What needs to be expected of us

It seems so many people have all these opinions about what we should and shouldn't be doing, regarding our economy and our economic and financial situation, for the country and the world.

There's no shortage of opinions in normal times, of course, but when it's extraordinary times like these, well, the opinions flow. Some good, even. Lots of bad ones.

What we need to do, what needs to be expected of us, all of us, is that we

--stay calm,

--search for good sources of non-partisan information (think NPR and PBS),

--hold on to reason and logic,

--fight letting our emotions take over,

--avoid thinking of situations as "me" or "us" vs. "them",

--look for solutions to problems and not focus on just the outcome(s) of any current bad situation,

--be realistic

--push ourselves to think of solutions we can possibly offer other people,

--avoid demagogues of any political stripe and their emotional calls or out-and-out tirades to act out or think in certain ways,


Knowledge, information and logic will help us.

Yelling about things and getting and keeping emotional helps nothing.

Hating others is ugly, pointless and, in fact, only creates more problems.

So Rick Santelli-type rages on the trading floor of Wall Street helps nothing.

Daily rants from the likes of Rush Limbaugh or Larry Kudlow types is just irresponsible and only creates interference and roadblocks to solutions. It only clouds people's thinking and creates more problems.

What we need to do, folks, ultimately, besides this listed above, is work together. We need to talk to one another. We need to understand our mutual problems and situations and then work together to common, shared solutions.

And we can't get that without talking to and understanding one another and then working together.

That goes for both houses of Congress, all political parties, and all of us "common people" on the street.