OpEdNews - Page 2 of Article: "Say It Ain't So, Bill

She got her wish. One of her sons found her at last collapsed over a cup of coffee, dead as a doornail. And, ironically, she had spoken just that afternoon to my mother and me of her desire to simply have it all over with.

This woman had been a real fighter. City Hall was not a match for her in earlier years!

But we laid her to rest, sad but assured that she had gone to a better place.

I do not name either the priest or my uncle or aunt herein, because I don't want to cause them further hardship.

Meanwhile, her son is working his last few months at Rocky Mountain Steel--now owned by Russian oligarchs--after having had a heart attack himself.

Mother and I had occasion to talk to him and his wife this past weekend because her father had just passed away.

As it often does, the subject turned to politics.

He expressed hope for our president, Barack Obama, but almost visibly shuddered at what the consequences would be should Obama cross the wrong powers that be. We talked about the demise of JFK, and the fact that the full truth is not yet known, although British Broadcasting had pretty much pegged some but not all of the perpetrators.

The worry about our new president was palpable. How, we asked, can he get this economy turned around without ending up with a bullet in the head like Kennedy?

John F. Kennedy, early in his administration had called the heads of Steel Corporations into his office and demanded that they drop their prices for the good of the economy. That, one would think seems like his first mistake. His second, the Bay of Pigs, also took its toll. But perhaps the greatest errors threatening his person were made by his brother Bobby as Attorney general.

Robert Kennedy actively pursued investigations of both Jimmy Hoffa and the Mafia, and never could establish a productive working relationship with J. Edgar Hoover.

Of course, now we've seen all the movies. But just go to Google and enter "John F. Kennedy assassination", and you will find a plethora of books, movies, and other paraphernalia on the subject.

The truth, commented my cousin, newly bereft of yet another elder, will probably not be fully known in our baby-boomer generation's life span.

So, now here we sit with a promising young chief executive in the White House. He is trying to both bail out Wall Street, and censure it for irresponsible profit-mongering.

The most important banks have dwindled to a startling few. Wells Fargo (which is actually Norwest from a corporate takeover) throughout the northwest and southwest, Bank of America on the West Coast, Chase with offices everywhere including Joe Biden's Delaware (a credit card capital if there ever was one), and Wachovia in Winston-Salem, if it still exists at all.

I've watched, during all this crisis, as one day my "open to buy" on a Chase Visa was zero, and the next day, after a payment, back to nearly $30,000!

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"Say It Ain't So, Bill - Say It Ain't So!"