RetroVision Media: America is Being Lead By A Ship of Fools
The Bush administration and the United States Congress have exposed themselves as a ship of fools. During the most trying times in American history, when the nation is relying on our so called leadership to come together for the good of the country, to right our financial ship by plotting of course toward safer waters, things instead fell into the usual divisive finger pointing, grandstanding one-upmanship bickering that lead to more inaction, costing America $1.2 trillion in investments.
The 777.68 point drop in the market, the largest one day loss in the history of the exchange, should have been predicted weeks ago when the president failed to take ownership of the impending market perils. The president simply failed to adequately explain to the nation in a timely fashion exactly what was occurring and the disastrous future the country would face if quick, responsible, well thought out measures were not adopted.
The administration and congressional leaders (Nancy Pelosi/John Boehner and Harry Reid/Mitch McConnell) along with both presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain should have invited a panel of leading and well respected non-political, non partisan economist to assist them in understanding the crisis and developing a strategy to overcome the financial blight we are confronting.
This should have been done via cable, satellite, broadcast television/Internet, fully accessible to anybody remotely interested in the details. They could have and should have agreed to leave the blame for who ever was responsible for the problem off the table until the country was reasonably convinced the actions being proposed had at least a snowball’s chance in hell of working.
The media could have played a valuable role by checking the details of the plan as the process played it’s self out and be ready to sound the alarm should said plan appear to be flawed. The media could have also used their investigative assets to keep digging for the true culprits for later exposure when things begin to normalize. With this degree of transparency and reliance on real thinkers solving the real problems, we would not have had the embarrassing spectacle we saw yesterday. Additionally and more importantly, the world would seen that Americans are capable of doing what ever it takes to face and solve any problem before us, no matter how dire. It would have been quite remarkable; it would have been cool!
With Nancy(the P word) Pelosi delivering a scathing castigating pre-vote speech, outlining her opinion of the White House’s role in the nation’s financial collapse while she had not locked down enough Republican support was one of the most asinine stunts we have witnessed in many moons of covering congress. Conversely, to witness John (limp boner) Boehner stand before the American people and the world, using Pelosi’s idiotic speech as a reason for voting against the bailout bill was nothing but an insult to the nation’s collective intelligence.
As the events unraveled throughout the day, we envisioned the analogy of the American taxpayer and global investors alike being stranded on a small island, sinking fast into a sea of red ink. If a rescue ship does not arrive soon, were all going to drown or be eaten alive by loan sharking creditors and their evil bill collecting partners. Suddenly, someone sees a sail on the horizon as the sun begins to set, signaling a glimmer of hope. But as we look closer, we see that the vessel we’ve placed our faith in is just a rudderless ship of congressional fools with Captain George (the moron) Bush at the helm.
Why the president and these congressional halfwits tried to pretend they had the intellect to understand what those with mightier gray matter at their disposal than they will ever possess was having trouble comprehending, is beyond our imagination. To a person, our president, congressional leaders along with their flunky rank and file looked lost and foolish in front of the world. Whether you were for the bailout or against it is beside the point, whether the bill passed or not is also beside the point, the main point now is how stupid we look
The people we have entrusted with our futures have been off a proper course for decades now and it is time the country just torpedoed these dumb bastards in November once and for all. If we have to elect a new face, with limited Washington experience but a lot of smarts and a fresh approach then that is what has to be done, for it is doubtful any thing is going to change without making an effort to change. Vote smart America. Click here to download podcast.