CHANGE IS NECESSARY BUT NOT ALWAYS DESIRABLE

Without a doubt, parts of the country reflect the terrible economy more than others. In Eastern Massachusetts, unlike the mid-West there are fewer large factories and plants that can close, leaving total desolation. When a military base or such closes, all the peripheral businesses that supported them also die. Locally where I live, more likely, now restaurants have instant seating available most of the time, theaters are frequently less crowded, and merchants complain about the lack of business. Prices have been raised to help balance the shortfall. Pretty soon, the added prices will keep customers away, thus insuring the demise of the business.

Luxury items are suffering. Malls are seeing many shop closings. For Rent or Lease signs are sprouting like grass in the springtime. Many Massachusetts smokers go to New Hampshire even after the additional $1.00 tax hike MA levied per pack. New Hampshire then raised the tax on theirs but kept it just under the MA hike.

It is my belief that the current administration is doing its best to handle the situation. Jobs in other areas are starting as infrastructure is finally being attended to in many states. People are normally impatient and forget who put us into this economic quagmire. It was not Obama though the short-sighted and politically ignorant will still blame whoever is currently in charge.

Indeed, most of us have lost 1/3 of our on-paper wealth. It ids axiomatic that people place their losses from whatever the top value of their portfolio might have reached at one time. They certainly didn't sell then or they wouldn't be complaining now. When people did sell at that time and put their money in liquid or more stable positions they be whining less than those who trusted the 'Cramers' and others who denied that the country and its financial system were in such difficulty.

Once again, Obama's promise to break the country financially rather than do more bombing worked for him. Cheney can say all he wants to say about having protected the United States from another 9/11 attack, he only killed hundreds of thousands of people and ruined more lives with his war. Bush, who never seemed invested in the people anyway, remains silent in his new home, protected by Secret Service for life, and now has his permanent vacation like many of the CEOs who left their companies, taking millions for themselves while the stockholders lost everything and the employees were left destitute. A blind man may not see it but he can certainly hear it.

PRESS SECRETARY'S CONVERSION TO TRUTH TELLING

McClellan has certainly shocked a few people with his new book: "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," Chris Matthews was interviewing Ari Fleischer and was deeply insulted, telling Ari he didn't need to resort to sarcasm when he asked Ari a question about McClellan and the job, talked over his answer, then demanded an answer from him. Mr. Fleischer, who had lost my respect with all the lies he covered when he was the White House Press Secretary, raised my respect a nanometer when he had told Matthews at the first opening left him, "When you stop your filibuster I will answer your question." I thought Matthews did admirably to almost hide and control his rage his rage.

Apparently Bush administration staffers find the book "puzzling". McClellan's current negativity regarding Bush's desire to be remembered as a 'great' president was on learning that Bush believed that greatness comes through being a war President. It does cause a regurgitating reflux to think he did that for his own gain at the expense of so many thousands of lives lost and ruined. Such arrogance will go down for greatness, not as the greatest success as his deluded thinking might have hoped, but as the greatest failure as a President whom we have seen in the US.

The book sounds like it might be a good read....I think I'll try it though little is needed to prove we have been lied to for eight years. Rather than trying to separate the wheat from the chaff, it is simpler to just assume that nothing that comes out of the Administration it a truth....and may even be more accurate.