conversations with crazy

I had a great talk with my brother today. We always end up having the same talk, starting with politics and ending with religion. That's never really my intention but he has this way of starting it out with: "Let me ask you this..." and that begins the confrontational conversation. He will ask me questions about George Bush then start leading into the Bible and the scriptures etc. etc. He is very genuine in all of these questions and sometimes I get the answer "right" and sometimes he thinks I'm wrong. The whole time he tells me: "I appreciate your answer to that" or "that makes sense to me". He makes a lot of valid points for his "cause" and I make a lot of valid points for mine. He doesn't know the same things I do because I am really obsessed with my radio talk shows (both right and left), I read the newspaper and I watch a couple of different shows on T.V. like the news and such. In return, I don't know about the Bible shit that he talks about. To be fair, his Bible stuff isn't shit, it's just a little judgy, crazy and sometimes hard to argue because it's so...crazy.
Anyway, whenever we talk, it's basically the same ending result, agreeing to disagree. He did, however, get me thinking tonight. He was saying that people always place blame on someone else for the problems in this country and everywhere else. He asked me, in that 'let me ask you something...' tone of voice, if I thought the financial crisis that we are in right now is Bush's fault. I had to tell him no, that I did not think it was all his fault. I know that what happened in the Wall st./mortgage crisis/ bail out bullshit involves both Democratic and Republican parties and the greedy lenders and then that's as much as I can explain. I feel like the people who pass laws about regulation made some mistakes. I think that folks who want a free market were a careless with how that was handled. I may even be wrong, I really can't argue a point that I don't fully understand. I do know that our country is in a huge deficit and that prior to Bush, we had a lot more money to be able to take care of our country. I do know that, while the bailout is not Bush's fault, the war in Iraq is. The mishandling of hurricane Katrina was also his responsibility, the fact that 7 years after 911 we still don't have Osama Bin Laden, the money that was approved by Congress to rebuild Iraq was seriously mishandled, the money that was donated for Katrina relief was also mishandled and those people are STILL living in horrible conditions. Don't even get me started on mother lovin' Haliburton...I don't blame Bush for everything (and by the way, the right wing republicans are still blaming Clinton for shit that he didn't do, but don't you dare talk about Ronald Reagan's crazy shit...) In closing, yes, we shouldn't blame others for every little thing, but someone has to take responsibility for the things that go wrong when they do go wrong. And my brother, I love you, no matter how crazy you are...