Is this a Joke?

Two Ants are walking across a golf course.  As they maneuver around a large white ball,  a club swings down from the sky. It misses the ball and almost hits the Ants.  They run to the other side of the ball for safety just as the club swings past them, once again missing the ball but gouging a rut in the grass in front of them.  Scared and confused one Ant says to the other, "We better get on the ball or we are going to get the hell knocked out of us." 

No. This is not a joke. It is a Congressional cautionary tale.

It is very hard to think funny right now. I've only heard stories from my folks and grandparents about the "great depression". None of the stories are very pleasant.  To actually witness the stock market drop by an historic number in hours this week was an ominous slice of perspective.  What I have been told by relatives who work in the financial world is this: we really didn't recover from the "great depression" until we entered World War II.  But wait, aren't we in two wars now?  How does that figure into economic recovery?

I would love to rant on about the current economic/political situation. I can usually turn a rant into a comedy piece. However, the only thing it would accomplish is to alienate at least half of my readers, and add fuel to a fire that now burns out of control.   

The problem is everyone is talking about it and no one is doing anything but talking about it.  It is the equivalent of firefighters standing around a house fire debating whether it started in the den or the kitchen.  Just put out the fire.

The problem is, there is no one in government we can trust.  We just assume no one is telling the truth. In fact, as a country we may have lost the concept of truth entirely.  Truth has become a partisan plank in a party platform.  In the words from Tommy Smothers Emmy acceptance speech last week , "The truth is what ever we can get you to believe."  I was always taught to believe the truth was an absolute, a principle that contains no red or blue.  Are bad sub prime mortgages just the WMD's of seven years ago?  Who knows?  The boy who cried wolf was eventually eaten by the wolf.  Are we the boy, the wolf or the town's people who assumed the call was a lie?  I fear that most of us are the sheep the boy was supposed to protect.

In the words of Forrest Gump, "And that is all I have to say about that." 

As you were,

Jay