Snake Oil for Sale!

Guest post by Jerome Walus
Augusta County, Virginia

Snake oil for sale! This is the elixir of life! It will cure any and all your ailments! I have traveled the world in search of miraculous cures and brought this elixir from the exotic forests of Indonesia where people use it to live 100 to 150 years while still retaining the looks of a 20 year old.

The elixir of life will grow back hair on bald scalps! It makes you feel young again! Apply to wrinkles and they magically disappear! I am the only one with this secret potion and if you act now I will throw in an extra bottle for the one low price of $19.95, but wait ...

I could go on and on and on. We have heard the pitch of false hope and promises before, and we hear it today on infomercials. This pitch of bait-and-hook has been around for as long as man has existed. We are now witnesses to a new, improved, modern medicine show and bait-and-hook is the major part of the act. This new snake oil salesman is selling himself as hope and change but who exactly is he and what changes will he make?

We know that he is a man who is a skilled lawyer. We know he is a polished orator. We know he dislikes free market and enterprise. We know he plans to financially punish employers with additional burdens. We also know he is a control freak. We know he once made his living from shaking down banks with lawsuits forcing bad housing loans to poorly informed people which in turn placed families in houses for which they could hardly make payments on even the interest.

Maybe he should be known as “Sub Prime Mortgage Man,” able to force banks to lend large amounts of money to those not ready for the mansion, those with a smaller house income, and those with little, no, or bad credit and thus set up people for failure or a federal bail out which only prolongs the failure.

We know he is planning to cut our wages through taxation. We know he plans to steal from the evil rich and give to the poor. (Side note: If you work, you are rich and evil.)

He plans to enact a third world government-run health care system where everyone will wait their turn and be told their condition is inoperable, not because it can’t be cured, but because someone younger bumps you out of line or you are not worth the cost of the treatment, similar to Canada.

We know that we already have a huge monetary burden taken from our gross pay for social security and we know there is no guarantee we will ever receive anything in return for our investment.

What makes anyone believe that our federal government, which misappropriates social security money, can manage health care?

I am convinced that every working person will have a payroll deduction from what is left of their current take-home pay to fund the free Government Health Care, and that the cost will be equal or greater to the deduction for FICA.

He says we do not need to increase the supply of fuel but, rather, that we Americans drive too much so he advocates a Federal tax on gasoline equal to that which the Europeans pay. He predicts it will push the price at the pump to well over $12 per gallon and will curtail our evil driving habits and, while he did not say it that way, that is the way it comes across.

We know he has a disdain for our armed services and does not have a rational conception of evil. He and Neville Chamberlain would be giving each other accolades and high-fives for getting tyrants' agreements (fingers crossed behind their backs) that Adolf wouldn't aggress further and try world conquest. And when Mahmoud gets nuclear capabilities, he won’t nuke Israel, Europe or the USA no matter how many times he proclaims it publicly.

In an earlier age these traveling show salesmen were known as flim-flam men and snake oil salesmen. A few years back they were known as shake-down artists and con men.

Today he is known as Obama -- and about that hope? He hopes you can afford him.