We have our problems to be sure. I'm not sure you perception of the state of living for the typical American is accurate though Walter.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0104/p09s02-coop.html

An excerpt:

The US unemployment rate now is at a healthy 4.5 percent. This rate is lower than the average annual unemployment rate for the 1970s (6.2 percent), the 1980s (7.3 percent), and even the high-growth 1990s (5.6 percent). Inflation, meanwhile, is running below the average for the 70s, 80s, and 90s.

Here's more good news for ordinary Americans. The percentage of Americans who own their own homes is higher than ever, even though the size of today's typical home is larger than ever. Workers' leisure time, too, is at historically high levels. And jobs are just as secure today as they were in the late 1960s, according to a research paper by University of California-Davis economist Ann Huff Stevens.

Perhaps you think that this prosperity exists only because so many of today's households require two income earners. But women started leaving homes for paid employment at least a century ago, with no jump since the end of World War II in the rate at which women enter the workforce, according to a recent report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Had worker pay truly deteriorated in the past 30 years, and had families reacted by sending moms to the workforce, the rate at which women join the workforce would have increased. It did not.

Today, the percentage of household expenditures used to buy nonessential items is at an all-time high - about 50 percent compared with about 45 percent in the mid-1970s. That undercuts your notion that two incomes are needed just to scrape by. Not only is America's middle class not disappearing - it's thriving.



>>>It takes a man to look at it from all angles besides your favourate one. It takes courage to love your enemies. It takes even more courage to critisize your friends.
>
>>You're a real hero, Walter.
>
>I'll never be, but I accept my fate. Those men who liberated europe, many giving their lives are heros. But so are those, who have the courage and are not affraid to stand up and speak against the stream for a cause they believe in.
>
>Again, not claiming to be one, but I think it is time for an american hero to stand up gainst the direction the country is flowing. And I believe many americans at least in their heart believe that. The american dream needs an update. The US needs a leader that will direct the US into a new era of prosperity for ALL americans, not the 2% of elites. A leader that has good sense of international politics (as clinton did.... not implying we need another clinton, but his foreign politics was far superiour than that of both bushes and could certain match reagans).
>A new leader that has the courage to question the weak points in the US society and political culture.
>
>Walter,