Cowardice Abounds

Updated: Tuesday, 10:30am

What astounds me about today, as the entirety of our political, financial and journalist community run around with their hair on fire screaming Armageddon, is the complete and total lack of either courage or leadership. What we have instead of leadership is a display of astonishing cowardice, with everyone screaming “We’re all going to die,” and not one single voice in the herd saying, “Now let’s all take a breath and consider how we can get through this together.”

It started when Paulson and Bernanke called a meeting with Congress to advise them of the coming disaster and not one single member of that august body questioned them. They came out of that meeting and dutifully told the American people the country was about to catch fire and burn to the ground, that only George W. Bush and his cronies could save it, and that Paulson was working on a plan to do so and would have it ready in a few days. They hoped Paulson’s plan would be ready in time to prevent disaster, because they certainly knew that they (Congress) had no plan and did not know where else to look to come up with any plan.

As a side note, Congress is charged by our constitution with the responsibility for managing the finances of this nation. They are not charged with sitting around idle waiting for King George to tell them what to do. That was England, this is America. They are supposed to have a plan, or at least a clue. They are supposed to pass their own bills, not the bills of King George, even with window dressing added.

Paulson presented his plan and Congress said “Oh, thank heaven, we will pass it immediately.” The American people read the plan and told Congress, “If you do we will vote you out of office in November.” Congress responded by putting some lipstick on the pig (sorry, I could not resist that), taking many days and trying several shades of lipstick, but the House rejected it because the American people still recognized the pig and were still rejecting it by large margins.

Congressional “leaders” began screaming about who was to blame, the corporate overlords and their minions in the media are once again screaming that we are all going to die, the traders have gone into a major snit and have driven down the stock market because their huge bonus was snatched away from them, and politicians, corporatists and media are all trying to scare the American people into line by telling them that without this bill their employers will not even be able to borrow enough money to pay them their wages.

Even when Kennedy announced that Russia had installed nuclear missiles in Cuba, I do not recall an orgy of fear even close to this frenzy of terror that we are experiencing today.

The only group with a modicum of sense and courage is "the man/woman on the street" who seems still to be saying that, while things might get bad, we don't want our tax dollars used to reward the thieves who caused this and we don't want socialism.

Everyone else has completely lost their head. Not one single person that I have heard has publicly admitted that they do not know what might happen next; everyone knows exactly what will happen next right down to the “fact” that your ATM card will become inactive.

The terrorists aren’t in Pakistan; they’re in our newsrooms.

Update: Tuesday, 10:30am
Well, maybe there is one "still small voice crying in the wilderness." Only maybe it's not that small a voice. Go read this post at Bob Geiger to see what Barack Obama can do with a crowd of 25,000 in a driving rainstorm, and know hope.