Where is the Common Sense?

Chicken little is having a hey day today! Between the economy, the auto industry, the mortgage crisis and swine flu the sky is definitely falling! Of course being the eternal optimist I have one big question; what the heck happened to common sense in the world today?

Let's examine a couple of these things:

• The economic crisis, no question it is here and upon us, the interesting thing is a little common sense could have avoided it. Where was the regulation of all the financial instruments that created the problem in the first place, Congress and both parties are quick to lay the blame but if one of the purposes of government is to act for the greater good of it's citizens then why wasn't good old common sense used in the regulatory environment, most of these designed financial instruments were designed out of greed and to take advantage of the system, a little common sense by someone might have brought out that realization.
• Here's my favorite one, swine flu! I saw yesterday that Ft. Worth was closing all it's schools for almost two weeks because of it and of course it's all over the media that we have a pandemic. I'm not quite sure what a pandemic is but right now this flu has accounted of about 160 deaths, each year the flu kills over 36,000 people in the U. S. alone, so does that mean we have an ongoing pandemic? Again a little common sense would tell me that if you take the normal precautions against getting sick you are probably going to be OK and even if you get the flu almost all of the cases have been mild here in the U.S. So like usual in the year of no common sense we overreact and forget about using some!

It would seem to me that what this country really needs to get moving again is simply some common sense, if it doesn't look right it probably isn't, if it doesn't feel right, it probably isn't. And as far as the U.S. media and news goes they are the biggest culprit, because they like creating a frenzy and hysteria and so they report (sometimes skewed) on all of these issues and they get their so-called experts talking about the sky falling and next thing you know Chicken Little is all up in arms! Maybe we should just figure how to unplug them all for a month and get some peace and quiet! Now that's some good old common sense!