Our mountain stream in the back yard is now a river as the ample snow pack is giving way to warmer weather. We’re told that sandbags may be in order by mid May. I swear if it’s not one thing it’s another.

The stock markets are rocketing up as a last ditch effort to hold on to investor money and attract more commissions before it goes back down. There is no earthly reason for the markets to go up, other than the good news that banks lost fewer billions than expected. Geez.

The general economy remains the main focus of the nation primarily because if you don’t have a job for a long time you either starve to death or have to go down and talk to the government welfare people, which creates a tough choice.

Change will come when neighbors get together and agree to make those changes. Neighbors will get together when those on either side are open to a meeting on Wednesday afternoon, because none of the three have a job to mess up their social schedule.

In the Midwest “rust belt” manufacturing area of our country, the unemployed will give the Democrats another whirl as a last ditch effort. The last dance in which they were whirled by Bill Clinton resulted in the signing of NAFTA and our entry into the World Trade Organization.

America is a Democratic monopoly…er…I mean Republic, where the rules say that we vote to give each party their turn at destroying the Middle Class.

Speaking of monopoly, the game and our system are identical, the game just goes faster. Monopoly is pure unchecked gorilla capitalism that results in one person having all the money at the end of the game. The difference is that at the end of the game, you divide the money back up and play again. In real life, those who have all the money get to keep it.

This brings me to the announcement yesterday that between Citigroup and AT&T, they plan to cut 13,600 jobs. Those people will then be out of the Monopoly game and free to meet on Wednesday afternoon to discuss the economy which now looks much different to them, than it did last week.

Even the mega drug maker Eli Lilly, has announced a reduction in force (as in, you’re fired) of 500 employees. But Americans have become so calloused to bad news and so detached from reality, that it takes both us and our neighbors being out of work to sound the wake up alarm.

In this month of April, back in 2003, we heard that Baghdad had fallen. The next month, in May of 2003, President Bush said that while far from concluded, the worst of the fighting may be over.

Yet, five long years later and thousands dead, we scarcely blink when the news reports that 100 Iraqi’s were killed when a bomb went off in a market. Or that 5 of our Marines were killed with a roadside bomb. That’s because it wasn’t us or our loved ones that were killed. Anyway, we don’t have time to think about these things, American Idol is coming on.

As hard core as this may sound, this reporter can hardly wait until neighbors are free on Wednesday afternoon to plan a grass roots strategy for taking America back. For until that happens, it will always be the other guy that is in trouble.

Wake up Middle America, you are in fact your brother’s keeper, we just forgot for a while.