It is cold, overcast and snowing today, so, perhaps that is why the Dog feels so paralyzed by the news. Today, 45,000 Americans are finding out that they do not have a job anymore. For many of them that the layoff’s were coming was not news, just the fact that against the hope they held, they were on the list is. This is just the latest in the string of news of people losing their jobs. Of course those numbers are really a little deceptive, it is actually worse than that. There are all services that we have based our economy on that will suffer from a lack of customers. Those that are lucky enough (if you can call it lucky) to have good severances are still going to be going into hoarding mode.

They will not be taking little Suzie to hockey this year, that is now a luxury that they can’t not afford. They will not be eating at restaurants; they will not be traveling to weddings and family reunions; instead they will be hoping that they can find something that will in provide them with enough money to stay in their homes or apartments. These people will be hoping against hope that they will find a good job that will provide them with the money to pay back the debt was too high before this crisis came.

There might be a ray of hope, in the fact that the new President is not someone to hide from a crisis. He asked for a bill on his desk before he even became president, but the Congress could not deliver. It is not as though he really expected it to happen; the process is so complex that it was really just a goad to make them start working and thinking about this. That said, we are already seeing the Republicans lining up against this stimulus. These posturing preening ideologues fear that this will be the final repudiation of their failed economic theories. Worse for them, if it is passed and it is effective, then it will be the final nail in the Reganite coffin, that final proof that government is not the problem, the problem is government run badly.

It is enough to make the Dog grind his teeth down to nubs to hear hypocritical bastards like Rep. Boehner talk about the debt that we will be putting on future generations, as if the nearly ¾ of trillion that we have spent so far on the Iraq war was somehow different. When you have a war of choice, then you have spending of choice. At the same time he and is fellow cohorts talk about reducing taxes on the top earners in this country even more than we have in the last 8 years. As if that is going to somehow make it more likely that there will be less debt for future generations.

That ideologically blinded fools could or would hold up what is needed for the American people is no surprise. The Republican Party has shown that it cares not at all for the American people (other than their votes). They even brag that they are doing this out of principal. The problem with always operating from principal is that it allows you no room to reassess when it does not work. Today William Kristal in his last column for the New York Times (thank you FSM!) said that Conservative ideas were right more than Liberal ones. That level of blindness is so stunning in its conception that it is hard to deride, as any thing more patiently absurd would lack the basic consistency to be a real sentence.

All of this leaves the Dog gob-smacked. What can he recommend when there is this level of misery and blindness as the background? This is one of those days that can defeat even one of the most optimistic people (if you read the Dogs stuff with you regularity you will know he is a true optimist). The Dog is not one to wait for others to solve problems (he is way to sure that he is going to find a better answer anyway) so that has got to be the prescription today. This day the Dog will act. He will call the members of his Congressional delegation and tell them that they must do everything in their power to pass the Renewal and Reinvestment Act. That they should not let the Republicans who will resist this bill at every turn concern them. Their only goal must to help the people of the United States.

Is it enough? No, of course not, but there must be hope. When the world overwhelms your intellect, then there is only hope in action. It may be futile, it may be too little too late but how any one that considers themselves an American or a patriot, or hell, just a human can look at this level of fear and misery and turn away without doing their part, however small and insignificant, is beyond the Dogs understanding.

So, because it is cold, overcast and snowing, because the level of the problem tries to paralyze the Dog, he will fight for hope. He will take the actions that he can today, and think on tomorrow, in the hope that he will know then what to do more effectively. What he will not do is allow circumstance to defeat him, at least not today. That is what the Dog will do, what will you do today to reduce the misery of our fellow citizens? It does not have to be a huge thing, but if we all acted today, and tomorrow and everyday until things are better, is there any limit to what we could achieve?

The floor is yours.