IF ELECTED PRESIDENT

I promise to protect the middle class from being objectified.

If I were Joe the Plumber, I'd be complaining about being used and abused with no sex involved. Now, Joe's got a gun in hand! And let me tell ya somethin' about Joe the Plumber: he's no Dick Cheney!

It's not too late for the true poetic and political Third Way! Remember:

If elected President, I promise a poet in every pot!

*****

More seriously, I've been obsessed for the last couple of weeks with watching the stock market ticker every morning. Being three hours behind NY time, I can catch most of the Dow's movements during my California mornings. And I have to say, short-term trading aside, there are a lot of idiots on, and pundits related to, Wall Street. Y'all have no business having significant rallies, folks, when you hadn't yet received the data on economic fundamentals that you knew was unfolding this week (and if you're a technician vs a fundamentalist, what about rallying ahead of the known unraveling of Lehman positions). Let me put it succinctly:

                  It's not the economy, Stupid. It is jobs, Stupid.

There, I've just given you more specificity than you've gotten from the two Presidential candidates. In other words, you can address the credit and housing crises all you want but you need more direct address on unemployment. No job? No demand for credit. (If that trickle-down effect hasn't worked, what makes you all think trickle-vertical is going to be sufficient? Yes, you need a more direct address of the issue.)

I am a trained economist but I do not approve of interupting my life as a blathering-drunken-poet to deliver to y'all this message.