Who's Going To Clean Up This Mess?

We return to our financial crisis, already in progress...
BIG THREE AUTOMAKERS: So you see, Senators, that's why we absolutely have to have twenty-five billion dollars to save our corporations.
SENATORS: We were hoping for something more along the lines of fifteen.
BIG THREE: (with furrowed brows and stroking of chins) Well, gee, I dunno. I'll tell you what, let me pop back to the sales office and see what the sales manager can do on that.
SENATORS: Okay - but how about asking what it would be without the undercoating?

Every morning that I wake up and hear about companies being saved via billions of dollars in government money, I bristle just a little more at the way that wealth is being redistributed. Where were these jokers when they closed the Toys R Us? Forget terrorists. What about when the Hungries hit? They closed Red Barn! Why don't I get to choose what corporations survive and which companies close?
Workers laid off from their jobs at the Republic Windows and Doors factory near Chicago have occupied the building and are demanding assurances they'll get severance and vacation pay that they say they are owed. About two hundred employees began their sit-in Friday, the last scheduled day of the plant's operation. Just like the heads of the Big Three automakers, if they sit there long enough, maybe the cash will show up, but their jobs are gone. General Motors, Ford and Chrysler will, most likely, continue to exist, and they will be "out to win us over this year" with their "Ram tough" vehicles that are "surprisingly affordable." In November, more than half a million Americans lost their jobs. That's half a million more. Not just half a million Americans out of work. Just so we're clear.
We continue to explore vast new regions of darkness before the storm. My mother likes to remind me of the way history has always worked: "Things will probably get worse before they get better." This is a fact that hasn't been wasted on our President-elect while warming up in the bullpen. When the truth is finally revealed that for the past eight years, we have been governed by a group of Red Lectroids overseen by Lord John Whorfin ("Dick" Cheney), everything will become clear. Until then, we live with the hopelessly tangled mess left inside Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems.

They say that these are not the best of times,
but they're the only times I've ever known - Billy Joel