Let’s play a game. Try to come up with ways to pay off the $11 trillion national debt. Here’s some figures to get us started: last year the national budget was $2,650 billion dollars. We spent $412 billion of that paying JUST INTEREST. The debt has increased by more than 20% since January.

And… go!

The economic crisis currently gripping our country has been the top political issue in this country for months now. My blog is a political blog. Noticeably absent from it has been the top political issue in the country. Why? Because words can’t describe how angry, disappointed, and disgusted I am with the handling of it all.

Believe me, I’ve tried. There are many half-written posts on the subject. A starting paragraph followed by a rant followed by broken sentences that simply couldn’t be folded in coherently – not that my rants are terribly coherent to begin with. It almost makes me feel like I’ve somehow failed as a blogger. I’m normally a very articulate person. I’d like to at least think that I’m a rational, reasonable, persuasive person.

But every time I think of what the government has done on this my mind just fucking asplodes.

Free trade isn’t the horrible job killer that the doom-sayers claim it is. Free trade increases demand for American goods, decreases the cost of living in America, and makes world a better place for everyone. While I doubt that any of the free trade agreements sitting in Congress right now will be passed in the next four years, we need to fight against the erosion of our current agreements by the Obama administration. Support America. Support prosperity. Support capitalism. Support free trade.

The basic equation of capitalism is with risk comes reward. Without risk, capitalism doesn’t work. We need risk. We need failure. We need to expect failure. We need to accept failure. We need to let failure happen.

Warning: The following could be considered a rant. Those of you who read this blog for the dry, thoughtful, “just the facts” tone of my posts may want to look away.

My problem with the auto bail out (on top of my problems with bail outs in general) is that the companies are not financially viable – and they’re not viable for a reason. Everyone who has anything to do with them has a sense of entitlement.