Foot in Mouth Disease

It happens to everyone. A remark is made and (usually) the person who made the remark wants to rewind time so they can revise what was said to (pick your choice) 1. make more sense; 2. be in reference to the actual topic; or 3. be accurate.

You realize something is wrong when you hear the sniggers, see the rolling eyes or the mouthful of food or drink come spewing out of mouths. You do a quick rerun of what you just said and realize you put your (insert shoe size here) New Balance 601's into your mouth.

Most of the time it's innocuous. No big deal.

It happened to Senator Joe Biden the other day. He was referencing how President Franklin Roosevelt reacted when the Stock Market fell on October 29, 1929 to begin the Great Depression.

"When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, 'Look, here's what happened,'" Barack Obama's running mate recently told the "CBS Evening News."

As you and my other reader know, because my readers are the smartest, most astute readers on the Web (yes, I know, I'm shameless), it was Herbert Hoover who was president when the market crashed in '29, not FDR. Something else Biden said that was not mentioned in the article I read, no one, not FDR or Hoover, got on TV to talk about the crash because TV didn't exist at the time.

That Biden was historically inaccurate isn't much of a problem. I'm not even really concerned with what Biden or any of the candidates have to say about what happened.

I am much more concerned with what is being done about it. I usually like when someone steps back from an issue and thinks it through, then gives a thoughtful, clearly reasoned response. Senator Obama did just that when the most current financial crisis fell into our laps.

Even more, I like when a candidate can give an answer based on what he (or she as the case may be) has already stated as part of their platform. That's what McCain did.

I'd like to step back a second and address what many consider to be McCain's foot-in-mouth statement. McCain made a statement about how the "fundamentals" were strong. Obama jumped in and asked what economy he was talking about. The media did their part and broadcast the portion where McCain spoke of the “fundamentals” and left out the part before where he defined the fundamentals. McCain made the statement in Tampa and it was widely (in the Tampa area anyway) broadcast. I saw the entire statement and know the context. When McCain was talking about the "fundamentals", he had just talked, and I mean within the same sentence and paragraph, about the fundamentals of the economy being…the people. The business owners, the entrepreneurs and the employees, and they were what is strong about the economy. I remember thinking, yes! He's got it right - it's the people who are the strength of the economy.

McCain had to make a statement the next day clarifying what he said. And yes, even I agree that the economy itself is in poor condition right now. I wasn't, and still am not, one who was running around screaming, "the sky is falling!" I leave that up to the liberals and those who are scared of every bump in the road. Is the road bumpy? Yeah, it is. Lots of potholes need to be fixed. McCain was ready with a plan of what he would do if he were president. Obama wasn’t. He came out with a statement saying something to the effect of, let's wait and see.

This isn't something we can wait and see. I don't agree with the current bail out of $700+ billions of dollars to "fix" this problem. Especially if there is no oversight on how that money is to be used. This isn't pocket change and this isn't an "owie" that needs some Neosporin and a Band-Aid.

This is our money, our tax dollars that Paulsen and Bernecke want to use to bail out the economy. I want to know that the people doling out this money know what they are doing and that the money will be used to it's best use.

Not something Congress is familiar with.