Today's vocabulary word: metastasized

I don't know if I'm going to watch tonight's debate. These things are getting painful, and not because I think Obama is going to lose the thing. The Republicans are running on fumes, and the fumes are toxic. Regular folks are going to get to ask questions, and maybe regular folks will show themselves to be smarter than their random standard bearer of the moment Sarah Palin, but they could also get caught up in the nonsense and trivia the media has put forward as the important issues, like lipstick and lapel pins.


Here's what I'd like Obama to say.

"John, could you look at me for a minute? This year, the Republicans in power and those who ran for president told us again and again how well the economy was doing. You said and Bush said the fundamentals were strong. Your friend Fred Thompson said the American economy was the greatest story never told. People who disagreed were alarmists and extremists. Then comes September, and Bush tells us we are facing the largest economic crisis in eighty years.

"John, any president is going to face challenges. What we need is someone who can see a problem and address it before it becomes a calamity. By ignoring the obvious, the credit crisis metastasized into a disease which threatens to kill our economy. Both literally and figuratively, we can't afford leadership that bad."