A lot of jobs today seem soulless and irrelevant. People are not doing what they like, or even what they are capable of. People are filling slots, not even making an adequate amount of money in doing so. Most get no health insurance and no benefits. These jobs are not really jobs where one gets a chance to use their head, or that actually offers a person a chance to get ahead.They are simply filling slots, cogs in the wheel that keeps the business going, making the owners money. Sometimes obscene amounts of money. Management is next to useless, not knowing how to make people feel significant and good about what they are doing, in fact, often tending to make employees feel insignificant and worthless, primarily out of their own inadequacies and insecurities. Many people are suffering from the soulless and empty nature of their work. Emergency rooms and doctors offices are filled with people who will get the wrong diagnosis. They need meaningful and worthwhile work, not pills.

My vision of life is not crystal and clean. Maybe I've seen too much, read too much. Maybe I've listened to too many stories of betrayal, violence, sexual misconduct. Even murder. Your innocence leaves and you're stuck with reality. Democracy is not pure; religions will not necessarily make you a better person; convictions come and go; governments will not protect you from the Wolf; promises of a better tomorrow are not worth much today. You get lied to, deceived, people take your money and give you a bill of goods as long as your arm. They tell you you won't amount to a hill of beans, that you are from the wrong side of the track. You're the wrong color, the wrong sex, your arm is withered, your eyes can't see, that your job is low prestige or not at all. You see things others don't, you can't get out of the chair, you hear voices that others don't hear. You're dirt poor, living in a car, begging food at the local mission, ashamed to go to the emergency room again. Life is not crystal and clean. Your hands get dirty.

I had some Baptists stop by last night trying to get me to attend their church and get saved. I'm not much into church, or being saved, particularly in a church that emphasizes people being sinners. Hell, I don't need to put $20 in the offering every week to understand I do wrong. I already know that. The question is, if I've screwed up, what am I going to do about it? If I drink too much, when am I going to quit? If I'm screwing the neighbors wife, when am I going to zip it up? If I cuss and carry on in front of my children, do I intend on stopping? A born again experience is worthless without action and a commitment to an ongoing lifestyle change. They left a bit dejected. I hope I didn't ruin their delusion.

"This problem with illegal immigration is nothing new. In fact, the Indians had a special name for it. They called it "white people". Jay Leno

Some people think the end is near because of Bush and the precarious position he has placed us in. I hear people saying that it looks like it is all over. Many on blogstream are losing hope and feeling like the the fat lady is about to sing. We got Iraq going full-blow with no end in sight. (You forgot, didn't you?) But we've looked at war before and ended one. We may be bruised and battered, but we're not done. Torture has once again entered our consciousness, but this is by no means the first time we have faced The Dark Ages. Milton Friedman's capitalism, using torture as persuasion, is being rejected around the world. We have been denied universal health-care once again, but its day is coming. They can no longer use the argument that we can't afford it. We stand up to everything they place in front of us, often just in the nick of time. We faced off with the right-wing when they were about to declare themselves the saviors of the world. We'll buy our houses back from the rich as many times as we need to, drive to work a 100 miles per day for a job when necessary, and will walk to the bank and take our money out if they try to cheat us again. No, I don't think the world is ending. As many times as they knock us down, we'll keep getting up. After all, we're in this for the long-haul. If not for us, for our kids and their kids, and theirs.