I told him to go out and check his truck the other day because he left the lights on, but apparently he's been too busy. Dang, that thing has a good battery!

I'm with you guys, though. While my wife and I are still both working, secure, and doing fairly well, we've felt the recession just like everyone else has. I had to take two weeks of unpaid furlough last year, another week this year, my overtime has been eliminated, and my wages have been frozen for two years. My wife's ex-husband got laid off and she didn't get any child support for about 8 months. With 3 pre-teens, that makes a big difference.

Everybody has felt the pain somehow. But how it affects us is all dependent on our attitude. While I was on furlough, I did a few side jobs and ended up making more than I would have at work. We shopped a little more carefully and watched the utility usage to compensate for loss of the child support. Since I can't work overtime, I've sold a couple projects and some parts that I had lost interest in to fund the ones I'm working on. We've never despaired or felt like the world was going to end. We just find a way to overcome. We even planned for the possibility of one of us losing our job and we could have survived that too.

It's rough all over, but this IS America. I still believe that we will ultimately persevere and prosper as a country. The American people will only tolerate so much incompetence, corruption, and government interference in our lives before we change the regime at the polls. Our economy is in the process of changing, but we will adapt. We always have. I've read in several places that manufacturing is already starting to come back in some areas. It seems that the Chinese workers are starting to figure out that they are getting screwed by their employers and are demanding better working conditions and a bigger piece of the pie. By the time these expenses are figured in on top of the costs of shipping the products over here, it's a better deal for the manufacturers to just make it over here with American labor to begin with. We need to move past the doom and gloom mentality as a country and set about the business of pulling ourselves out of this mess. We just need the proper leadership with the proper attitude for inspiration. Hopefully we can get a good start on that in November.