Thursday, October 9, 2008

If It Quacks and Waddles...

...then it must be a duck, right? However, what if it quacks loudly but the waddle is more like an occasional hop and skip? Even during some of the most trying times for the nation since September 11, 2001...

For all the times we need real leadership: it seems neither candidate for President is willing to go out on a limb in addressing the core issues of the Wall Street meltdown that every household in America talks about but Washington and New York seem not to hear. Obama can't commit to tell us how he'll run a more expansive government run on our running-out money; McCain won't fess up and hold tight to the basics he's old enough to remember coming from parents who grew up during the Depression.

Both talk about sending Washington a message while voting for the bailout plan, loaded down with pork at the absolute worst time, because our political system is greased on bribery. Even then, it always seems as though it is other members of Congress and not Ohio's getting those sweetheart deals. Both sides cleared the path for Fannie and Freddie's most excellent train wreck, one side by jamming through changes in the law and the other waxing with impotence enforcing it.

We just don't trust 'em anymore.

The clip of President Bush offering words of encouragement as the Dow Industrial dump another nearly seven hundreds points worth of value are contained above; it won't satisfy you or fill you with confidence. It is, for the most part, the same set of quotes we heard in Rose Garden after Rose Garden appearance a few weeks ago before Congress passed that bloated bailout...er, no, "rescue"...plan that was going to help stop the bleeding. How's that been working out for you in the past two weeks?

In neighborhood after neighborhood housing values tumble, workers fear for their jobs, nobody wants to buy anything on credit (even if they could get it) because common sense tells you it ain't over yet. They still have plenty of our cash as investors move what they can into insured checking and savings accounts but they're pretty stingy about lending it back to us. The experts say it's because the banks don't trust the banks to pay it back, so is it any wonder we don't trust either of them?

In Tuesday's debate neither Obama and McCain would say what just about every American believes now, that this mess won't be over by next year -- not by a long shot. There's more bleeding of the stuck pigs on Wall Street to be done, more loss in our 401k plans to the point they become 101.5k plans. If we ran our houses like they want to run our government we'd be living in our cars. Instead they're flying around the country on the electoral lecture circuit telling us what their consultants advise we want to hear instead of what they're going to have to do.

Wanted: Harry Truman. Teddy Roosevelt. Ronald Reagan. FDR. Someone with a set, even if it is a set of ideas, to punish those who abuse and help for those abused.

Someone with a set of principles to reward those who paid their bills on time, who put money down on their homes to build equity, who understand the path to credit heaven isn't paved on plastic. Someone with a set of values to tell those who loaded up on speculative condo building in Florida and Las Vegas that we aren't holding the bag on their no-money-down dreams, and the power to tell the influential that they've got to at least go through the motions of sharing in the pain. Someone to tell AIG's fuzzy-headed executives they have to pay back the company for their spa treatments during a half-million dollar corporate retreat a week after bailout, and someone to show Congress the door for whoring out the American dream by forcing look-away bankers to give money to anyone, anytime.

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