Car Czar

So now, the Big 3 are going to get another $15 billion as an emergency bridge loan. I say another because they were already promised $12 billion to retool to build “Green” cars that nobody will buy and now another $15 billion to keep them afloat until they accomplish that. HOOOKKAAYYY!!

And to keep a watchful eye on the greenbacks, which will disappear like Rosie O’Donnell on Primetime, will be a new Car Czar.

Well, I take exception to that position. Czar’s usually are quite effective. You know, they murder, maim and plunder to get whatever they want done. And historically, they have been very effective….until they are undone.

Political Czars, on the other hand….not so much.

Let’s review. In the 70’s, we created, a Czar of sorts, the Secretary of Energy. That’s because we were threatened by a Saudi oil embargo that brought us to our knees. We suddenly realized that our security was jeopardized by control of foreign oil. Voila, the Dept. of Energy, complete with a Secretary--aka Czar--to secure our energy independence.

Well, that was over 30 years and hundreds of billions ago, when we imported 25 percent of our oil. Today we import almost 70% and Energy has an annual budget of $60 billion per year. Great jobs require great budgets.

So what of our Drug Czar. He was mandated with stopping the flow of drugs into the U.S. from abroad and the south. And by 2003 the budget was over $20 billion a year, while more drugs than ever were flowing at ever increasing cost, due to the inconvenience of interdiction. Again, being a Czar is a learning curve.

So now, we are going to have a Car Czar shoved down our wallet pocket, like having the Environmentalists, Unions and Dept. of Transportation wasn’t enough of an impediment to running a successful auto company.

Well people, buckle up. You are about to take a ride like you have never been on before. Get ready for the resurrection of the Pinto, Yugo, and every other car you NEVER wanted to own.

Writing for the Choir

Friends and Net acquaintances often ask me why I don’t write more. I tell them that I am overwhelmed with so much material, I don’t know where to start. I only write when I am inspired, when I am most offended, when someone--usually a Liberal-- picks my scab. And since November 4, my scab gets picked a lot. I am starting to look more like a pomegranate pizza than a pissed off Conservative.

For instance, when I select what I think is the most outlandish event of the day, by mid-day it is not just old news, but dwarfed by 5 other events ready for the book of Idiot’s World Records. You get that when Congress and the pres-Elect are Liberals and the Lame Duck Republican leader is spending his last days pardoning career criminals and others NOT his friends or relatives.

I am most astounded when answers to today’s most pressing problems are coming fourth like water off Niagara Falls from Senator Obama, while the brain trust, that is our present Administration, remains apoplectic in the face of the Liberal tsunami to come. Of course, all of “The One’s” profound and prophetic answers involve cash….lots of cash. Nevermind that he will steamroll America with an avalanche of new taxes, fees, duties, tariffs and enhancements to pay for it. Damn It, it will be done.

For starters, he WON’T raise taxes on the wealthy or the oil companies like he promised, to get elected. That promise alone made the Left, far Left and the Left so far left they had swam out beyond the buoys, so warm and fuzzy that they were wetting down their legs. The slackers, entitlement gamers, deadbeats and professionally unemployed just shivered in anticipation of their “cost of living” increases that would provide the extra cash for a couple of new flat screens and a better quality of Pot. For them, on Nov. 5 the party was on.

For the rest of us, it appears to be more a peek at Armageddon than anything resembling a way out of the fire. There are things you can change and many you can’t, but changing a Liberal is like pulling your own teeth without Novocain.

So, for the time being, I will just scribe about the things that amuse me. That way I won’t spend too much time cleaning and reloading.
The Dumbplumber

A Three Sided Firing Squad

Now let me get this straight. Congress has been imposing CAFÉ Standards(fuel economy mandates) since the 70’s. In part because of the energy/ security issues which resulted in long gas lines during short supplies. Later, the UAW got those standards modified to secure jobs within the US, by having Congress impose limits on imports that would meet the new standards. So, in essence, US automakers were handicapped immediately, where foreign manufacturers were not.

Meanwhile the UAW has been slowly ratcheting up the economic pressure, by not just demanding outrageous healthcare and pension benefits, but extorting them under threat of strike, while insisting that the UAW manage those funds. Pension and medical benefit trusts are currently under-funded to the tune of tens of billions of dollars, all on the table in the current Beg-o-rama on Capitol Hill.

Add to that the dream job of having NOT to work to get paid. Yeah, you got it. When the Big 3 shuts down a plant, they still have to pay about 80% of the wages, plus benefits. My kind of job.

But the $34 billion dollar gorilla in the room is the incessant raising of the bar, for fuel economy, by Congress, egged on by Environmentalists. The silence on this issue, in the hearing room, is deafening.

Way back when, it was 25 mpg, then it was raised to 28, then 30, now the bastards want 35 to 40, with no end in sight. Of course, every time they do this it causes the auto makers to retool, costing billions. And adding insult to injury, the Congressional fat cats tool around in gas guzzling SUV’s, when they aren’t burning jet fuel by the truckload.

And who will be the ultimate loser, when the last Congressional gavel drops?……anyone? OOOH, oooh, oooh, me, me, me. The taxpayers you ass, that’s who. We have 535 bribe taking, earmark grabbing, vote buying, office holding, self-indulgent A-holes all fighting for the tiller on a sinking ship while any consideration for the crew was thrown overboard on Nov. 5th.

Good luck suckers. The Dumbplumber

Bad Loan Circle Jerk

Time for some basic math. We have about 300 million people in this country. There are 535 members of Congress, plus the President and a few hundred highly educated bank and insurance company CEO’s, who are supposed to know what they are doing. But strangely over the past few months, we have dove another $7 trillion in debt, because these folks were incompetent, unconscious or complicit in the biggest heist in history.

Today, the Media is thrashing about for a way to blame Bush for the debacle, but that dog won’t hunt. Yes, he was President for the past 8 years, but the problems really started back in the Carter years, with the Community Reinvestment Act. Well, that notion went over so well that, in time, it morphed into a policy to grant loans to everyone everywhere, as long as the questionable paper would not exceed an acceptable ratio within a bundle of other loans.

Eventually, with the expansion of the real estate boom, throughout the U.S., commissions and fees “trumped” amortized interest, as a revenue stream. Fees and commissions became King when borrowers were returning to the trough over and over to refinance into ballooning equity positions, even though their ability to meet the higher payments did not grow along with the obligations.

The feeding frenzy of borrow, spend, refinance, spend some more, then refinance again never seemed to meet the challenge of the ability to repay. The first bar to hurdle when qualifying for a loan. Loans of $300k and $400k went to borrowers with fixed incomes of less than $2000 per month, which should have been the first litmus test of excessive lending. But NO, the taxpayer was somehow never considered when the ink on loan fraud and bank fraud was being delivered in supertankers. Fannie and Freddie grew into the festering boil, that when burst, would make the DOT.COM bubble look like a fart in your hot tub. Spending and lending went as nuts as the inmates in the Cuckoos Nest.

So, here we are now, swallowing the excesses of a few million irresponsible debtors, and the greed of thousands of mortgage representatives and brokers, who chose to look the other way in qualifying borrowers, not to mention the wholesale negligence of a bureaucracy mandated to oversee such excesses and abuses.

But somehow, the over 290 plus million of us that played by the rules will be shackled with “righting a ship” that less than 10% of us tried to sink.

The silence of the outrage is deafening in our Halls of Justice, Halls of Congress and the Main Stream Media. Instead, the selling of the remedy looks more like a game of Three Card Monte than any retribution against those that got us here. In the pandemonium to make heroes of the upper echelon of government and finance, we have neglected to hold any responsible party’s feet to the fire, insomuch as it would be but a token moral installment to those of us that will ultimately pay for the gross mismanagement and incompetence…. we SO did not deserve.

You see, it was those that got us into this Paul Bunyon Boondoggle that are now crowing that it is THEY who will get us out…..for a few trillion dollars, plus interest. WE HAVE BEEN SO SCREWED.

Obama's Brown Shirts

Seems like every day that I wake up since Nov. 4, 2008, I feel like I’m in a Rod Serling, parallel universe. Initially, I couldn’t believe that America had actually elected the “Puff of Smoke” to lead our nation. But once I got a glimpse of the sheeples that stampeded the polls to vote for “The One”, I understood immediately why we are so screwed.

An interesting cross section of Liberal voters revealed that many couldn’t tell Joe Biden from Joe Torres, Justice Ginsberg from Judge Judy or Ben Bernanke from Benny Hill. But by God, they knew it was great that Obama had picked Sarah Palin for VP, that he was supporting both wars and that he wanted Bill Ayers for Attorney General. Now THAT’S an informed electorate. So, now what?

Well two things have now reared their ugly heads. First the President elect has immediately disappointed the far Left, by picking many of the old “Clintonistas” to fill his cabinet positions. And second, he has committed himself to a “Civilian National Security Force“, which has raised the “Socialist detection” antennas on the Right.

Now it is easy to for Obama to “Bull S**t” his way around the Left (remember he conned them into voting for him), so he can weave any poetic platitudes as an excuse for hiring Hillary and company, and most likely get away with it-- think millions glued to Oprah and Jerry Springer, just waiting for their next stimulus check to arrive.

But just try and blow-by the notion of an American version of Hitler’s “Brownshirts” enforcing every petty assessment, tax, fee, levy, duty, tariff, toll and tithe. Then add to that, door to door enforcement of coming draconian codes, covenants, commandments, canons, ordinances, regulations, statutes and acts designed to contain the populous and extract the last farthing to finance the Socialist agenda.

Well folks, there are just two weaknesses to this plan. One, we still have the Second Amendment, and to a gun shop, Americans are exercising this right in record numbers. Second, unlike the Nazi Brown Shirts, Obama’s will have a very wide yellow stripe down the back, due to weakness #1. So, watch first for a concerted effort to eliminate that little obstacle.

Sarah and the Media

So now, Sarah Palin is the talk of the town, instead of the butt of the joke. Fresh from her vice-presidential defeat, Palin is in high demand by most of the lowlifes of the entertainment industry. Leno, Letterman and Stewart, and that is just the night owls. Oprah, Stephanopoulos, Brokaw and Schieffer, they all want her. Guess they must have discovered some flesh still left on her bones.

It’s hard to get your head around the self-indulgent arrogance of the Media elite, when they can spend 2 months excoriating someone, then once they have achieved the desired effect (character assassination), they invite the victim back to have them “explain the pain” and just WHAT went wrong.
Oh, I don’t know, perhaps the media were so enamored with their own culpabilities, they just wanted everyone to know how efficient they are in reducing charm, character and principle into a bowl of moose chili, right before America’s eyes.

But try as they might, they failed miserably in proving that Palin was a drag on John McCain’s campaign. Oh, they said she was. Their colleagues said she was. Their echoes rippled through the character assassin’s sewer system, that is the Mainstream Media. But Media’s failure was to convince the rest of America, both Red and Blue. Red cheered, Blue feared.

You see, by every measure, McCain was on life support prior to Palin. Her appearance, stage left, resuscitated his stagnant campaign, because other than his tired assertions, there wasn’t a conservative bone in him.

Stepping off the well concealed flight from Anchorage, Palin did something, that Tim Pawlenty, Bobby Jindal and Mitt Romney combined couldn’t do. She struck fear in the hearts and minds of elitists, already armed with all the prejudice, bigotry and slander necessary to bury the predicted frontrunners.

Well, their mission was successful, McCain lost. But his fall was cushioned by a few million voters who came out, more for Palin than McCain. And now the snarkey snobs, who crow over their success, secretly shudder at the notion that a more seasoned and scarred Sarah lurks in the political wings

“O” Allrighty Then

America is all a-twitter that Obama hasn’t spoken to the nation about his plans to lead. Oh, I suggest that Obama’s cabinet picks are speaking much louder than a megaphone in an elevator. And while those stuck in “the cult of personality” frantically await the Messiah’s next utterance and marching orders, the 48% of America that knows the difference between Nancy Pelosi and Judge Judy, are packing their pantries, buying ammo and joining the NRA.

Meanwhile, the stock market is dropping like a boulder off a trestle, the auto industry is sinking like Mark Spitz wearing an anvil anklet and about the only silver lining is the glow off the hair-plugged pates of the former CEOs-- now Wal Mart greeters-- who held all their retirement in stock.

Oh yeah, Obama may not be talking, but America is listening. They’re listening to Barack drag out and recycle tanned, rested and ready Clintonistas. Now, there’s hope and change.

So the America that didn’t vote for The Messianic puff of smoke, is voting with their wallets. And suddenly the sound of pocketbooks slamming shut is trumping the whimpers of the early birds lining up at the Obama Entitlement Pay Window. Just wait till January 20, when the party faithful discover that they will be taking their promised bonanza in IOU’s and Just Trust Me’s.

Can’t wait to see how these work in the liquor stores, tattoo parlors and Seven Eleven’s.

Gonna go buy me some ear plugs, so I don’t have to endure wailing and gnashing of those so disillusioned that Oprah won’t be able to calm them down. Now that’s an “O” moment.