Via LOLfed, this interview with Obama, which I expect to see blazoned across the pages of the A list as they work through the, er, dimensions of it. Not.*

Man. I swear. I say I am going to go on vacation for once and the government chooses my first day out of the office to run out of money. Some select quotes from an interview President Obama gave C-SPAN [here -- lambert] (sourced from Drudge, but they look respectable enough to have not been taken out of context):

In a sobering holiday interview with C-SPAN, President Obama boldly [the use of the word "bold" is a sign Versailles is getting its way, and the people are being fucked] told Americans: “We are out of money.”

C-SPAN host Steve Scully broke from a meek Washington press corps with probing questions for the new president.

SCULLY: You know the numbers, $1.7 trillion debt, a national deficit of $11 trillion. At what point do we run out of money?

OBAMA: Well, we are out of money now. We are operating in deep deficits, not caused by any decisions we’ve made on health care so far. This is a consequence of the crisis that we’ve seen [photo at left] and in fact our failure to make some good decisions on health care over the last several decades.

The credit crunch and health care bankrupted us. Got that? Onto GM…

So, if we're "out of money" why aren't we taking immediate advantage of the savings that single payer would bring? Single payer has overhead of 3%. The health insurance companies take 30% in CEO compensation, profit, and the administrative expenses of denying people care. Going from 30% to 3% saves at least $350 billion a year. But Obama doesn't want to do that. The only conclusion possible is that for Obama, we're out of money for some people, but not for others. Can anybody think of a distinguishing factor?

SCULLY: When you see GM though as “Government Motors,” your reaction?

OBAMA: Well, you know – look we are trying to help an auto industry that is going through a combination of bad decision making over many years and an unprecedented crisis or at least a crisis we haven’t seen since the 1930’s. And you know the economy is going to bounce back and we want to get out of the business of helping auto companies as quickly as we can. I have got more enough to do without that. In the same way that I want to get out of the business of helping banks, but we have to make some strategic decisions about strategic industries…

On this point I’m in full agreement, though it would have been more fun if phrased “Bitch, please, I have ENOUGH to do without trying to sell you a Jeep.”

And finally, on whether or not he’ll be bailing out the Governator:

SCULLY: States like California in desperate financial situation, will you be forced to bail out the states?

OBAMA: No. I think that what you’re seeing in states is that anytime you got a severe recession like this, as I said before, their demands on services are higher. So, they are sending more money out. At the same time, they’re bringing less tax revenue in. And that’s a painful adjustment, [photo at left] what we’re going end up seeing is lot of states making very difficult choices [photo at left] there…

You mean… we have to choose whether to raise taxes or cut services? We all know which way that is going to go.

Indeed. Funny how the toughness of "tough decisions" is always rather unequally distributed, isn't it? Good thing we elected a Democrat, or we'd be totally without protection!

NOTE * Thank gawd for the econoblogs! Please, can we stop the yammering that Obama's a "progressive" because of his skin color, air of cool, and choice of music? Thank you. The primaries are over now, and we're seeing what Obama's governance looks like. Look! Over there! Liz Cheney!