HolyCrapWe'reF**KED!

The above title intentionally has commas and space missing because it feels all like one word screaming in my head.

I'm talking about the economy.

At first, I felt like Nelson on the sidelines pointing and saying "Ha! Ha!". It doesn't affect me.

The Bush administrations coddling of corporations and the raping of the middle and lower class has actually worked in my favor. I have no major investments. I have no minor investments. I have really minuscule investments. IRA's that will cover my ass for about about a week once I retire my wrinkly ass. Millionaires and billionaires are the ones who got hit the worst. And it was at the effect of their own corporate boners for deregulation. Deregulation doesn't work. Give people in power the opportunity to "monitor" themselves, they'll make the choices that make themselves and their shareholders richer. And that's what they are trying to do in the bailout.

In the last gasps of the Bush administration, Bush and pals have drafted a bailout that gives absolute power to the Secretary of the Treasury, absolute power without retribution. There's also no accountability or penalty against the big corporations being bailed out. It's as if the government is responding to some "Act of God" natural disaster, not the massive mishandling of people's money. They want to get their buddies off the hook and give them a free ride.

This has been typical behavior of Bush's shock doctrine politics. Take advantage of major events, like 9/11, or, in this case, a huge stock market crash, and push policies through quickly while people are panicked. Fortunately, many people have become accustomed to this disaster maneuvering and are able to more consciously respond to the what's going on. Even both presidential candidates (yes, I know, there's more than two, but, really, there's only two) agree that this bailout plan is crap. That's good news.

So, why am I still brain yelping "HolyCrapWe'reF**ked!"?

While congress has become more saavy to Bush's shenanigans, they're behind the curve of most of us. And we've seen him slide all sorts of crap through to the point of making the U.S. Constitution a curious historical document. And I recently read The Road. In Cormac McCarthy's apocalyptic novel, he never explains how we got to this point. What's happening right now with the economy, our ever-increasing trillion-dollar deficit, our immense trade deficit, our spreading our military resources so thin... well, this is a way to get us on The Road.

What can we do? Really? Not much. Short of millions and millions of us storming the White House with torches and pitch forks - an idea I do condone - there's just not much we can do before November 4th. And I don't envy Barack Obama. If he gets elected, he has eight years of red tape to untangle and unmangle. It's change we can believe in, but it ain't going to happen over night. And there are a lot of rich, powerful people who don't want change who will be doing everything they can to keep it from happening. They don't mind if we all end up traveling the roadways with our broken down shopping carts foraging for food. They have their thirteen cars to protect them.

THE BS NEWS QUIZ OF THE DAY

Yesterday, I asked...

"Scientists in Japan are working on a new way for man to reach space. They refer to the technology as what?"

36% said "Space Tube"
- Yes. And we have to carry messages when being shot through the tube.

10% said "Space Escalator"
- Just remember to not block the path. Stand on the left, defy gravity on the right.

9% said "Space Balls"
- Yes. And our astronauts will be giant hamsters.

45% got it right with "Space Elevator"

According to The Times Online, the finest scientific minds of Japan are devoting themselves to cracking the greatest sci-fi vision of all: the space elevator. Up and down the 22,000 mile-long (36,000km) cables — or flat ribbons — will run the elevator carriages, themselves requiring huge breakthroughs in engineering to which the biggest Japanese companies and universities have turned their collective attention.

My life is a sitcom. My luck, I'd get stuck two miles above the planet with a pregnant lady and have to help her give birth in zero gravity. Ew.

Here's an artist's rendering of what the elevator station would look like on earth.
Here's what the other end looks like...