It has not washed over the whole USA yet, but it still is surging. Do not believe that this recession is ending.

Americans no longer can get jobs, work hard, and be okay. Now, we either have to be lucky entrepreneurs or lucky children-of-the-rich. No more steady, loyal et cetera modest American family types.

We grew up believing in the system, and the bosses kicked us in the throats. Just wait, you people who say you do not know anybody who has lost a job. The wave is coming to Beautiful Your Area. Soon, somebody you know will get swamped. Soon, you yourself well may will get washed away.

Second off, does this remind you of Americans telling Mexico to protect the environment better? Any excuse. Any port in a storm.

Michigan ain't just automotive. We had a big pharmaceutical hub in West Michigan, in Kalamazoo. The big drug companies consolidated several years ago, and devastated Kalamazoo. My good friends had to move to Milwaukee, for a baking job, after the Grim Pharma Reaper hit.

Now, though, glad tidings: Kalamazoo hit rock bottom, and begins to rise. If Detroit has the same sort of cycle, we will see a Detroit spurt in five years. Keep in mind, though, that from rock bottom, the only direction is up.

These are deep south people, and they just do not know any actual Jews. Apparently, few Jews live in their part of South Cawlinky. They never have met any Muslims, either. And they only have abstract, theoretical, mistaken ideas about them.

I knew a young woman from Michigan's Upper Peninsula. She moved to the Lower Peninsula, and finally talked to her first black person at age 24 or so. She told the story of that meeting, and the punch line was, "And he talked to me!"

I did not get it. She said, "He was a black guy!" She did not hate him, but she was utterly amazed that this happened in her real life.

The ignorant Southerners do not even know what they are saying, but they are not as cute or charming as my friend the ignorant Northerner.

And some lovely swamps and such. But SC does not seem to be a happy place in general.

The Harper Valley PTA has taken over the Republican Party. In that famous dopey country song, the singer's mom kicked the Harper Valley PTA's butt, but now, country Republican folks hew to the Harper Vallet PTA's murderous dictates.

Over and over, we hear dopey, nasty simplistic cliches/lies delivered in southern accents by people with poodle-parlor haircuts. We do NOT hate Southerners. We really LIKE the way you talk, but aggressive false assertions by southern demagogues and preachers, in their peculiar accents, turn us off.

Part of the problem is that these southern "spokespeople" believe they are appealing to "regular folks" when they lay on their thick, smarmy y'all talk. But they just make us Northerners barf. We like huntin' and fishin' just as must as you guys (we say "you guys" rather than "y'all"). But we do not share your sincere/baloney way of connecting. We do the wry/laconic thing. AND... We are smart enough not to assume you understand our style, unlike some of you, with all your good ole crappola.

We like regular Southerners and honest leaders from Tennessee and such, and we enjoy the way you talk, but we HATE your phony-baloney "sincere" politicians. We REALLY cringe when southern "Christians" try to equate their accent and questionable southern grammar with Jesus.

Please, Southerners and Texans and ilk, you need to be more grown-up, more subtle in an adult way, when you try to communicate with the rest of the world.

She herself and her family probably do not need to worry about health care or rent or food, or even re-election, for crying out loud.

So, she can and should vote for history and for the USA. However, she seems to be caught in the tiny distractions. We need real, free, good National Health Care. Her Yes Vote now is a small step toward that goal. She seems to be a nice lady, but she needs to vote Yes now, and then continue the process toward real health care.

He is staying in Iraq and Afghanistan; he threatens Iran; he allows torture to continue and shields the torturers. He allows the union-loving auto companies to fail...

These right-wingers in Tennessee should bless Obama for the things he really has done, rather than taking up all these false, silly notions of socialism and Islam, foreignness and so on.

I learned that many Latin Americans believe most American Presidents have been Jewish.

Plus a lot more. Our American 10% (actually many more) have nada, and their basic unemployment compensation will run out soon.

We made real progress in science and race relations and living standards. We assumed that progress would continue. "A little debt" did not seem important, because we all knew we would have flying cars, domed cities and 3-day work weeks by "the year 2000."

We had lots of nasty stuff in the 50s and 60s, but things were getting better. That progress stopped, when?... 1980 or so? But we kept that attitude. And now all we have left is the debt. Where's my flying car?!

And this nasty silliness shows how far our USA right wingers have strayed from the real world. I hope the rest of the real world will take notice, and discount what our righties say, and what they already have said and done.