Our New Motto -- Burn, Baby, Burn!

We hunkered down at the Alamo behind two feet of mortar to monitor current developments, satellite dishes aimed, modems humming and periscopes twirling.

A bulletin arrived. Our Hispanic brothers had encountered another difficulty.

A prisoner leapt out of a cop car on the highway. The cops gave chase, lights flashing. Vehicles pulled over, doors flung open, and carpenters, plumbers and electricians bailed out and made a run for it.

We had a stampede of illegal aliens, a fleet of ten-four cops in pursuit and two miles of stalled motorists trying to get home for cocktails.

So, the question is, my brothers, considering all those flashing lights, is it time to make a run for it?

Sales of existing homes plunged in March because of bad weather, experts said. Sales of new homes were up because of good weather, experts said.

If the weather is good, global warming did it. If bad, global warming did that, too.

Therefore, global warming is screwing up home sales and will soon screw up your purse as cash is extracted to make it warmer, cooler or keep it the same, depending on which way the wind blows today, yesterday or in the future.

Still more money will be extracted from you because global warming got lenders hot and bothered and lathered up with greed. They made no-down-payment loans on overpriced houses. The deadbeat borrowers have stopped making payments and will live free till they get kicked out. Nice scam. Pay nothing, live free. Truly a sad situation for lenders and borrowers.

The losers must be saved. Then we all become poorer, we all become losers, which makes us equal, the perfect government solution.

Meanwhile, the Dow hit an all-time high, the federal government set a record one-day tax haul and the feds spent more money in March than any month in history.

According to Marketwatch.com, "Spending on Medicare and Medicaid totaled $83.4 billion in March and $418.4 billion for the year, up 15.6 percent." Spending on the George Bush get-out-the-vote Medicare drug benefit is up 144 percent.

The Christian Science Monitor reported, "Slightly over half of all Americans — 52.6 percent — now receive significant income from government programs." That is up from 28.3 percent in 1950.

A producing minority now supports a couch-potato majority.

Yeah, that will work.

Meanwhile, as the government continues to manufacture money, consumer price inflation hit 0.6 percent in March, or an alarming 7.2 percent annualized.

This happened despite the usual adjustments, in which the numbers are sent to Asian economic experts in massage parlors in Atlanta, schooled in the government methods of hedonics and substitution, after which they come out looking a lot better than they went in.

As we crack down on guys who can pass a drug test and show up for work, who pay the rent on time and do not whine about what they do not have, we remain refreshingly open-minded on the subject of economics, so open-minded our brains have fallen out.

This leaves some tough decisions at the Alamo. Do we fix the brakes on the imitation sports car? Do we buy a Dow at all-time highs driven by overpriced mergers and acquisitions starting to smell like the latest fiat monetary bubble?

Or do we pick up something timeless?

Yes, pilgrims, we park the car, mount the horse and trot over to our neighborhood purveyor of gold to load the saddlebags. Then we John Wayne into the sunset.

We swap paper for money, the only legal money, according to the Constitution our government rejects.

Rumor has it they pave the roads of heaven with it.

And paper currency? It rots, it burns, it lights the fires of economic hell on earth.

Phil Lucas is executive editor of The News Herald in Panama City, Fla. Contact him at plucas@pcnh.com. To find out more about Lucas and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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