BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE

I thought the "Obama House" binge deficit-frat-party would only last the weekend, and we could start cleaning up Monday and get back to work, but it's Wednesday, the party has only gotten bigger, and the neighbors just called the police.

Bluto.
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Obama and the frat-house Dems say the neighbors are fascists anyway, extremists, conservatives, all of them. Party on!

Benny "Big Times" Bernake, the banker, is stumbling around with an empty bottle of QE2 in his hand, singing "Louie-Louie" at the top of his lungs, while Barry Obama, chief party planner, is already working on the next party in 2012. Who knew Benny was such an awesome party guy?

Benny Big Times, Wearing Party Wig

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But even though the government's got debt sloshing down its snorkel right now, we're all better off, ain't we? Got more money now, right? With all that stimulus money giving us fiscal goose-bumps?

Well, no, actually. Not at all. Not even close.

Since the Great Campaigner has already begun his 2012 election march, let us ask the question "are we better off now than before President Obama got into office?"

Here is "Hope and Change," by the numbers, 2008-2011 (an article in NRO supplied the figures):

gasoline - $1.83 per gallon to almost $4
oil - $41 per barrel to over $90
gold - $853 per ounce to $1,500
corn - $3.56 per bushel to $6.33
sugar - $13.37 per pound to $35.39
median household income - declined by $300, to under $50,000
food-stamp recipients - 32 million to 43 million
people officially in poverty - up 10 percent (to 44 million)
long-term unemployed - up from 2.6 million to 6.4 million.

News flash: 6.5% unemployment in October, 2008; 8.9% unemployment, March of 2011. Obama promised it would plummet to 8% in 2010, after it spiked up to over 10% in 2009. Yup. Down to 8% in 2010. Promised.

Wrong.

Total U.S. debt in 2008 was $10 trillion. Total U.S. debt in March, 2011 was over $14 trillion. Badda-bing.

U.S. debt as a percentage of gross national product? It's gone from less than 70% to over 100% in 2.5 years. Here's a neat "hockey stick" picture:

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Annual government deficits have tripled since 2008. Here's a picture comparing Bush II and Obama deficits:

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Printing cheap dollars with low-interest debt to "stimulate" the economy has blown up commodities. More money is chasing the same amount of commodities. So the price of commodities in dollars goes way up. That's inflation.

The Fed and the Treasury have done this because it avoids deflation. Deflation has you dealing with your fiscal problems right now, like rehab. Deflation gets Presidents "de-elected." People feel terrible when they are drying out. Cranky. And we can't have that.

We've used cheap money to solve our economic woes for 2 decades. We've just pushed one bubble forward into another, bigger one. Clinton and Alan Greenspan did it to get out of one bubble (savings and loan) and into the dot.com bubble. Bush II did it - dot.com bubble to sub-prime bubble. Right now Obama and Bernake are pushing the bubble from the sub-prime collapse straight into a bigger one: government debt.

Once the government debt bubble bursts we are at the end of the bubble pushing party. No one will take our funny money anymore. We'll have to figure out some other way to be irresponsible.

Economics is frustrating. How about all those foreign policy successes? Yeah, buddy:

Afghanistan? We are in a stand-still there.
Iraq? We won, as Bush insisted we would, and just as Obama predicted we could not.
Egypt? First do one thing, then another. Then do the first thing.
Libya? Please can't somebody else handle this.
Syria? Let Hassad gun down funeral mourners.
Israel? Go ballistic when they build some houses.
Iran? Remain comatose while Prime Minister Aminadab'lldooya, supporter of all Anti-American terrorism everywhere, builds a nuclear bomb.
China? Apologize for how nutty Arizona is. Ignore Chinese gulags. Keep borrowing their money.
Palestine? Pretend the corrupt government is not composed of terrorists.

There was the Monroe Doctrine, then the Bush Doctrine. Now, the Obama Doctrine:

"If We Drive Slow Enough No One Will Notice We Are High."

You know what? Never mind foreign policy. That's frustrating, too.

How about campaign music? What is the Obama 2012 theme song going to be?

It's easy: "Burning Down The House," by the Talking Heads. (Click the link to watch.)

Watch out you might get what you're after. . .
Hold tight wait till the party's over.
Hold tight we're in for nasty weather.
There has got to be a way.
BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE.

Obama II Campaign Haiku:

Hope and change blossomed
in the sunshine of your smile -
now only ashes.