Burning Down the House

Oooowhee! Totally mesmerized by the failure of the bailout and watching the stock market drop like a rock. Haven't seen anything like this since the crash during Dubya's first term--scared even to look at what's happened to my retirement investments.

Let's see: Apparently, the American People are Mad as Hell and Not Going to Take it Any More, so they hate the bailout, even though pretty much everyone who actually knows anything about economics and financial markets says that failure to approve it will mean further foreclosures, bank failures, no credit availability, job loss--in short, a bad recession. But Average Joe either doesn't care or--more likely--doesn't even know what the consequences will be. He's just plain pissed.

Therefore, nearly everyone in Congress regards the bailout as poison Kool-Aid, with the Democrats saying we'll take ours if you'll take yours. So most of the Democrats dutifully down their dose, but 2/3 of the Republicans say "Ha-ha, fooled you, suckers," and pour theirs down the drain. Then they blame Nancy Pelosi for hurting their feelings, insisting they really would have voted for the bill if she hadn't been so mean.

Meanwhile, Bush is revealed as a dead, not lame, duck, and El Loco McCain, who claimed to have rescued the bill from defeat (which, of course, was total nonsense) just looks foolish. As of this posting, he has had nothing to say about the House vote. From my standpoint, that's the only silver lining in this very dark cloud.

I think it was Mencken who said, "no one ever went broke by underestimating the intelligence of the American people," but I think Mencken may be proved wrong in a way, when we all go broke.