Where Were You When the Country (Nearly) Stopped Working?

There is a popular profoundly patriotic country song that asks the question "Where were you when the world stopped turning?." The event in that song refers to 9/11 and serves as a remarkable and touching reminder of that day of infamy. I get tears in my eyes every time I hear the song. Less than two years ago, our country experienced another crisis of magnitude several hundreds of times greater than the 9/11 catastrophe. Around that time we were at the precipice of a free fall in our economy that nearly wiped out life savings, pensions, the job market and the dreams of most Americans. We are still in the grip of that potential disaster with double digit unemployment the leading indicator of how far we have to go to recover from this disaster. I bring this up because today my topic is short term memory loss on the part of Republicans. This catastrophe, like 9/11, also took place during a Republican presidency and Congress. The ongoing Goldman Sachs debacle should have served to refresh the memories of Republicans as to just who, when and how this fiasco occurred, but apparently it doesn't. Obama is instead blamed for everything; excessive spending, increasing the deficit, etc. Add to that the current Republican theme that he is trying to do too much, trying to exert too much authority over people's lives, trying to over-regulate the banking industry and one gets the distinct impression that this short term memory loss is in a pandemic state. The free fall of our economy as a result of the likes of the unregulated bastards at Goldman Sachs is the lesson that needs to be preserved in song and remembered. I have written a little ditty that will probably not reach the best seller list, but should be memorized by everyone who want to make sure that it never happens again. It goes something like this:

Where were you when your job disappeared?
Where were you when your boss said sorry?
The day your job went calling?
Where were you when the stock market plummetted,
and damn near disappeared
You held your kids, you hugged your wife, the country stopped working?
Where were you?