Obama Promised Dems Trip To Disneyworld; Failed To Mention It Involved Crashing Plane Into Florida

[The above title derives from a quip made by Newt Gingrich on the Greta Van Susteren program, for what it’s worth].

Unless “hope and change” meant total Democrat annihilation (which it does for me, anyway), I would submit that something went wrong on Obama’s trip to Utopia.

There was a cartoon from months ago that pretty much summarized the election results from November 2:

And the American people – and most certainly conservatives – tried to warn them.  Repeatedly.

Remember Virginia?  When Republican Bob McDonnell won the governorship in a major setback to Obama? Remember  Massachusetts? And the shock defeat by Republican Scott Brown to win Ted Kennedy’s seat? Remember New Jersey?  Where Chris Christie defeated Obama-backed Jon Corzine with independents running away from Democrats to give Republicans the governor’s mansion in the bluest of blue states? Remember all the town halls across the nation?  Where senior citizens were red-faced furious at Democrats for passing ObamaCare? Remember the tea party events across the country? And how they just kept getting bigger and bigger even as the Democrats and the mainstream media first ridiculed them and then demonized them?

Meanwhile, now former House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi assured everyone that Democrats would keep control of the House.  And assured them “for sure.” And daring Republicans to “bring it on” in the process.  And kept assuring.  And then assuring some more.

And it wasn’t just Nancy Pelosi who lived in a bubble.  Lots of prominent Democrats did.  Such as DNC chairman Tim Kaine, who was predicting Democrats would keep the House of Representatives only days ago.

And, of course, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen joined San Fran Nan the very day of the election to loudly assure the world that the Democrats would keep their dominance in the House.

And, even after the admitted shellacking, Barack Obama demonstrated loudly and clearly today that he STILL doesn’t get it.

I don’t know if Obama and Pelosi cared one way or another; but Democrats were slaughtered for the sake of Obama’s incredibly unpopular agenda.  Obama kept using the metaphor of a car and a ditch, but no matter how many “Danger, Bridge Out!” warning signs he passed, he refused to change his course as he drove his party right off a cliff.

It was not just a slaughter; it was a historic slaughter:

WASHINGTON — Republicans rolled up historic gains to seize control of the House on Tuesday, as voters disenchanted with the economy, President Obama and government dealt a strong rebuke to Democrats in every corner of the country.

The GOP ousted Democratic freshmen and influential veterans, including some considered safe just weeks ago. Republicans piled up their biggest House gains since they added 80 seats in 1938: By early Wednesday, they had netted 60 formerly Democratic seats and led in four more. The GOP victory eclipsed the 54-seat pickup by the so-called “revolution” that retook the House in 1994 for the first time in 40 years and the 56-seat Republican gain in 1946.

And it’s actually even worse than that.  Because the most recent counts show that Republicans have seized 64 seats from Democrats.  With more elections still not yet called, that could well add to the number.

What we just witnessed was the biggest pick up by any party in any election since 1932.

Here’s the latest political map.  For you liberals, you are the ones who are now so marginalized you practically might as well not even exist:

I mean, literally, I have more legitimate grounds to deny the existence of liberals than I do the Tooth Fairy right about now.

And just two years ago you so incredibly arrogantly ruled the universe.  And you were lecturing Republicans on the extinction of the Grand Old Party.

You were a ship of fools, captained by even grander fools.

But it gets even worse.  Because we haven’t talked about the governor’s races yet:

Governors-Stunning loss for Democrats
Published in November 3rd, 2010

America changed overnight in a very big way. Based upon election results at this moment, sixty percent of our country will now be led by Republican Governors. That number may grow as a few states with uncertain election results are solidified.

Yesterday, there were 37 Governor’s races and Republicans won 24 of them. Democrats took only nine, Independents took one and three are too close to call at this moment (Connecticut, Minnesota and Vermont).

This is an absolutely stunning loss for Democrats who, prior to the election, held 26 states to the 24 held by Republicans.

The balance of power has shifted and this will impact the 2012 elections as well as redistricting that will occur in each state as a result of the 2010 Census.

But as bad as that is, it gets even worse than that.  We’re talking about complete devastation for Democrats in the state legislatures, where Republicans picked up a never-seen-in-history 680 state legislative seats.  In doing that, they gained majorities in 14 states, and unified majorities (gaining control in both branches) in 26 states.

From the National Journal:

While the Republican gains in the House and Senate are grabbing the most headlines, the most significant results on Tuesday came in state legislatures where Republicans wiped the floor with Democrats.

Republicans picked up 680 seats in state legislatures, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures — the most in the modern era. To put that number in perspective: In the 1994 GOP wave, Republicans picked up 472 seats. The previous record was in the post-Watergate election of 1974, when Democrats picked up 628 seats.

The GOP gained majorities in at least 14 state house chambers. They now have unified control — meaning both chambers — of 26 state legislatures.

That control is a particularly bad sign for Democrats as they go into the redistricting process. If the GOP is effective in gerrymandering districts in many of these states, it could eventually lead to the GOP actually expanding its majority in 2012.

Republicans now hold the redistricting “trifecta” — both chambers of the state legislature and the governorship — in 15 states. They also control the Nebraska governorship and the unicameral legislature, taking the number up to 16. And in North Carolina — probably the state most gerrymandered to benefit Democrats — Republicans hold both chambers of the state legislature and the Democratic governor does not have veto power over redistricting proposals.

It wasn’t just a power shift; it was a historic power shift.  It was a massive repudiation.

Now, for all of that butt-kicking of the Democrats and the Democrat agenda, how did the mainstream media react?  Predictably.

I turned the channel from reliable, trustworthy Fox News to MSNBC and CNN.  It was comical.  From their coverage, you’d think that the entire election consisted in Harry Reid’s, Barbara Boxer’s, and Jerry Brown’s Democrat victories.

Barack Obama’s own Illinous Senate seat will now have a Republican’s butt-print all over it.  That personalizes this ass whipping; Obama couldn’t even hold on to his own seat – even after all the previous shenanigans Democrats tried to pull.  And Republicans snatched at least five other Senate seats from Democrats.  But how about that Harry Reid win?

Laugh, liberals.  Laugh hysterically.  Laugh until you fall down and pass out.

Because you’re butt-kicking is just getting started.  From Politico:

If Senate Democrats think 2010 is a tough cycle, just wait two more years.

They’ll probably hold the Senate majority Tuesday — with a couple of seats to spare, most analysts believe. But 2012 is a different story.

By then, Republicans will be poised to take control of the Senate — with pickup possibilities scattered across the map and a much narrower base of their own to defend.

It’s not simply the lopsided mathematics — with at least 21 Democratic seats on the table in 2012, including two independents who sit with the Democrats, compared with 10 Republicans. It’s where the seats are located.

Start with Democratic seats in three states where President Barack Obama lost in 2008: Nebraska, North Dakota and Montana.

Then go down a list of where Democrats are poised to lose Senate battles this year — Ohio, Florida and Missouri, for example — and Democrats will be right back at it in 2012, defending seats there again.

Throw in some bona fide tossup states — Virginia and New Mexico — and it’s pretty hard not to picture Republicans picking off the handful of seats needed to take control, if Tuesday goes as well for the GOP as experts expect.

For the official record, Republicans won all three of those Senate battles in Ohio, Florida and Missouri.

The really funny thing is that not winning the Senate during a tough economy is actually a blessing in disguise for Republicans – who never had much more than a halfway decent chance at best to capture the Senate this year.

Obama could have run against the Republican-owned Congress, the way Bill Clinton was able to do against Republicans after they took control of both branches in 1994.

Back then, Republicans balanced the budget and reduced the deficit, and Slick Willie took credit for everything good that came along.

Instead, poor one-term Barry will have Harry Reid wrapped around his neck like an albatross in two years.  As all those Republican governors use the power of their offices to make sure he’s a one-term president.  Even as they supervise the redistricting to make it tougher for Democrats to make any kind of a comeback.

The Republican House doesn’t even have to do much, really.  All they need to do is vote on popular measures: the repeal of ObamaCare; permanently extending the Bush tax cuts for everyone; capping spending at 2008 levels; maybe ending the earmark process.  And if Democrats in the Senate don’t pass it, well, doom on the Democrats in the Senate.

I think of it as a beautiful case of poetic justice and dramatic reversal wrapped into two election cycles, a story where Dorothy gets to say to the wicked witch of the West (and that’s Nancy Pelosi, not Christine O’Donnell), “I’ll get you my ugly, and your little messiah too!”

Absolutely everything that the most über-hard-core conservative commentators (such as Rush Limbaugh) have said about Barack Obama has come to pass exactly as they predicted.  The corrupt Chicago community organizer was totally unqualified and unprepared for the presidency, and he has proven to be a total disaster and disgrace to his own political party, along with America.

The worst thing that ever happened to the Democrat Party – to go along with the United States of America – was the election of Barack Obama.  And Republicans aren’t going to let Democrats forget it.  And I’m talking for years to come.

Pollsters Seeing Democrats Slaughtered For Their Obama Agenda

There’s a video of Wall Street Journal’s “Campaign Journal” saying that Democrats could lose more than sixty House seats.  The previous record was 52 seats, set the LAST time a Democrat president led a Democrat Congress.  Way to go, SanFran Nan.  You and your pal Barry Hussein have led to the greatest destruction of a major political party in U.S. history.

October 29, 2010, 12:35 PM ET
I’m Thinking of a Number Between 48 and A Lot
By Patrick O’Connor

Tuesday night will be a bad one for Democrats. But how bad?

Let’s survey the political soothsayers: The Rothenberg Political Report now predicts Republicans could take somewhere between 55 and 65 Democratic seats “with gains at or above 70 seats possible.” The Cook Political Report says the Democratic losses could total somewhere between 48 and 60 seats “with higher losses possible.”

Nate Silver, whose FiveThirtyEight blog makes predictions based on a weighted average of available polling, puts the number at 53 – and offers no caveats.

“The midterm maelstrom pulling House Democrats under shows no signs of abating, if anything it has intensified,” wrote the folks at the Cook Political Report. “House Democrats are suffering the full violence of this national undertow.”

With the hours ticking down to Nov. 2, the field of imperiled races seems to keep expanding for Democrats. Just this week, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee started spending money to defend Reps. Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona, Ron Klein in Florida and Chris Murphy in Connecticut, among others, according to disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission. Rothenberg puts a total of 98 seats held by Democrats in play, with only nine Republican-held seats in the contested column.

Mr. Silver at FiveThirtyEight hasn’t officially turned out the lights for House Democrats. They still have a 17% chance of retaining the House, he says, but adds: “their chances of doing so essentially boil down to there being systemic errors in the polling” and the other indicators he uses to compile predictions.

Carnac the Magnificent would be having a ball.

When Obama took power, hat-in-hand Republican leaders came to him to offer compromise and provide their ideas.  Obama arrogantly and dismissively told them, “I won.”

No compromise.  Thus began the Obama regime.  Total Democrat control, with rabidly leftist agenda after agenda rammed down America’s throat, like it or not.  The stimulus.  ObamaCare.

Recently Obama demonstrated that he hadn’t learned a single thing about compromise in two years of failed governance.  He told Republicans, “We don’t mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.”

Is that not racist enough for you?  How about this one from our disgrace of a president:

“If Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, ‘We’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us,’ if they don’t see that kind of upsurge in voting in this election, then I think it’s gonna be harder and that’s why I think it’s so important that people focus on voting on November 2.”

We’re literally going to need a white Rosa Parks to tell Obama that she isn’t getting up to ingratiate herself to his despicable, immoral and perverse agenda.

It’s not Islamic terrorists who are our enemies in the United Socialist States of Obamastan; it’s white people who vote Republican.  And if you are a racist Democrat, you need to punish Americans.  Hurt them.  Destroy them.  Break them.

And if the economy goes under in the process, GOOD! Because Obama has his glorious Cloward-Piven strategy to first cripple America, and then “fundamentally transform it” as a socialist utopia.  And if you happen to get mowed under and turned into mulch in the process, well, great change always has consequences and casualties.

Obama will lead this country to ruin, like Ahab pursuing the white whale come what may.  “Change” is clearly not in him when it comes to changing his own pathological agenda.

The only problem is that the American people aren’t quite the sheep that the rest of the world have turned into.  At least, not yet.

 

The ‘Slaughter Solition’ As Epitome Of Obama ‘Transparency’

I’m sure anyone you meet can tell you all about the self executing rule that the Democrats are now relying upon to pass their health care boondoggle.

They will know all about the “Slaughter solution.”  It will be “transparent” to them.

Because this is the most “transparent” administration in history.

Right?

Wrong.

Democrats routinely demonized the Bush White House as “the most secretive administration in history.”  But it is now a documented fact that the Obama administration is at least 50% more secretive than Bush:

PROMISES, PROMISES: Is gov’t more open with Obama?
By SHARON THEIMER Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) – The government’s use of legal exemptions to keep records secret rose during President Barack Obama’s first year in office, despite promises of increased openness, an Associated Press review found.

The review of annual Freedom of Information Act reports filed by 17 major agencies found that overall, the use of nearly every one of the open-records law’s nine exemptions to withhold information rose in fiscal year 2009, which ended last October. […]

Major agencies cited that exemption to refuse records at least 70,779 times during the 2009 budget year, compared with 47,395 times during President George W. Bush’s final full budget year, according to annual FOIA reports filed by federal agencies. Obama was president for nine months in the 2009 period.

This lack of transparency – hypocritical as it is because Obama demagogued Bush while promising to be so much better – has taken root in health care.  His “transparency” is an outrageous and incredibly cynical lie just like all his other outrageous and incredibly cynical lies.

The Democrats are like the “Mr. Brooks” character portrayed by Kevin Costner: self-designated pillars of the community who are all the while actually brutal mass-murdering schizophrenic psychopaths.  They say one thing in public, but the very ugly truth is a very different thing behind closed doors.

It’s rather fittingly ironic that ObamaCare is going to be shoved down our throats with Constitution-schmonstitution shenanigans named “The SLAUGHTER Solution” and “the Self EXECUTING Rule.

Barack Obama – who was THE most liberal U.S. Senator in Congress the year he announced his candidacy for president (in 2007) – stated as his core promise that he would “transcend the starkly red-and-blue politics of the last 15 years, end the partisan and ideological wars.”  But it turns out that he was a hard-core partisan ideologue radical.  It turns out that he is the most polarizing president in history.  It turns out that he would see this country erupt in flames not seen since the Civil War (when Republicans were as usual in the right and Democrats were as usual the party of genuine depravity) in order to impose an unpopular “fundamental transformation” onto the American people.

Now this lying demagogue – who attacked the reconciliation strategy as “majoritarian absolute power” right out of the ugliest pages of the Karl Rove playbook, and who claimed that anyone who would pursue such a strategy doesn’t believe in government – is now hypocritically and cynically embracing a strategy that makes reconciliation look positively tame.  I mean, at least you actually VOTED with reconciliation, even if that vote was a joke; with the “self executing” Slaughter solution, you don’t even bother with such pretension, but merely “deem” it to have been voted upon.

In the modernized version of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, the line from today’s bandits is, “Vote?  We aint got no vote!  We don’t need no vote!  I don’t have to show you any stinking vote!”

Obama is the one who doesn’t believe in government.  The man who once said, “You’ve got to break out of what I call the sort of 50-plus-1 pattern of presidential politics. Maybe you eke out a victory of 50 plus 1, but you can’t govern,” and who once said, “Karl Rove doesn’t need a broad consensus, because he doesn’t believe in government,” now reveals himself to be the political anarchist who would blow up our entire political process in order to ram through his incredibly unpopular ideological agenda.

Our founding fathers went to war to rid themselves of a king who wasn’t half the tyrant Barack Obama has revealed himself to be.

And all the while he keeps brazenly trying to pass himself off as something he absolutely is not.

Reminds me of what the Bible says about the devil:

“But I am not surprised! Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Cor 11:14, NLT).

When SchoolHouse Rock’s ‘I’m Just A Bill’ Met Obama, Pelosi, And Reid

Do you remember those “Schoolhouse Rock” educational cartoons?  You know, like the one about the Superhero “Verb” in action?

How about this one on how a bill becomes a law?  It’s worth watching so one can understand how bills used to be passed when our Constitution mattered back in the day.

But, of course, that was before Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi came onto the scene and decided that the constitutional process really didn’t need to apply when they decided to take over one-sixth of the economy.

Now we have this:

Hope and Change is something of a bitch in Obamaland.  It’s degenerated into “I sure hope they don’t change the Constitution so much we lose our country.”

It’s rather fittingly ironic that ObamaCare is going to be shoved down our throats with Constitution-schmonstitution shenanigans named “The SLAUGHTER Solution” and “the Self EXECUTING Rule.

God has a sense of humor as He leaves His own clues about what a demonic abomination this takeover of our health care system will become.

Death panels?  Of COURSE there are no death panels in this SLAUGHTER-style EXECUTION of our health care system.  Why would anybody think anything so silly?

For the record, the entire ObamaCare boondoggle has been one gigantic death panel from the get-go, both in its dehumanizing death-by-bureaucracy substance –

– and by the incredibly despicable political procedure (think the $300 million Louisiana Purchase, the $1.2 billion Cornhusker Kickback, the $5 billion Gator-Aid, the $100 million Hospital Handout, and the $300 million Libby Asbestos Deal, just for starters) used to impose an incredibly unpopular bill onto the American people.

When ‘Democrats’ And ‘Democracy’ Are Antonyms

Antonym (an·to·nym): A word having a meaning opposite to that of another word: The word wet is an antonym of the word dry.

Vote shmote.  Who needs a vote?  Do you ever see Big Brother begging for votes in the novel Nineteen-Eighty-Four?

Democracy by Slaughter [Daniel Foster]

The sense around here for the last week or so has been that “only the House vote matters” in deciding the fate of Obamacare. But what if the Democrats can pass the bill with no House vote at all?

Astoundingly, House Democrats appear to be preparing to do just that:

House Rules Chairwoman Louise Slaughter is prepping to help usher the healthcare overhaul through the House and potentially avoid a direct vote on the Senate overhaul bill, the chairwoman said Tuesday.

Slaughter is weighing preparing a rule that would consider the Senate bill passed once the House approves a corrections bill that would make changes to the Senate version.

Slaughter has not taken the plan to Speaker Pelosi as Democrats await CBO scores on the corrections bill. “Once the CBO gives us the score we’ll spring right on it,” she said. . . .

House members are concerned the Senate could fail to approve the corrections bill, making them nervous about passing the Senate bill with its much-maligned sweetheart deals for certain states.

“We’re well beyond that,” Pelosi said Tuesday, though she did not clarify.

That the Democrats could take this extraordinary step to avoid passing the Senate bill tells you that they have zero trust in the Senate to pass reconciliation “fixes,” and zero trust in the president not to sign the Senate bill should it reach his desk and a reconciliation effort collapse. But most crucially, it gives the lie — in a big, big way — to the Democratic narrative that health-care reform should and will be finished via simple “majority rule,” and not bound up in the arcane rules of the United States Senate.

So we’re no longer just talking about reconciliation as an end-run around the Constitution; now we’re talking about an entirely different game as an end-run around reconciliation.

As one of our founding fathers must have said: “Give me Stalinism or give me death.”

Stupid democracy with its stupid votes and its stupid constitutional processes.  The Democrats don’t need that garbage.  The people are pathologically stupid, and elitist Democrat big government statists know what is best; we’re little more than herd animals.  Why should they govern when they can simply rule instead?  They want ObamaCare, and they’re going to have it.  And as for the American people who couldn’t be more clear that they don’t want it?  “Let them eat ObamaCare.”

Only we’re way beyond analogies employing genuine historic figures such as Marie Antoinette.  We are now in the realm of crazy-land-fiction, where Nancy Pelosi is like the psychotic “off with-her-head” queen from Alice in Wonderland.

Her attitude is that:

“But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”

Funny: that’s almost exactly what Chairman Mao must have said about his Great Leap Forward Plan.

And just who the hell do you think you are to expect that it should be any different, you pathetic little peon?

Stupid American people.

A new poll released by the Associated Press finds this:

More than four in five Americans say it’s important that any health care plan have support from both parties. And 68 percent say the president and congressional Democrats should keep trying to cut a deal with Republicans rather than pass a bill with no GOP support.

And only 27 percent of voters want to see ObamaCare rammed down the nation’s collective throat.

HotAir does a great job filling in details of this poll.

What did I say about the American people?  Oh, yeah, that’s right: Stupid American people.

Do they not realize that Obama is not only our king, but our God?

From the editor of Newsweek:

“I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God.”

And you would thwart “the One’s” will, you petty, insignificant little SERF?  How DARE you get in the way of “the One” who is standing above the country, who even stands above the entire world?  It’s not exercising your freedom in a democratic society to oppose ObamaCare and all the corrupt shenanigans being employed to impose it; it’s BLASPHEMY!!!

We are at a point in which one group or another is profoundly unAmerican: either it is the American people, or it is the Democrat Party.

Car Sales Fall Back To Historic Lows, Proving Cash-4-Clunkers Was A Clunker

The problem with the liberal-glorified cash-for-clunker program was always obvious to anyone who would but contemplate: the spike in sales merely robbed future sales, or delayed past ones.

My own parents waited for at least a couple months to buy a car for the program to go into effect.  Ultimately they walked away from it due to the massive aggravations of the program (my father is a very patient man unless and until things stop making sense – at which time he starts to lose it) and decided to keep their “clunker” until they needed to buy a new car.

The funny thing is, they very likely would have already bought a new car had it NOT been for the cash-for-clunker program.

September Auto Sales Seen Slumping Post-‘Clunkers’
Published: Monday, 28 Sep 2009
By: Reuters

U.S. auto sales likely fell in September back to the nearly three-decade lows of early 2009 without government incentives to spur buying, leaving in doubt the timing and pace of a recovery for the battered industry.

Nearly 700,000 new cars and trucks were bought by U.S. customers through the government “cash for clunkers” incentive program from late July through the first three weeks of August, a leap from recession-stunted sales earlier in 2009. […]

“There are still a lot of obstacles out there,” she said. “I think we are still going to see the hangover from ‘cash for clunkers’ both in September and almost potentially through the end of the year.”

Sales Drop at All Major Automakers

U.S. auto industry sales rose 1 percent to more than 1.2 million vehicles in August from a year earlier under the “clunkers” program, the first time monthly sales pierced the 1 million mark in a year.

However, none of the largest manufacturers are expected to post sales gains in September, and Edmunds has forecast a 23 percent industry sales decline for the month.

Edmunds expects Ford Motor to post a 9.7 percent sales drop, GM a 46.1 percent drop and Chrysler a 48.7 percent decline among the Detroit automakers.

Edmunds expects Toyota Motor to post a 9.7 percent sales decline, Honda Motor an 8.3 percent drop and Nissan Motor a 1.1 percent drop among Japan-based automakers.

The August sales gain represented a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 14.1 million vehicles, but did little to turn the tide on annual sales. U.S. auto industry sales were down nearly 28 percent through August 2009 versus last year.

Global Insight expects U.S. September auto sales to come in at a 9.33 million seasonally adjusted annualized rate, or well below the 12.5 million unit rate from a year ago when credit markets froze in the wake of the Lehman Brothers collapse.

The median forecast for U.S. auto industry sales was 9.5 million vehicles from 41 economists surveyed by Reuters, while J.P. Morgan believes the annualized rate could drop to 8.9 million vehicles — the lowest month since December 1981. […]

This comes as no surprise to people who had a clue.  For example, John Quelch predicted in August:

C4C disrupted the even flow of supply and demand. New car buyers held back in advance of the launch of the program; in fact, many prenegotiated with dealers to do so. And, now the promotion is over, expect year-on-year sales to be lower than they would have been because so much consumer demand has been concentrated in the promotion period.

The Daily Plunge predicted:

The auto industry received a short-term “sugar high” at the expense of lower future sales when the program is over. The program apparently boosted sales by about 750,000 cars this year, but that probably means that sales over the next few years will be about 750,000 lower. The program probably further damaged the longer-term prospects of auto dealers and automakers by diverting their attention from market fundamentals in the scramble for federal cash.

And whaddyaknow?  That’s basically exactly what happened.

In addition, the fuel savings came at a very high cost.  In fact, in order to save $815 million in oil via the better mileage of the new cars, the U.S. Treasury had to pay out $2.877 billion.  In other words, for every dollar saved in fuel, the taxpayers lost $3.53 cents.  Some savings.

Poor people – who couldn’t afford to buy a new car with the cash for clunker incentive – will also now lose out on billions of dollars’ worth of used cars that were destroyed under the program.  The price of the cars that would have improved their lives (and their mileage) were shipped to China as scrap metal.  And law of supply and demand guarantees that the price of used cars will go up for the people Democrats always say they’re trying to help.

The cash for clunkers program ought to sound eerily familiar to people who’ve done any reading about the Great Depression, because it was the same kind of program that led to the slaughter of hogs under the Agricultural Adjustment Act (which was intended to raise hog prices but led to famine instead).  The issue here is the same one as back then: the profound arrogance of economic planners who think if they just get enough data, and they turn all the diodes exactly the right way, and if they get all the right memos and all the right forms, that they’re going to be smarter than free market would be.

Big government liberals invariably believe they know how to allocate resources better than markets do — just like the Marxist economic planners did.  And the problem is like that fairy tale about the old woman who swallowed a fly; every single solution they come up with just creates another problem, and then you get this continual snowball effect that just keeps getting more insolvable.

And thus it is with the cash for clunkers thing.  Maybe some of these people who bought a new car didn’t really need a new car; what they really needed was a new refrigerator or a new washing machine – but they got such a great deal on that car!  The government knows better that they needed to buy a new car more than they needed to buy a new refrigerator or a washing machine or a host of other products.  And so the government artificially incentivized people to buy the car that they really didn’t need.  And instead of buying all the things that they really should have bought and WOULD have bought anyway WITHOUT the billions in taxpayer dollars, now people have taxpayer-funded cars they really didn’t need to buy.

So, as an example, were told that “Durable goods orders show unexpected decrease in August,” but it shouldn’t have been “unexpected” at all.  What it was was the opportunity costs due to all the people buying cars instead of other goods.  Like refrigerators and washing machines.

And at the same time, all we’ve really done is rob demand from a couple of years down the road, where these people were almost by definition ultimately going to buy new cars anyway.  Why?  Because they have CLUNKERS, dammit!