Ecclesiastes 7:4

There's No Pill for This Kind of Depression - WSJ.com

KJV says it best: "The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth."

I think Peggy is back from being "lost", but the Bible verse says it as best as is possible. We are still pretty close to a 50/50 nation in reality. Right now BO's numbers are still high because about 10% of the people that know better are still giving him the benefit of the doubt in hope against hope that this won't be as bad as it looks -- so he is at 60% popularity as opposed to 50. The people that produce, invest, once dreamed of having a future, thought their kids could have a bright future, believed in what had always been America -- those kinds of folks are now mired in a depression that goes beyond mere financial ruin. They see that the core values of America have been squandered and we are careening to being "Really Western Europe", or some yet unknown Pagan Socialist Pauper Nation -- "On Nation Under Nothing" -- or maybe just "Under".

Two, the economy isn't the only reason for our unease. There's more to it. People sense something slipping away, a world receding, not only an economic one but a world of old structures, old ways and assumptions. People don't talk about this much because it's too big, but I suspect more than a few see themselves, deep down, as "the designated mourner," from the title of the Wallace Shawn play.

What I see around me is essentially "the loss of the future". For people in their 40's and 50's, they have seen 12 years of their investing lives go up in smoke, and any last vestiges of job security blow away (if not their actual jobs). They look out at the early wreckage of "the change", and they see no hope of a recovery that allows them to postulate a future any better than most likely a cinder block appartment in a government building where they will essentially be "a ward of the state". The future that looks most likely to them from today is a future that scarcely would have crossed their mind 6-12 months ago.


Meanwhile, our media and the 50% of people that always figured that "things were stacked against them" are in a paroxysm of joy. The wise know that will not last -- that is why gun sales are breaking all records. When the fools realize that yet again, they have duped themselves, they will return again to their natural state of anger. Will BO be able to turn their anger away from where it deserves to be (him) and toward the wise? Who knows, that is why the wise are buying guns.

Gun sales continue up. The FBI's criminal background check system showed a 23% increase in February over the previous year, a 29% increase in January, a 24% increase in December and a 42% increase in November, when a record 1.5 million background checks were performed. Yes, people fear Obama will take away the guns he thinks they cling to, but a likely equal contributor to what The Wall Street Journal's MarketWatch called a "gun-buying binge" is captured in the slogan on one firearms maker's Web site: "Smith & Wesson stands for
protection." People are scared.

I think "scared" is the wrong term -- "prepared" is better. The wise are always thinking of preparation -- a year ago it was saving, investing, not buying on credit, doing well at your job. Today it is laying in some cash/gold, supplies and firearms in case BO continues to take the nation in the current direction. We DO want him to fail to destroy America, but he has one hell of a good start if turning us into Kenya or worse is his objective.

"The heart of fools is in the house of mirth".