BLAME IS ALWAYS THE NAME OF THE GAME

"The times are desperate...!"

The first person who said that was probably Adam to Eve as they were losing their lease on the Garden. So today's Americans have no monopoly on desperation. Something I'm reminded of every time I visit my cousin in her senior home. Folks here don't go back as far as the Garden, but they've been around long enough to have some epiphanies of advice for today's scared, angry citizens.

Over lunch I watched the residents. What life had snatched from their bodies, it had enriched their minds. "Uncharted waters...." was their recurring refrain.

America today is in a perfect storm -- brought on by a simultaneous collision of national mistakes and international calamities -- unlike anything we've ever quite seen before. FDR was at the helm in an even worse storm, "But at least his Fireside Chats could explain to us who the enemies were...." Today, not even the enemies know who they are. Banking, financial and mortgage systems have been so manically scrambled, it's virtually impossible to unscramble the omelet to get the shells and the shills out of there.

"Then the big boys did the same thing with globalization..." Cynthia's friend shook his head at the way that let owners cut labor, outsource jobs, then blame the pension & benefit plans of whoever were still left. "Roosevelt indicted them as 'economic royalists,' but today the royalists have convinced us they're too big to fail...."

Cynthia's roommate was dyspeptic."Next the rich pump money into our so-called spontaneous populists...." If they get their way this election, they shoot themselves in the purse, because now there won't be anyone left in Washington to say no to another 30 years of cowboy capitalism. "You know, the old trickle-down that never trickles..."

Cynthia's whole table pretty much agreed. The patients are blaming the doctor for the diseases. "So what do they do -- fire the doctor and get rid of the hospital..." A mistake these seniors learned long ago can be tragic. Sure, when they were younger, they could afford a few dumb mistakes. But neither they nor their country are that young anymore.