The Onion's Gone Viral

Everything I hear in the (real, legit, mainstream) news lately makes me think of the Onion.

• Iran hosts a nuclear summit of their own when they're not invited to Obama's party.
• Putin takes control of the investigation of the plane crash that took out a chunk of the Polish government and the President of Poland, even though the first thing any reasonable person would suspect was that Putin's own people shot the plane down.
• Oklahomans want to put together a private militia to fend off encroachment by the Federal government.

This last one takes the cake. Picture the Oklahoma Regulars, armed to the teeth with semi-automatic deer rifles, in battle fatigues, eating Tactical Bacon and flying a 'Don't Tread On Me' flag.

Against this mighty force, the United States armed forces. Remember the Republican Guard? They had tanks and shit, they were a hundred times scarier than any band of Okies you're likely to sign up, and in the face of the 1st Cavalry, the Republican Guard was about as terrifying as gingivitis.

I'm not in fundamental disagreement with the Tea Party crowd on some things. We are overtaxed in America, and we have witnessed in the latter years of W.'s reign and the beginning of Obama's, the death of free market capitalism on any scale larger than a local family business.

Investment banks can borrow unlimited sums from Uncle Sam at 0% interest and invest it in Uncle Sam's debt by buying U.S. Govt. securities with the money. If you can borrow money at zero and get paid two or three percent, how much money do you want to borrow? All of it, right?

We've sold out, besides ourselves and our descendants, the people of Tibet and the victims of genocide in Darfur because we have to keep the Chinese content to buy ever increasing amounts of U.S. Government debt themselves, and make sure they continue to provide us with a steady supply of carcinogenic consumer goods.

Fractional reserves, fiat currency, the debt spiral, and that's before you get to the moral hazard of establishing the stupid idea that big, mismanaged companies can't be allowed to fail, the government owning car companies, etc.

The phrase 'circling the drain' about sums it up.

Compared to the Wall Street shenanigans, CDOS, the bail outs and the defacto nationalization of a big chunk of the auto industry, the health care 'overhaul' is a reasonable measure. Which isn't to say I'm in favor of it, but it at least sounds plausible until you remember that we're talking about the same organization that brought us Amtrak, the War on Drugs, $900 Toilet Seats, the Post Office, and, by the way, largely engineered the financial meltdown.