And you've paid a hefty price to aquire it!

The free market isn't working because the market mavens have figured out a way to frustrate its built-in moderating mechanisms.

The Marxists believe the market should be abandoned. altogether The Right doesn't dare admit to itself that anything's wrong. And both of them despise the middle because it still thinks a synthesis can be forged which will address the problem.

But since there are no Marxists to speak of in America, the political center has been redefined as somewhere between the where the actual center should be and the far Right. And it is the Right that is pushing that definition, and they come to forums like this one to do it.

The election of Obama is an attempt by the nation to restablish a balance, with a new midpoint in a more central location. That is why he is being opposed with such ferocity. The Right can deal with wide-eyed radicals and leftist loonies because they are extremists and too far removed from the American mainstream, which is moderately Rightist.
A moderate Leftist, like Obama, or myself, is a bigger threat than some mustachioed bomb-throwing anarchist, because it legitimizes the Left and offers an alternative to either extreme.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.