It looks as though we just haven’t really hit bottom yet. If half of us still don’t get it, maybe it really will take another couple of years. So, so much will have been lost, including years of any possibility for future prosperity. But maybe that’s what it takes – for us all to be a lot less comfortable, for politics to become more of a neccessary knowledge.

So far, half of us didn’t care that from the time Bush took office until August (August only because that’s the date of the post where I grabbed the stats):

1.2 million people in America have lost their jobs, bringing the total to 8.2 million.

The number of Americans living below the poverty line increased by 4.3 million to 35.9 million – 12.9 million of them children.

The number of Americans with no health insurance increased by 5.8 million – with 1.4 million losing their insurance in 2003. The total now stands at 45 million.

Forty percent of the 3.5 million people who were homeless at some point last year were families with children, as were 40 percent of those seeking emergency food assistance.

Median household income has fallen more than US$1,500 in inflation-adjusted terms in the last three years, and the wages of most workers are now falling behind inflation.

Average tuition for college has risen by 34 percent, while 37 percent of fourth graders read at a level considered “below basic.”

One third of the president’s $1.7 trillion in tax cuts benefits only the top 1 percent of wealthiest Americans.

That’s only the beginning. All hell breaks loose now, friends. There have been several incidents having to do wiht abuses of the Patriot Act – watch for more. Watch businesses lose tax incentive for offering health insurance options to their workers at all. Watch blue states in particular get smacked on the new tax codes. Watch the dollar plummet. Watch government officials, with no trace of conscious irony, talk about fraud in other country’s elections. Watch the interest rate climb. Watch a whole lot more people get kicked out of those houses they recently bought – my neighbor was a Harvard-educated corporate lawyer, and it didn’t help him one bit when he had to declare bankruptcy. His parents started Meals on Wheels – if he’s lucky, maybe one day he’ll qualify to get them. Watch your kids have all their after-school programs get cut – and compare the cost of care to your tax “relief” check. Forget about art, music, team uniforms.

Remember all those awful things the Russians did – you know, when you were a kid and you were being told why it was so bad to be a “red” – and how awful it was there? Bush is supporting Putin’s regime slide back to the good ole days. And Bush likes it so much, we might be heading there too!

Maybe it just really takes a bigger wake-up call. America is like a man with a problem and a mid-life crisis. Too bad we just can’t get a new sports car. Get ready for the future….”and all the lousy little poets comin’ round, tryin’ to sound like Charlie Manson…and the white man dancing” (Leonard Cohen is 70).

Had a terrific Thanksgiving – but already today I’m bitter bitter bitter. Perhaps it’s time for a short news fast. I simply can’t understand how anyone could be blind to what is happening here – what it is is exactly clear.