He talked about the substantial increase in customer traffic he’s seeing on his lots as a result of the Cash For Clunkers program, in which the government takes $4,500 of taxpayer money to help fund the purchase of a new car by someone who trades in an old one that gets lousy mileage. Knowing a handout disguised as a stimulus program when they see one, savvy Americans burned through the billion dollars allocated to the program in 4 days, not the 4 months the government anticipated.

Further justification (as if more was needed) for a total lack of faith in government projections and economic reports.

Our elected officials, quick to spot a winner when they saw one (it’s always past tense with them), are feverishly trying to take another 2 billion smackers out of the taxpayer’s pockets, those being yours and mine, and subsidize additional car purchases by wily fellow citizens. One of the morsels Jackson revealed was that the credit worthiness of the people taking advantage of the Clunkers program was, as a whole, better than the average customer his company’s used to seeing.

Why exactly am I helping to buy new cars for people with good credit? For that matter, why would I want to help buy new cars for people with tainted credit? I make car payments every month, and I certainly wish they were smaller. So why does the program benefit those whose needs conveniently fit into the time frame the government decreed? How about a 10-15% reduction in MY car payments?

Better yet, how about using that money to re-train auto workers to do something in an industry that won’t need constant support for the next couple of decades? The auto industry is like a drunkard at 1AM on a Sunday morning with his left arm draped over one pal’s shoulder and his right arm over another’s, being helped out of the Bailout Bar and Grill yet again and safely tucked into a cab. One that was made in Japan.

Please don’t mistake the above for a lack of willingness to do a good turn for others. I’m quite happy, for example, to see the government using taxpayer dollars to buy enough swine flu virus to immunize us all, regardless of each citizen’s ability to pay.

Now that’s universal health care.

                          

A divorce followed by a re-marriage may be preferable to the cacophonous, never ending, and unprecedented bickering this polarized union’s going through. What I’m hearing isn’t spirited debate, it’s poorly disguised hate speech.

I get daily news feeds from both Newsmax (an up and coming right wing rag whose only redeeming quality is that Ben Stein writes a monthly column for them) and Air America (the left wing policy wonk platform with fewer listeners than employees). The vitriol within their headlines and content point to a national marriage that would be dissolved in a New York minute due to irreconcilable differences.

Examples, first from Newsmax:

Obama Nomination Papers are Perjurious, Gingrich: Obama’s Attack on Medical Civil Liberties, Rove Calls Biden Liar, Obama Wrongly Called Our Nation Arrogant, Castros Want to Help Obama, Obama Lies To Gun Owners As Holder Reveals Gun Attack Plan, The fight to save our county from Obama starts in Here and Now, Rush Tells NY to Drop Dead, Obama Readies Plans for Social Chaos, and the topper: O.B.A.M.A. One Big — Mistake America

And from Air America:

Al Qaeda and Taliban Hosted by US Companies, Hundreds More $140 Million Obsolete Jets Ordered, Marc Maron to Glenn Beck: You Are a Fascist Clown, Here’s How To Call for Rove’s Arrest, and this slice of through the looking glass journalism: Fox News today announced that it will adopt a Malawi child to show the world how cool news organizations “do it,” the company said in a press release. “The idea,” Fox News Channel President Roger Ailes said, “is that we can be as cool and newsworthy as Madonna.”

Ratings over rationality, popularity over productive discourse. Punditry over people and the quality of their lives. If this continues, let alone escalates, we’re up the proverbial creek.

But wait; checking my inbox this morning, I find, miracle of miracles, a glimmer of hope, as Newsmax, counter to its usual tendencies, declares:

Al Franken, New York Race Proves GOP Is in Danger

                          

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LOS ANGELES: Batman blockbuster The Dark Knight won’t be screened in Chinese cinemas.

Warner Bros studios said in a statement yesterday that the acclaimed film — the second-highest-grossing movie in US box-office history — would be canned in China, with “cultural sensitivities” cited as one of the reasons for the no-show.

“Based on a number of pre-release conditions that are being attached to The Dark Knight, as well as cultural sensitivities to some elements of the film, we have opted to forgo a theatrical release of the film in China,” the statement said.

Explanations being bantered about include a character who’s a Chinese money launderer, and the presence of the late Heath Ledger, whose “Brokeback Mountain” was banned in China as well.

Both of those reasons are small minded diversions, and they’re wrong.

“The Dark Knight” portrays a society in chaos, disorder in the streets, and a lack of central authority that can restore whatever passed for normalcy.   With China’s economy experiencing a downturn as a result of the global swan dive, Chinese unemployment is rising, and workers who migrated to the cities are unhappily returning to their old peasant-farmer lives.

The keepers of the poorly named People’s Republic are concerned with the effect that the on screen chaos of “The Dark Knight” would have on a populace who have been kept in check over the past decade by the Chinese boom and the subsequent rise of the middle class along with the general standard of living.

There are already rumblings of social unrest; Party leaders fear that Eastern fascination and emulation of Western culture may include copycat riots.  They err on the side of caution.  I think we call it censorship here.

Readers of these pages know that “Batman: The Dark Knight” disgusted me, but one of the things I have to be thankful for this holiday season is that movies I’m disgusted by still have the right to do huge box office in this otherwise fraying nation.

                          

Nonfarm payrolls plunged a larger-than-expected 533,000 in November, the U.S. Labor Department said Friday. The unemployment rate, which is calculated using a separate survey of households, rose 0.2 percentage point to 6.7%, the highest since October 1993.

Plus, this number doesn’t include people who have thrown in the towel and aren’t looking for work anymore.

Big bad domino effect coming.

Public services deteriorate, nation goes deeper into debt, potential civil unrest, and bailout of auto industry becomes imperative. Even if the bailout is a band-aid that falls off in a couple of weeks without healing an ugly scab. Even if the bailout is fiscally irresponsible when assessed by the gods of pure capitalism, which is Darwinism with money.

But why not give the auto companies a shot? Hank “Sleight of Hand” Paulson distributed hundreds of billions to former and future Wall Street colleagues, telling the American public the funds were to be used to clear the credit arteries. Then he gave a wink and a nod to the banks as they used the funds to shore up their own balance sheets and acquire other assets. All the while the patients the dollars were ostensibly intended for went into code red.

In the face of that, what’s a lousy 40 billion dollar wager with less than stellar odds to save a few million jobs?

A necessary gamble.

                          

1. The addicts, better known as consumers, who took on debt they either knew they couldn’t carry or were conned into thinking they could, whether it was mortgage debt, consumer/credit card debt, auto loans, or whatever other variations on these themes that were dangled in front of them, and

2. The enablers and dealers, from the real estate agents, to the mortgage brokers, to the car salesmen, to the banks sending out one credit card offer after another all featuring usurious interest rates in fine print. And then there are the big fish, the dealers the likes of which the DEA craves, but the SEC lets slide, the majordomos in the boardroom and backrooms of the now deceased or reorganized investment banks who passed off cubic zirconium as diamonds to greedy fools willing to buy shiny stuff without looking beneath the surface.

What kills me is that the folks in the middle, those who didn’t take on obligations they couldn’t handle, and who pay their bills on time and in full, end up not only paying their own way, but that of the above bad actors as well.

That hurts; that really hurts. While I understand that reimbursement may come, if it comes at all, only after the situation stabilizes, it’s going to make paying taxes feel that much more onerous, because not only are the responsible types paying their own fair share, they’re covering the bad bets made by rich and poor alike.

Decent folks are being treated like gullible dolts. Shame on all of us, the perps for their, well, shamelessness, and the innocent victims who accept a burden they didn’t hoist upon themselves while maintaining an obedient bordering on docile posture.

There is substantial cause for good people to remain anything but silent.

                          

Examples:

1.  Failure is the price that’s paid by a poorly run company in a free market capitalist system, but these companies and the companies they support are too big to fail. Additionally, millions more will be added to the unemployment lines and a national deficit that already knows no bounds will reach an even greater level of obesity.

2.  Politically, we’re in a void for another couple of months, as all unpleasant, divisive, and crucial decisions (except, of course, bailing out the beloved banking and insurance industries) are put off until Barack’s hand leaves the Bible on inauguration day

The above thinking is all well and good, but the elephant in the room (or donkey, if you like), that isn’t being mentioned, is the high probability of severe civil unrest in Detroit should the car-makers be allowed to collapse under the weight of their own bad decisions.

This may well be followed by the newly unemployed taking to the streets without the structure and salaries that keeps much of the middle class’ discontent at bay. They will no doubt be joined by others who have been left impoverished by having lost jobs in other sectors of the economy, and still others who haven’t yet experienced being in the workforce, and have nothing better to do than embrace the mob mentality and contribute their fair share to the mayhem.

There will be white men, and there will be black men, united by impotent frustration and desperation. No doubt there will be an effort made to pin this unrest, should it come to pass, on an administration not yet in office, although their only sin may well be luckless timing.

This piece is not meant to incite, and it require hubris beyond that which even I possess to think that this lone observer can provoke anything more than a food fight at a birthday party.

It’s meant as a giant heads up, but again, I don’t think I’m the only one seeing this possibility. I think we’ll hear more about it in the days to come, once the ostriches get tired of eating sand.

Hopefully it ends here, in the speculative stage. Otherwise, from what I’ve read and seen, it’s going to make the riots of ‘67 look like a fine and proper tea party.

                          

Even though, as I write, it’s down 6% on the day, Smith and Wesson stock is up around 70% from its closing low of $1.58 on October 28th.

Originally it was widely thought that the stock price was going up as folks ran out and stocked up on hand guns and ammo in anticipation of new gun control legislation driven by a Democratic D. C.   There’s clearly some credence to that.

However, bigger picture, I think the rise in the stock price can be attributed to law enforcement buying higher margin rifles to deal with the coming lawlessness, bordering on anarchy. The contents of the Wall Street Journal and the NY Times are frightening, on a daily basis. Bankruptcies, both corporate and personal, abound. And then come the inevitable results: layoffs and more layoffs, especially in retail, which is where the unemployed normally go for a couple of months of part time wages during the holiday season.

People who are at the end of their ropes economically may cross a line they’d never have considered when they were employed homeowners. Illegal but employed aliens already don’t give much of a damn about our laws. Wait until they’re illegal, unemployed aliens.

All this, while Mad Vlad Putin is sounding over-the-top bellicose, and furious that the dropping price of oil is interfering with his plans for Russian re-armament. So the printing presses at Treasury have to keep pumping out Monopoly money to be used for both national defense and internal order.

I’m reading one of the best books ever written on the great depression, “The Forgotten Man”, by Amity Shlaes.  Any tome recommended by both Arthur Levitt and George Will is probably onto something. The similarities between then and now are chilling.  The book reinforces my admittedly dark outlook.

Chicken Little, or the Amazing Kreskin?  You decide.

Let’s hope the former, while preparing for the latter.

                          

He’s already got Buffet and Volcker, Rubin and Reich. That’s most of the economy, stupid.

The mark of a society that survives is its ability to discern, and willingness to listen to, the best and brightest within its ranks.

This election, is, more than anything else, a referendum on us. On whether our society survives and prospers, or continues the wretched decline that began on January 20, 2001.

America’s going to look in the mirror on November 5th, and see whether we’re a frightened people clinging to a limited view of the past, or a courageous bunch willing to take on the unknown.

Romans watching Rome burn, or the Founding Fathers. You decide.