A Sad Day

I'm sad. This bailout is probably going to pass now that the piece of shit has enough sprinkles on it. It still stinks though. It doesn't do anything to adress the root problem of the real economy -- the collapse of the housing bubble and rising foreclosures.

But more than that, we're seeing a widespread failure in leadership. George Bush is pathetic. He couldn't even get the majority of his own party to support his "Bail Out My Buddies on Wall Street" package. It's as if we don't even have a President at the present moment.

And the failure in leadership extends to the two candidates. It's sad to see Obama mulling around with Robert "Wall Street" Rubin and see him emasculated by the Clinton gang. There is no roaring voice of coherent leadership right now. It's sad.

And as if I couldn't get any sadder, I have to realize that the 24-Hour Gossip News Stations are even more pathetic. They rely on big Washington figures to fill their air space because it's a more cost-effective broadcast model than anything remotely resembling real journalism. And so it becomes an inane echo chamber of competing marketing campaigns, with no real connection to the real world.

And in the end, it's just like a casino: the house always wins. The rich fat cats who manipulate the system and leverage their connections are able to use the government like the world's largest soup kitchen and run away with US taxpayer money. It's sad, really.