Herbert on Voting

Here are the leading paragraphs from Bob Herbert's column in today's NYT:

The lesson for Americans suffused with anxiety and dread over the crackup of the financial markets is that the way you vote matters, that there are real-world consequences when you go into a voting booth and cast that ballot.

For the nitwits who vote for the man or woman they’d most like to have over for dinner, or hang out at a barbecue with, I suggest you take a look at how well your 401(k) is doing, or how easy it will be to meet the mortgage this month, or whether the college fund you’ve been trying to build for your kids is as robust as you’d like it to be.

Go read the rest. The Republicans, with their addiction to "tax cuts for the rich" and huge deficit spending, have wrecked our economy. They did this across three presidencies: Reagan, Bush I and Bush II. This was a deliberate act on their part, as in the old saying "Once is an accident, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action."

Plenty of people warned that this day was coming, but I doubt if most thought it would arrive as soon as it did.