Waking Up to Current Events

Up until a few weeks ago, I was so submersed in the café and all its multiple layers of challenges that I had no time to write.  And if I did have a minute or two to call my own, my brain was too fried to craft anything worthwhile.  Forget about creativity…legibility would have been a stretch.  I was to the point where I could barely speak without screaming, growling or sobbing.  I had no desire to try to write from that place. 

All it took was a few successful (at least for now) hires to scoop me out of there and lift me to the plateau upon which I now find myself.  After successfully completing what passed for a vacation—a week in which I only had to work 1 ½ days—my chronic exhaustion began to abate.  In the two weeks since, I have been able to wangle two—count them, TWO—days off in every seven.  I’m almost beginning to feel human again.  Unfortunately, my ever-churning mind cannot seem to take advantage of the opportunity to switch off for awhile.  Sans the overload of café issues that have been swirling around in it for the past many moons, it has begun sucking in new topics.  Or perhaps it is simply letting in the stuff that would have been there, had it not been running over with entrepreneurial backflow.

First and foremost, there is the national political scene to worry about.  I can’t help but notice that the whole election process appears so much less snarky than it was four years ago.  With the exception of that horrid cartoon on The New Yorker, I’ve hardly seen or heard anything that has  made me want to scream at the television or hide my head under a cardboard box until the election is over.  I don’t know if this is because the Karl Roves of the world have been excluded from the process this time, or if the candidates are aware of the average American’s increasing disgust with the divisiveness, or if the media have for some reason changed their focus from creating sensation to responsible reporting (this seems doubtful…)  Or maybe John McCain and Barack Obama are just un-sensational men.  Well, that can’t be it.  Who could possibly be more un-sensational than George W. Bush?

And then there is the economy. 

I wrote a prophetic little blurb in my other journal back in March.  Rather than link to it, I’ll just copy it verbatim here (it’s short….):

Gas Prices Rise to New National Record

Watch for prices of just about everything to reach a bone-crunching crescendo as the Bush Administration grabs for every dollar it can for its Big Energy puppet masters, before it goes down into the tarpits at the end of this year...

Can they accomplish this without laying complete waste to the nation's economy?  Probably not.

Do they care what happens to the nation's economy?  Obviously not. 

Their solution:  Go borrow a bunch of money from China, throw a few bucks at the general population as you bow out, stuffing your pockets all the way, and let the next administration worry about cleaning up the mess.

Surprised? 

Not really...

The soulless avarice of the Bush Administration is without peer, at least in modern memory.  This administration has existed for one purpose and for one purpose only: To advance the political and financial aspirations of Big Energy, particularly Big Oil.  I do not believe there is anything they would not do, anyone they would not kill, any society they would not destroy, any war they would not start, in order to establish and maintain their place as the richest and most powerful men in the world.  They would do anything to tighten their grip on a few more billion dollars.  And have no doubt, money does equal power.  The Texas Junta has demonstrated this so flagrantly that one would have to be the equivalent of an animated potato to have missed it. 

I further predict that gas prices and the economy will miraculously heal themselves almost immediately upon George W. Bush’s exit from the White House. It is to be hoped that we can all dig in our fingernails and hang on until that time…