Cal: Movie Metaphors

Hello Family, friends and others (you know who you are). It's time for another installment of Cal's Crazy Movie Metaphors. In this episode we ask the reader to power up "Mr. Peobody's way-back" memory recollection machine. We travel back in time to the 1950's, yes those thrilling commie-baiting days of yesteryear. You are getting very sleepy (and I haven't even finished the first paragraph). You are remembering the terrific 1956 Don Siegle black and white sci-fi cult classic "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" starring the great Kevin McCarthy, the comely Dana Wynter, and that guy from The Bob Cummings Show who always called him "Bubby-boy". "Smile--I think you're gonna like this picture!"

Remember the premise? Regular caucasoid Americans are abducted as they fall asleep and are placed by previously snatched folks into large incubators which appear to be fabricated from spider webs, Venus Fly-Traps, and the world's most gigantic okra pods, complete with goo? Anyhoo...the sad sacks cook in there for a while and eventually morph into--well, themselves on Valium. Okay, I see a comparison coming on. I am Kevin McCarthy, the misunderstood, but nevertheless insane voice of truth, banging on car windows trying to warn people that "They're Here!! Don’t' you understand?!! They're here!!!" Then the movie ends and everyone presumably becomes and "okrapod" because they didn't listen to me, dammit! I mean Kevin.

Now, if you've read this far you must be aching for more or you really need to get a life. I shall assume the former to be true.

Most of us belong a generation that was "incubated" (am I stretching?) in a climate of government intervention and do-gooderism. Social security (broke), Medicare (broke), Medicaid, Food Stamps, Welfare, a progressive income tax system, and all manner of economic safety net provisions and benefits. According to my handy 2007 Federal Income Tax Booklet these expenditures account for 57% of the Federal budget, not including Federal Housing Assistance and credits such as subsidized home mortgage loans). National Defense, Veterans, and Foreign Affairs comprise 23% combined. That's 2007--before the mortgage and economic meltdown. From Social Security and Medicare alone America has an unfunded liability of $99,000,000,000,000. That's trillions! That's$133,000 for every person now living in this country! This doesn't even count the interest on the national debt. Tick, Tick, Tick.

Now back to the "way back" machine, but only for a second--back to September 2008. Americans have just lost $4.5 trillion in personal wealth from their home values and their retirement plans. Most of us felt that pain. We didn't riot. We took it one the chin. But we made a mental note to find out who and what caused this to happen. Didn't we? What did congress do to make amends? Spent $687,000,000,000 on TARP bailout funds and they bought GM and Chrysler.

Now, I ask the following given all that happened prior to President Obama's inauguration. Are these good ideas?

-spend another $1.2 trillion tax dollars to stimulate the economy
-pass a "Cap and Trade" plan that will cause massive increases in energy costs costing more trillions of bleed-out from the economy
-try to force feed the nation a $1.7 trillion government mandated health care plan that will forsake the 253,000,000 Americans with insurance coverage for 47,000,000 of whom only 12,000,000 are legal and want to pay for coverage, but can't afford it or qualify.
-totally ignore medical malpractice law and tort reform which results in huge awards and settlements, and that causes the massive overuse of testing by doctors in order to protect themselves from such lawsuits.

Friends, we are the pod people. We have drunk the cool-aid for 50 years. "We have met the enemy and they are us". Thanks Pogo. We pulled our heads out of the sand on September 12, 2001 for about 3 months and then we buried them again. We believed "Duck and Cover" would save our lives. We believed we would get 40,000 miles on a set of tires. We believed "We're from the government and we're here to help you."

We are saddling our children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren with perhaps hundreds of trillions of dollars of debt. That is just plain wrong. That is criminal.
We are preparing the pods for our descendants and if we allow this to happen then our generation will have squandered it's one chance to achieve greatness. Sleep calls--your Pod awaits.

Please plan to attend your local Tea Party. Your great-great grandchildren can't.
Cal.

PS: It wasn't Yogi Berra who said " You could look it up". My mistake. It was Casey Stengel. Yogi said "When you come to a fork in the road, take it". Words to live by.