This Web Blog was haphazardly produced without using Spell Check one danged time. We like it that way.

I know, I know! "Where were you?"

Well, it's like this: because of all the Blogs I have to maintain, my constant search for new clients and new work, and my weekly broadcasts over at BlogTalkRadio.com (BTR) - whether I want to be or not - I'm usually busier than a whore on a Saturday night.

But, unlike her, I'd prefer to get some money out of it. You can save the kiss.

So here's a list of the current Haps:

• You can find a great discussion held on Tuesday the 15th with Taylor Willingham of the Delibarative Democracy movement and Silona Bonewald of the League of Technical Voters on our PODCASTS page here or over at BTR in my archive there. At BTR you can either listen immediately or download it to your mobile device to check out later.



• You can expect a lot of action on our GUEST BLOGGERS page over the next few days, as I've started to receive a number of submissions from writers around the planet who - for whatever reason - continue to believe I haven't given up being a publisher. These people must be dreaming. Today's submission is from JOE O'NEILL in Belfast, Northern Ireland.



• And, yeah, it was about time to re-ignite the FILM REVIEWS page, while I was at it.

As Michael Corleone said: "I keep trying to get out and they drag me back in!"

AS I SAID last week, I've been feeling a lot more like Sonny Corleone than Michael these days.

I'll tell you why.

I've always known I lived in a poor neighborhood. I'm poor. What I didn't know was how horrific it really is. You tend to try to mitigate or ignore these things.

This week, though, a friend of mine in Florida sent me the link to a site called ZipSkinny.com. What I saw was a statistical report of how I and my neighbors live. The highest percentile of my neightbors make $10,000/year or less. Most of my neightbors have families. I can breathe a sigh of relief because I made more than than la st year.... but this year?

I got a great laugh looking at the self-reported data because almost 30% of the people classified themselves as working in "Managemnet/Professional" jobs while, at the same time, 32% live below the poverty line and 20% make $10,000/year or less. No one wants to admit to being broke or having a crappy job.

The simple fact is, I and most of my neighbors are on the borderline of homelessness.

Ausitn, of course, is not the only place where this is going on in America. Because of pride, I suppose, most people can't admit how precarious our economy has become - other than to now admit that a recession is a very real thing.

The only person I hear talking about the real plight of lower-income Americans is John Edwards and nobody in the political establishment in this country is going to let him get a shot. As far as they are concerned, he's a class-traitor.

And the band plays on...

It's stone cold music playing in the background of American life today. I can hear it and suspect that you do, too. It's a dirge, of sorts, that we pretend is being drowned out by the celebratory music coming from the houses of the plutocrats and oligarchs who are feeding off our carcasses.

Banana Republic.

THE WORST PART OF THIS SONG, this dirge, is that people are willing to throw themselves deeper in debt, go into bankruptcy, in order to keep up appearances for a while rather than admit their actual circumstances. Our country, from the federal government on down to the average person, is now awash in debt.

Our financial institutions - our banks and mortgage companies - are being sold off to the Middle Eastern potentates, the Chinese, the Japanese - just as our jobs were. Yet, we are told our economy is doing fine by the political class, as our national treasure dissipates and our infrastructure becomes an international joke.

The very idea of savings is now a notion from a by-gone era.

"Rainy day? What's that? I want it all now."

Stone Cold Music.

We are being diverted by the "threat" of barbarians at the gate while - like another empire I could reference - the rot is happening from within. Our so-called leaders are part of that rotten smell of fish here that we are encouraged to ignore every day by their courtiers and courtesans in the complicitous Mouthpiece Media. Get A CLUE.

Either that, on just go back to the mall and sell your future off.

Thank you for your continued patronage..

How about a little celebratory island music?.

Cheers!

Keep me in your prayers as I keep you in my own.

Thanks for visiting.

Talk to you in a day or so.

Be well.