Or simply a collection of the most willfully ignorant people on Earth? This is the question ‘Puter asks himself almost every time he reads a New York Times editorial.

Here’s today’s whopper, pre-spinning Republican concerns over our bankrupt government entitlement programs:

A lot of attention will be paid to the finding in the Social Security report that payouts will exceed revenues in 2010 and 2011, as high unemployment drives down payroll taxes. That doesn’t endanger benefits, because any shortfall can be covered by the trust fund.

Let ‘Puter enlighten you. Social Security has always been a gigantic Ponzi scheme. Our Congress spends every dime collected under the OASDI tax each year, replacing the funds with Treasury bonds. That’s the “trust fund” the editorial board assures you is sufficient to cover Social Security’s current and future obligations. It’s the equivalent of funding your 401k with IOUs and pretending you’re well set for retirement.

“What’s the problem, ‘Puter?”, you may ask. “All Social Security has to do is cash in the bonds, right? The government never defaults on its debts.”

And that’s exactly where the problems start. Cashing in the bonds requires the government to get the money from somewhere. There’s no magical Al Gore Social Security lockbox sitting in a desk drawer in Washington holding years of accumulated OASDI tax revenue. In order to honor the bonds Social Security will cash in, the government will either have to raise taxes, print money or borrow funds, most likely the latter, in the form of additional Treasury bond issues. Higher taxes are political suicide and inflating away debt would crater the bond markets. That leaves borrowing.

Our biggest lenders (bond purchasers) right now are foreign governments, who are rightly becoming concerned about America’s ability to repay its debts. This lack of confidence will lead inexorably to either (1) higher borrowing costs in the form of higher interest rates or (2) failure of bond issues (i.e., no purchasers) altogether.

Government may pull this off in the short term, but as many Americans can attest, rolling debt from one credit card to another in order to maintain profligate spending is a one-way ticket to bankruptcy.

'Puter

Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.

’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.

The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.

His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.

He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.

Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.

‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.