McCain and The Auto Industry both cry “Mulligan”!

Both John McCain and the Auto Industry both cried “uncle” this week when the pressure got too high. In a way it was a good thing. It showed the hypocrisy of these two crumbling institutions and hopefully displayed to the world that neither Mr. McCain nor the Auto Industry are fit to operate in a free market society.

First, the auto industry. Like a workaholic father trying to hide the fact that mommy has a drinking problem buying every toy it can find for the kids to keep things normal, our government is giving the auto industry $25 billion in relief. They’re doing this because twenty years ago when Americans were asking for more fuel efficiency and instead we got SUVs and H2. Actually, go back as far as the nineteen-forties when auto entrepreneur, Tucker, built his cars with 35 mpg at a time when the national average was 15 –20. The auto industry destroyed his business faster than you can say "four dollars a gallon". Why? Because when you have two industries trying to squeeze as much as they can from their consumers, the consumer’s needs don’t really factor into the equation. Like Big Oil and Big Auto. Don’t believe me? Well, even now the Big Three are still not willing to comply with new fuel efficiency standards, and why should they? If people stop buying their cars, we’ll pay for them with our taxes. Who needs the free market when you’ve got our taxes to make up your reckless financial decisions.

Second, Senator John McCain and his own bailout. His campaign is trailing in the polls, he clearly doesn’t understand the financial mess, his running mate may as well be a deaf-mute and now, he wants to call a time out. A time out. He wants to suspend his campaign activities until we sort this whole financial mess out. This mess that could last for years. Does that mean we’ll just give George W. a third term (literally, that wasn’t a jab at McCain) until Senator McCain is ready to hold elections? It’s nothing short of a travesty and a mockery of our election procedure. Senator McCain, if you can’t work on fixing the economy while doing something else, you need to step out of the race now because you are incapable of leading this nation. I’m sorry, but sometimes being president requires doing one thing and then, suddenly having to do something else too. Will Ahmadinejad of Iran or Putin of Russia postpone their activities because you’re in the weeds?

Things don’t look good for America right now and some say that we won’t recover from this credit crisis. But you know, we’ve come through a depression and world struggle that consumed nearly every nation and we did okay. I’m not saying we should do that again, what I am saying is that we’ve been in hard times before and we made it as a nation. I wasn’t there so I can not presume to know the courage of the average citizen, but I do know this, if our leaders can’t handle this crisis without being bailed out in one form or another, stand aside and let someone with enough courage try.