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ACROSS THE DIVIDE: These are frightening, confusing and volatile times both here and around the world. This page has deliberately been named to reflect the growing popular divide in public opinion, not to exacerbate it. To the contrary, we hope that more public debate will help clarify things in this poorly researched and dreadfully ill-informed media market, where New York circus clowns call themselves journalists. This week we received two impassioned contributions about our page and the issues addressing us all. The first from a lady named Catherine, and the second (unconnected, not a response) from Jeffrey Woods, a regular contributor who is apparently in Florida this month. Let the games begin.

CATHERINE THE GREAT: “While searching for information on a paper I am writing, I came across this website. Without reading too much I realized that it is the like-thinking of this publication that this country is in the shape it is in. What you write here is so reminiscent of how the conservatives acted, thought and behaved when they were in power. Of course with their own agenda.  Now the shoe is on the other foot, we get the same rhetoric in reverse.

To use the word cynical when speaking of Democrats and their ideology is laughable. The cynics are certainly in the conservative camp and not for the betterment of the entire country, but rather for the empowered.  It is clear that Republicans are wealthier, more educated and perhaps healthier and they want to keep it that way.

This brings me to realize that the only way for Republicans to beat the free thinking population is by fear mongering. I suppose you realize by now that the American public is becoming immune to these tactics. Furthermore, it may be a good time to examine and realize that the Republican party are not practicing Christians -- but rather hide behind religion to spew ungodly messages to the public.

Whenever I hear a Republican speak of religion while politicking I want to
laugh. How hypocritical you all are. I give you credit though. You named this rag right; Continental Divide.”

THE WOODSHED: Jeffrey Woods has sent us independently a very different take from his week on the other side of the Divide. He writes: “Civil servants are the new Pharisees, the corrupt so-called "guardians" of public trust, even as you cheat us all. The public workforce is destroying the nation -- it already has ruined California. A retired first grade teacher in Florida, for 20 years of 9-month a year at full pay and benefits, gets $100,000 a year for life with full health insurance at the average cost if $5 million after retirement. And the governor just vetoed a bill that would connect RAISES to classroom performance, because of union paybacks.

I just lost my health insurance because the woman at Carefirst told me: ‘The federal government has mandated 38 million new guaranteed policies, so we are randomly auditing small businesses nation-wide to see if they are comparably good risks. Your firm didn't make enough money last year to match projected government guarantees, so we are terminating you.

Then, in two years if you are still in business, Washington will fine you or put you in jail if you don't buy the same policy back anyway, and by then we can raise the rates. So there is zero percentage for us to carry you now however much you pay.’ She told me that straight on the phone, with no embarrassment; and this is happening nation-wide as we speak. Pelosi was right -- you will love it when you get to read it – by then you will be blind.

NAÏVE IDEALISM: I just walked by a completely empty office building near Tampa with signs everywhere about going out of business etc. In one corner was the only lit small office for "Federal Sustainable Energy," and ‘Brought to You by President Obama,’ and four kids sitting at desks staring silently at the wall.

I couldn't help but think of Warren Beatty and the movie ‘Reds,’ and the final disillusionment -- when John Reed realized that his naive idealism was a farce and failed to take into account the cynical political power and greed of the professional politician class of whatever ideological stripe. More ‘civil servants’ of ill-repute.

DESTRUCTION: This man Obama, and his party, are destroying America economically and ideologically. They are sapping our spirit; condemning us to being mediocre, individually and nationally, while calling dependency a virtue. If you work hard they will block you, regulate and tax you to death and take away your profits -- so Nancy Pelosi can order eight more private jets. If you don't work, they will help you eat. But that's it. In Obama's America there is no up -- Full Stop.

No new exciting industries or jobs, no better life, no new adventures in space or elsewhere, no advancement, no American Dream -- nothing special. It will be just another day in the unemployment, welfare, or some other line or bureaucrat's office. He is the man with the safe government job, you can only get if you are from Chicago or under indictment. But his message is starkly clear: 'You will be equal, you will not starve, just sit down and relax, and we'll get back to you when you are ready to die of boredom.’"

FREEDOM: Martin Luther King had a dream. I heard his speech in Washington at the Lincoln Memorial. “Let freedom ring," he said. "Let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, can prosper together."

That is not what Obama or his pals are preaching. They claim compassion and hope but practice non-racial bipartisan class warfare -- in which everyone loses equally. We can all do nothing, and eventually work for the Chinese as coolies – YES WE CAN BE AS DUMB AS OUR PRESIDENT.

EDITOR: Sorry, hyperbole is allowed.  These two young correspondents need to do lunch. With a referee and a witness, I am sure they would part as friends -- just two people with honest ways of looking at life differently.