Cliff Diving: Not My Idea of Fun

Why won't our elected officials listen?

The American people truly want them to cooperate to get things done.

And not to procrastinate like those school children we all remember ourselves being.

We've all grown up.

Isn't it time our elected officials grow up and realize that government service truly should be a higher calling?

As George Washington stated in a letter to Benedict Arnold, dated Sept. 14, 1775, "Every post is honorable in which a man can serve his country."

As the clock turns to 2013, I, along with all of the folks around me, have an uneasy feeling. Are these elected officials honorably serving their country? Have we really gone off the cliff? It feels as if we, as ordinary Americans, were all just standing on the sidelines and then forcibly pulled into some weird type of free fall.

As American citizens, we were following Benjamin Franklin's comments, which he made at the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, "We must all hang together, or, assuredly, we shall all hang separately."

And now, we all are hanging.

What will happen to the tax burden of all Americans?

What will happen to the unemployment benefits for those in need?

What will happen to government spending in general?

What will be the multiplier effect of all of these (in)actions in the U.S. and global economies?

What will happen when we soon approach the vote to increase the debt ceiling again?

I believe it is time for all Americans to take a page out of a movie of yesteryear where, in the 1976 film, Network, the fictitious anchor of the Union Broadcasting Systems, Howard Beale, convinces his viewers to shout out of their windows, "We're as mad as hell, and we're not going to take this anymore!"

It is time for every American to use every form of social media (including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and blogs) to get the message across that we are "mad as hell and won't take this anymore."