These seven days were memorable - Death, destruction, and government bail-outs

What a week. Within a period of about seven days, we marked the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, the 4000th casualty of that decision, a government bail-out of an investment bank, reports of record job losses, floods in Illinois, Arkansas, and Missouri, one presidential candidate (Barack Obama) giving the best explanation of how black people and white people talk amongst ourselves, and the Vice President responding to the news that two out of three Americans want us out of Iraq by saying, “So?” It’s funny these things happened during Easter week because it made me think that a government of the people, for the people, and by the people may have actually perished from the earth, but it can be resurrected.

The Dick Cheney comment really bothered me. I can almost understand why they wouldn’t let us see the flag-draped caskets of our dead soldiers and I kind of get the logic behind the President not attending any of their funerals over the last five years (although that’s the one thing I give Rudy Giuliani credit for after September 11, 2001). But then I remember that 3,880 of those 4,000 people died after the President said that we had “prevailed” in Iraq - and that’s when I get upset. It’s not like we didn’t stick it out with this administration, is it? It’s not like they can say we weren’t patient, right? We gave them everything they asked for and all the time they could have wanted. We’ve been in Iraq longer than we were in World War II – and that was a world war! It was almost like the Vice President was saying that we just have to accept the fact that we’re going to be paying $12 billion every month in Iraq and that 60 or 70 Americans are going be dying in Iraq every month for the foreseeable future and we had all better just get used to it. It made me want to take the prosthetic limb of a wounded veteran and hit Dick Cheney in his crooked, lying mouth with it.

The bail-out of Bear Stearns didn’t make me too happy, either. It just annoys me to no end when the government decides that there are some businesses in America that are “too big to fail”. It’s the second time in the last ten years this has happened and both times it was a bunch of super-rich speculators who were too smart by half, who had gotten monumentally greedy, and who got burned. The first was a hedge fund called Long Term Capital Management that lost almost $2 billion over the course of the summer of 1998. Not to worry, though. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York stepped in and saved LTCM’s bacon. It was that rescue that led Ken Lay and the geniuses at Enron to believe that since they dominated the energy industry, that they would be “too big to fail”, also. They were wrong – and most of their employees lost their pensions and their life savings in the process. Now the investment bank Bear Stearns’ heavy position in mortgage-backed securities caused their stock price to go from $60 per share to $2 per share basically overnight – a drop that could have caused a panic. The Feds stepped in and guaranteed $30 billion in taxpayer money to JPMorgan Chase if they agreed to buy Bear Stearns and absorb some of those losses. It reminded me of two old expressions, “there are no Libertarians in a financial crisis,” and, “when you owe the bank $100, the bank owns you. When you owe $100 million, you own the bank.”

Rising above this crappy news week was the next President of the United States, Senator Barack Obama. They say the third rail of politics is Social Security because if you touch it, you die. For him, it’s race. Let’s face it, white people don’t like talking about the role of race in America (I will add that black people may like talking about it a little too much). But none of us can deny that it is a factor in every aspect of American life. Or at least it has been before this current generation and the big, brown world they’re growing up in. Once again, he reminded us that we can actually act like adults, talk about the issues that divide us, and arrive at understanding so we can move forward.

To show us all how important it is that we work together, Mother Nature once again flooded the streets of American cities and towns and reminded us that we aren’t black or white or rich or poor or Democrat or Republican. When the waters rise, we’re all just wet and helpless – and we need each other.