Summer Sideshows and Salacious Sizzle Bring in the Clowns

The political season that once started in an four-year election cycle now starts 16 months or so in advance. 

Does this historically early start really help voters or is it just a roadshow to fill campaign coffers?  President Obama is wheeling his way through the Mid-west touting jobs ironically because his two buses are primarily manufactured in Canada.  I note that another bus is being readied for the Republican nominee as well. 

The Republican hopefuls are just tripping all over their tongues extolling long rejected virtues while attacking the President and disregarding the fact that our economy began its major downfall under the watchful eyes of George W. Bush from Texas who is being mimicked by Rick Perry. 

I think this cavalcade of clowns on the Republican side really helps Obama  (can you envision Bachmann or Palin with their finger on the nuclear trigger?) and also reinforces the fact that we, as a nation, are devoid of leadership across the board.  Neither side has the 'cajones' to propose out of the box solutions which might have a chance of rescuing us from an economic abyss. 

As of this blog, gold is quickly approaching $2,000 an ounce and everyone is on vacation.  Meanwhile the banks continue to rape and pillage by offering de minimus savings rates and keeping actual consumer loans to a minimum.  Interest rates should be in the mid-threes and ARMS should be in the mid to high two's.

I once thought that despite our differences in thought and culture that as the skies darkened as a replay of 2008 unfolds, that Americans and our leaders would be more patriotic and cast aside their agendas to work for the people.  I guess that concept is as antiquated as the American Dream of owning a house or going to a university these days. 

The point here is that the rhetoric is just plain irresponsible from threatening the Fed Chairman to resurrecting the resolved issue of abortion while cloaking themselves in the image of Ronald Reagan. (Note Governor Ronald Reagan signed the most liberal abortion bill in the U.S. in 1970.) 

Americans are thirsting for leadership this summer and all we get is hyperbole and 'gone fishing' signs.  Are we going to have a wholesale destruction of our economy for the next 10 years while the post-baby boom generation flounders?  There seems to be a 'leadership vacuum' nationally, just posers and hosers as my hockey friends would say.  Surely our nation can pull it together as we approach the ten year anniversary of 911. 

I don't think we, as a nation, have congealed since World War II, but perhaps now it is time to reject the clownage and political button pushing while realizing we are sliding into a morass that may be an economic La Brea Tar-pit, otherwise keep your powder dry.