What happened to the personal responsibility Republicans love to tout?

"Homeowners are the innocent bystanders in a drive-by shooting by Wall Street and Washington," Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Wednesday.

Not to mention, what happened to the fundamental value shift that McCain has been touting concerning "Country First"? It sounds like McCain is sacrificing even more of his "values" just to get the votes of people who are just as much to blame for the American greed (Dream) game falling apart as the Wall Street guys, the federal government, and the banks. I'm sorry, but people need to take financial responsibility for their own investments, futures etc., rather than doing whatever it takes to keep up with the Hollywood Joneses. If the person taking out the loan can't figure out that he can't afford the loan (or can but doesn't care just so long as he can get the hot car/house to show of to his lost dream chasing friends) then it's just as much their fault as the person giving them the loan.

I remember a time when I used to work for MINI that I sold a guy a 20,000 dollar car for 50,000 dollars just so he could drive it off the lot that day. There's no way the guy could afford it being that he was backwards on his trade-in. Not to mention, the guy didn't make that much money. But he wanted it "soooo bad". Sad thing is he just had a kid and was talking to me about how he needed to start a college fund for his newborn. However, he just "had to have this car and was willing to do anything to get it". So I worked out a monthly payment plan that he could afford. Thing was that by the time it was paid off it would cost him 50 Gs. He was so happy to have gotten his hot car that he didn't even do the math to see how much the car would cost him by the time he paid the car off. Lucky me, I ended up getting a sweet commission for the deal. I'm not proud of what I did, but a lot of people were caught up in riding the "something for nothing" gravy train at the time.

People (everyone in this country) need to start taking responsibility for this gigantic All-American fuck-up of a country that we've all helped create with our backwards "Bigger is better, Hollywood mentality". After-all, this is a democracy. Therefore, we're all in it together and all responsible to some degree in terms of where this country is and where it's going.

Get your shit together, America. This whole mess is highlighting the pathetic, self-serving, childish nature of the American mentality.