I don’t know anything about the stock market other than what I see in the media but lately, every time I see something about it I think what really needs to happen is for several thousand of us ordinary people to march on Wall Street and start slapping wealthy stock traders and tell them, “Don’t panic you fool; this mess is all your fault!”

But of course it’s not all their fault. You can’t blame them for not wanting to keep their money in companies that are about to fail because nobody is buying what they’re trying to sell. From their perspective it’s probably all our fault but you can’t expect people who don’t have jobs or who might not have jobs next week to go out and buy a lot of stuff. Every time I buy groceries I feel like my family is propping up the whole economy almost all by ourselves. It seems like it costs twice as much as it did a year ago to buy the same amount of stuff.

I noticed that President Bush has threatened to veto a bill that would extend unemployment benefits. We can spend $700 billion to save huge investment banks but helping ordinary citizens survive is irresponsible”? Jeez! Oh man, right now it seems like a really long time until January 20th. Not that I expect big change right away. It’s going to take a lot of time but just psychologically it will be a relief to feel that we’re moving in a new direction.

What puzzles me is that some of the very people hurt by Bush’s rich-people-first policies are predicting disaster and preparing their I-told-you-sos. I’ve said it before – the losing side in politics always acts pretty much the same no matter which side it is. That’s not literally everyone of course, just the more politically focused bloggers. I’m not going to link to any of them because I don’t feel like picking a fight with these people but honestly some Republicans are being every bit as ridiculous as Democrats were four years ago. I see people referring to Obama as “The Holy One” and “His O-ness” and other such nonsense, as if that’s the way his supporters think of him, and predicting the final downfall of America. And even when they turn out to be wrong they will never admit it. On the contrary, no matter how good things are going every bump in the road will be interpreted by them as evidence that they were right and that we’re living in the End Times.

Here’s one I will link to. It’s not a blog – a lengthy essay (which I did not bother to read all of) on how to survive a “SHTF situation”. Okay… you know what? This is fine. It’ll keep them occupied. We should probably encourage this. If we can get most of the people who voted for McCain to go out and buy survival gear and stock up on non-perishibles maybe that will boost the economy.

Sorry about the political rant but that’s what was on my mind this morning so that’s what you get. In a little while I’ve gotta go out and boost the economy myself. Then maybe later I’ll post some pictures or something else nice.