A tornado just made a 6-mile swipe through the middle of Atlanta for the first time ever.
It seems a little strange to me that one has not hit before because there is area of North Georgia in Hall County that is known as tornado alley. Plus Gainesville, which is only about 50 miles northeast of Atlanta, has had more than one tornado during my lifetime.
The big tornado that practically leveled the town of Gainesville was in 1936, killing several hundred people. I remember it quite well. It was around 8 in the morning and I was walking to catch the school bus.
In this election year, the rhetoric and dirty politics is in high gear. Like a ping-pong game, the accusations are slinging back and forth between the three major candidates.
Several years ago, there was a great Washington news correspondent named Jack Anderson who said, “I don’t cover the news. I uncover it.” I wish he was around today because there is so much covered up with spin, and so much to be uncovered, we are just beginning to hear about who’s buried what about whom, and why.
When this political campaign began over a year ago, I thought we were in a war of ideas. I was mistaken. It’s not on that level. No one seems to have any rational ideas about how to solve or resolve anything.
“All the world is wrong but me and thee, and sometimes I have my doubts about thee.”
With all that’s going on in the world and this country in particular, listening to the daily news is a situation that plays up and down with our emotions like a mountain fiddle player. It’s the war, the economy, politics, the crime rate, adverse weather, shenanigans in Hollywood, and as my grandmother used to say…enough to make a preacher cuss, and some do.
If it were not for the tragedy of conditions, it would be downright amusing. Thank goodness for the comedy of the nighttime talk show host which provides a little relief.
Talk about the economy is running neck and neck with talk about the war and the political race. So I want to stick in my two cents of opinion about the economy. The one thing we all have is an opinion.
The economy deals with money and the production and exchange of goods and services. Money is simply a medium of exchange. At one time in our history, we had gold, which has intrinsic value, and backed paper money. Then the government removed that backing and now has a grist mill of turning out paper dollars, referred to as fiat money.
The news is filled with stories about our medium of exchange, the dollar and politicians. The value of the dollar is sinking like the Titanic. Every day, the media speaks of the trillions being spent and the staggering, mounting debt of the government and American society as a whole.
Congress is talking about it like putting a band-aid on a hemorrhaging problem. They talk about bail-out solutions as if the government has plenty of cash savings to rescue all those in the market place who have spent like a drunken sailor on shore leave. While the wrecking ball is swinging, Congress speaks of billions in refunds, stimulus packages and tax breaks.
I’m no economist, and have trouble comprehending the language of Wall Street, pundits, Congress and the President, but understand enough to know we are in a heap of trouble. And trying to stick a finger in a broken dam. I do think the average person like myself should be thinking ‘hard money.’
