If you want a stern dose of reality I recommend visiting an important website, one to keep you in touch with the real world in a society where media and political spin abound.

The site is USDebtClock.Org and all you need to do is look at the steadily changing, ever flickering numbers that literally jump out at you to get in touch with the real economic world.  As I write this the grand total stands at over $12.4 trillion.  

That encompasses $40,239 owed per citizen.  While this figure has been quoted frequently when this verboten topic has been discussed the real figure of overriding importance that has tended to be overlooked is the amount per taxpayer.

While $40,239 is a far from insignificant figure, it is nowhere near as calamitous as the salient number determined by taxpayer in that the aforementioned figure includes a large population of children as well as numerous other citizens not paying current taxes.  

Social Security recipients in 2010 will be cheated out of cash they deserve.

The annual cost of living increase will not rise for the first time since they began being calculated yearly for seniors on Social Security.  

This injustice has been accomplished through an accounting cheating system.  The soaring cost of health care and gas are not included within the cost of living scale, thus giving a completely false calculation.

How interesting that congressional salaries, however, have increased while Social Security payments did not.  

It is sad to say that the United States has the deepest debt of any nation in the world!

Remember when politicians proudly proclaimed that the U.S.A. was the richest nation in the world?  That day is long gone!

The titans of U.S. big business can't get enough, as their 3,500 lobbyists chase around Washington, with plenty of cash to influence congressional members' votes.

The Wall Street Journal reported April 14:

The civil rights movement opened doors to educational opportunities and employment that could pay fair wages.

The child labor of the early 1900's was outlawed.  Unions organized to demand shorter working hours, safety demands, and paid vacations.

FDR began placing regulations on our banking system, and on Wall Street, which collapsed under its own self-destructive greed.

World War Two, with all of the job demands, helped to pull the U.S. out of the Depression.  Having had no attacks destroying U.S. property, except for the Pearl Harbor tragedy, the U.S. was one of the most prosperous nations in the world.  G.I.'s were provided with college educations and home buying considerations.

Americans want the cash infusion to prop up its collapsing economy.  With 37 million of U.S. families on food stamps and millions now unemployed, it looks as if there could be a re-run of the Great Depression.  

Bank failure where huge bonuses were handed out to bank chiefs who failed us has enraged taxpayers.  Why?  

After demolishing the U.S. bank structure, the Bush administration, aided and abetted by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, former head of Goldman Sachs, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, rushed through an emergency bailout -- the banks and credit market package.

This $700 billion bailout was sped through Congress at lightning speed.  So speedily in fact that specifications for control of how this gigantic cash infusion to insure money hungry bank titans didn't skim huge bonuses, luxury private jets, and lavish Las Vegas so-called business events.

What in God's name is Thomas L. Friedman doing writing a fantasy letter in the September 24 New York Times?

The letter is supposedly from George Bush to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal Al-Maliki.  

Friedman's fantasy letter begins:

"Dear Sirs:

As billions are going down the drain in Iraq, this wild misadventure is destroying the once strong U.S. dollar.

Economic vultures all over the world delight in seeing what was once the world's economic super power's financial stability being demolished.

Foreigners are buying out major assets as the dollar dramatically declines.  Belgium may buy the biggest brewery in the U.S.  In 2007 foreign investors spent $414 billion buying some of the biggest assets of the U.S.A.

There is even talk now of the New York City landmark Chrysler Building being sold.

To those wild spending, much vaunted moral guardian Republicans, their Halloween celebration is all tricks and no treats.

The other evening I listened to a tricky talk on TV by glib talking Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas.  As I heard her rant on about what a good job Republicans had done for the U.S. economy I thought that, in all fairness, Kay Bailey should instantly change her name to Kay Baloney Hutchison.

It took a lot of gall to declare that the Bush-led Republican robots had helped the U.S.A. economically.

The wild spending spree of the unneeded Iraq War with the ever-ascending $350 billion ever rising price tag debt represents the biggest national debit in the history of planet earth.

Voters of Minnesota's 1st District, if you want a Cheney-Bush lackey of the stripe that has brought America to its economic knees to serve you in Congress, then reelect Gil Gutknecht.

If you want a real change then elect Tim Walz, who challenges the outrageous falsehoods on which Gutknecht's candidacy rests.  Gutknecht in a recent debate seen nationally on C-Span uttered what might be the most egregious falsehood of the entire current campaign season when, responding to Walz's warnings about the U.S. economic picture stated that the current economy is "the best of the last 25 years."

That statement along with the pattern evidenced behind it supplies more than enough ample reason to conclude that Gil Gutknecht is unfit to serve in Congress.  Padding the record is a frequent reality of political life, but to call the current economic picture our best in a generation is an outrage.

Two quick visits to the U.S. Debt Clock and the National Priorities Project renders Gilknecht's claim absurd, not to mention harmful in substituting illusion for reality.  An earlier visit today revealed that the U.S. debt stood at $8,572,789,691,629.70.  

Does George W. Bush do anything right?  By that is meant correct rather than political direction.  By the latter standard Bush would be termed very far right.

When Richard Nixon was campaigning for president in 1968 he referred to the U.S. economy as he then evaluated it, saying, "Our economy is so strong that it would take a genius to wreck it."  By Nixon's standard, Bush would have to be classified as the reigning political genius of all time.  

Progressives have lately, and rightly, been hammering the unelected Cheney-Bush Junta for events such as a continuing illegal war with the world the ultimate casualty, along with those who have lost their lives and been injured, in that the move, as certain intelligence experts have noted, unified radicals in the Arab world in a way that Osama bin Laden never could.

There are also other matters such as trampling on international law with the maintenance of torture camps along with engaging in unconstitutional spying on citizens as well as, to satisfy his radical religious right base, attempting to turn America into a theocracy.  Yes, and there is preventive detention.