the last week claiming that Republican leaders agreed to a deal, when Republicans have steadily said that no such deal had been reached.  When a legitimate deal is reached, guess what happens?  BOTH parties come out and announce it.

This is what the Republicans said: “There’s not agreement on numbers,” Boehner told reporters Thursday. “And nothing will be agreed to until everything is agreed to.”

It is frankly asinine that every single Democrat has come out rigidly adhering to their fuehrers’ talking points and claiming some deal had been reached even a full week after Republicans said no such deal had ever been reached.  Not one single Republican has said there was ever any kind of a deal; they have in fact said precisely the opposite all along.

How about this, Harry and all you Demoncrats: President “Zero” Obama and I agreed to a deal while you were getting your “deal”: we agreed that the Democrat Party would fold and Democrats would collectively (like the collectivists they are) march off a cliff in proverbial lemming fashion.  How about you stick to that made-up deal???

The week-long argument that Republicans should somehow be compelled to stick to a totally-invented “deal” that zero-point-zero Republicans have ever said occurred is simply on the level of second graders.  And that said with all due apologies to second graders for the comparison.

Democrats are demagogues and demonizers of the worst sort imaginable.  If you listen to them, Republicans want to reduce the massive deficit for no other reason than that they want poor people to suffer and slowly die.

Take Nancy Pelosi (PLEASE!).  Washington D.C. has two newspapers, the Post and the Times.  The Times leans quite conservative and the Post leans quite liberal.  Amazingly, Nancy Pelosi was such a demagogic lying witch that the liberal Washington Post gave her 4 out of a possible 4 “Pinnochios” for lying.  Nancy Pelosi just flat out lied about the effects of the Republican budget cuts.  To which even the liberal Washington Post said:

In a city with overheated rhetoric, Pelosi’s statement ranks high on this year’s list of bloviated bluster. It’s bad enough that she repeatedly mixed up 6 million meals and 6 million people — and made no effort to correct the record after her statement was reported in the media. But the figure she used appears to have been invented itself, with little basis in fact.

Listen to Harrry Reid’s shrill unabashed hate:

“Republicans want to shut down our nation’s government because they want to make it harder for women to get the health services they need,” Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said on the floor Friday. “This is indefensible and everyone should be outraged — men and women should be outraged.”

That’s right.  It doesn’t have anything to do with Democrats’ reckless and frankly immoral out-of-control spending that will necessarily cause the collapse of America and a great depression that will make the last one look like a walk in the park on a sunny day.  It’s only because Republicans hate women and want them to suffer.

Reid said:

“But Republicans are asking me to sacrifice my wife’s health, my daughter’s health and my nine granddaughters’ health. They’re asking me to sacrifice the health of women in Nevada and across America. I won’t do it.“ 

Really, Harry, you demented liar?  You despicable little twisted piece of cockroach feces?  You secretly recorded Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell demanding that you sacrifice every female member of your family to their demonic god of meanness, did you?  Y0u ought to be tarred and feathered before having your butt permanently kicked down the steps of the Capitol for that kind of outrageous vileness.

But for Democrats, that kind of over-the-top vicious lie is simply a typical negotiating tactic.

We’ve got Democrat Eleanor Holmes Norton spewing vileness and lies the way a drunk college frat boy spews vomit:

“We are absolutely outraged. This is the functional equivalent of bombing innocent civilians,” she said.

That’s right.  The only thing keeping Republicans from firebombing every single city in America is Democrats.  Because Republicans want to murder as many Americans as they possibly can.

This is actually how these people debate.

Then there’s the whole Planned Parenthood thing – which was at the heart of the evil Democrat statments above.  First of all, if Demoncrats had wanted to pass their own budget, they damn well should have done so last year when they were in total control of all three branches of government.  Instead, they played their stupid political games and refused to deal with their primary responsibility as politicians.  They didn’t want to pass a budget because it was an election year and the American people would have seen how determined Democrats seem to be to bankrupt America and turn us into a banana republic.  And now they are pathetically whining when Republicans take over to do their damn job for them in a way they don’t like.  Democrats shrilly and hysterically claim that Republicans are trying to kill people so nobody will look at the facts.  They say Republicans are trying to destroy women’s health so people won’t see how despicable they’ve been.

Here’s the thing: the “women’s health” argument is demonstrably bogus.

Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards claimed “If this bill ever becomes law, millions of women in this country are gonna lose their healthcare access — not to abortion services — to basic family planning, you know, mammograms.”  Numerous Demoncrats such as Barbara Boxer have repeated that false claim to justify continued funding of Planned Parenthood.  Boxer said, “In California alone, hundreds of thousands of women, the Democratic Senator said, use the organization’s “life-saving” services — including cancer screenings, mammograms, day-to-day health care, OB-GYN services as well as contraception and family planning.”  Liberal mainstream media took up the false claim that women’s lives are being saved with Planned Parenthood mammograms.  And:

In addition to being frequently repeated by politicans who are in Planned Parenthood’s pocket, this claim is frequently repeated at Planned Parenthood rallies, blogs, newspaper editorials, and on television (courtesy of Planned Parenthood’s CEO).

But here’s the truth: a very recent sting revealed that Planned Parenthood does NOT provide mammograms.  It was all a lie told by an organization that is based entirely upon abortion and the dishonest defenders of abortion:

In the tapes, a Live Action actor calls 30 Planned Parenthood clinics in 27 different states, inquiring about mammograms at Planned Parenthood. Every Planned Parenthood, without exception, tells her she will have to go elsewhere for a mammogram, and many clinics admit that no Planned Parenthood clinics provide this breast cancer screening procedure. “We don’t provide those services whatsoever,” admits a staffer at Planned Parenthood of Arizona. Planned Parenthood’s Comprehensive Health Center clinic in Overland Park, KS explains to the caller, “We actually don’t have a, um, mammogram machine, at our clinics.”

Consider this:

In a current advertisement a Planned Parenthood clinic director for eight years, Abby Johnson, explains why she left the organization.

“I learned that Planned Parenthood is not about women’s health care at all. Their primary profit center and their entire corporate culture is about abortions,” Johnson says in the ad. “My superiors actually instructed me to increase the number of abortions at my facility. I couldn’t take it anymore. Low income women need real health care services and it is time America knew the truth about Planned Parenthood.”

Caught red-handed in a total lie that was the basis of their demand for funding for Planned Parenthood, Demoncrats simply dismiss reality and continue their screeching screeds of demagogic hatred.

Republicans point out this is about spending at a time when we don’t have money.  They point out that since Planned Parenthood is an abortion organization in addition to being a radical leftwing outfit that DOESN’T perform the services they claim, they should get their money from somewhere other than the federal government.

Let’s say I get federal funding for encouraging children to eat their broccoli.  But when parents call me to get me to come and get their children to actually eat broccoli, I say, “I’m sorry, but I don’t provide that service.”

Should I keep getting federal funds?

In a sane world the answer would be “hell no.”  But Demoncrats do not live in a sane world; and they do not want the rest of us to be allowed to live in one, either.

If Planned Parenthood wants to provide abortions, let them.  It’s evil, and one day every liberal who advocated the murder of these fifty-two million babies will burn in hell, and decent people will continue to do everything we can to stop this monsterous Nazi practice.  But go private and get your damn money from liberals.  Don’t you dare bait-and-switch us with bogus claims that it’s all about women’s health and demand government money.  Particularly when it turns out you rat bastards were even lying about that.

We are facing national extinction in a not very distant time.  We cannot even possibly continue to spend like this.  It is insane.  It is morally and fiscally insane.  And yet Democrats WILL NOT make even trivial cuts in spending.  And any time Republicans try to make the cuts that are absolutely necessary to prevent the financial implosion and Great Depression that is guaranteed to come, Demoncrats falsely demonize them at every turn.

We don’t need to cut billions of dollars from the federal government; we need to cut TRILLIONS of dollars from the federal government.

It comes down to this: if Democrats get their way, if the American people support them with their votes, America will fall, and fall soon.

Then we will truly see which party wanted the people to suffer.

California Bucked Trend, Voted For Democrats – And Now Will Get A Facefull Of Hell

California is in a total meltdown.  But don’t worry.  The state elected a governor formerly known as “Moonbeam” to face reality so the residents wouldn’t have to.  It re-elected the most ideological witch (I’m sorry, SENATOR Witch – she worked so darned hard for that title) in the entire US Senate.  And it actually ADDED to the number of Democrats who already had total control of the state.  Oh, and it passed a proposition that will give Democrats even more total control by making the Republican minority totally irrelevant in the budget process.

Which is another way of staying, it’s time for all the rats to jump overboard and start paddling furiously.  Because the Good Ship Lollipop is about to take a trip to Davy Jones’ Locker.  And she aint no submarine:

Panic in the California Municipal Bonds
November 17th, 2010 1:30 pm MT

There is a fund called the PIMCO California Municipal Income Fund II symbol PCK on the New York stock exchange.

In the last few days the fund has been going vertical down.  Investors can’t get rid of this turkey fast enough. (SEE PICTURE TOP LEFT-DOUBLE CLICK ON CHART TO ENLARGE).

“It might be argued that muni markets are merely reflecting similar declines in Treasuries (TLT). Fair enough. Bond holders, though, are probably are more interested in the fact that their bonds have declined rather than why.

Warren Buffett warned back in June on the muni bond market as local and state municipalities struggle to meet their obligations amid declining tax revenues.

There was a time — before the 2008 crash — when triple AAA rated, insured munis were seen as the safest of safe investments. Times have changed though. Only Assured Guarantee (AGO) still insures municipals, but the company has been recently downgraded from AAA to AA. Ambac (ABK) is in bankruptcy. MBIA (MBI) is entangled in litigation and no longer writes new policies. The financial guarantee business today is but a shadow of its past.

Even though defaults, so far, are rare, the Fed’s zero interest rate policy has thrown a cloud of uncertainty over all bond markets. One can’t help but wonder what happens when ZIRP is withdrawn. Declining tax revenues, rating downgrades, loss of insurance and rumors of bailouts all contribute to the uncertainity and suspicion.

It may be wise to lighten up on all medium to long term bonds at this juncture. Greece, Ireland and Portugal may not be as far removed from New York, Illinois, and California as we might wish.” More…

You have got to love the above quote especially when it says that this precipitous drop is no cause for alarm but at the same time it might be a good idea to lighten up. We prefer to say that there is panic in the California bond markets.

Basically what investors are saying is that they want more interest from these bonds because they are not paying enough. When bonds go down interest on the bond goes up. The problem is that California has no money. The more it raises taxes, the worse the economy does and the less revenue there is. Where is the money going to come from to pay more interest?

The answer is that it will not come from anywhere. The bond market knows this and is getting rid of this investment in search of better performance. It could also be argued that the bond market is also giving the newly elected government Jerry Brown and his union supporters a vote of no confidence. The bond markets know that Brown and Company  will not be able to find the money to pay higher bond yields and therefore the value of the bond is greatly diminished.

At least 80% of states are in this mess and Arizona is no exception. Just yesterday a Hispanic man on Access, Arizona’s welfare healthcare system. was denied a liver transplant because the Obamacare health care reform has heaped an extra $1.2 billion shortfall on the state. There was outrage that this man was not able to get his liver. What does this have to do a a collapsing bond market? People still just expect government to pay and pay and pay and that money is unlimited. This collapse of the bond market signals very clearly that the party is over and the money has dried up even though many people expect differently.

Arizona just does not have the means to pay its existing overhead or to raise money through the bond market. The more states raise taxes the less tax revenue comes in because our economy is shrinking. Arizona’s plight is no different than California’s and the illustration of the PCK bond fund collapse reflects clearly that the markets are signaling they have no faith in the states’ abilities to pay their bills.

Someone is probably going to say, “But Arnold Schwarzenegger was a Republican!”

Because everyone knows that a guy who is pro-gay marriage, pro-abortion, pro-embryonic stem cell research, pro-global warming alarmist, pro-radical environmental agenda, pro-illegal immigrant, pro-bailout, and pro-Obama-stimulus, is clearly a “Republican.”

And California decided to teach RINO pseudo-Republicans a lesson by deciding to pass on the successful billionaire chief executive officer of the incredibly successful company and elect Moonbeam instead!!!  Because I don’t want to look at the hand I just pooped in; I want to look at all the wishes in my other hand instead.

California is facing a MASSIVE $25.4 BILLION deficit.  And unlike Barry Hussein, Governor Moonbeam can’t just print more increasingly worthless dollars.

If that isn’t insane enough, California is facing its black hole of debt by digging faster than ever.  As we speak, California is borrowing $40 million PER DAY 24/7 from the federal government (which can print money and devalue the dollar further and further) to pay for jobless benefits.

Because California’s unemployment rate is 12.4%, and, after two years of bennies, liberals have decided that unemployed workers should get a lifetime of unemployment benefits so they never need to worry about finding a job.

Of All The Democrats Running For Office, NOT ONE OF THEM Admits To Voting For ObamaCare In Ads

There are some major condemnations against ObamaCare in the recent past.  The first major one may have been the announcement by many major corporations that they would have to take billions of dollars in write downs due to the new requirements that were going to be imposed on them.  Given that Obama had promised that businesses were going to love his new health care system, this was bad.  That was made even more glaring when the National Small Business Organization joined the lawsuit against ObamaCare.  Didn’t Obama assure us that small businesses in particular would love his beloved new health care system?

Then there has been the continual trickle of news that now at least 22 states are actively suing the imposition of ObamaCare on them, and a total of 38 are seeking to pass legislation to block its impact on their citizens.  That can’t be good, can it?  And how can this be, given how wonderful ObamaCare is supposed to be?

Then there came the revelations that the central, fundamental promise of ObamaCare was a lie:

Administration Defends Health Law Despite Medicare Report Hiking Nation’s Tab
Published April 23, 2010
FOXNews.com

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Friday defended the new health insurance law after a report from its own Medicare services agency showed the provisions will increase the nation’s health care tab over the next 10 years instead of bringing costs down.

The sobering assessment by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services concludes what Republicans had warned about during heated debate — that the double-counting of Medicare spending — as both savings and as a means to shore up the debt-ridden government fund for seniors’ health care — means the cost is unrealistic.

The analysis also found that the law falls short of the president’s twin goal of controlling runaway costs, raising projected spending by about 1 percent over 10 years, or $311 billion, up from the $222 billion previous estimated.

Other studies are confirming that, yes, health care will be more expensive because of Obama’s meddling, and Americans will spend more out of their pockets.

Now getting caught in such a huge, fundamental lie is clearly bad.  But there you have it.

But we STILL haven’t plumbed the depths of the fallout yet.  Because now we’re seeing that not only do the numbers bear out that Democrats lied, but so also does their own actions.

Take this abandonment of central promises:

Dems retreat on health care cost pitch
By BEN SMITH | 8/19/10 4:55 PM EDT  Updated: 8/20/10 3:31 PM EDT

Key White House allies are dramatically shifting their attempts to defend health care legislation, abandoning claims that it will reduce costs and the deficit and instead stressing a promise to “improve it.” […]

Now one of the foremost Democrat experts in heath care, who wrote part of and pushed for and voted for the ObamaCare “reform,” is now saying he doesn’t want anything to do with the monster he helped give birth to.  That’s right, Ron Wyden voted to pass that bill before he decided to try to protect his state from the bill he voted for.

And thus we keep sinking to the bottom of the sewer.  Because now the reality of ObamaCare and the fundamental lies that got this awful, heinous, evil collection of 160 new death panel bureaucracies passed silently scream at us.

Silently because most Democrats aren’t saying anything; they’re just walking away from the despicable new boondoggle they imposed on an American people who never wanted it and loudly said they never wanted it.

There are 231 Democrats running for national office [219 Democrats for the House of Representatives, and 12 Democrat Senators as incumbents], and NOT ONE SINGLE ONE OF THEM IS RUNNING A SINGLE AD ACKNOWLEDGING THAT THEY VOTED FOR OBAMACARE.

9/05/2010
Not one Democrat in House running ads saying they supported Obamacare

Dems are unwilling to run on their votes for Obamacare.

At least five of the 34 House Democrats who voted against their party’s health care reform bill are highlighting their “no” votes in ads back home. By contrast, party officials in Washington can’t identify a single House member who’s running an ad boasting of a “yes” vote — despite the fact that 219 House Democrats voted in favor of final passage in March.

One Democratic strategist said it would be “political malfeasance” to run such an ad now.

Democrats have taken that advice to heart; it appears that no Democratic incumbent — in the House or in the Senate — has run a pro-reform TV ad since April, when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) ran one.

Most of the Democrats running ads highlighting their opposition to the law are in conservative-leaning districts and considered the most endangered. They’re using their vote against the overhaul as proof of their willingness to buck party leadership and their commitment to watching the nation’s debt. . . . .

Democrats are running away from their own very own signature legislative accomplishment in a matter identical to cockroaches who are running away when the kitchen light is switched on.

You’ve got grim analyses such as this one, you know, by the people who were RIGHT ALL ALONG in saying that ObamaCare would cost FAR MORE than government functionaries said it would all along:

The bottom line is that you will lose your health care under this legislation, if not your job, your country as they bankrupt America, and maybe ultimately your life or the life of a loved one. All that to make dreamy, emotionalized, liberals happy, even though many of them are not happy because the socialism in the bill is not overt enough. Moreover, the promises made to the American people to pass the bill are shown in the study to be thoroughly false. This pattern of calculated deception, however, did not fool the American people, only members of Congress, many of whom will now pay with their jobs as a result.

Now, you can decide for yourself whether all the folks who were wrong before are right now, or whether you should believe a guy like Peter Ferrara who was right, and who says that these people STILL haven’t told you how bad ObamaCare will really be.  Me, I’m going with Pete.

This may be our last chance as a nation.  We either give Republicans enough power (by which I mean control of both the House and the Senate) to repeal and replace ObamaCare, or we may well go the way of the Dodo bird as a law that is so fundamentally terrible that even Democrats refuse to be associated with it begins to eat our nation like cancer.

Obama Turns To Clinton To Advance The ‘Democrats As Party Success’ Myth As His Economy Turns to Crap

Barack Obama is widely seen as a complete failure.  Businesses large and small are turning on him and his incredibly harmful economic policies.  Even former staunch allies such as US News & World Report owner Mortimer Zuckerman and GE CEO Jeff Immelt have turned on him.

His answer?  To turn to an impeached, disbarred, lying and oath-breaking, sexual predator and unconvicted rapist to save a failed president for the sake of the Democrat Party.

From Reuters:

WASHINGTON, July 14 (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama sought on Wednesday to lift sagging confidence in his economic stewardship by enlisting the help of predecessor Bill Clinton, as a leading business group issued a scathing critique of the administration’s policies.

Clinton, who presided over the 1990s economic boom, joined Obama at a closed-door White House meeting with business leaders to encourage job creation and investment, including in clean energy.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a top business group, issued a rebuke of Obama’s economic agenda, accusing him and his Democrats in Congress of neglecting job creation and hampering growth with burdensome regulatory and tax policies.

What this country needs is a return to “it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”

It doesn’t matter that Clinton once recognized that Obama is little more than a Chicago thug.

It doesn’t matter in this Obama-era of race-baiting that Obama played the race card on Clinton.

It doesn’t matter that Bill Clinton subsequently demonstrated that he frankly deserved to be labeled as a racist when he outraged Ted Kennedy by telling him regarding Obama, “A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee.”  Or that Clinton essentially said, “MAYBE joining the Ku Klux Klan was wrong” in honoring the former Kleagle and Exalted Cyclops Robert Byrd.

All that matters in the mainstream media propagandist cesspool is that – while Barack Obama is increasingly recognized to be a complete economic failure and fraud – Bill Clinton is an economic hero who can therefore temporarily restore confidence in Obama and his failed policies until after the November election.

As usual, the media isn’t telling the full truth about Clinton.  Or what happened to create the healthy economy of the 1990s.

The mainstream media is remarkably consistent: you can count upon them to never give Democrats the blame they deserve, and you can count upon them to never give Republicans the credit they deserve, about anything.

Bill Clinton is widely hailed for presiding over a great economy that featured a budget surplus.

But let’s consider a very basic fact:

From the Herald-Journal, January 27, 1984”

If you took a quiz on government and were asked who writes the national budget, would you answer “The President” or “The Congress”?

The correct answer is “The Congress.”

The U.S. Constitution says that power belongs to Congress. All through our history, the Congress has exercised that power. The president cannot spend one thin dime that has not been approved by Congress.

Article One of the Constitution of the United States refutes the argument that Bill Clinton should receive credit for his “surplus”.  It was the Republican-dominated CONGRESS featuring promises that stemmed from the Contract with America, that resulted in the healthy budget that Clinton the media gave Clinton credit for producing.  Even though all he did was sign (often after vetoes) that which Republicans had actually produced.

What we don’t get told very was that Bill Clinton did such a miserable job running the country for his first two years in office that he suffered the largest (at least until this coming November) political defeat in American history when the Republicans swept into power over both the House and the Senate.  We’re not told that Republicans continued to be the majority party in both the House and Senate during the years that the media assigned Clinton all the credit.

It was those Republicans who were most responsible for the good times that resulted.  They are most certainly responsible for the budget surpluses that Democrats have congratulated themselves for ever since.  The very first item on the Republicans’ agenda was the Fiscal Responsibility Act.

One quick example of these Republican changes was welfare reform.  In his 1996 State of the Union, after losing even more fights, Bill Clinton was famously forced to admit, “The era of big government is over.”  And Republicans were making that statement true by passing welfare reform legislation and an avalanche of other cost-cutting measures that made a budget surplus possible.

Two welfare reform bills were passed by the Republican Congress, which Clinton vetoed.  Then a third bill was passed by the Republicans, which Clinton finally signed.  The National Organization for Women noted:

“There is little difference between the welfare bill (H.R.4) which the president vetoed in January and the new plan H.R. 3734/S 1795.”

An analysis by Steven Dawson for the Saint Louis University Law Journal observed that:

“In fact, President Clinton vetoed two largely similar prior versions of the bill.”

All rhetoric aside, Bill Clinton was FORCED to sign welfare reform into law by the Republican Congress.  Just as he was FORCED into a balanced budget, and any subsequent budget surplus.

But after being literally dragged into signing it, Bill Clinton took credit for it as though it had been his idea all along.  And the media duly reported that slanted history as a matter of “fact.”

That said, we can also point out that “the Clinton budget surplus” also had a lot to do with budgetary smoke and mirrors.

And like I said, the same media that will never give Republicans credit for something good will never give Democrats blame for something bad.

Consider the last three plus years’ worth of reckless spending.  The Bush administration has been blamed for much of this reckless spending, but it was actually a Democrat Congress that swept into power in 2006 (largely due to what we can now readily see was hypocritical demagoguery over the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina rather than any economic issue) which proceeded to spend America into the stratosphere:

For the record, the last budget from a Republican President AND a Republican Congress – FY-2007 (passed in 2006) – resulted in a$161 billion deficit at a time when unemployment was 4.6%.  That’s what happened the last time the GOP was in control.

What happened when the Democrats took control in January 2007?  Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi passed a FY-2008 budget that had a $459 billion deficit – nearly three times the deficit in the immediately previous Republican-passed budget.  Three times.  And this before the financial crisis that somehow “necessitated” all this massive spending.

Now, that’s a pretty crazy increase under Democrat control.  But you aint seen nothin’ yet.

The Democrats passed a FY-2009 budget with a staggering, mind-boggling, totally reckless $1.42 TRILLION deficit.

The FY-2010 budget approved by Reid and Pelosi and signed by Obama had an estimated $1.6 TRILLION deficit.

The deficit has increased from $161 billion in the last budget before Democrats took control of the Congress (FY 2007) to $1.42 trillion in the most recent fiscal year (FY 2009)—an increase of $1.26 trillion or 782%.

With three months remaining in the fiscal 2009 budget, the federal deficit just officially passed the $1 trillion mark.  Worse yet, Obama borrowed more than forty cents for every single dollar he spent.

We also suffered a budget shortfall of $94 billion in the month of June, which marks the first June in more than ten years (read, “encompassing the entire Bush presidency”).  Bush’s success in raising revenues is bookended by two Democrat presidents who failed.

And now the Democrats aren’t even bothering to pass a budget for the next fiscal year, so they can simply spend without any accountability whatsoever.

The old annual deficits under Republicans have now become the monthly deficits under Democrats:

In the 12 years that Republicans controlled the House, the average deficit was $104 billion (average of final deficit/surplus FY1996-FY2007 data taken from Table F-1 below).  In just 3 years under Democrats, the average deficit is now almost $1.1 trillion (average of final deficit/surplus FY2008 and 2009 data taken from Table F-1; FY2010 data taken from Table 1-3).  Source: CBO January 2010 Budget and Economic Outlook

Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Minority Whip) rightly pointed out on ABC’s “This Week”:

“If you look at the kind of deficit that we’ve incurred over the last three years that the Democrats have been in control of Congress, 60% of the overall deficit from the last ten years has occurred in that period. And frankly with the incurrence of the debt, we’ve seen very little result. That’s why we think we ought to choose another way.”

And yet the media falsely blame BUSH and Republicans for that spending, rather than Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the Democrat-controlled House and Senate, even though factually speaking the Democrats were ENTIRELY to blame for every single penny that was spent from January 2007 on.  Because our Constitution forbids a president from spending; it is CONGRESS that spends.

I also point out in that article (and many others such as this one) that Democrats were primarily responsible for the disastrous policies that led to the 2008 collapse.  They were basically completely responsible for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and their reckless policies, and then utterly refused to allow any reforms that would have averted the ensuing disaster.

In an honest world, Bill Clinton wouldn’t get anywhere near as much credit as he does for the strong economy of the 1990s.  And Republicans wouldn’t get anywhere near as much blame as they received for the 2008 collapse.

The problem is, our mainstream media advances one outright lie after another.  And the lies become “truth” through sheer repetition.

Obama isn’t calling upon Bill Clinton to actually offer advice on how to turn the economy around; he’s calling Clinton in as a prop.  Bill Clinton was forced to change his failed policies when the Republicans swept into power.  Hopefully, that is exactly what will happen beginning this November.

Turd-in-Chief Sinking To Bottom Of Toilet In Latest Poll

The Tennessee Valley just experienced its worst flood in 500 years.  At least 31 people were killed, and over $1.5 billion in damage was done to the region.

And Barack Hussein Obama never bothered to even show up and tell desperate victims, “I feel your pain,” before jetting back to the White House.

I mean, lest we forget, George Bush at least flew over the Hurricane Katrina devastation.

Now, maybe Obama has an excuse for not showing up in Nashville.  Maybe he’s too occupied in doing absolutely nothing to deal with the massive disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

From Politico:

The gulf oil spill catastrophe has entered a new phase, as Washington looks increasingly weak and unable to control the disaster or the political narrative.

Congress will do what Congress does best: hold hearings, express outrage and threaten subpoenas. The White House will continue to do what it’s doing – send out long, detailed memos to the media outlining “the ongoing response” to the oil spill. But BP and the Obama administration are married on this disaster – Coast Guard chief Thad Allen admitted that the federal government can’t take over the cleanup because it doesn’t have the expertise to take over.

Let’s see.  Obama took the most political contributions from BP over a twenty year period, despite having less than a three year career in national politics.  His administration approved of the BP project that blew up and started gushing oil.  His administration issued an environmental waver to the BP platform only eleven days before it went boom.  His administration did absolutely nothing for NINE DAYS while the crisis turned into a national disaster.  And as we speak, the Obama administration doesn’t have so much as a freaking clue about what to do for what is turning into the world’s worst oil disaster.

And let’s not forget that, only three weeks before this disaster exploded and spewed millions of gallons of oil all over us, that it was OBAMA saying “Drill, baby, drill.”

From ABC:

President Obama: Drill, Baby, Drill
March 31, 2010 6:01 AM

On Wednesday morning at Joint Base Andrews Naval Air Facility in Washington, DC, President Obama will announce that his administration will allow the lease sale to go forward for oil and gas exploration 50 miles off of the Virginia coast — the first new sales of offshore oil and gas in the Atlantic in more than two decades.

The Department of Interior will also allow seismic exploration for oil and gas in the Outer Continental Shelf from Delaware all the way South to the middle of Florida, to assess the quantity and location of potential oil and gas resources.  A White House official says that the president will also approve a lease sale in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, while canceling another lease sale in Alaska’s Bristol Bay because of environmental concerns. (Lease sales in Alaska’s Chukchi and Beaufort Seas are essentially being suspended pending further scientific review.)

The official says that “To set America on a path to energy independence, the President believes we must leverage our diverse domestic resources by pursuing a comprehensive energy strategy.”

So much for “blame Bush.”  Blame OBAMA.  His paws are all over this baby.

James Carville, a lifelong Democrat strategist, pretty much says Obama has failed in just about every possible way he could have failed.

CARVILLE: “The President of the United States could have come down here. He could have been involved with the families of these 11 people. He could have commandeered the things. We could have sent the Woods Hole people. He could have sent the Scripps on research vessels in the Gulf of Mexico. He could have implemented a plan in anticipation of this. You know, right, he can’t exactly fill the hole up. Last night I was on Larry King, the CEO, the former CEO of the Shell. They said they got 85 percent of the stuff cleaned up in the Gulf of Saudi Arabia. He could be commandeering tankers and making BP bring tankers in and clean this up. They could the deploying people to the coast right now. He could be deploying people to the coast. He could be with the corps of engineers and the Coast Guard with these people in Plaquemines Parish, doing something about these regulations. These people are crying. They’re begging for something down here. And it just looks like he’s not involved in this! Man, you have got to get down here and take control of this! Put somebody in charge of this and get this thing moving! We’re about to die down here!”

I guess you weren’t doing anything that would have kept you from going to Tennessee, after all.

Just imagine if Karl Rove had said that about George Bush’s failure in Katrina.  Man, journalists would have been all over that the way Great White sharks get all over bloody meat.

According to the news, Obama has golfed every single weekend since the BP-Gulf disaster hit some 36 days ago.  At least he’s doing something, I suppose.

Meanwhile, North Korea is going rabid and escalating saber-rattling war tensions to a level that we haven’t seen in fifty years.  And, oh, yeah, Iran is on the verge of having nuclear weapons to go along with their being a terrorist state bent on international jihad.

And Obama’s policies in Afghanistan are bogging down, and only cut-and-run is looming ahead.  General Stanley McChrystal says Marjah “is a bleeding ulcer right now.”  And the access McChrystal granted to reporters “drove home the fact that President Barack Obama’s plan to begin pulling American troops out of Afghanistan in July 2011 is colliding with the realities of the war.”

Like virtually every conservative and every human being with a functioning brain cell was saying would happen six months ago.  Liberals have been arguing for years that we needed to have a withdrawal date so our enemies could know we were going to cut and run, and our friends would be made aware that we weren’t a reliable ally.  And whowouldathunk such a brain-dead strategy wouldn’t work???

The McClatchy article which has the above quotes goes on to say:

There aren’t enough U.S. and Afghan forces to provide the security that’s needed to win the loyalty of wary locals. The Taliban have beheaded Afghans who cooperate with foreigners in a creeping intimidation campaign. The Afghan government hasn’t dispatched enough local administrators or trained police to establish credible governance, and now the Taliban have begun their anticipated spring offensive.

“This is a bleeding ulcer right now,” McChrystal told a group of Afghan officials, international commanders in southern Afghanistan and civilian strategists who are leading the effort to oust the Taliban fighters from Helmand.

In other words, Obama, who demonized Bush up one side and down the other, and demonized Bush’s successful strategy that ultimately won the war in Iraq, is failing.  And hanging on his own petard.

What’s it like to be such a terrible president that you make George Bush look magnificent in comparison, Barry Hussein???

The disaster isn’t the troops’ fault; it’s the Commander-in-Chief’s.  Abraham Lincoln fired general after general until he found Ulysses S. Grant; the problem here is that Obama needs to shitcan Obama, only we all know he won’t.

Weakness is as weakness does.  Or, to put it another way, Obama’s foreign policy is “weakness through weakness.”

On the domestic front, our economy is circling the toilet.  Unemployment is up, mortgage delinquencies are up, and market leading indicators are mostly down.

Obama shoved his health care by way of an immoral and undemocratic process that has a whopping 63% of likely voters wanting repealed before it grows into an even bigger monster.

Then Obama demonized Arizona over its attempt to finally do something to stop the tsunami of illegal immigration which Obama clearly has no serious interest in tackling.  In spite of the fact that a massive 69% of Americans say the Arizona law is either “about right” or that it “doesn’t go far enough.”

That didn’t stop Obama from appearing with the President of Mexico – in spite of that countries’ incredibly harsh immigration policies – and join him in demonizing Arizona:

Well, at least Obama didn’t bow down to Calderone.  At least I don’t think he did.  He’s bowed down before so many other leaders, it’s getting harder and harder to keep track.

Obama couldn’t care less what the American people think.  We’re gnats to him.  Insects.  He’s “the president of the world,” after all.

Incompetent, arrogant, and detached.  You’d think that would be a winning combination.

But it’s not.

From Rasmussen, May 25, 2010:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 24% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty-four percent (44%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -20 (see trends).

The Presidential Approval Index is calculated by subtracting the number who Strongly Disapprove from the number who Strongly Approve. It is updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern (sign up for free daily e-mail update). Updates are also available on Twitter and Facebook.

Overall, 42% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the president’s performance. That is the lowest level of approval yet measured for this president. Fifty-six percent (56%) now disapprove of his performance.

Have you ever noticed how turds tend to sink to the bottom of the toilet bowl before you flush them?

There’s your metaphor for Obama: a turd sinking to the bottom of the bowl.

Why We Should Be Seriously Contemplating The Great Depression

Revelation 6:6 – “And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.”

There are plenty of financial experts out there assuring us that any comparison between our current economic situation and the Great Depression are utterly baseless.  The problem is that most of these experts are either demonstrated hypocrites who have themselves compared our economy to the Great Depression, or they are employing extremely flawed logic in their dismissals that may well even cross the line into outright deception.

Nathan Burchfiel takes CNBC‘s Jim Cramer to task for the sort of blatant hypocrisy that we’ve seen from all to many other media analysts:

CNBC “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer said on NBC’s “Today” show Dec. 2 that comparisons between the current economy and the Great Depression are “scare tactics.” Maybe he forgot about his own reliance on the juxtaposition….

But Cramer has been among the most vocal scaremongers when it comes to throwing around Great Depression warnings.

Criticizing economists who opposed the $700 billion taxpayer bailout of the financial industry on the “Today” show Oct. 1, Cramer warned the country was “on the precipice of Great Depression II.”

He made a similar claim about the financial bailout in September, arguing that if Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson didn’t find a way to get a rescue package passed, “we are going to have The Great Depression II on our hands.”

On Nov. 11, Cramer supported another proposed bailout – this time for the U.S. auto industry by saying it would prevent another depression. “It’s like look – we got to bail them out,” Cramer told CNBC “Street Signs” host Erin Burnett. “We have to. We have to keep the Great Depression off the table.”

In other words, the “Great Depression” basically becomes a shell game, where you see the shell when the shysters want you to look at it, and then you don’t see the shell when they want to keep it out of sight.  It’s a bogeyman that some journalist, or some academic, or some government official can trot out to frighten us into doing what s/he wants to advance an agenda, and then put it away until they want to frighten us again.

Now, there was a time when a story like this one would have completely discredited a media personality such as Jim Cramer.  But in these Bizarro World days, being discredited seems to be to a journalist’s career what having a tawdry sexual affair does to a movie star’s career.

Then we’ve got the philosophical dismissal of any comparison to the Great Depression, as exemplified by government academics such as Ben Bernanke:

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said Monday the current economic situation bears “no comparison” to the much deeper crisis of the 1930s Great Depression.

“Well, you hear a lot of loose talk, but let me just … say, as a scholar of the Great Depression — and I’ve written books about the Depression and been very interested in this since I was in graduate school, there’s no comparison,” Bernanke said in a question period after an address in Austin, Texas.

Bernanke cited “an order-of-magnitude difference” in the current situation compared to the 1930s.

“During the 1930s, there was a worldwide depression that lasted for about 12 years and was only ended by a world war,” he said.

“During that time, the unemployment rate went to 25 percent, at least, based on the data that we have. The real GDP (gross domestic product) fell by one-third. About a third of all of the banks failed. The stock market fell 90 percent.”

Bernanke said the situation at that time represented “very difficult circumstances,” because “we didn’t have the social safety net that we have today. So let’s put that out of our minds; there’s no — there’s comparison in terms of severity.”

Well, first of all the fact is that Bernanke – just like Cramer – has himself made the comparison between our economy and the Great Depression, as the bottom of the same article clearly demonstrates:

In a related matter, President George W. Bush said in an interview released Monday that Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson warned him weeks ago that bold action was needed to avert a new Great Depression.

“I can remember sitting in the Roosevelt Room with Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke and others, and they said to me that if we don’t act boldly, Mr. President, we could be in a depression greater than the Great Depression,” Bush told ABC News.

Which clearly means that comparisons to the Great Depression clearly aren’t so silly after all – as evidenced by the very people who are most loudly telling us that such a comparison is silly.

Bernanke and others also imply that our social support structures and our financial expertise would prevent the worst effects of any so-called “Great Depression.”  But is that really so?

When the $852 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) suddenly morphed into what one writer mocked as Capital Redistributed As Pork (CRAP), shouldn’t it bother you that an abandonment of such an enormous program’s expressed goal midstream amounts to a de facto declaration that our experts clearly don’t know for sure what they’re doing?

The notion that a Great Depression could never happen because we know so much more doesn’t hold much water for me in the light of our “Keystone Cops-approach” to all of our various bailouts and attempts at political legislation.  The fact is, after seeing our “experts” at work the last couple months, I have less confidence in them than I’ve ever had before.

But there’s another giant problem with Bernanke’s analysis, and it is difficult to imagine that he doesn’t himself recognize it.  The problem is that he’s comparing apples to oranges; he’s comparing an economy that may well be on the throes of a future Great Depression to a 1930s economy that was already well into the worst stages of a depression.  And he’s pointing out the obvious – but in fact completely irrelevant and actually completely absurd – fact that they don’t look alike.  Of course they don’t look alike – yet.

But what would have happened had Bernanke compared the economy as it was in 1929 with our economy today, rather than the worst period of the 1930s?  What would have happened had he looked at the economy just before the Black Tuesday crash of October 29, 1929, or even shortly after that crash?  The numbers would have hardly appeared anywhere near so dire, which means Bernanks’ comparison would have failed.

Let me quote Wikipedia to show you what I mean:

The Great Depression was not triggered by a sudden, total collapse in the stock market. The stock market turned upward in early 1930, returning to early 1929 levels by April, though still almost 30 percent below the peak of September 1929.^[7] Together, government and business actually spent more in the first half of 1930 than in the corresponding period of the previous year. But consumers, many of whom had suffered severe losses in the stock market the previous year, cut back their expenditures by ten percent, and a severe drought ravaged the agricultural heartland of the USA beginning in the summer of 1930.

In early 1930, credit was ample and available at low rates, but people were reluctant to add new debt by borrowing. By May 1930, auto sales had declined to below the levels of 1928. Prices in general began to decline, but wages held steady in 1930, then began to drop in 1931. Conditions were worst in farming areas, where commodity prices plunged, and in mining and logging areas, where unemployment was high and there were few other jobs. The decline in the American economy was the factor that pulled down most other countries at first, then internal weaknesses or strengths in each country made conditions worse or better. Frantic attempts to shore up the economies of individual nations through protectionist policies, such as the 1930 U.S. Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act and retaliatory tariffs in other countries, exacerbated the collapse in global trade. By late in 1930, a steady decline set in which reached bottom by March 1933.

Keep in mind that OUR stock market began to tank only a little over two months ago.  And if the exact same thing were to happen now that it did to the United States in the 1930s, we actually would expect our market to pick up significantly in the coming months – and our economy to even appear to be rebounding – shortly before a downward slope into collapse that would occur one to three years later.  It wasn’t until March 1933 – 3 years and 4 months after the Black Tuesday stock market crash – that the bottom really fell out of our economy.

And while “Great Depression” comparisons may be silly in terms of the actual economic numbers RIGHT NOW (the number of banks going under, the jobless rate, etc.), we actually face potential economic nuclear bombs that would very likely have made 1930s American financial experts faint with dread.

We are looking at $700 TRILLION in derivatives.  Compare this stupefying fact to the associated fact that global GDP is only about a lousy $50 trillion! Assets have been leveraged as much as a hundred and even two-hundredfold.  The Institute for Economic Democracy have an article titled, “Hedging and Derivative Risks Become Infinite Risks.”  The result is MASSIVE exposure such as the world has never seen lurking like some incredibly deadly plague in the form of financial vehicles that few even begin to understand and only advanced computers can calculate.  As these highly leveraged financial obligations result in losses – as has already begun to happen – the result is cataclysmic failure in financial markets beyond the power of any government to prevent.  And anyone but a fool should be able to recognize by now that such disasters can send the entire global economy crashing down very quickly, seemingly from out of nowhere.

None of the bailouts have done ANYTHING to fix the systemic structural problems with our financial system (the worst probably being the massive flow of capital out of production and into speculative markets due to the shift from being a manufacturing-based economy to a service-based economy).  And the fact that the $852 billion bailout package went from being used to buy bad mortgages to a completely different solution should kind of serve to tell you that no one really knows WHAT to do.

So our financial experts are throwing out our money the way out-of-control craps players throw dice.

ABC News had this:

The government’s financial bailout will be the most expensive single expenditure in American history, potentially costing around $7.5 trillion — or half the value of all the goods and services produced in the United States last year.

In comparison, the total U.S. cost of World War II adjusted for inflation was $3.6 trillion. The bailout will cost more than the total combined costs in today’s dollars of the Marshall Plan, the Louisiana Purchase, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the entire historical budget of NASA, including the moon landing, according to data compiled by Bianco Research.

It remains to be seen whether the government’s multipronged approach to bail out banks, stimulate spending and buy up mortgages will revive the economy, but as the tab continues to grow so does concern over where the government will find the money.

One critical thing to understand is that the aforementioned historic massive expenditures – which combined still only amount to half of the expenditure we are talking about today – took place over many decades, such that the various costs to the economy were absorbed over many years.  What happens when we spend trillions of dollars in only a few months?  Who knows?  No one has ever tried it before! And unlike the what had been the greatest – now the second greatest – expenditure in history, the costs associated with World War II were spent producing, building, and developing, whereas frankly most of the costs associated with our current bailouts essentially amount to paying off Wall Street’s gambling debts.

Meanwhile – as we contemplate forking over still more billions to bail out our automakers – we need to realize that we’re entering a potentially insane realm where there’s simply no end to the companies and now even the states who are “too big to fail” and need bailouts of their own.  And what of the moral hazard incurred by giving money to people, corporations, and states simply because they were the biggest fools and failures?  What impact will this have not only on the economy, but on the hearts and minds of honest people who played by the rules and ended up with nothing to show for it while the failures and the gamblers walk away with money in their pockets?  How many previously stable people will begin to angrily demand, “Where’s my bailout?”

What’s going to happen as our financial system attempts to absorb absolutely mind boggling government debts that dwarf anything ever before seen in human history?

A lot of financial experts aren’t so much anxious about what happens in the next few months.  We might well be able to throw so much money at the economy that we can stimulate it again; rather, they are worried about 3-5 years down the road as our dollar devalues dramatically due to interest payments that can only be repaid by printing more and more money.  You don’t just double an already insanely-out-of-control national debt without severe consequences.

And given the very real probability that massive spending is going to be the cause of our undoing, the social safety net that Bernanke refers to as being a preventative would actually merely be one more causative factor in a pending economic collapse.  We won’t be able to hand out food stamps and welfare checks if our government itself goes bankrupt.

So while it’s obviously not accurate to describe our present situation as a “Great Depression,” the simple reality is that we might well – and in the very near future – experience an economic meltdown that would likely make the Great Depression look tame in comparison.