Yes, Michelle, There Is A Problem.

A nice lady posted this not so nice sign in her yard and has earned her 15 minutes of fame on the nightly news here in Duh Moines earning her the ire of the local homeowner's association that has asked that she take it down. 

Here's what she said.

"I wanted to do something to spur people's conversation at the dinner table between each other, neighbor to neighbor to get people's attention."

On Tuesday, ******, a wife, mother and former marketing major, used her home computer to craft a bash on Obama's abortion stance: a sign calling Obama a "baby killer."

"Got on my PowerPoint and pulled off some art," she said.

Nobody's going to sit around the dinner table and say "Honey, please pass the three bean salad. Gee, we're really doing great with the 401k, aren't we? Obama's really a baby killer, isn't he, just like all the rest of those pesky Knee-Grows?"

They're far more likely to be sitting around the dinner table after the kids have been tucked in, saying to each other "Where in the hell are we going to get the dough to make the mortgage payment, the gas and electric, and send something on the Mastercard? Who can we stiff for another month? Do we really need to put $5 in the collection plate this Sunday?"

To paraphrase Francis P. Church, 

Yes, Michelle, there really is an economic crisis. It's far more important than some story made up to scare the dickens out of some people and to offend others with the sort of tripe that your standard bearers are dispensing like toxic turds along the campaign trail. 

Whirlpool is laying off 440 employees over in Amana next week. The stock market has shed 35 per cent of its value with no bottom in sight. This week the stock market set a record for values shed and number of shares dumped, all in one week, the like of which we haven't seen since 1929. And this morning as I write, the market's down another couple hundred points.

Banks aren't lending money because they can't get any. Business is starting to feel the pinch. 

Mortgage foreclosures and forced evictions are on the rise all across the country. The Des Moines Register carries three or four pages of foreclosure notices nearly every day.

The Polk County Sheriff has scheduled no less than 113 foreclosure auctions of homes in the next month. 

Some of these foreclosures and evictions have taken place right in your own neighborhood. Do you recognize the names Yousufani, Acherman, Hoang, Schira, Belanger, Millard, Larson, Brodeur, Cahill, Christensen, Hyland, Warner and Bunda? That's right, those are people who used to be your neighbors right there in Ankeny until they lost their homes in the last few months and were evicted.

But don't you worry about a thing. We may all live in dumpsters and eat out of garbage cans for the next forty years, but we'll be damn sure that Obama doesn't kill any babies in our town.