Stickybuffalo.com

I don’t have thousands tied up in mutual funds comprised of stocks, backed, through some convoluted process, by AIG. I don’t have a house that’s rapidly losing value, or for that matter a car loan to deal with. It’s times like these where the screams of sheer terror coming from the financial sector have that finite degree of separation from my daily life that it almost feels good to be a lowly student employed by a large healthcare organization. All that aside, it’s really hard not to feel like this is All George’s Fault. For now, I’m reading a lot of articles on The Motley Fool, which is providing some real temperance to the sky-is-falling feeling. I also appreciate the range of opinions realclearmarkets.com is offering (admittedly, it’s easy to click over from RCP).

As I said above, I’ve got little invested (sorry) in this directly, more so indirectly, and yet it’s quickly becoming the issue of Election 2008. In fact, it’s certainly bigger than the election. 700 billion dollars of wealth invested in the market evaporated and more to go considering the slide of nearly 500 points today means it’s not long before this starts taking out the retirement savings of everyone. Thank goodness it’s rapidly becoming the election platform plank that might just beat McSame into a quiet life at one of his dozen homes. Take a little breather from the hot AZ summer John, maybe some time at the beach? Certainly Cindy’s beer distributorship is depression-proof. Retire and let someone with patience and a willingness to learn step in to deal with this issue which you claimed to have little expertise in before last week. It’s hard to look at a January 2009 with McCain/Palin at the helm and envision anything better than the horrible situation the economy is in today.

Which leads me to another Kos post, also in the digg feed, which quotes the former National Review Online publisher, Wick Allison, as saying:

It gives me comfort just to think that after eight years of George W. Bush we will have a president who has actually read the Federalist Papers.

Most important, Obama will be a realist. I doubt he will taunt Russia, as McCain has, at the very moment when our national interest requires it as an ally. The crucial distinction in my mind is that, unlike John McCain, I am convinced he will not impulsively take us into another war unless American national interests are directly threatened.

“Every great cause,” Eric Hoffer wrote, “begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” As a cause, conservatism may be dead. But as a stance, as a way of making judgments in a complex and difficult world, I believe it is very much alive in the instincts and predispositions of a liberal named Barack Obama.

May all fiscal conservatives reach such enlightened positions after this week’s mess.