Playing On People's Fears

It has been nice for about ten days to just sit back and watch what is going on and not have to stroke the keyboard. I was out in Ft. Worth spending time with my son as he prepared to walk across the stage at UT at Arlington to receive his degree in geology and it was time well spent. I met with Wayne Brown and his lovely wife for dinner a week ago today at the 5 star restaurant my son has managed the last four years as he pursued his education. I have endeavored to teach him that there is no free lunch and I think he gets it now. I can attest to the fact that Wayne is a real person with a very sharp intellect. We had a crowd of young people around us that evening and they got some pearls of wisdom for now and the future. Of that I am certain.

So I've been quietly watching as events unfolded during this period. I witnessed Obama doing a bit of a flip flop on drilling our own domestic oil rather than sending megabucks abroad. He seems to have sensed the public pulse on the issue which I find unusual, but not too much so. He created the Big Oil boogie man, the Speculator boogie man and a few others to try to deflect blame but the majority of us weren't buying it. Maybe the American people are indeed starting to wake up to the Snake Oil Salesman-In-Chief. It's always easier to play on people's fears rather than really attempt to solve a problem. If you buy into that then you may just be the sucker they are attempting to draw in. Drill -Baby - Drill and not in Brazil. I ain't afraid of no boogie man Obama.

Then low and behold here comes the revelation that both Social Security and Medicare, at their present levels, aren't as sustainable as our politicians would like us to believe. The social security "trustees" (boy that is an oxymoron) issued their annual report that very simply states that the system is now running on a permanent cash negative basis. What does that mean? It means that there aren't enough revenues coming into the system to cover the continued outlays. So in 2036 it will have exhausted itself. Of course, we always have next years report to gleefully look forward to.

What we are witnessing is what we will always witness as a Ponzi scheme goes south. That's a fact by the way. Eventually there aren't enough people at the bottom to feed the people at the top. Just take that pyramid and turn it upside down and you'll get the picture. When Lyndon Johnson turned a retirement trust fund over to the general revenue fund to finance Viet Nam and his "Great Society" it was the beginning of the end. The federal government can't be everything to everybody and it shouldn't be. But I'll be damned if it didn't try to be and Obama wants to play on people's fears that it should be.

Medicare fared not much better. That system is expected to run out of money by 2024, not 2029 as reported last year. Again it is the case of the upside down pyramid at work. Too few at the bottom to feed those at the top. Then I read a report that Harry Reid, the same Harry who contends that social security is solvent and he won't consider changing it until he is 90, blasting away at the other side of the aisle about reforming what is obviously broken. Some radical changes now have to be made my fellow Americans - changes that involve pain so prepare yourselves. The federal government can't be everything to everybody as much as they would like it to appear so. Our founding fathers didn't exactly see it that way either if one bothers to read the US Constitution and associated history.

Then I reflect on Obama going on the stump to his favorite of places where minds are more susceptible than those of us who aren't naive enough to know better - college campuses. He is a master at fear mongering this one. He wants to contend to college students that as long as it is his watch, he will preserve something for them that will be broke long before they ever get there. You see, those young people are the ones at the bottom of the pyramid food chain. They are the future "wealthy" of th nation. But they aren't being told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Even his own people - Geithner and Sibelius - are a couple of the very "trustees" who just signed off on the death knell of the two Ponzi schemes. But Obama knows better huh?

Then Obama trots off to El Paso to play the immigration, or lack of adequate enforcement, card while I'm in Texas. Naturally, any such talk has to occur in a border town where just across the border guns are blazing. It made me wonder just how aware Obama is that granting amnesty to these law breaking leeches is a wildly unpopular issue. Even when he had both houses of Congress and the Whine House, nothing was flying in that direction. But then again, this is all about his reelection hopes and very little to do with the will of the people as we have seen since he took office. He is the one who wants to "fundamentally change" our nation whether we like it or not. It's always nice to make grandiose statements without properly defining them. Last time GWB tried to make an attempt at this issue the switch boards in Foggy Bottom got shut down by the outrage of the majority so don't expect anything different this time Obama.

As all that unfolded, I watched the game of political chicken and fear mongering going on concerning raising the debt ceiling - the sky is falling, the sky is falling... Well, they whistled right past the magic number and the carriage didn't turn into a pumpkin pulled by a team of mice. But we are still running on empty now, aren't we?

The bond market reacted well to the looming disaster yesterday as investors around the world gobbled up T bonds at a discount and drove up interest rates that the American tax payer will also now have to absorb. The federal government absorbs nothing mind you. So I guess maybe we'll see another Speculator boogie man appear over the horizon.

So the saga continues. We'll see more boogie men, you can take that to the bank. This is all about politics and some idiot(s) trying to get reelected. Maybe you need to face that reality. This isn't about you, nor is it about me or countless other millions upon millions of tax paying citizens of this nation. The game is all about them and their continued existence of warming seats in Washington DC -.at our expense let me add. If you're okay with that then seek help immediately if not sooner. But it is always easy to prey upon people's fears as they endeavor to survive the acts of the truly greedy - politicians. It's always so easy to spend other people's money now, isn't it?

But the bottom line is that we're still running on empty and have been for quite some time. Just try to at least attempt to see through the political smoke screen. When you finally do, it sure isn't a pretty sight.

Have a nice day!

As always,

The Frog Prince