Combative Obama Renounces Socialism

by Michael K. Smith

Washington (CNN) - Seeking to recover his once-impressive standing in the polls, President Obama on Monday continued to position himself as the most responsible candidate in the 2012 presidential race.

Speaking to about 500 Mussolini Democrats and more than a dozen reporters at the tactically sophisticated Invertebrates For Obama think tank in Washington, Obama lashed out at "so-called progressives" clamoring for an expanded New Deal.

"Far too many Americans are looking for a hand-out, not a hand up," he said, apparently targeting the growing Occupy Wall Street movement and its sympathizers. "The reason we must reject socialist economics is that it conflicts with our core political philosophy about the purpose of government."

"We cannot preserve liberty for ourselves and our posterity if government fails to fulfill its obligation to sustain the free market system with trillions of dollars of bailout money for selfless Wall Street firms deemed 'too big to fail.'" Therefore we must seek common ground with the GOP and renounce relics of the Communist era like Social Security and Medicare." To sustained applause the president added, "I hereby do so."

Obama called for a reform of his own health care law to include a "private option" that would allow HMOs to deport Americans without health insurance to Cuba, in hopes of bankrupting the free health care system available on the Communist-ruled island. "The cost of treating fifty million uninsured Americans should bring down the Castro brothers once and for all," proclaimed Obama gleefully.

The president said he would grant federal aid to states expelling the medically needy to Cuba, adding that he would veto any attempt to have them treated in the U.S. "We've got to get beyond the idea that democratic government means doling out aid to irresponsible citizens who refuse to pull their own weight." The president emphatically rejected appeals for government assistance from ordinary Americans. "As we all know from civics lessons the only legitimate function government has is performing those tasks that Americans cannot perform themselves - like carpet-bombing foreign nations and giving away the store to transnational corporations and international banks."

The president went on to state that his reformed health care reform bill would prove itself a more efficient system than the universal care available to the elderly through Medicare. "Obviously the market is more efficient than government," said Obama. "I mean, how much equity is returned to stockholders under Medicare? Absolutely none! Whereas under HMOs investors are making a killing, if you'll pardon the expression," the president said. Asked about the much higher administrative costs under privatized care, Obama explained that those "don't count," because they are passed on to the public.

On issues like declaring the war in Iraq "over," Obama portrayed himself as the candidate who goes the extra mile for peace. "George Bush declared 'mission accomplished' in Iraq only once, while I am now working on my second final withdrawal from that liberated country," the president said with obvious pride.

Obama also called for "staking out the middle ground" by privatizing Social Security, outsourcing the public schools to China, and handing over municipal water systems to corporate polluters in need of infusions of public capital in order to pay off fines imposed for systematically polluting the environment.