Present were swatches from every race, creed, color, age, and political and socio-economic background.  Conspicuously absent were members of the mainstream media who seem determined to continue treading a poison ivy laden path towards irrelevance.

“I don’t care what the tabloids and the Wall Street Journal say,” said a weeping Illinois. “I still love you, Cali!”

The 640-mile long funeral parade route was lined with flowers, candles, teddy bears, and IOUs from millions of mourners and debtors who made the somber journey to watch the passing of the state that had once ruled the box office and industrial charts. Among them were current chart-toppers who cited California as a key influence.

“If it wasn’t for California, I wouldn’t be where I am today,” said Arizona of Westside 3, the popular Sunbelt trio who recently benefited from the late state’s generous gift of fleeing taxpayers and businesses. As a tribute to their mentor, Arizona vowed the group would start spending money “like crack-addled hip hop stars.”

“California’s financial and musical legacy will never die,” said band mates Nevada and Oregon.

At the official funeral service at the LA Coliseum, a grief stricken Washington, who teamed with California on several hit software and wine projects, had to be physically restrained from climbing into the deceased’s gold plated casket.

Similar emotional outpourings were the rule of the day. Stories – apocryphal or not – of the late state’s bizarre self-destructive behavior and fondness for molesting children did little to dampen the flood of tributes from fans who preferred to remember California as America’s Sweetheart.

From a humble beginning as a water-poor remote Spanish mission outpost, California proved to be a precocious and talented child performer. It struck gold with ‘Sutter’s Mill’ in 1849, earning accolades and attracting millions of crusty bearded prospectors. Black gold soon followed with ‘Arizona.’ Unlike many child acts, California made a smooth transition to adolescence, scoring a major hit with ‘Agriculture’ in 1891.

Even a frightening bout with tremors did not stop the flow of hits. The 1915 megasmash ‘Hollywood’ broke all records, as did the wartime favorite ‘Aerospace.’ More recently, California topped the charts with ‘Tourism,’ ‘High Tech,’ and ‘Coastal Pretension.’

For a time it seemed as if the superstar could do no wrong, but behind the glittering facade of Disneyland Manor troubling signs of mental instability began to emerge. The state developed a well-publicized drug problem during filming of 1967’s ‘Summer of Love,’ and briefly dabbled in strange religious cults. Under the influence of spiritual guru Jerry Brown, it began wholesale experimentation in exotic spending programs, eventual resulting in a traumatic 1979 stay at the Prop 13 Rehab Center.

During the 80’s and 90’s California enjoyed a brief career renaissance with hits like ‘Olympics,’ ‘Real Estate’ and ‘Dot Com Boom,’ but personal problems plagued the reclusive star once again. During the recording of the ‘OJ’ and ‘Rodney King’ albums, friends and visitors expressed concern over its recurring tremors and penchant for self-mutilation.

“California used to be so happy and beautiful,” said a horrified Ohio. “I hardly recognize it any more.”

During that period, camp insiders say the increasingly psychotic state began driving away its long time professional management team and support crew. In its place, it assembled an entourage of con men and embezzlers, some of who stoked California’s increasingly bizarre environmental paranoia. It was seldom seen in public without a breathing mask to ward off imagined pollutants.

Worse, the hits began drying up; the huge 2001 flop ‘Dot Com Bust’ put a huge crimp into California’s once unlimited cash flow. Despite the setback, insiders say the superstar was unwilling to change its lavish lifestyle, and retreated once again into spending abuse. Personal expenses skyrocketed, propelled in part by California’s eight million adopted foster children. During the 90’s sensationalistic accounts of child abuse began surfacing. Eyewitnesses reported California cruising local neighborhoods in school buses, luring unsuspecting kid for sessions of ‘public education.’ By some estimates hundreds of thousands were left traumatized and severely brain damaged.

The charges were vigorously denied by California camp spokestate Vermont.

“California loves children,” said Vermont. “California loves children, because deep inside California is a also a child — full of innocent wonder, and the belief that any budget wish can come true as long as you just wish hard enough.”

True or not, the charges alienated many longtime fans, leaving California in an ever-worsening financial position. In 2003 the state rejected suggestions that it was facing bankruptcy, saying that “I can’t be out of money, I still have checks left.” Amid the maelstrom, though, it fired tour manager Grey Davis who many blamed for California’s financial woes. In his place, California hired Arnold Schwarzenegger to help engineer a career-saving comeback tour.

Under the management of the flamboyant Austrian body builder / therapist, California began a rapid descent that ultimately ended in death. Some faulted Schwarzenegger’s unconventional therapeutic methods and prescription spending pills, including state pension steroids that some say were powerful enough to kill a Scandinavian industrial power. Schwarzenegger denied culpability, saying that his spending pills “help build de upper financial torso and lats, and deese other sings and so on.”

Despite the last minute financial maneuvers analysts say the state died penniless, owing creditors as much as $100 billion. Amid the swirling recriminations between California camp factions, fans chose to mark it’s passing quietly. Longtime California fan club president Iowa said that despite being the constant butt of the Golden State’s insults and jokes, it will remember the late superstar fondly.

“Let’s not remember California as a bloated, rotting freakshow corpse hanging above a filthy public pension toilet,” it said. “Let’s remember the good times. Like my six-day bender at the ‘91 Rose Bowl.”

“California’s pain is finally over, and I like to think that the whole state is going to a better place,” Iowa added. “Just look at all those U-Hauls headed to Oklahoma.”

America is in a crisis of its own making.

Not only are we realizing that our banking system and our core infrastructure are broken, and that our primary checks and balances (Congress, the media, etc.) are corrupt, but we are also coming to grips with the fact that we did not inherit our forefathers’ or even our fathers intestinal fortitude.

Signs of our collective weakness emerged after 9/11 when only part of the American population took seriously that we were at war with an evil and motivated enemy determined to destroy our way of life. Since then, al Qaeda has refused to quit despite debilitating losses.

Clearly, our national will is wilting away.

Following the tragic lead of Europe, too many Americans no longer want to engage our external threats head-on. And on the domestic front, we are confronting the economic crisis of our lifetime with the same full-steam-ahead spending-spree mind-set that got us into the mess to begin with.

We say: Let’s create more government dependency, reward the incompetent and print more money.

That’s doubling down on stupidity.

We are a trust-fund nation (picture Tori Spelling in the Lifetime Channel role of her career) whose BMW has run out of gas in the middle of the Mojave Desert after a pointless 115-miles-per-hour joy ride. The credit cards are maxed out. We’re out of cell phone range. And dad, who just got taken by Uncle Bernie Madoff, wouldn’t take the call anyway.

The silent generation, which learned valuable lessons from the Depression and World War II, is not here to guide us through these difficult times. The narcissistic baby boomers, who probably think this song is about them, are now firmly in charge. And that’s the rub.

You can read the column in full here.

Big X here, broadcasting live from Celluloid City in the swishy-swishy Peacock Lounge, high atop the mighty Breitbart Tower on Sunset and Cherokee!

Holy cats, what’s next?!

After last week’s spectacular victory over Hard Times with the passage of his trillion-dollar Stimulus Bill, the sour-puss Republican Tycoonocracy was crying in their caviar, throwing a tizzy over the so-called “deficit” and demanding to know who will pay the piper for all those bee-yutiful C-notes!

While any lesser mortal would have rested on his laurels, his name forever embedded like a shining supernova in the historical firmament as the greatest American Commander-In-Chief ever, President Obama gave those sobbing-Sallies an answer:

“You, Mr. Moneybags!”

Yes, it’s certified, Mr. President! For that magnificent one-two punch, I hereby dub thee Barack “Bam-Bam” Obama!

Our waiter, Rodrigo, has been kind enough to bring a Xerograph of the latest Spending Bill, and boy, is it a doozy! Yes, it seems complicated, folks, but don’t panic! Your pal, Big X is here to cut through the bull and boil it down to stew!  And what a savory dish it is!

First off, the good news is that tax rates will actually be dropping for the vast majority of working Americans, even those who don’t make enough scrap to even pay taxes. Yes, you heard me right, Johnnie Q.! Ain’t that a lulu?!

Pass the butter and slop the hogs, ma! I smell money! And it may be spelled R. E. F. U. N. D., but it spends just the same!

Hot-dawg!

But wait a second! How can Uncle Sam hand out a cool trillion with more on the way, and cut taxes? As my good friend Albert Einstein once said while perusing his bar-tab at the Stork Club, “Ach mein Gott! It just don’t add up!”

Oh, but it does…!

Because tax rates will be going up as well, my friends! Way up! But not for you or me, or anyone we know! Unless, that is, your name is Rockefeller and you rub elbows with all the swells and socialites who pull down more than a whopping $250,000 smackers a year!

That’s right, folks! You heard it here, first! The stinking-rich leisure class will finally be forced to cough up their fair share of the U.S. Tax Bill!

What’s that, Rodrigo? Really, that much?! Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle…

Ladies and gents, our trusty cocktail-juggler, Rodrigo, has just informed me that between the salary and tips he earns here at the Peacock, and the profit his wife clears from her dress shop downtown, they make a combined income of over $250,000!

Why, that bears some looking into, Rodrigo!  I’m quite certain a situation like yours is scarce as a pen in a Post Office! After all, Obama himself has personally assured us repeatedly that these tax hikes will only impact the wealthiest 2% of Americans!

Luckily, my curvaceous assistant Miss Montenegro is standing by with the latest data from the Internal Revenue Service to tell us exactly what miniscule percentage of Americans make more than a quarter-million clams a year!

What, my dear? The data’s not broken down at the $250,000 point?

Come, now, Miss Montenegro! Don’t be silly! The President of the United States isn’t going to just pull numbers out of a hat! Check again!

What’s that you say? It’s broken at the $200,000 point?! Very well; how many of those are there…?

Seven percent?!

That’s absurd! How could one out of every fourteen American households make so much more dough than I do…?

I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen. It seems we’ve gotten bogged down in petty technical details. Yes, Miss Montenegro, that will be quite enough. Order us another round of Manhattans, will you?

As our President and every red-blooded American with an ounce of common sense knows, the rich have been bilking the tax-man for decades by retaining shady Hebrew accountants who cook the books to take advantage of arcane loopholes and dubious deductions unavailable to the rest of us Short-Form-filing guys and gals.

Miss Montenegro has just passed me a note that precisely illustrates my point! Get this, folks: The people we were just talking about who clear over $200,000 a year-a full 7% of American households, mind you-pay a measly 6.2% of the total tax bill-

What’s that, Miss Montenegro? That’s a poppy-seed, not a decimal point? By gum, you’re right!

Correction, folks! That’s 62% percent?!

Yes, Rodrigo! That is a shocker. Now freshen up my drink and tell Ernesto not to skimp on the Maraschinos this time! Chop chop!

(Between me and you and Auntie Sue, folks, I think all that filthy lucre is giving our little brown friend a swelled head!)

The fact is, it doesn’t matter how much of the bill the hoi polloi covers, they still take unfair advantage of loopholes in the tax code big enough to drive their solid gold, desert-tortoise-squashing, carbon-belching Cadillacs through!

And it’s exactly these very loopholes that will be abolished by our great leader, Bam-Bam Obama, under his new Spending Bill-

For Pete’s sake, what now, Miss Montenegro?!

You say he’s placing a cap on the deduction for charitable contributions? Of course he is! Why shouldn’t the stuffed-shirts pay taxes on money they give to poor people…?!

You think they’ll give less?

Oh, pish-posh, Miss Montenegro!  Such cynicism hardly becomes a lovely creature such as yourself! But even in the extraordinarily unlikely event that what you suggest is true, Team Obama has already set aside additional money in the budget to go to charities and cover any shortfalls!

And rest assured, folks, they won’t be the frivolous non-profits you choose to support, but those carefully vetted and certified by our illustrious Administration!

I’m afraid that’s all the time we have, folks. Reporting live from Filmland, I bid you a fond adieu, and remember, all that glitters is not Papst Blue Ribbon!

Until next time, this is Big X, out!

I’m sorry, but I just don’t get it.  Clearly, I am just too simple minded to understand the efficacy of the so-called Stimulus Bill. I run the idea past my Common Sense center in my cerebral cortex and all I hear is a dial tone.  And if I get really quiet … I can hear a distant scream. 

I’ve watched President Obama make his case on national television.  I keep waiting for the entire Washington press corps to bust up laughing.  I keep waiting for news anchors to crack up mid-sentence and not be able to continue, doubled over.  I keep waiting for an incensed public to storm Pennsylvania Avenue and demand their money back.

But then … I must be stupid.

I am reminded of two scenarios from my past.   The first one was when my older brother fell in love.  A beautiful Costa Rican girl, thick accent, beautiful face and figure; my brother was over the moon.  The rest of my family fell, as well.  This girl had the ability to make us all laugh.  Until I started to discover that she was actually not a very nice person.  Nasty, in fact … though I seemed to be the only one who caught it. 

When brother announced their engagement, I decided to send up my first trial balloon warning.  It was discounted by him and the rest of the family.  “Oh, it’s just her accent, you misunderstand her.”  Half-believing, half-hoping they were right, I paid even closer attention to this girl’s words, and more importantly, her actions.  After several weeks, my honest assessment was that the woman, beneath her beauty and charm, was venal, narcissistic, selfish, and cruel.  It was all about her, little else mattered, and she was looking to tie her boat to my father’s small fortune through my brother.  I confided as much to my brother, and implored him to make a closer evaluation before he proceeded to tie the noose.  Again, my warnings were laughed off. 

So… he married her.  She looked beautiful and charming coming down the aisle. 

Seven years and three children later, she had turned my brother’s life into a living hell.  I’d give you details of her exploits but I’m saving them for my horror novel, “Nightmare From Costa Rica.”  But I can tell you this, she looked beautiful and charming every step of the way.

The second scenario was when I went in to buy my first new car.  After struggling through a series of used junkers, I had worked my butt off, saved my money and was determined to slap it down on a brand new, tricked-out VW bug.  It had the hot race steering wheel, the cool Blaupunkt, the chrome wheels, the fat meats on the back and every little fun, hip accessory I could imagine.  But the salesman on the showroom floor blew it for me.  Any fool could see I wanted the car, but he told me I had to buy today, because only today would the special sale price be in effect.  Only today would the extended warranty be enacted.  Only today could I buy this car and be happy about my decision.  I had to ‘buy now!’ I thought long and hard about it, realized I don’t like to be pressured into buying anything, even if I want it; and this guy was almost bullying this nineteen-year-old, first-time new car buyer.

I walked out of the showroom.

I ended up buying the same car at another dealership two weeks later, with more extras and at a lower price.  Wouldn’t it be nice if Congress had the same sales-resistance?

But enough of that, I want to feel good about myself, and I want to feel good about America.  I don’t want to think; thinking’s hard, and my head is starting to hurt.  I just want to feel.  I want to feel good, like my brother did with his new Costa Rican girlfriend, and I want to fall in love.  And we are in love… with Barack Obama!  He is beautiful and charming.  My gosh, the man has taken charm to an art form.  I thought Bill Clinton was smooth.  Forget about it!  Great smile, nice energy, wonderful sense of humor. Charms the pants right off of me. 

So I was listening to the President’s first press conference yesterday, sans pants …thrill up the leg… and it occurred to me:  He didn’t spend 20 years in Rev. Wright’s church to learn Black racism or ‘Black Liberation Theology,’  No, no, no!  He spent 20 years in Rev. Wright’s church to learn how to preach!  And I have to admit, the Reverend Obama is even more amazing than President Obama.  Forget his uncanny skill at reading a teleprompter, going from left to right and back so smoothly is looks, not like he’s reading, but that he’s simply ‘inclusive.’  And his raised-chin pauses for emphasis … masterful.  He exudes authority and poise.  And sincerity.  He cares, dammit.  And he knows what he’s talking about, just look at him.  What’s that, you say?  What is it he is actually saying?  Well…I can’t really tell you, but he is saying it so beautifully … so charming …does it really matter?

Well… yes, actually.  It does.  A lot.

I listened to as much of the Hurry-Up-and Let-Me-Spend-A-Trillion-Dollars-of Your Money sales job as I could take.  Which I must admit, wasn’t all that much.  But I did catch an interesting little gem as the president addressed those who suggested it would actually be more economically prudent to not spend a trillion bucks and just let market forces work, period. The non-partisan CBO, specifically.

“What I won’t do…is return to the failed policies of the last 8 years…that got us into this crisis in the first place.” – Barack Obama, Feb 9, 2009  

Even though Congress was controlled by the Democrats from 2006-2008, I am going to go out on a limb here, and assume that the president is talking about failed Republican policies.  (Is that a fairly safe bet, you think?) 

REALITY CHECK!  Mr. Obama has been so busy concentrating on his campaign, his transition, and now his consolidation of power, that he apparently slept through the economic meltdown, so out of touch is he with what caused it.  Earth to President Obama:  It wasn’t the ‘failed’ Republican policies that took us to this point.  What caused bank failures and the economic meltdown was the failure of the housing market which itself was caused by banks being forced to give out bad housing loans.  That gem of irresponsibility, the Community Reinvestment Act (introduced and enacted by Jimmy Carter and the Democrat Congress and later bolstered by Bill Clinton) literally forced banks to abandon prudent fiscal policy and instead, hand out loans to people who otherwise could not qualify to buy a home.  And Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac were right there leading the charge.  Not to sound ‘partisan’ or anything, but the people running these two Government Sponsored Enterprises:  yep … Democrats. 

 Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner came on TV this morning, and told us ‘how we got here.’ His explanation sounded somewhat logical … but conspicuously missing was any mention of the above involvement of the Democrats forcing Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae to give out bad loans.  That’s like trying to explain how an internal combustion engine works, and failing to mention anything about gas fumes igniting and expanding within a closed cylinder. 

What Geithner left out in his address this morning was that George Bush, Alan Greenspan, John McCain and the Republicans in Congress, fearful that unsafe fiscal practices by Freddy Mac and Fannie Mae could lead to economic disaster, attempted to establish oversight on these GSE’s, but were rebuffed by … Democrats.  Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Chuck Schumer, Charlie Rangel, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, et al.  Anyone who isn’t aware of this hasn’t been paying attention.  The Democrats, not the Republicans, are responsible for fomenting the economic conditions that lead to the housing bubble bursting.

Also missing in Mr. Geithner’s speech was any mention of monies paid out by Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac, six-figure sums, to Democrats Chris Dodd, Barack Obama, and John Kerry.  And payments for what?  Cooperation incentives?  ‘Performance’ bonus.  Hush money?  What? 

And another thing:  Geithner said the root cause of the meltdown was individuals and businesses borrowing funds they couldn’t pay back.  And so the solution proposed is … to borrow and spend even more money, at an unprecedented rate — and not gradually, but aggressively? 

Clearly, the lunatics have taken over the nuthouse.

So now we are supposed to let the very same people who took us into this economic mess … straighten it out.  And use our money to do it!   Which wouldn’t be so bad … if that sort of thing worked. The fans of Keynesian economic theories are lovers of history revision.  (Just look at how they distort the history of the past eight years.)   Democrats love to try to spend us out of recessions.  It doesn’t work.  And if you say, FDR I’ll tell you FTS! 

FDR’s liberal spending policies extended the depression.   It took WWII to bring this country out of it.

But now Congress is being pressured to pass this spending bill and do it now!  There’s no time to lose, we don’t have time for further discussion, no time for debate.  We have to pass the bill now, yank the lever, press the button … pull the trigger.

What the hell is the rush!???   I’m missing the soup lines.  I look but I don’t see throngs of homeless people trying to warm themselves by the oil drum fire.  I have not had to swat the flies off of a little starving child once in the past month.  I must have missed the food riots in Los Angeles as starving hordes prowl the streets looting Vons and Ralphs stores.  And have you been on the freeway lately?  I would think that if the ‘crisis’ was as bad as our President says it is, the 405 would resemble a ghost town.  But there I am, jammed in, trying to shuttle my butt over the hill to L.A. in the same old rush hour slog.  Okay, I’ll admit that the banking and financial markets are in monstrous disarray.   And that yes, it could probably be considered a crisis. But … the end of the world type of crisis?  The we-are-screwed-so-let’s-throw-capitalism-out-and-become-a-socialist-nation type of crisis?   Uh … not in my movie.

But we are told we have to go a trillion dollars into debt or the world is going to end, and we have to borrow it immediately!  (Even though it will be two years before the money would even start to get spent.) And where do we borrow it?  From China!!  Am I the only one left who sees this as an absurdly stupid recipe for disaster??  Two words: Tiananmen Square.   I was there two years before the tanks rolled over the peaceful protesters, and I can tell you … things haven’t changed in the ‘People’s Paradise’ all that much since.  Oh, you saw the Olympics on TV and they all look so advanced and peace-loving and civilized?  The people, yes.  The totalitarian Communist  regime, nada.  So sure … let’s reduce our dependency on foreign oil, but increase our dependency on a Chinese Communist oligarchy??

This is insanity on such a grand scale … that no one can really believe it.  So we refuse to.  History is replete with examples of world events so startling that the populace was literally frozen with surprise, and stunned to inaction.  Students in 1989 Beijing faced a wall of AK-47 rounds.  The Soviet tanks rolled through the summer streets of Prague.  The Jews were ejected from their homes and herded into Nazi camps.  The twin towers tumbled in Manhattan.

And now … with the derisive laughter from my Leftist friends still echoing in my ears … my accusations of Obama being a ‘socialist’ have just been confirmed by … Newsweek magazine.  For once we are in accord.

Tyrants and despots can only come to power through the pretense of crisis.  Otherwise the people would not stand for it.  It’s How to Boil a Frog, 101.  If we are convinced of a crisis, we can also be convinced that ‘emergency measures’ are in order.  Sweeping executive powers must be invoked.  Individual liberties must be compromised and ‘temporarily’ suspended.  Dissension must be stifled and freedom of speech deferred; the media – newspapers, television, and radio must be managed, dominated, and/or censured.  Individual business must be manipulated and controlled.  Personal property stops having any meaning whatsoever.  The State dominates.  Only the State provides.  The State becomes everything.  So comrades…  Socialism starting to sound better and better?

Maybe we should walk out of the showroom.