The federal debt as of today is a bit over $11.2 trillion.  That’s $11,200,000,000,000.  The 2009 federal budget is $3.6 trillion and includes $1.8 trillion of new debt.  The 2008 budget was $3 trillion.  In 1976 the budget was $300 billion.

 Over the past three decades the federal budget has grown 10 times or 1,000%.  This year alone the budget is growing by 20%.  Compounding itself the federal budget is likely a decade from now to be about $22.3 trillion.

 The U.S. GDP (gross domestic product) for 2008 was projected, pre-recession, to be $14.26 trillion. In 2009 GDP will decline, and is almost surely to repeat the decline in 2010 and 2011.  Meanwhile the federal budget will be growing geometrically, aiming at exceeding total GDP.

 The pattern of federal governance over the last century has been that:

• First, progressives / liberal fascists / socialists / Democrats / (new-definition) liberals expand the government and its budget hugely.
• Then, conservatives / Republicans / (old-definition pre-FDR) liberals “roll back the excesses” by reducing the growth of the government and the growth in its budget.
• Next, progressives / liberal fascists / socialists / Democrats / (new-definition) liberals expand the government and its budget hugely.
• After that, conservatives / Republicans / (old-definition pre FDR) liberals “roll back the excesses” by reducing the growth of the government and the growth in its budget.

 And on and on.  There is no example of a congress or executive branch ever attempting to actually reduce the size of government or reduce the budget.  Not once.  When “budget cuts” were talked about – touted by Republicans, impugned by Democrats – each was demagogueing.  They all snuck in an annual presumption of 8% growth in each line item, then if Republicans proposed, say, and increase of only 5%, the charges of starving children started.

 "The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened."  (Norman Thomas (1938), six-time Socialist Party of America candidate for president)

 If right now, the federal government tried to pay off the nation’s debt, it would have to get all of the tax revenues, not incur the $1.8 trillion of new debt, then spend not one dime.  It would have to fire the millions of employees, cease social security and Medicare and Medicaid, disband the military, have congress and the executive branch work for free and with no perks and bennies; this for a  . . . decade.  No, not true.  Given the interest on the debt already there, paying off actual principal would take generations; and all with the government shut down.  Talk about no free lunch?

 For you business folks out there, you know about debt-to-equity ratios; when you want to raise them and when you want them low, really low.  In the U.S. of 2009 – in the midst of a recession – debt is 41% of the economy.  In 2010 – in the continuing midst of a recession – debt will be 62% of the economy.

 I’m told ad nauseum that there’s a pendulum.  We swing right, we swing left, etc.  So, it all balances out over time.  Sorry, that’s a lie.  What happens is that we swing way left, then swing just a little left from there, then swing way left again, then swing just a little left from there, etc.  What happens is that that liberals floor the accelerator, followed by conservatives coasting or braking a bit, etc, etc.  There’s no turn signal.  There’s no u-turn.  The gear shift has 2^nd and drive, but no reverse.

 If in 2008, the country had elected John McCain and Republican majorities in both house and senate, right now America would be on life support.  We’d have voted, I think, for coasting, no brake, even a touch of gas.  However, the country voted for “hope and change”, and America is not on life support.  America is on a train, and the congress and White House are driving that train full-speed, stoking the boiler, heading left -- Saul Alinsky-radical left -- faster and to beyond what FDR ever dreamed possible left, and he admired and was a fan of Joseph Stalin.

 Is there a light at the end of the tunnel for us conservatives, Constitutionalists, even libertarians?  Yes, and it is that train, and the train has an engineer (union) named Obama (reading a teleprompter), and boiler operators (Reid, Pelosi, Durbin, Dodd, Frank, Schumer, Waters and Waxman, et al) but the train has no brakeman (is collecting unemployment compensation . . . extended).

 Hold on there, drpete, you say, the private sector isn’t gonna just roll over and play dead.  Businesses aren’t gonna cozy up with these liberal fascists willingly. They’ll be screaming from the rooftops.  I say I disagree.

 "When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.  When the government fears the people, there is Liberty!"  (Thomas Jefferson)

 Business “leaders” can see clearly right now who the alpha dog is.  And they can see clearly that the “rule of law” has been replaced by the rule of a tyranical oligarchy.  And they can see clearly that “card check” will change the playbook markedly.  And they can see that the oligarchy may well take the "healthcare" burden off their hands.  The oligarchy is choosing winners and losers, and ceo’s are street smart enough to side with the tyrants.

Wanna know where the train is headed?  Study the history of 20^th-century Argentina.  It’s your future.  Game, set, match.  Exit stage left.