A Growing Problem

Now that the torrential rains have ended, it's time to set the mower all the way up and attack the lawn. All the moisture (2 1/2" in the LipsYard raingauge over the weekend) has more than just the grass growing. There's these little orange guys.

They magically sprung up overnight.

The orange is a nice complement to the green.

Over the weekend, more trouble popped up on Wall Street. Lehman Brothers went belly up, Merrill Lynch got bought up by Bank of American. Insurance giant AIG is waiting in the wings to fail. The Dow's 500+ point drop yesterday was the biggest since September 11, 2001. John McCain advisor Donald Luskin is frustrated, not at Wall Street or the Bush administration, but at us middle class whiners and exaggerators. And he's not gonna take it any more!

"Things today just aren't that bad. Sure, there are trouble spots in the economy, as the government takeover of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and jitters about Wall Street firm Lehman Brothers, amply demonstrate. And unemployment figures are up a bit, too. None of this, however, is cause for depression -- or exaggerated Depression comparisons."

That's what Bushonomics are reduced to? After eight years of being told the next tax cut for billionaires would unleash the long promised economic Mecca, after two straight Presidential terms where critics of Bush's trickle-down mythology were soundly ridiculed as ignorant socialists, after being told We the People don't understand complicated money stuff and we should just shut up, work harder, shop our brains out, and trust conservative economic philosophy, the best case scenario our millionaire conservative cheerleaders can make in the end is 'it's not as bad' as the Great Depression?

"Vote Republican and it won't be as bad as the Great Depression!"

There was a time when our nation was at peace, its economy driven by technical innovation and stable markets allowing the accumulation of investment capital. Interest rates and unemployment were near historical lows, wages and productivity rose almost as steeply the stock market. Talk of investment banks going broke or market meltdowns was rare to non existent. And no one had to write columns begging people not to compare the economy to the Great Depression. It was called the Clinton Years.