Just some thoughts

Just random musings today, in no particular construct other than stream-of-consciousness:

- Noticed the Dow lost another few hundred points today. Guess that bailout's really working, eh?

- The shrillness factor seems to have gone up an order of magnitude for both campaigns in the past few days. Depressing thought: most of the nasty stuff they have to say about "the other guy" is rooted in truth. Manic depressive thought: our political conditioning to the two-party system means one of them will win next month.

- In one single act (the bailout), Congress obligated the U.S. taxpayer for an amount greater than five years of war in Iraq.

- Capitalism is taking the rap for the current crisis, but few seem to acknowledge the corporatist government interventions into the market that got us here. In a free market, obsolete or inefficient businesses die by the creative destruction of Adam Smith's famous 'invisible hand.' Today, the all-too-visible hand of Uncle Sam is busy stirring everybody's pot. That's not a free market, or capitalism. It's just a recipe for boiling over.

- My favorite non-partisan "plague on both your houses" slogan encountered this week:
"Let's have a clean slate in '08!"

I can still dream...