Unprotected Sex with Merrill Lynch

.
Tom Friedman on the Imus Show this morning called the election situation in Israel a complete, bloody mess.

'course that phrase pretty much sums up what the Obama Administration has inherited, as well, in both foreign policy and the state of the economy.

And poor ol' Tom, he's reduced to staying home from the cocktail circuit with his head in his hands, dithering over whether to put his paycheck in Citibank or under the mattress.

At least he's got a paycheck.

Friedman tells us: be afraid, be very afraid. This is a national emergency we're in and people are acting as if it's business as usual....I find the grandstanding and partisan bickering appalling.

Well there we agree.

And as Friedman notes, the worst of it is, when contemplating the "banksters" who testified yesterday, they're a bunch of dopes. Bank of America, he says, was going along fine and then had unprotected sex with Merrill Lynch and the rails came off.

Friedman's solution is getting the heart that runs America pumping again, and that's the banking credit system.

So now what?

Friedman's willing to give Obama six months, a year to work through this current mess. Because, as he notes, this is not a test. This is real.

There's a whole lot of hysteria percolating right beneath the surface all over the place these days, as Friedman's commentary shows.

I take heart from looking at the totality of what the Obama Administration has already done. Obama promised his team would hit the ground running, and they have. Appalling last minute Bush directives have been overturned. A cabinet has been assembled.

Sure, if you listened to the dinosaur media, you'd think the only thing going on is the stimulus package and whether Drug-Rush will rule Republicanville.

But if you step back and take a deep breath, you'll see the same strategic thinking that sustained and grew the Obama campaign is now up and running in Washington.

And that's a good thing.
.
UPDATE: Maybe part of the problem is the 5 percent factor.

For Your 4th

.
Whatever you have on tap for this holiday weekend, take a little time out to give thought to what you can do to truly "support the troops" who don't have a choice between the usual holiday at the resort, or the beach, or the national park, or even "staycation."

Men and women are putting their lives on the line each and every day for us...in Iraq and Afghanistan...on the fire line in Big Sur...at home, ready if the call for first responders goes out.

We talk a lot here and throughout the blogosphere, and one of the things we've talked a lot about is Congress and oversight. Why, we ask, haven't the now in control Democrats put the brakes on the runaway freight train about to careen off the side of the mountaintop that is the Bush Administration?

We talk a lot...but what are we doing? How many have sought out our Senators or Congressperson to say, listen to US. Listen to America. Don't listen and vote for the special interests on K Street, like the telco's who just had their way with the House of Representatives while doling out a paltry few thousands of campaign dollars.

I'm thinking that works because the Congresscritters are tellin' themselves, if I don't vote AT&T's way, then maybe Corp X, Y and Z would see that they might not get their "money's worth" and turn off the campaign contribution spigot, too.

A screwed-up system.

On the Imus Show this week, Tom Friedman, the man who put the "FU" in friedman unit, opined, as though by a timely cosmic revelation, we've got to fix our democracy here, we've got to fix our country.*

Well no shit, Sherlock.

Welcome to reality, pal. While you've been busy furthering the friedman unit, the rest of us out here in the real world have been dealing with the consequences of the Village's blithe bolstering of the gut of Bush. And it ain't pretty. So put down that plate of cocktail wienies, step away from the RNC blast o'the hour, let go of the self-indulgent claptrap, grab your media-darling cronies, and say, hey, maybe it's about time we stopped treating this as some kind of theatre of the absurd, pushing people around like pawns—a few thousand layoffs here, a few thousand layoffs there, a few hundred thousand casualties over there, pretty soon it adds up to real yadda, yadda.

Because oversight belongs to all of us. Congress. The media. And you. And me.

So this Fourth of July, between the wienies and the fireworks, ask yourself...what am I putting on the line?
.
. Need a jump start? Christy's got some great ideas and tools over at firedoglake.

* my paraphrase, because WABC hasn't put the interview up on their website for linkage and exactitude as of this writing...not that that ever stopped the BBQ Media from runaway adoration of St. Mc and distortion of whatever they feel like distorting on any given day.