What Goes Around ...

Thanks to Vinnie in Ohio for sending this in

(Click on image to enlarge)

Jorge Santayana said "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."  The above political cartoon from a 1934 edition of the Chicago Tribune perfectly describes the conditions in modern America, if we just change a few of the names.  Note Obama's soul mentor, Karl Marx, in the lower left corner.

This insightful drawing precisely captures the situation as it exists today.  In short, a normal recessionary correction in our economy (albeit a major one) is being used as an excuse by Progressives (socialists) to seize control of our successful capitalist Republic and destroy it so that it can be replaced by their vision of a socialist "Democracy." Following Marx's Communist Manifesto and Alinsky's Rules For Radicals, Obama and his far left band of thugs are spending us into oblivion.  The Federal deficit is now at $1.42 trillion and the National Debt is running at $12 trillion (if you want to get scared senseless, go to this link to see how fast the National Debt is increasing - http://www.usdebtclock.org/ ). Unemployment is estimated at just under 10%, but most experts concede that it's really at about 17% when those who have just given up are counted.  Durable goods orders, unfilled orders and inventories (perhaps the best indicators of the faith that business has in the future economy) are all in the toilet.  If business doesn't have confidence in the future, when do you suppose they'll start hiring again?

So, given all of this, what has been the response from our fiscally responsible politicians? Well, Bush and a leftist Democrat Congress bailed out Wall Street with our money ($700 billion), arguing that we had to protect credit.  I argue that government intervention at ANY level pollutes capitalism and shoves us right down the slippery slope to total government control.  In this case, we merely bailed out a lot of greedy rats and idiots with no business acumen to "save the country", when what we really did was push it over the edge of a financial precipice. We needed to save the credit market by pumping more money into it when in fact the very cause of the meltdown was excess, loose credit and excess debt. The result?  Credit is very tight,  banks are still tanking and we, the people are $700 billion further in debt. The stock market is doing better, but it was doing great right before the Depression and the latest crash. And let's not forget how Bush and his Republican pals in Congress started spending us into oblivion after being elected as "conservatives" (I guess Bush really was a neo-con).  Make no mistake about it.  Bush and Obama are both Progressives, the only difference being the degree to which they feel government should control us.

Our pals in Washington also pumped a few billion into GM, a poorly managed business with overpaid workers who produced non-competitive products.  And actually, they made a very good case for this ... UAW workers with a burden rate of $80/hr. needed protection from those evil foreign competitors who were building superior products with American workers, working in ultra-modern plants, who carried a burden rate of $40/hr. To improve upon Bush's insightful management of this crises, Obama and his gang decided that it would be a dandy idea for the government to own GM and to give controlling power of Chrysler to the unions.  And we got all of this for only a few billion. Sweet.

In order to "help" us even more, Obama, Reid and Pelosi jammed the $787 billion "Stimulus Bill" down our throats.  Heavily marbled with pork fat for constituents of Progressives (Democrats), this whopper brings the spending orgy of the last year (on top of our already exorbitant Federal budget) to somewhere around $1.7 trillion dollars.  The good news is that only three "Republicans" voted for this pig ... Specter, Snowe and Collins.

Based on all of this spending, the Keynesian axiom that government spending can pull the economy out of recession should by now have been proven wildly true.  We should all be rolling in dough, everybody should be working and the economy should be booming.  Of course, things don't turn around quickly, but we know this philosophy is working because Obama tells us so.  I feel better already!

Coming soon to a socialist pork store near you - socialized medicare and carbon caps!  These will drive spending to intergalactic levels, further strengthening our already robust economy!

I believe that.  Don't you?

By the way, if you want precise details about how Roosevelt prolonged the Depression and began the march towards socialism in our government using the exact same methods Obama is using, I suggest that you read The Forgotten Man by Amity Shales.  It's amazing how may parallels that you will draw between the Roosevelt regime and what Obama is doing.  I believe the only things that saved us from pure socialism during the Roosevelt years was the war and his death.  Whatever picture history paints of Harry Truman, he did two huge things that helped our great nation.  He ended the war by having the guts to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki (thus saving millions of American and Japanese lives) and he managed to put the breaks on much of Roosevelt's radical progressive agenda.