The pig bomb
March 17, 2010
According to a special documentary on the Discovery Channel called “The Pig Bomb,” the United States is being overrun by giant, feral, crop-gobbling, life-threatening hogs.
It’s an irresistible metaphor for the current passel of politicians in Washington, D.C.
It’s funny how we get used to something dangerous when we spend a lot of time in its presence. Familiarity breeds contempt. I’ve been reading an autobiographical book by Michael Crichton called Travels wherein he describes directing a movie that required rattlesnakes. For the rattlesnake sequences, they had a “snake wrangler” bring a big basket of rattlers, and naturally the cast and crew started the day standing far, far away from the snakes being filmed. By the end of the day, however, Crichton and the crew were so disdainful of the rattlesnakes’ limited abilities that people would stand right next to them and carry on conversations, ignoring the snakes completely.
And yet, over a thousand people receive serious rattlesnake bites every year in the United States, some of them leading to death, others leading to amputation or other drastic consequences. So the damn things are apparently dangerous.
A similar thing happened to me in Atlanta, where I spent six months reading water meters. The meters were in pits under metal lids in front yards, and between the leaks and the condensation on the pipes it gets moist down in those pits. Moist, warm, and dark means perfect black widow spider habitat, and on my first day I was aghast at the number and size of the spiders meter readers confronted. I don’t like spiders—at all—and I was creeped out big-time. But lo and behold, six months later I barely noticed them as I reached down through their webs to clear leaves and stuff out of the way. Like Crichton’s rattlesnakes, black widows aren’t that swift and suffer from chronic shyness, and familiarity with their limited abilities breeds contempt.
And yet, lots of people get bit by the damn things and suffer immensely, including meter readers. Five or six times every day a spider would get confused when I lifted the lid and tore her web, and she would crawl toward my hand rather than away from my hand. I would simply say, “Hey, little momma, you’re going the wrong way,” and keep doing what I was doing. Pretty stupid when I look back on it.
Two or three times during that six months other meter readers had to quit their routes and go home after reaching into a black widow web that was full of babies. The babies are not wise enough to leave people alone so if you reach into a web full of babies they swarm over your hand and bite the crap out of you. They don’t have much venom, because they’re babies, but it upsets the meter readers greatly. I suspected the upset was psychological more than physical because suddenly they were reminded that black widows are nasty and dangerous, and by golly they spend the whole day reaching into the webs.
Nobody likes that kind of reminder. It leads to thoughts that are uncomfortable.
For decades, leftists have dominated the teaching profession where they indoctrinate our children with leftwing ideas, and dominated the mainstream newspapers and broadcasters where they slant the news stories, and dominated Hollywood where they make radical-left movies and TV shows to further indoctrinate our children, and somehow all that presence in our lives made us underestimate the danger.
Because of their limited abilities, familiarity with leftists bred contempt, and this reminder we are now getting of how nasty and dangerous they are is uncomfortable.
The most famous hog in Discovery Channel’s TV special was “Hogzilla,” who weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 pounds. If you look at Hogzilla’s picture, where he hangs by his hind feet next to the Georgia farmer who shot him, you can see how fierce and dangerous these critters are… but Hogzilla doesn’t hold a candle to the hogs we have in Washington when it comes to being dangerous. The hogs running things in Washington are communists, and they threaten our way of life, our standard of living, and the very existence of our republic.
President Obama loves to say that he inherited the federal deficits that are about to destroy the nation but, as with so many other things he says, he’s being viciously and callously dishonest. I created the following chart to show the deficits under Clinton, Bush, and Obama:
If you click on the image above you will notice that I use the increase in federal debt as a representation of the deficit. Government accountants will say that deficits and increases in federal debt are two different things but I’ve been a government accountant most of my life and I know the differences are short term—sooner or later, deficits require the issuance of debt to cover the shortfall.
As you can see, the deficit for the one actual year under Obama’s stewardship and the three CBO (Congressional Budget Office) deficit projections dwarf the deficits under Clinton and Bush. In four years, according to the CBO, Obama will accumulate 30% more additional debt than Bush accumulated in eight years.
It’s a good bet that Obama’s four years will add more to the national debt than the sixteen years of Bush and Clinton combined.
The last fiscal year under Bush, when the economy was hit by recession and financial collapse caused by the sub-prime mortgage mess, is the only year that comes close to any of the Obama years. You can hardly blame Bush for that mess since it was Democrat Party mortgage policies that created it—policies supported by Obama before and after he became a politician. That’s one example of what I mean by viciously and callously dishonest.
Bush was no model of fiscal prudence, as you can tell by comparing his deficits with Clinton’s, but keep in mind that Bush had 9/11, two wars, Hurricane Katrina, and the worst part of the financial crisis. In spite of all that, Bush-the-spender was a piker compared to Obama-the-spender, who seems to have no restraint at all.
Even now, with credit rating companies threatening to downgrade the rating of U.S. debt, and foreign nations like China scolding us and threatening to stop buying Treasury securities, Obama is running around in full campaign mode promising billions of dollars here, billions of dollars there, and billions more to anybody and everybody who will listen to him speechify.
(For those who think the stupidity theory is untenable, just two days ago our president gave one of his numerous campaign speeches promoting Democrat Party healthcare legislation and said the following:
Here’s the thing about the chart above: as horrible as the Obama deficits look, the reality will be worse because the reality is always worse than CBO projections. To understand why, you need to understand how the CBO works.
The CBO answers questions phrased by politicians and the CBO is explicitly limited to answering the questions asked. They cannot resort to the evils of common sense or utilize well-known facts which contradict the question as the politicians have phrased it. So if Harry Reid asks the CBO, “How much will this health insurance legislation cost if Medicare saves five hundred billion dollars on doctors’ fees?” then that’s the question the CBO has to answer, even though Harry Reid knows, and the CBO knows, and God knows that the politicians will never save five hundred billion dollars on doctors’ fees.
(The situation just described actually exists. In fact, Obama still quotes CBO cost estimates for healthcare legislation which include savings on doctors’ fees in Medicare, even though subsequent to the CBO’s estimate being made our congress—in early March—went ahead and gave the doctors their Medicare fee increases and therefore those savings will never exist in real life. Call that example number two of vicious and callous dishonesty.)
When compiling its Budget and Economic Outlook, used to make my chart, the CBO is not quite so constricted by how politicians phrase the question as when they are analyzing specific legislation but still they are not allowed to include everything they know. The January projections used in my chart do not include the effects of any future spending proposed by Obama and the Democrats or any bad repercussions the CBO might see coming from previous legislation. So any money you’ve heard Obama promise since January 1, and any effects of the healthcare legislation, and any effects of the cap ’n’ trade legislation they want to pass, and any money from TARP which has been paid back but now they want to spend on other things, and any liabilities that need to be covered because of the failure of Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac or AIG or General Motors… none of that is included.
To give you an inkling of how much worse reality will be, in January of 2009 the CBO predicted a fiscal 2009 deficit of $1.2 trillion—when the fiscal year ended nine months later the actual deficit was almost $1.9 trillion. They underestimated by almost 60%... because they had no idea how profligate and irresponsible the Democrat-controlled congress under a no-restraint-whatsoever president would actually be.
So much for the Obama excuse that this is all Bush’s fault, eh?
Take another look at those three red bars representing projected deficits under Obama. Now imagine them 60% higher. It’s frightening. What’s more, it’s impossible.
This level of deficit spending is not sustainable. There are not that many trillions of dollars waiting around in mattresses and buried in the world’s backyards to purchase the amount of U.S. Treasury securities the federal government will need to sell. There simply isn’t enough money out there. The only way this out-of-control spending can be maintained is either by printing dollar bills, which will lead to hyperinflation and complete financial collapse, or by raising tax rates to levels so draconian that we will all essentially be slaves to the government.
We’re talking about tax rates so high that our way of life and standard of living will be fundamentally altered.
That’s always where communism goes, doesn’t it? Oppression, slavery to the government, destitution?
Like meter readers with black widows and movie crews with rattlesnakes, Americans got used to living with a passel of nasty, dangerous, feral hogs and we grew complacent about the danger. Now the communists are attacking en masse. The pig bomb has exploded.
From Reno, Nevada, USA
It’s an irresistible metaphor for the current passel of politicians in Washington, D.C.
It’s funny how we get used to something dangerous when we spend a lot of time in its presence. Familiarity breeds contempt. I’ve been reading an autobiographical book by Michael Crichton called Travels wherein he describes directing a movie that required rattlesnakes. For the rattlesnake sequences, they had a “snake wrangler” bring a big basket of rattlers, and naturally the cast and crew started the day standing far, far away from the snakes being filmed. By the end of the day, however, Crichton and the crew were so disdainful of the rattlesnakes’ limited abilities that people would stand right next to them and carry on conversations, ignoring the snakes completely.
And yet, over a thousand people receive serious rattlesnake bites every year in the United States, some of them leading to death, others leading to amputation or other drastic consequences. So the damn things are apparently dangerous.
A similar thing happened to me in Atlanta, where I spent six months reading water meters. The meters were in pits under metal lids in front yards, and between the leaks and the condensation on the pipes it gets moist down in those pits. Moist, warm, and dark means perfect black widow spider habitat, and on my first day I was aghast at the number and size of the spiders meter readers confronted. I don’t like spiders—at all—and I was creeped out big-time. But lo and behold, six months later I barely noticed them as I reached down through their webs to clear leaves and stuff out of the way. Like Crichton’s rattlesnakes, black widows aren’t that swift and suffer from chronic shyness, and familiarity with their limited abilities breeds contempt.
And yet, lots of people get bit by the damn things and suffer immensely, including meter readers. Five or six times every day a spider would get confused when I lifted the lid and tore her web, and she would crawl toward my hand rather than away from my hand. I would simply say, “Hey, little momma, you’re going the wrong way,” and keep doing what I was doing. Pretty stupid when I look back on it.
Two or three times during that six months other meter readers had to quit their routes and go home after reaching into a black widow web that was full of babies. The babies are not wise enough to leave people alone so if you reach into a web full of babies they swarm over your hand and bite the crap out of you. They don’t have much venom, because they’re babies, but it upsets the meter readers greatly. I suspected the upset was psychological more than physical because suddenly they were reminded that black widows are nasty and dangerous, and by golly they spend the whole day reaching into the webs.
Nobody likes that kind of reminder. It leads to thoughts that are uncomfortable.
For decades, leftists have dominated the teaching profession where they indoctrinate our children with leftwing ideas, and dominated the mainstream newspapers and broadcasters where they slant the news stories, and dominated Hollywood where they make radical-left movies and TV shows to further indoctrinate our children, and somehow all that presence in our lives made us underestimate the danger.
Because of their limited abilities, familiarity with leftists bred contempt, and this reminder we are now getting of how nasty and dangerous they are is uncomfortable.
The most famous hog in Discovery Channel’s TV special was “Hogzilla,” who weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 pounds. If you look at Hogzilla’s picture, where he hangs by his hind feet next to the Georgia farmer who shot him, you can see how fierce and dangerous these critters are… but Hogzilla doesn’t hold a candle to the hogs we have in Washington when it comes to being dangerous. The hogs running things in Washington are communists, and they threaten our way of life, our standard of living, and the very existence of our republic.
President Obama loves to say that he inherited the federal deficits that are about to destroy the nation but, as with so many other things he says, he’s being viciously and callously dishonest. I created the following chart to show the deficits under Clinton, Bush, and Obama:
If you click on the image above you will notice that I use the increase in federal debt as a representation of the deficit. Government accountants will say that deficits and increases in federal debt are two different things but I’ve been a government accountant most of my life and I know the differences are short term—sooner or later, deficits require the issuance of debt to cover the shortfall.
As you can see, the deficit for the one actual year under Obama’s stewardship and the three CBO (Congressional Budget Office) deficit projections dwarf the deficits under Clinton and Bush. In four years, according to the CBO, Obama will accumulate 30% more additional debt than Bush accumulated in eight years.
It’s a good bet that Obama’s four years will add more to the national debt than the sixteen years of Bush and Clinton combined.
The last fiscal year under Bush, when the economy was hit by recession and financial collapse caused by the sub-prime mortgage mess, is the only year that comes close to any of the Obama years. You can hardly blame Bush for that mess since it was Democrat Party mortgage policies that created it—policies supported by Obama before and after he became a politician. That’s one example of what I mean by viciously and callously dishonest.
Bush was no model of fiscal prudence, as you can tell by comparing his deficits with Clinton’s, but keep in mind that Bush had 9/11, two wars, Hurricane Katrina, and the worst part of the financial crisis. In spite of all that, Bush-the-spender was a piker compared to Obama-the-spender, who seems to have no restraint at all.
Even now, with credit rating companies threatening to downgrade the rating of U.S. debt, and foreign nations like China scolding us and threatening to stop buying Treasury securities, Obama is running around in full campaign mode promising billions of dollars here, billions of dollars there, and billions more to anybody and everybody who will listen to him speechify.
Extend unemployment benefits! Pass another jobs bill! Spend more money on windmills! National biometric ID cards sounds like a nifty idea! Las Vegas, to show how sorry I am, I’m going to fund a whole new federal tourist agency to bring foreigners here! And let’s buy more land for the federal government! Hey Michelle, feel like another date in New York?I waver constantly between the opinion that Barack Obama is deeply stupid, completely incapable of understanding numbers, and the opinion that he is intentionally driving the nation to ruination. I’m sorry if that seems offensive but there is no other way to explain what he’s doing. Even economists on the liberal side of the political spectrum are warning that it will be impossible to service, let alone sell, the amount of debt Obama is building into his budget proposals.
(For those who think the stupidity theory is untenable, just two days ago our president gave one of his numerous campaign speeches promoting Democrat Party healthcare legislation and said the following:
“How many people are getting insurance through their jobs right now? Raise your hands. All right. Well, a lot of those folks, your employer it’s estimated would see premiums fall by as much as 3,000 percent, which means they could give you a raise.”3,000 percent? If a decrease of 100 percent brings the amount to zero, what does a 3,000 percent decrease mean? Hate me all you want and accuse me of being disrespectful but saying premiums will fall 3,000 percent is stupid. It’s worse than saying 10,000 people died in a Kansas tornado or not knowing how many states there are.)
Here’s the thing about the chart above: as horrible as the Obama deficits look, the reality will be worse because the reality is always worse than CBO projections. To understand why, you need to understand how the CBO works.
The CBO answers questions phrased by politicians and the CBO is explicitly limited to answering the questions asked. They cannot resort to the evils of common sense or utilize well-known facts which contradict the question as the politicians have phrased it. So if Harry Reid asks the CBO, “How much will this health insurance legislation cost if Medicare saves five hundred billion dollars on doctors’ fees?” then that’s the question the CBO has to answer, even though Harry Reid knows, and the CBO knows, and God knows that the politicians will never save five hundred billion dollars on doctors’ fees.
(The situation just described actually exists. In fact, Obama still quotes CBO cost estimates for healthcare legislation which include savings on doctors’ fees in Medicare, even though subsequent to the CBO’s estimate being made our congress—in early March—went ahead and gave the doctors their Medicare fee increases and therefore those savings will never exist in real life. Call that example number two of vicious and callous dishonesty.)
When compiling its Budget and Economic Outlook, used to make my chart, the CBO is not quite so constricted by how politicians phrase the question as when they are analyzing specific legislation but still they are not allowed to include everything they know. The January projections used in my chart do not include the effects of any future spending proposed by Obama and the Democrats or any bad repercussions the CBO might see coming from previous legislation. So any money you’ve heard Obama promise since January 1, and any effects of the healthcare legislation, and any effects of the cap ’n’ trade legislation they want to pass, and any money from TARP which has been paid back but now they want to spend on other things, and any liabilities that need to be covered because of the failure of Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac or AIG or General Motors… none of that is included.
To give you an inkling of how much worse reality will be, in January of 2009 the CBO predicted a fiscal 2009 deficit of $1.2 trillion—when the fiscal year ended nine months later the actual deficit was almost $1.9 trillion. They underestimated by almost 60%... because they had no idea how profligate and irresponsible the Democrat-controlled congress under a no-restraint-whatsoever president would actually be.
So much for the Obama excuse that this is all Bush’s fault, eh?
Take another look at those three red bars representing projected deficits under Obama. Now imagine them 60% higher. It’s frightening. What’s more, it’s impossible.
This level of deficit spending is not sustainable. There are not that many trillions of dollars waiting around in mattresses and buried in the world’s backyards to purchase the amount of U.S. Treasury securities the federal government will need to sell. There simply isn’t enough money out there. The only way this out-of-control spending can be maintained is either by printing dollar bills, which will lead to hyperinflation and complete financial collapse, or by raising tax rates to levels so draconian that we will all essentially be slaves to the government.
We’re talking about tax rates so high that our way of life and standard of living will be fundamentally altered.
That’s always where communism goes, doesn’t it? Oppression, slavery to the government, destitution?
Like meter readers with black widows and movie crews with rattlesnakes, Americans got used to living with a passel of nasty, dangerous, feral hogs and we grew complacent about the danger. Now the communists are attacking en masse. The pig bomb has exploded.
From Reno, Nevada, USA
March 18, 2010 - Unsustainable is right! I would like to pass my hat around in an effort to raise enough money to buy these mathematically challenged, moronic, congress people a calculator a piece! Are they crazy?? I have noticed in the past 30 days that the staples at my local discount no frills grocery store (where are all the poor people shop including me)have increased 20%-30%! Imagine if that happens every month. 20% times 12 months equals a price increases of 240% in just one year! In plain English, I now pay $2.40 per gallon for milk over $1.99 last month. In one year if this keeps up I will be paying $9.50 for the same gallon of milk. Why am I the only one who sees a problem here? Do I own the only working calculator in the country? This is what happens when the dollar loses value due to "OVER PRINTING"! So in other words my usual $200 monthly grocery budget now only buys me $160 worth of groceries over last month. What did I have to give up? The food that I usually send to my adopted Soldier in Iraq. Instead of sending enough coffee, cream, sugar and cookies for the whole Garrison (30 soldiers) I can only afford to send coffee etc for the one soldier now. I already went on the "Soldier's Angel" diet 3 years ago. What is that you ask? That's the diet you go on when you feel guilty for eating lovely beautiful feel good food while your adopted soldier in Iraq eats SAND! Instead of eating decadent, lovely, sinful food like cookies, soda, cakes, juice, chocolate etc I send all of that to my adopted Soldiers! Of course I lost weight!.. It really works!
But now due to the declining dollar my charity has to be scaled back so that the government can pretend to be doing something good when in reality they are crippling us more and more every day. You know what they say in the Dungeon?!
Once the slaves are dependant upon you for their daily bread they will never ever cross you!... Same thing goes for the government enslaving the common man. I am not interested in becoming a slave for anyone least of all officials that the dreamers of this country voted into office to serve and protect us! 2+2= 4 NOT 1!!!! Wake up people. This President and Congress couldn't care less about you. As a German Born (army base) individual I can tell you that we are on dangerous course. The citizens of socialist countries do not have it that good. Just ask them! - Domme Yankee, Connecticut
J.P. replies: There’s another reason your food prices are rising, DY, but it won’t make you any happier. The San Joaquin Valley in California is probably the most fertile farming area in the world and last year liberals in the environmental movement succeeded in turning this area, which formerly supplied about 25% of the nation's food, into a desert in an effort to give more water to a little fish called the Delta Smelt. But hey, on a positive note, in a bribe to get two more healthcare votes Obama just opened the spigots to the irrigation canals and gave them some water. Not much, but at least they can wash the dust off a couple tractors.
