I say this not to lay blame or look backwards, but because it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we’ll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament.

How we arrived at Chris Dodd? Barney Frank? Charlie “Three Chins” Rangel? Little Timmy the Tax Evader? The most distinguished of the great chamber!

The fact is, our economy did not fall into decline overnight.

Correct, it won’t be able to do that until the stimulus provides all illegals their low-interest tax payer sponsored mortgages.

Nor did all of our problems begin when the housing market collapsed or the stock market sank.

Tell me little historian, when did the Iranian revolution start?

We have known for decades that our survival depends on finding new sources of energy.

Cigarettes that don’t cause cancer?

Yet we import more oil today than ever before.

Sorry we can’t all levitate to work, despite our proximity to your magnificence.

The cost of health care eats up more and more of our savings each year, yet we keep delaying reform.

If George Soros wants to euthanize Ted Kennedy, who are we to stop him?

Our children will compete for jobs in a global economy that too many of our schools do not prepare them for.

Since somebody from Harvard likes to end their sentences with prepositions, however shall we unwashed masses compete?

And though all these challenges went unsolved, we still managed to spend more money and pile up more debt, both as individuals and through our government, than ever before.

What do you mean we? Speak for yourself clown-bait.

In other words, we have lived through an era where too often, short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity;

Like the GM jobs bank, the union contract, and legislation rammed down the taxpayers throats before even the law-makers had time to read it?

where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter or the next election.

The Generational Theft Act?

A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future.

Citigroup?

Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market.

The Community Reinvestment Act?

The McCain-Feingold redistribution of free speech?

The failure to build the border wall, to stop illegals from their manifest home-loan destiny?

(end part 3)