Summer is over. It was a sad three months. A great friend of mine died of a terrible disease (Joe Casella); a great woman passed away and is terribly missed (Eunice Shriver); and a fun and respected friend died a few weeks later (Senator Ted Kennedy). Twenty-one public figures of note died including Michael Jackson; Walter Cronkite; Farrah Fawcett; Les Paul; John Hughes. Click here to read this round up story. And just this weekend a relative of my wife died unexpectedly at 46 years of age.

What is going on? I am glad the summer is over.

And the economy hasn’t gotten much better, has it? This summer I have had more than a dozen friends or relatives lose their jobs and are now unemployed. The government has done plenty to help BIG banks and big companies. Now it is time now to help the working men and women of our country and to help small businesses that provide the growth engine and create jobs. Unemployment is almost at 10 percent. If you don’t have a job, how can you pay your mortgage? How can you buy a car? We need to focus now on Main Street – as promised - and let Wall Street figure out its own course now. Good riddance this summer to “Cash for Clunkers”, too. Yuck.

All summer long I have heard venture capital is hard to find for start ups and even great growth companies and loans to businesses are even harder to find. Mr. Big Banker - come back from the Hamptons and loosen up the purse strings so people can get back to work again. This summer, we took a step back in our economy and job creation now must be priority one for our President. That rally on Wall Street is a sucker’s rally, I believe. How can we be recovering when we are still losing jobs?

And, I would also connect the dots on healthcare. Will reform on healthcare help the economy? Help create jobs? Help businesses? If so, make the case, state it clearly and get the politics out of the discussion. I got turned off this summer to the loud rhetoric of the town hall meetings. THIS is wisdom of crowds? Yikes. The heat must be getting to people.

And our President’s honeymoon seems to be over, killed this summer as most citizens still are focused on family matters, the economy and war. I heard something very interesting the other day. A politically savvy friend said, “I am bored with our President already. I have tuned him out. He is overexposed. Please don’t make another speech for a month or so. Go do some work.” We treat our President like he is a celebrity. In this new media era – in less than 10 months - you can get overexposed and the message you are transmitting is not the message that is being received.

And what was going on this summer, culturally? Do we really care that much about Jon and Kate? Tell me how these two folks have become celebrities and cover subjects? Why wasn’t the passing of Mrs. Shriver worthy of a cover story in People Magazine? She has helped more people than any woman this century but Kate gets on the cover multiple times? I don’t get it! This was the summer of “Jon”, what a putz he is.

And what is Hollywood doing? Transformers 2? Ugh. G.I. Joe? Double ugh! And on and on. My brain was turning to mush.

And it was hotter than usual and seemed to be raining a lot. The local allergens and mold were killing us that suffer from allergies.

I am glad it is September. A new season is about to start. Let us hope for good health for all. Let us hope for some sanity back in our discussions on important matters. Let us hope for a better three month stretch to the holidays. This summer sucked.