What I Worry About

I'm not losing much sleep over the current financial crisis. I don't mean that I'm not troubled by all those people losing their homes -- and presumably ending up destitute in the process -- but I'm referring to the fallout in the financial markets. It's costing some rich people money they can afford, it will hurt some pension funds and non-profit endowments and retirement accounts a bit but investment portfolios always have some losers and some ups and downs. Yes, it might tip the U.S. economy into recession but that's bound to happen sooner or later and it's just something we'll have to get through.

I know we have to deal with resource depletion and global warming, and we're going to have water wars and famines and rising oil prices and more storms and droughts and all that stuff, but Homo sapiens spent its first quarter of a million years at the mercy of the weather and the local ecosystem so we might as well get used to it again. There are a lot more of us to get decimated than there were in the past, and it could turn ugly here and there, but I'm sure the Ice Age wasn't any picnic either.

Bird flu? A mere bagatelle. (Whatever that means.)

I do, however, worry about President Cheney attacking Iran. It's obvious he wants to do it -- he's got Charlie McCarthy out there with Hamid Karzai and Nuri al Maliki, insisting that Iran is causing all the problems in their countries even though they both insist that they're down with Iran, it's cool. He's got his floorboy generals accusing Iran of killing our boys over there in Eye Rak, even though the evidence evaporates whenever anybody tries to look at it. And anyway, I thought it was al Qaeda. Make up your damn mind.

Yup, Uncle Dick is trying to whip up the war frenzy. He hasn't gotten the crowd going much, so far, but you know what? It doesn't matter. He'll just do it anyway. The Democrats in Congress not only won't try to stop him, the second the bombs start to fall, they'll fall in line, stand shoulder to shoulder, and Support our Troops, or rather our heroes who drop bombs from the sky on people who can't even see them. There's nothing braver than that.

Anybody out there care for a small wager?