SHAWNEE, Kan. - Unions aren't perfect, so we should do away with them. Government isn't perfect, so we should do away with it.

This kind of Black/White, simplistic thinking that is neither constructive nor helpful in solving the crisis-point level problems that this country faces today needs to stop. The kind of thinking that still considers America to be a place where, if you work hard and apply yourself, you can get ahead in the world no longer applies to our situation. The America where we used to be able to work hard, pay our bills and still afford to send our kids to college; the America where a child could expect to work hard and move ahead of his or her parent's economic status; the America of opportunity and justice, industry and ingenuity where a good idea could be brought to the marketplace, benefiting the inventor and the consumer; this America is the one of yesteryear, not of today.

This America has been destroyed along with the American Dream. And it's time for the little people to turn from denial and admit that the dream is dead.

SHAWNEE, Kan. - A few years ago, on a liberal blog that I frequented at the time, I met an interesting fellow from Kansas. He told me about a Kansas blog for progressives that he had started and suggested that I check it out. At the time I remember thinking, "Wow! A progressive blog in Kansas? That's great news!"

The fellow's nom de plume was Iggy Donnelly. I was intrigued by the name alone. So I checked out the blog, Prairie Populists and Progressives and found both a home on the web, and friends. Iggy and most of the other bloggers on PP&P hail from the Wichita area. To find progressives living in Wichita was amazing. If I felt like a Martian living on Pluto, imagine how they must feel, I thought.

As a transplant from the east coast, I had never thought of Kansas as my home. Home had always been back east in Philadelphia, although it had been decades since I lived there. I had never felt a sense of belonging in Kansas, mainly because of the prevailing political and religious leanings.

WASHINGTON - The talk now is that the Senate bill has stripped away any mention of a public option in order to capitulate to Joe Lieberman because they need his vote. The story goes that all the Republicans are going to vote against any sort of health care reform because they don't want to see any Obama policy put into law (which is true) and Democrats need Lieberman's vote in order to get any bill passed (which may or may not be true as well). So the Democrats now have the scapegoats they need in place in order to begin the great flim-flam they are going to call "health care reform."

While it is true that the obstructionist party would have voted no on anything that the Democrats put forward and Lieberman has been huffing and puffing all along about what he "will" and "will not" vote for, this is all smoke and mirrors, folks. Let me tell you what is really going on behind the scenes right now.

BLUE SPRINGS, Mo. - A Missouri billboard is enlightening, but maybe not in the intended way. It says more about the state of our citizenry and the state of general knowledge (or lack thereof) than it does about Obama.

A red and yellow billboard posted along I-70 near Blue Springs is gaining attention from the local media. Watching the following video made many points, some that I would assume that the person that paid for the billboard did not intend. Check it out and then read on: