THE LEFT FIDDLES WHILE THE HEARTLAND BURNS...WHERE ARE ALL THESE "GREEN SHOOTS"?

It's been painfully obvious to us here in Fly-Over Country for quite some time that our "leaders" (rulers?) don't give a damn about us and that we essentially have no representation in Washington anymore. The Obamas and Pelosis and Reids and their fawning flunkies in the state-run media can show off an endless parade of "victims" of insufficient government hand-outs, especially during election time, but do they really care about the ordinary working family in these United States? Hardly.

If they did, they might at least pretend to be trying to do something about the foundering economy. The Stimulus was a joke from the get-go, nothing but pork and pay-offs, and since that was such a disaster the Propaganda Ministry has decided it is "the word which must not be spoken". They sure as hell aren't going to mention their Messiah's little broken promise about unemployment never passing 8% if only we would listen to his vast financial wisdom and pass the unfunded monstrosity. Well, it didn't pan out. So what? We've plenty more rat holes to shove money down for no return.

Now, at the beginning of the new Depression, which is what we are sliding into despite all the outright lies about green shoots and recoveries, the Mugabe Obama Administration and his corrupt cronies in Congress are doing all they can to DESTROY JOBS in this country faster than ever.

In Copenhagen "fixing" Global Warming, an extremely dubious problem in reality anyway, will amount to the US government shoveling out billions of taxpayer dollars (which we don't have, if you haven't been paying attention) to every little Third World dirt bag country with its hand out. Basically, it amounts to buying votes, just like they do in Chicago. That's sure not going to create any jobs. The EPA is running rampant as a Godzilla-like entity unto itself, answering to no one, over-regulating or closing down everything in its path, especially mines, costing tens of thousands more job when we are already overwhelmed with an endless spiral of unemployed workers. Cap-and-Tax will end up costing the average American working family several thousand bucks more in increased fees and taxes which, in case you haven't noticed, we pay too much of for no return already. All this bullshit about Green Energy creating jobs, in reality, means losing even more jobs in the existing energy industries.

Health Care "Reform" will at least create some jobs as hordes of new petty bureaucrats will be hired for the dozens of new government administrative entities whose mission will be, like that of the VA and Work Comp, to find creative ways to screw the average Joe out of either medical treatment or funds, but preferably both. This may offset the 40% of doctors already talking about hanging it up rather than work for a government-run health care system. It also makes it that much harder for the few productive working families left in the country, as it steals more money out of their pockets. The marriage penalty unearthed in the bill, for instance, would cost families an addition $10,000 in taxes.

But even all this talk of the big picture tends to make the sheeples' eyes glaze over as they eagerly believe all the "good news" oozing from Sodom on Potomac and faithfully regurgitated by the Ministry of Truth. Real truth means nothing, and no matter how you skew and spin the numbers, people are hurting and hurting bad in the Heartland. We never hear about the human cost to real-life flesh-and-blood everyday people. As Uncle Joe Stalin reportedly said, "One death is a tragedy. One million is a statistic."

Not long ago, my wife and I were in line behind a woman who had two shopping carts filled to overflowing with groceries. Just groceries. No booze, no cigarettes, no toys. She had two small children in tow. Her shoulders were bowed as if by a great weight, and she looked tired. Apologizing for stalling the check-out line with so many purchases at once, she explained the reason for such a large buy, and as she did so one could see a touch of fear in her eyes.

Her husband worked, and had worked for many years, at the Missoula paper mill. I knew the place. It provided very good jobs for this area, better than double the average wage, union jobs, the median pay going around $70,000 a year, almost enough to pay for a single Barack & Michelle date in New York. The young couple was living in fear, the woman told us, that the husband would lose his long-time job at the mill, that it would close down altogether. They were trying to buy groceries for three months in advance...while they still had some money...just in case.

I pray they are doing OK, along with 416 other families.

For this week, the corporation of Smurfit-Stone announced it will be shutting down the Frenchtown, MT paper mill...permanently. Just gone; 417 good-paying jobs, $45 million in salaries and benefits going into the local economy per year, 620,000 tons of linerboard produced annually.

Yet that's only the tip of the iceberg. There's the loggers, the sawyers, the skidder operators, the truckers, the railroad workers...all the people in the long chain of jobs that it takes to get the wood from the forest to the mill. All those folks, like the mill workers, who put their wages back into the local economy, keeping other jobs afloat. The state is talking of around a thousand additional spin-off jobs lost as the effects of the original 417 become felt.

The timber industry has long since been crippled by environmentalist wackos; thousands of jobs gone ever since the Spotted Owl dog-and-pony show, and some of numbers of those studies may be, and probably are, about as "accurate" and "scientific" as those utilized by the Global Warming crowd. Animals, and even plants, to the Left, are much more important than human beings and their suffering. Entire small mountain communities supported by generations of logging dried up and blew away. The promised eco-tourism jobs that would save them all never materialized. Go figure.

This latest mill closing could likely be the straw that breaks the camel's back for the remnants of the timber industry in Southwest Montana. Logging operations in the counties surrounding Missoula have suddenly crashed to a complete halt. The saws, skidders, feller-bunchers, trucks, and rail cars sit idle. No one wants to harvest a product for which they cannot find a buyer. Everyone is waiting to see what will happen. Will there only be a "mere" 1,000 spin-off jobs lost? What about the factory workers in states far across the country who manufacture the heavy equipment that is suddenly a liability rather than an asset? What about the folks working in the stores where these now unemployed timber people spend their wages?

But really. Who cares? Obama keeps promising the world, Congress is going to pass an unfundable health care bill to save us all, we have the Tiger Woods story to keep us distracted, the Press keeps insisting everything is just peachy, and the Survivor finale is on this weekend. What's a few jobs?

To Washington, obviously, nothing. Nothing at all.