Welcome to 2009

From the news the past few weeks, 2009 looks a lot like 2008.  That will suck if it continues.

·         Polls = “lies, damned lies and statistics.”  One added benefit to Barack Obama’s election would be the cessation of the endless polling the news networks did during the campaign cycle.  Wow, was I wrong about that.  The polls have shifted from which candidate people support for the 2008 campaign to which GOP candidate is most favored (it’s Sarah Palin right now) to beat Obama and/or how much confidence the public – including the same Republicans who are already lining up to support Palin – has in Obama.  WTF?  Can’t the guy take office before the snarkiness starts?  Apparently not.

·         Petty, partisan politics are over.   Uh, not in the US.  Just as Minnesota says Al Franken won, Norm Coleman and his pals in the Senate vow to fight on.  Granted, with an election so close, it’s hard to blame them.  It’s how they got the White House in 2000.  The other split seems to be in how the GOP machine will respond to President Obama.  So far they have released obnoxious and racist videos.  When called on the blatant racism of “Barak the magic negro” their response was “it was a joke.”  Yeah, so were your response to Katrina, our participation in the ICC or adherence to the Geneva Conventions the economy and your general ability to govern.  See, none of us are laughing at those either.

·         No, really – everything I do it totally legal.   One might think that if one governor is in the newspaper every day over a ‘pay for play’ scandal that if you maybe did the same thing, you might not want to subject yourself to anything that requires Senate confirmation.  Poor, silly Bill Richardson.  Of course, the adage that ‘those in glass houses should not throw stones’ never did mean much to politicians.  Nice.

·         Just because I am about to be impeached does mean I lose my rights to govern.  Speaking of Governor Blogojevich, he hasn’t actually been indicted on anything.  I understand that the ‘appearance of impropriety is worse than the impropriety itself.’  I do but legally he has the right to appoint anyone, who meets the requirements to be a Senator, to the Senate.  He could make things easier on Harry Reid, but why should he?  He should because anyone he appoints will be tainted and that may make it harder to them to keep the seat in 2010 when they have to run again.  A veto proof Senate would be, well, I can’t say how strongly I feel about it because then I would have to list this post as ‘offensive’ but it would be awesome.

·         Winter is cold and there is still plenty of war to go around.  After 10 days in Florida and too many hours of CNN/the Weather Channel, I can tell you that in the winter most of the US is cold and people still try to kill each other all over the world.  Israel is pounding Gaza (and I do blame Hamas for this), conflicts continue in the DR Congo & Darfur and pirates are taking ships off the horn of Africa.  Good times.

 

I know I sound glib here and promise that is not my goal.  It’s hard for me not to not be cynical about the state of the world.  The US made great progress by electing Barack Obama but we have a long way to go in terms of the rest of the planet, our role in it and what we do within our borders.  Democracy does not equal stability and peace.  The US is not the only country on earth and political corruption runs rampant.  We get the government that we settle for.  

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Whack-a-mole

It’s whack a mole but with issues.

 

Just when you thought we had conquered certain problems, they come back.  Despite its current unpopularity, thanks to Silent Spring (a book), we stopped using DDT.  The real problem was that because it was cheap, the people who used it would use about a thousand times the amount needed.  In those does it is bad for you.  In lower doses, it just kills bugs and is the reason things like malaria disappeared from the US.  Global warming and our pc nature have brought it back.  Now infectious diseases, such as malaria, dengue fever (a real treat – there are FOUR strains and if you get one and then are infected with another you are MORE likely to get the hemorrhagic version – think Ebola – nice, right?) and others, are making a comeback in the US.   Don’t believe it?  The CDC reported in 2002 that the mosquito that carries Dengue had been found as north as North Carolina.  More cases of the disease have been reported along the US-Mexican border.  Sure they kill millions of people in the world but those are poor people in far away places so they don’t count.  (If they did our pharmaceutical giants – who seem to be weathering the current economic problems just fine – would make more anti-malaria drugs and spend less on erectile dysfunction, which kills, I am just guessing here, zero people a year.)  Our overdependence on antibiotics, and doctors I have talked to will tell you this, too – many people don’t think their doctor helped them unless they get a prescription, has lead to a drug resistant bugs, like TB.  Washington, DC has a high rate of both normal TB and drug resistant TB.  Back when my grandmother got TB it was called consumption.

 

If infectious diseases aren’t your thing, don’t worry.  There are other problems that have made a comeback.  If all pirates looked like Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom I might not have a problem but apparently they don’t.  Moreover they didn’t stay in the 1800’s – or whenever – like they were supposed to.  No, they are alive and well and taking ships off the coast of Somalia and East Africa.

 

Maybe that’s too far away, too.  Well back here in the states we have had resurgence of slavery.  Human trafficking probably never actually went away, it just went underground.  Today I read about a house in Falls Church, VA where 11 women were being forced to work.  Depending on whose data you believe, the number of people being held at any given time ranges from one to four million people worldwide.  An estimated 70-80 percent are female and 50 percent are minors.  http://www.unescobkk.org/index.php?id=1963

 

And that doesn’t even include companies that just abuse their workers (Walmart I am looking at you).  With the economy tanking it can be hard to think about anything else.  I am probably in a bitter mood today but it just seems ridiculous that in 2008 things like slavery, piracy and curable diseases kill and hurt so many people.  And we think we’re so advanced.

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