It's the Economy, Again

Well, no sooner had I posted my second blog about how it was all over for McCain & Co., than the stock market crashed and burned- big time, to borrow a phrase from Mr. Cheney. And with that crash comes the country-wide realization that yes, indeed, the issues matter. A lot.
Most of us have never lived in anything close to such trying times as these. The economy is being called the worst since the Great Depression. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are not really going so well. McCain can say "we're winning" as much as he wants- until I see our troops coming home in huge numbers- indeed, until the troop level in Iraq is at least a little lower than pre-surge- I don't think people are going to buy it. Not for any significant length of time. And then there's global climate change, which some people say is the reason we have so many monster storms demolishing Texas and Louisiana again and again. Let's face it, folks- things are rough, and as such, issues matter very much.
Campaigns can write as many speeches as they want, manufacturing righteous indignation about imagined slurs in between cute stories about hunting Moose on the tundra- that won't and can't stop the world from turning and bringing the unexpected. Stuff happens, to borrow a phrase from another pillar of society. And when said stuff happens, we inevitably take a longer look at who is applying for the job of running the joint once the current head honcho hits the bricks. McPalin looked fine when the issue was personality and moose hunting and lipstick applied to both pigs and pit bulls. But now that we've all been abruptly jerked back into reality by the worst day on Wall Street since re-0pening after 9/11, I don't think the GOP ticket looks so good to as many folks as it did just yesterday morning. Today- not last week or a month ago or a year ago or back when he was having trouble as one of the Keating Five- but today, the day being called Black Monday, today John McCain said the fundamentals of our economy are strong.
Huh?
Is he kidding? Nuts? High? I mean, it seems to me that the fundamentals of our economy have been upended by a bunch of de-regulation mad lobbyists- most of whom now seem to be working on the McCain campaign. Call me crazy, but I don't trust the Republicans anymore. I just don't. I never did all that much, but there used to seem to be at least some modicum of sanity and honor in the party, Nixon not-withstanding. Amazing as it may be, I find myself waxing rhapsodic about the good old days of Reagan and Bush 41. The party that can claim Lincoln has become so obviously out of touch with reality, so crassly bought and so callously run, that I have no respect for it what-so-ever. No doubt, soon there will be some spokes model or other from the right telling us all that what really caused the current financial mess wasn't lack of regulation, greed on a massive scale, lazy CEO's, or anything like that, but rather the Democrat Party and all their evil ways. They'll tell us that it was those darn corporate taxes that made it all happen. That and of course gay marriage.
And when they do, I'll just sort of quote Bush and say:
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.