I was not even planning to go online tonight, but I just watched a segment on 60 Minutes called “Hard Times Generation”. I have a hole in my wall to patch now from where my fist went through it!

25% of all our children live in poverty now!

School buses now stop at many cheap hotels to pick up children, that are lucky enough to even have a room now!

Parents are standing on the street holding signs looking for work just to pay for a flea-bag hotel!

I watched children being interviewed telling how they lost their house, and then everything in a storage space, because their parents lost their jobs and now go to bed hungry!

I watched children tell how they now wash up in a Walmart bathroom before school because they live in a car!

Families are being split up among homeless shelters by male and female!

I watched them cry because of how they live now!

These are former middle class families!

DISGUSTING!!!!

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7358381n&tag=contentMain;cbsCarousel

Four years, and there is no more light at the end of the tunnel. The only reason unemployment has gone down is because they stopped counting so many unemployed people, or they are “back to work” like I am. Most all jobs now being created are low paying, part time, and temporary ones. All talk about helping people has vanished from the media and DC. Now it is all about how much to cut. No one in any party has any plan that will actually change anything. It is either go back to what we had that gave us zero private sector job creation, or some little “stimulus” that is like throwing a couple pennies in a homeless persons cup.

I listen to what so many have to say about people in similar situations to me, like “take a bath and get a job”, “do whatever you have to to make money”, “you can live fine on minimum wage”, ”go back to school and learn a new career”.

Even if I am asked to do something as simple as going fishing, it is usually my truck is not on the road, or I don’t have gas money.

After all my job searching these past years I have never been able to find more than part time and temporary work. I still occasionally work a few hours for the employer I had in 2007, but the work he has now is a tiny fraction of what he had always for decades. Now I am left with using every skill I have ever learned to get part time work for less than half what I made per hour before. Much of it is backbreaking dirty work out in the cold. I have done everything I know how to survive and keep a roof over my head for four years now.

Now I live alone in a little room in a barn, with a hotplate to cook on, and the bathroom a hundred yards away in another building. I can’t afford to buy heat because I was too late when I applied for heating assistance in early November, because of the cuts to it, and demand increase now. I am left looking for fallen trees in the woods to cut, haul, and split to get some wood that is almost worthless for heat. A stove full of dead wood only burns for a hour or so, and I have to go outside and downstairs to keep filling it if I want heat. I am lucky to even have that because my landlord will let me slide on the rent for a long time when most will not. I have a 16 year old truck that I can’t afford to keep legal and functioning many times. There is no more enjoyment in my life. Ever day is filled with worrying how I will pay bills. Old friends that still have their good jobs don’t call anymore because I don’t live in their world any longer.

I have done a lot of soul searching this new year. last night I woke at 3am and laid there thinking about what my life has become until sunrise, after working in the cold all day breaking my back, spraining my wrist, and getting soaked in hydraulic fluid head to toe, just to make a few dollars. I’m posting this because I know so many others out there are in similar situations now.

In 2007 I had a decent job, money in the bank, a house where I lived with my girlfriend, two dogs, two cats, and a huge tank of tropical fish. Family. A new truck, a motorcycle, a boat, a RV, a ATV, and many “friends”. There was always endless fun things to do in my free time, but never enough time to do them all. That had been my general situation for decades.

Between then and now I lost all of the above, except one dog who is really old now and fading fast, and a RV that is ruined from trying to live in it in the winter, all because of money.

I don’t want your taxes to go up to support me. I just want some help until I can get a job," she said.

With boomers aging, short on cash, and with younger people unsympathetic as they themselves tough out a “lost decade” of financial turmoil, the next 20 years will be the hardest times they have faced.

“It’s going to be very hard for people my age to adjust,” DePietro said. "I went through a period of deep, deep depression. But what kept me going is seeing my kids’ beautiful eyes. I want to see grandchildren. I want to have Christmas, like we always have Christmas.

Old age is a shipwreck, John F. Kennedy said

Forced to relinquish many of the middle-class comforts they have always known, millions of boomers may learn what he meant.

http://www.phillyburbs.com/news/local/burlington_county_times/news_columnists/article_e4b69b6c-9c94-5f98-9ae2-f15d2bcaeaa9.html

I remember when I was living in my RV a while back and had only a few stations on my TV antenna. South Park would come on every night and there was nothing else to watch. Thank God my little room in the barn now has cable!

Happy New Year to you too :)

This series of articles says much…

Wired.com Embeds With #Occupy and Anonymous

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/10/quinn-norton-occupy/

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/11/anonymous-101/all/1

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/12/anonymous-101-part-deux/all/1

I have also been giving some thought about all those that think Occupy was beaten by all those storm troopers that attacked us…

All I can say is thank God for this new generation that was born with computers, and has the knowledge to take on the status quo and all their old style weapons. I often wish I was born when they were instead of a age when Pong was considered amazing when I was already growing up fast…

All those naysayers can talk all they want, but for Occupy to do what they did in only a couple months was basically unheard of before.

And 2012 is about to begin…

As we wait for the clock to tick into 2012, and all that will bring, I was trying to think of something good to say, but decided on the old adage of “a picture is worth a thousand words”.

These pictures speak volumes!

25 best Occupy photos of 2011

http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/12/31/25-best-occupy-photos-of-2011-2/

President Obama has scheduled NEWS CONFERENCE tomorrow morning 11:30am with BREAKING NEWS! The party of NO is being given a ONE-WAY ticket to IRAN.

Oh , I am with you on that one! Rick Scott is ravaging Florida!

@sclark113

Long time no see.

I hope you are doing well.

And all the 99ers got jobs, bought houses, went on vacation, had a bunch of kids, and live in LALA land now too…because Obama took care of those millions of American citizens so good….

The cost for REDEVELOPMENT & RECONSTRUCTION in IRAQ ($61 BILLION) BUT WHO’S COUNTING WHEN ITS TAXPAYERS MONEY. “Missing Iraq Money may have been stolen, Auditors say” http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-missing-billions-20110613,0,4414060.story

I’ll pass on a couple articles I read tonight…

The Banks: “Too Big To Fail” or “Too Big to Jail”

When Wall Street became the defacto capital of the country, the bankers accrued more power than the politicians who they bought up with impunity. Their lobbying power deregulated the economy and decriminalized their activities. They killed many of the reforms enacted during the New Deal designed to protect the public. They built a shadow (and shadowy) banking system beyond the reach of the law…

Where are the political leaders and activist groups willing to “fight the power” and demand accountability and transparency on Wall Street?

Why are so many of us banking on the very people and institutions responsible for the crisis for a financial recovery to bring back jobs and a modicum of justice?

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24942

See…I don’t even go into Freenet or one of the many others….

Hell in a frigging handbasket from both sides!

so he voted against the war, but turned around and kept it going signing off on all the papers… he is commander in chief right now isn’t he? we got about 5 fishy wars going on, all under obama? how about that? very glad to have you aboard obama/biden 2012 you are exactly the type of person we look for. congrats.