2009: All panic, all the time? Or is there room for something else?

[madokie]

== Your year of yes =
Mark Morford
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2009/01/09/notes010909.DTL&nl=fix

Is this the year? Is this the one where it all comes together and it all begins to make some sort of strangely cohesive sense, where you really begin to sink into warm pools of calm awareness laced with laughter and love and really healthy teeth, where you finally accomplish or at least begin all those lingering and latent projects you've been craving for so long, like learning to bake orgasmic homemade bread or creating that hyperliterate travel/sex blog or meditating at dawn, all while reminding yourself every single day to tell everyone around you how beautiful and important and luminous they are, and how grateful you are every moment just to be here, sharing space with them, touching the planet, feeling it all, entirely clothing optional?

Or was that last year? And this one can be summed up in two little words: "More Ambien"?

They say 2008 was brutal and fraught, one of the worst on record, enervating and cruel in a thousand snarling ways despite the simply insane and transcendental glory that was the Obama victory. As Will Pitt over at the tough-minded, gray-skied Truthout.org put it, "The year 2008 began on a Tuesday. Matters went downhill swiftly from there." Not sure just how bleak and brutal it was? Don't worry. We have pictures.

They do not stop there. They go on to say 2009 will likely be even worse, more challenging and unnerving despite Obama's cavalry and despite the merciful exit of Bush, the long-overdue removal of that devastating toxin from the collective body. The fiscal collapse will keep right on collapsing. The downturn will keep right on downing. The media meltdown will keep on melting, despite how everyone still wants and even demands top-notch journalism and serious global reportage, but gosh, no one wants to pay for it. ...

[MADem]

1. This whole era seems to me to have the same funky miasma that the

Nixon-Ford-Carter era had. And that wasn't good.

A lot of stress, angst, tension, very bad fashion, indifferent music, rusty cars, cold winters, not-quite-acid-rain (we get dying bees instead) and uninspired television. If you had to sum the era up in two words, "Fer Shit" would do.

[peacetalksforall]

2. I've been thinking about this all morning. It's so hard to stay up. Cheney really put

us where he wants us.

Then I read the wiki page for Booz, Allen, Hamilton - a Carlyle company that gets millions in government contracts. If you want to know where Cheney gets his direction and who orders him - start reading about the Carlyle companies, Council on Foreigh Relations, and the story behind their dozens of contractors and some of the individuals.

We are the fools. They take us for fools. We are simpletons to start with that they keep drugged with sports, celebrities, serial programs, and debt with minimal jobs and missing money for education.

We are owned and we may be wiped out just like the Palestinians if we don't provide them our money so that they can maintain profits off our labor and purchases, plus credit payments. If we can't work we can't supply them with our taxes for their misuse.

The challenges of honest people are formidable.

Go into the see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing state if you can't bear the pain of truth. How many Palestinians died today, their time, because the UN had to pull out?

This is a real time massacre. History being made, statistic by statistic and the weight of all the blood - not entered into the history books yet - a project still in progress.