It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better

I have been watching the US economy unravel before my eyes for the past few weeks and the question that keeps coming up is:

What is the worst that can happen?

Sadly nobody knows. Those in power were not on the scene during the Great Depression and even if they were a new calamity seldom behaves like the last one. What does an economic crash look like when the economy is no longer primarily agricultural? What does a fully networked populace do when companies start falling like dominoes? In the 1920's one could raise chickens and grow food to survive the hard times but a suburban and urban America several generations removed from that kind of self-reliance will have an entirely different response. What might that response look like? I hope we never have to find out.

Presidential Politics: The Lightning Round

After reading the text of the Charlie Gibson interview with Palin I think it probably helps the McCain folks out a little as it keeps her name above the fold going into another weekend.

To say things are moving rather fast would be an understatement. Since Tuesday we have seen pigs and fish. We have seen McCain accuse Obama of being essential a child abuser with the sex
ed fabrication/ad/riff. We have seen Obama show his cool on Letterman and have lunch with Bubba. The scariest part of the Clinton lunch was listening to Clinton predict that Obama would win. After the primary season please keep your political predictions to yourself. Bill Clinton seemed to get most of his Hillary predictions all wrong and I think we all know he is doing the Obama lunch thing to punch his "I did all I could!" ticket before he returns back to his offices in Harlem to sulk/brood.

Speaking of Bill and Hillary... I have noticed have you. Some of Clinton's old allies are doing background and not so background interviews expressing their Obama doubts. These are getting a ton of play on Drudge.

For Example:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6c2f69ce-8031-11dd-99a9-000077b07658.html


They essentially second guess/write the obit for the Obama campaign and if Obama wins I hope somebody in charge is feeling vengeful and excommunicates these dead enders to the back benches for 4-8 years minimum. In a just world that would happen. Of course if Obama loses and my application for Canadian citizenship falls through I never said any of this and please pass the Moose burgers. Yummy!

A September Morning

I was getting ready for work and the radio announcer broke in to say that the TV was showing one of the World Trade Center towers on fire. One report was indicating it might have been a small plane.

I remember how the weather in the Chicago area matched the weather in NY and Washington D.C. with the cloudless blue skies. I remember driving with my wife to work and hearing radio reports that kept escalating the bad news. I remember feeling my hair stand up on the back of my neck when I learned that the Pentagon was on fire and the false reports of other explosions near the State Department and the Capital. At one point the announcer (I believe it was Dan Rather simulcast on a local CBS station) said basically let's slow down here and take a breath. The events of that day didn't let us do that. I remember pulling into work and finding all of my co-workers watching TV.

Seven years later I think of how much has changed. The world is different now (two prolonged American wars) and I am different too (two beautiful children).

The stakes for me now with a family of my own have risen. The stakes for the world have risen too.

Some Additional Thoughts After The Republican Convention

With each passing day the stakes in this coming presidential election get higher. Whoever takes the office is going to find plenty to keep them busy. Lets list the problems and hope whoever wins has some good ideas.

• Rising Unemployment
• A Mortgage Crisis
• Rising National Debt/Deficit
• Declining Stock Market
• War in Iraq
• War in Afghanistan
• A Newly Antagonistic Russia
• Unaffordable Health Care
• Oil at $100+ a Barrel
  
• Declining Education System
  
• Damaged Environment (Another big chunk of ice broke loose a day ago.)
• Looming Threat of Terrorism
  

I mention all of this to say wake up America and get in the game but then this video sort of made my point for me.

Reaction to the Palin Speech at the Republican Convention

Palin is some sort of cross between Jesse Venture, Evita Peron and Archie Bunker. The unearned pious anger, the barely disguised racism, the chirpy 'you betcha' delivery. She is supposed to elicit this reaction in me and I suppose the equal and opposite reaction in the red states.

If this Palin ploy works in November, the political/cultural heart of this country has been gamed one to many times for my taste.

Regardless of the outcome I suspect that McCain will have the burden of knowing he introduced this strain of fascism into the American mainstream political waters.