$135.74

My partner and I went grocery shopping today after work. We didn't buy a lot of things as we have just started the South Beach Diet. It's worked well for us before and since we've both put on a little weight we decided to try it again.

For those of you who haven't been on the South Beach diet or don't know about it, it's a bit of a challenge. The first two weeks you're mostly allowed only proteins. No carbs at all, such as rice and bread. Juice and fruit are out, as are carrots, sweet potatoes and even tomatoes. You have to retrain your mindset on the things you can eat and you force yourself to focus on that rather than the things that you can't.

So we're in Publix, our local chain supermarket. We bought some salad greens, sugar free Jell-o, sugar free puddings, cheeses, soy milk, beans, some Crystal Light and lots of frozen veggies. We picked up a few cans of tuna, dog food, Splenda, Pledge, some protein bars, mushrooms and several types of meat and fish. All in all, not a lot of food or anything extraneous. If we're lucky, the amount of food we bought will last us one week. Let me repeat that. One week. And we spent $135.74.

I never thought I would see the day when I, like my mother and grandmother before her, would be standing at the cash register saying, "I remember when." I swore I would never become that. Things change! Everything goes up.

But CHRISTALMIGHTY!!!! THIS much? And we're two people with no kids! What about the parents with children? For that matter, what about single parents? And what of the elderly who are on even more of a fixed income than WE are???

I'm incensed and appalled that our nation has gotten to the point that it has. It is absolutely revolting and disgusting. The political leaders in this country should all be strung up, lined up, and FORCED to work for minimum wage. They should be FORCED to live on a budget. They should be FORCED to work for a corporation and have to kow-tow to the bosses and stuck in a job that they don't like simply because they are working for medical insurance. They should be FORCED to live just like everybody else.

I'm sick and tired of all these filthy politicians making rules for the masses, living like parasites off the taxes WE pay, and lieing through their fucking teeth about . . . well, EVERYTHING!

Starting with the most local of commissioners, although they are probably closest to mainstream America and the aches and pains we feel, then continuing all the way up to the son-of-a-bitch who calls himself the "P" word; the man who stole office not once but TWICE! The idiot moron who has driven our country so far down the fucking toilet it'll take a hell of a lot more than Roto-Rooter, a plumber's snake and the entire Drano factory.

I can't wait for the madness of King George to end. The fascist dictator pig should be strung up by his balls. I pray to a God I'm not sure exists anymore, that we never honor Bush in any way shape or form, the way we have with Nixon, Reagan and other dead former "P" people who all of a sudden, just because they have died, are instant saints and everyone wants to canonize.

How stupid do they think we are? Exactly how bad IS our short-term memory as a nation? As a people?

Well, apparently quite stupid if they are feeding us McCain and Palin. Even dumber if we allow the Republican party to continue to destroy what I was always taught to believe was the greatest nation on Earth.

I'd like to see, not just Palin and McCain, but all the other politicians on BOTH sides, fighting to pay bills and struggling to put food on the table. I would really love to force them to look at our nation's poor, the civil rights they are stripping us of, yet touting Democracy in other countries we have no right to be in.

The problem is, that kind of change will never happen. The kind of change I want to see will be nothing short of a revolution.

I truly hope people wake up soon. I hope we realize that words don't pay the rent. Words, as important as they may be, don't put food on the table, they don't feed your kids, they don't pay your doctor bills, your medication. They don't pay for your gas. They don't put gifts under the tree at Christmas. YOU do.

So if you want to continue struggling, barely scraping enough money to get buy, let alone get ahead, go ahead, keep believing the false prophets and their false words. Frankly, with all that we have allowed and put up with . . . considering the state of our country, our economy, our great nation . . . our planet . . . I'm surprised that anyone can sleep comfortably at night.

Especially the politicians and lawmakers that have led us to where we are now.

Pissed off? You bet. Disgusted? Absolutely!

Aren't you?

Seriously. What else has to happen before you stand up and say "I've had enough and I'm not going to take it anymore?" How many more jobs have to be lost? How many more people have to die because they have no insurance and we have a tired, overburdened bureacracy that just doesn't care? How many hurricanes have to blow before the privileged few are FORCED to look at the poverty that exists in our own backyards and start fixing the things that broken and no longer work?

Wake up people! We are not battling these things as one single ethnic group, as men or women, as straight or gay, as one religion pitted against the other. We are ALL fighting these things TOGETHER. As one planet.

We must stand up and say something because if we don't, as Ben Franklin said, "We shall surely hang together." And personally, I can already feel the noose tightening ever more.

All of this just because my partner and I spend $135.74 for barely one week worth of groceries.