Just Another Day at the Office...

Three trillion dollars of deficit spending in one day.

That's:

- $800 billion for the new stimulus bill.

- A $1 trillion commitment by the Fed to "make loans more widely available to consumers" which actually means the taxpayer will be taking over the liability for many past bankster screwups.

- $350 billion from the first pork bill goes from uncommitted to committed, thanks to Geithner, who refreshingly promised that thing they call transparency (which events suggest is actually spelled "opacity"). Right. Anyway, he also said they'd soon be back for more, which was one of very few promises I found believable.

Add in a few et ceteras and that's three trillion. (Here a billion, there a billion, everywhere a billion billion. Old MacDonald's house of cards - EIEIO.)

Update: After a pitched battle in which the Senate dropped some tax breaks for the peasants but clung bitterly to their spending and power grabs, the price of the stimulus bill dropped precipitously to $789,000,000,000. Nanny Pelosi said "We have come to an agreement with the Senate as to how we will go forward and I think the people are happy about that." No kidding. She really said that. They came to an agreement - with themselves - on plundering the nation. How congenial. She thinks we'll be happy about this if she merely suggests the idea? Delusional twit...

So - what does the stimulus bill really stimulate? In the guise of job creation, there are some huge payouts to the left's power base - as in bankers, unions and entitlement recipients. Taken as the immediate economic stimulus it claims to be, this legislation is a joke. Much of this spending isn't even scheduled for this year! Scratch the surface, and you'll find that what's really stimulated is federal power.

This is no accident. A new federal health care gestapo is birthed in this bill, with $20 billion worth of gleeful plans to hold every last detail of your medical history in government hands, and with further plans for those same hands to grab decision making from our doctors. Rahm Emanuel said "You never want a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before." Like fascism, for example. Federal bureaucrats will soon have the power to nag your doctor - real time as he treats you - dictating which treatments are acceptable and which are not. Heavy on the "are not."

This is a coup, folks! They just imposed socialized medicine, without the inconvenience of representation or debate.

Back in the Clinton years (come to think of it, he was the original stimulus Bill...) it became apparent that the push for socialized medicine had but one true goal - the rationing of costly medical care - particularly for the elderly. That's rationing with the kind of "capital R" that's written in blood by Federal teeth. If you think they're not serious, consider that nothing short of rationing will mitigate the looming burden of the baby boom generation on Social Security and Medicare.

Great. Social Security. Paternity tests on this program reveal a grinning Ponzi. Any junior actuary could have told you - in 1960 - that this whole SS/Medicare thing would inevitably collapse. These programs have been cash cows since their inception, though, and they still are. Thus, now is not a particularly convenient time to admit that the whole mess is mathematically guaranteed to fail as the baby boom generation attempts to retire. (Attempted retirement - now there's a crime for this new millennium!) No, the bad news on retirement will have to wait, for as long as they can distract us from thinking about it.

Meantime, in my crystal ball, a not-too-distant future appears - the phone rings and when it's answered a disinterested bureaucrat says: "So, Granny Smith - our computer model has reviewed your case and you're just not paying enough taxes to justify your continued existence. And then there's the matter of your carbon footprint. So, we're sorry, but no more dialysis for you..." (I could be way off base about such a phone call, as they may just send the message to her implanted chip. Saves on bureaucrats that way!)

Today's vocabulary word is "geriatricide"

No wonder they want us disarmed...