Perhaps it is the strange weather that continues to make us all uneasy, or is it perhaps the way people look in the Supermarkets these days, a bit like young deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming vehicle. There is also a general disease; a malcontent feeling that looms ever in the shadows, an enemy we least expected has taken into a tailspin. We pass each other on the street with suppressed greetings, even strangers now days look at each other like pathetic waifs waiting to be rescued from the debris falling all around us! Was it not just yesterday that the great dream of us was still alive? Certainly it wasn’t more than a month ago…or was it? Kids stand on the street corner counting coins, then two or three decide to get together and they count there collected coins again…yep enough for one kids meal split three ways one youngster smiles. The others follow eagerly on down the street past me and my old dog headed for McDonalds.Shaken from his reverie an old bum who hangs out on the corner of Alamitos and 4th smiles at me and stops to pet my dog, he smells of stale beer and dirty clothes but he loves to talk to Myraah…she is in a different world like he is and he always gives her a good old patting before he pass on bay with out so much as a look at me.Animals know what people like him crave…someone to care just for a moment, someone to not turn away, or notice the smell someone without judgment who gives a bit of love in return.Life is changing and anyone who hasn’t noticed yet should be awakened from their lethargic complacency and be forced to the harsh reality that is life in this country! Anyone who wants to go on being the great American Ostrich should take note! This is no time to wear your rose colored spectacles, no indeed a new America is beginning to emerge.Finally we have a President who believes in telling the truth to the people he works for, finally we have a brave young man in the White house who understands that putting on a happy face and telling everyone that “ it is only a recession” just might get us all in lot of trouble. President Obama has inherited a might awful mess, but so far he has been able to stand his ground and tell like it is, something that I admire greatly in any man! He knows that the road ahead of us is long, and that the America that is shedding it’s old skin will come up shinning again but he doesn’t tell us that it will happen overnight! No, he tells us that it may get worse before it gets better and those of up with ears to hear and minds to question understand that what he is saying is we are going to have to tighten our belts! We are going to have to come to terms with the facts just as they are then, and only then we will begin again!What is this crazy old Bubbe trying to say? Just the facts, that’s all, just the facts! We are an egregious society, the people of the US make up only 1/5 of the worlds population and yet we use 60% of it resources…now if I had a well and it had good clean water and it produced at the rate of a good spring well about 1000 gallons a week then realistically that well could serve my ranch and probably four others without much problem. Let’s say though that I decide to be selfish and horde my water, my neighbors have no water and I offer to sell them some of mine but they have no money so there I sit…all that water and I won’t share. The USA has been like that for years, really since right after WWI, yes that’s right…we began the long path that has led us to this point just because we decided that we didn’t have to share with anyone, not just water, not anything. Oh, we gave away some things once in while when it served our purpose, or made us look like the good guys, but for the most part we squandered what we had, we didn’t share our wealth, we spent it on a two car garage, two and one-half children, (don’t ask me where that stat came from), two cars, at least one vehicle of some sort for sun, TV’s, dance lessons, beauty parlors, bars, restaurants…by now you should get the picture. We spent and spent and when there wasn’t any cash we used plastic and when there wasn’t any plastic we got a bigger mortgage and took money out to pay off the plastic so we could start all over again.That my dear friends is a privilege that only belonged to the USA for a long long time, a privilege that we thought we were entitled too! We truly believed that we were better, we deserved more, and so we continued to strain the worlds resources until all of a sudden the dollar mill that pushed all that egregiousness’ became a sink hole so large that it nearly gobbled up Wall Street in one swift stroke. First it was stocks, and banks, and credit granting companies, then it was the car dealers, on no and then the bankers and the financiers in their $4000 suits flew up to Washington in their private jets and begged for loans..which were given without much fan fare and the band as they say played on.Three years this whole sinkhole process has been broiling…and where might it end? I certainly wouldn’t want to guess at that date and understandably neither would any other God fearing, budgeting lower middle class accountant! Certainly though there is one thing that we can all agree on, it is an awful sink hole and if we don’t stop the flood of dollars that go swooshing down it soon there will be quite simply a total and complete collapse of all that we know as the economy of this nation.President Obama inherited all this mess, he inherited a country that is so broke even foreign banks are beginning to call in notes to corporations that have done business with them for years. The very fabric of life as we know it is tattered and worn, nearly to the point of no return. Corporations large and small are implementing lay offs at a speed faster than any other time in our history, today your company might give you a pink slip or an ultimatum..lose one day pay a pay period or lay off will start, then in a while when they see that the still can’t bring the ends of the budget together, it will be another day or perhaps staff will be let go…here is the dilemma that 65% of working Americans who make middle management salaries are facing. An average worker takes home roughly $1400 every two weeks after deductions, lose a days wages and suddenly that figure is 1270, to a working class family that is one days worth of, “why can’t I play soccer?”,” how come we can’t go out with our friends for dinner” and other stressors that come so quickly to those who are the strength of the working homes. Most families don’t have a savings, and many who used to have parents who did have savings have watched in horror as entire lifetimes of savings melted away as one stock broker after another fell to the floor as the markets spiraled downward. What is to become of this nation if we can no longer support the middle class where the hard working back bone of this country finds its strength?Perhaps when Washington was so busy last year deciding who should be given the billions of dollars in bail outs they should have looked at the middle section of our great nation, if they had given that money to ordinary men and women it wouldn’t have gone into the sink hole! NO SIR! It would have gone to pay debts, to lessen the loads of the mortgages that were too high to pay off credit card balances and maybe just might have actually had that buoying up effect that everyone thought would come by giving it to the banks.Mind you I am not a financier but I do budget my household and I can tell you that just in my circle of friends and family we would all have known exactly what to do with those billions, we would have dug ourselves out of this mess of overdue bills, medical expenses, mortgages and student loans, we would have buoyed up the economy the very best way possible from the small guy on the street to the top.You see, I am somewhat of a mystic and the dreams I have these days keep me up at night…somehow they must interfere with my dogs sleep too, because I find myself walking her at the oddest times. In those nightly terrors of mine I see hungry children, men and women with dark circles under their eyes, grandmothers with tear stained checks who look out from hollow eyes worrying about who will help the children and the grandchildren as things get worse. Chaos that’s what those night terrors are made up of. Too few jobs and too many homeless, people who never thought they would be living in the streets there in great numbers with nothing to give them hope.Why are we so lethargic, so laid back I want to run down main street carrying a sign that says WAKE UP!! Before it is too late !. We the people have to take action. We the people have got to stand and be counted, we must began to take action to speak up, to let our senators and our congressmen know that we are mad as hell and we won’t stand idly by while what little bailout money is left goes to those who got us into this mess in the first place! We need look around us at those who don’t know what is happening and somehow help them to wake up, we need to see what lies ahead before the road crumbles beneath us and it is too late. We could find ourselves in a subservient situation with a foreign nations holding the purse strings if we don’t get out there and speak up!There is no longer any time for us to relax in the dream that was once our nation, we have got to get back on track and start again to build. We can’t depend on the huge corporations or the Wall Street boys to repair the break in this damn! We nee to get back to basics and start looking at where and how each one of us can ease the burden of debt, not just for our own families but for all of us! We need to step up to the plate while we have a President who is still listening and begin the tough job of cleaning up the mess that we have all allowed to made of the finances in this country. Now is not the time to point fingers or place blames now is the time for all good people to come to the aide of their country men! Now is the time for coming together, now is the time to get off the couch and begin the work of reconstruction! Don’t you remember that when those of us they call the boomers were babies our folks took on the debt load of two wars. They all put their minds and bodies into action and stood up to the plate! We can do it again but it must begin with the average working man and woman, it can not work if the money gushers only at the top…we need to cap this spending frenzy and foster a plan that all of us can live with, so what if the guys with those airplanes have to catch a bus! Those of us who work for a living know how to get to work for less, we walk, we take trains, we ride buses and sometimes we car pool.We as a nation are at a fork in the road and if we fail to stand up and be counted, well…that is just a scenario too bleak to imagine!