We are in trouble.

Let’s take a look at the Sunday paper — just one Sunday, last Sunday — to get an idea of what may be accurately describe as the insurmountable problems this country faces.

In a short interaction last week with the American press, (one cannot call it a press conference) George W. Bush stated that the major source of uncertainty in today’s America is whether his tax cuts, scheduled to expire in 2010, would be extended.  This statement is so far afield from the depressing realities squeezing the life out of this nation that one hardly knows how to respond.  The Sunday New York Times responds was to report our problems.  To wit, and in no specific order:

Half of all black teenage girls in the United States carry a sexually transmitted disease.  This is 250% of the percentage of whites or Hispanics, and 500% of the world average.

In a single week, Bear Stearns, the largest bondholder of open mortgages in the United States, collapses, because of the a run on its bank.  With federal government help, J.P. Morgan Chase purchases Bear Stearns.  In five trading days, Bear Stearns stock fell from $70 a share to three dollars a share.  Interestingly, several leaders of American financial institutions called the bail out disgusting.  William Fleckenstein, one of the nation’s largest capital brokers, says “This is the perfect time to set an example, but [this administration] is not interested in setting an example.  We are Bailout Nation.” The investors are concerned that bailout remove risk from investments, basically giving high interest rates to supposedly high-risk investment which have no risk.  The business section in several articles calls this policy “ill-advised.”

At the current rate of falling housing prices, by July of this year one in five American homeowners will owe more on their mortgage then their house is worth, having lost, in the previous year, all their equity and all of their mortgage payments.

One in five California homeowners, it is predicted, will lose their homes before the end of 2008.

One realtor in Florida has so many foreclosed homes that she only tours prospective homeowners by school bus.

Formally charged with no wrongdoing, New York State Governor Elliot Spitzer resigned his office under a cloud of suspicion regarding a prostitution ring.  Meanwhile convicted felon, Republican Senator Larry Craig from Idaho, refuses to resign his office.  It is hinted that Democrats have consciences.

For the first time in history, two countries disconnect their currency from the plummeting US dollar — Dubai and Qatar.  Several other countries are considering the same action.  For the first time in 13 years the yen breaks 100 against the dollar.

This week we mark five years of war in Iraq.

Our economy is in such shambles the Chinese refuse to buy any more of our notes and therefore will not subsidize our debt.

It is noted that some time in the past week we passed 50 million Americans with no health insurance.

Well, enough.

After spending several hours with the New York Times Sunday Edition, it seems apparent that even the editors and journalists of this great newspaper are not only exhausted from reporting bad news, are not only depressed that nobody is presenting solutions including the new candidates for office, but are decidedly angry that the American people are so — how else to say it?  — brain-dead as to their seemingly unavoidable fate.  Depending on how you look upon it, it took the Roman empire 400 years to fully collapse.  The American Empire may collapse within a decade.

It’s going to get very ugly.

– Maui Curmudgeon, somewhere on Maui