Despite these problems, the U.S. Congress has gone on their regularly scheduled vacation.  The Iraqi Congress is also on vacation and I can't help but wonder how that affects the overall morale of the troops serving there.  As bad as things are here, imagine what life is like in Iraq.  One can only imagine the horror, or imagine the fear as Iraqis wonder when the bombs might start to fall, or IEDs explode.

McCain and Lieberman are playing golf, and Obama is vacationing in Hawaii.  While Rome burns, the would-be dictators - flush with the people's money - keep up their lavish spending sprees.  Today there is so much graft, greed, and corruption that politicians are inundated with bribery money and have started keeping spare millions in the freezer.

In the 1930's when bankers would show up with their henchmen from the Sheriff's office to foreclose on some poor struggling American family, every neighbor would pile out into the street.  Just as soon as the deputy would haul something out, we would haul it right back in, and keep this up until they got tired and left.

When the Gestapo was coming, we borrowed an ambulance and a phone book and went out in the middle of the night to every Jewish sounding home.  No GPS or cell phones.  There was no one to tell us what to do or how to do it to save our Jewish neighbors.

But when I mention the General Strike today, people are quick to say something like "that'll never work."  And when I talk to truckers, they are discouraged because the last shut down failed to produce any results.

But it is in these doubts and failures that I see the General Strike's strength.  It is true that the anti-war movement has failed to end the war or even slow it down.  The impeachment movement has failed to produce one hearing on impeachment.  911Truthers?  Fuggetaboutit. Unions couldn't stop the exporting of our jobs, and truckers are downright ignored.

Our democracy is in crisis.  There is no argument about this - even both presidential candidates from both parties agree that Washington is broke.  How we respond to this crisis will affect generations to come.

Each of the above mentioned groups: truckers, anti-war protesters, impeachment people, 9/11 truthers, etc. are very impressive, producing millions of protesters worldwide, but individually they are weak.  Over 200 years ago the founding fathers defeated the British, not by agreeing on everything but by setting aside those differences to defeat a common enemy.

What I am proposing is quite simple.  Instead of an "anti-war protest" or a "truckers shut down" or "Ron Paul rally" or an "impeachment protest," let us all set aside whatever differences we think that we have and defeat that which is destroying all of us.

We, as diverse as we are, all have the same "enemy."  Our common "enemy" is the criminals who are in power led by George W. Bush and supported by a complicit Congress and media.  It is this cabal that has created the growing problems we average Americans face everyday.  It is time that we the people of the United States stand up to the machinations that thrive on the blood of our sons and daughters, that continually create chaos and crisis in the name of profit.  It is destroying our economy, the education of our children, our health, our environment, and our planet. It is a rot from within the halls of power that stands stubbornly blind in the face of our withering democracy, a rottenness that refuses to hold those that flout the rule of law accountable.

I can't tell you how this will end, only how it begins.  It begins by you saying, "I will not work for you, buy from you, or fight for you until the criminals are gone from the halls of our government."

General Strike 9/11-15 2008