Good Morning!

Despite the hour, I am not off to donate platelets this morning. (But why aren't you?)

No, I'm off to do something called "University of Scouting". It's an all-day event chock full of hopefully useful training and other things. It's mostly geared towards new leaders, but I need credit for attending some sort of training in order to earn my Den Leader's award this season...so off I go.

We're all aware of the seismic shift that happened this past Tuesday. I've been switching between cynic and disinterested for much of the week. Fact is, America has spoken, and even though they have spoken wrongly, there's not much you or I or anyone else can do about it. I rather like Raine's idea from earlier in the week that we should call the Speaker's office every day in the new congress and demand jobs, reduction in government, and budget austerity. It won't do a damn thing, but we'll feel better about it, I suppose.

After Bush' won' in 2004, I went back and reread "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich". I was astonished at the time over the similarities in the respective rises to power, and knew that we were in for bad times ahead. Six years later, and this past year I reread George Orwell's "nineteen-eighty-four". Sad to say, we are there.



While we might have voted for that "hopey-changey" stuff two years ago, it seems that America doesn't have the stomach for it. We apparently like to keep the rich rich, the poor poor, the country at war, and our Presidents white.

And now this week, another voice has been silenced. While I expect Keith Olbermann to resurface at some point in time, MSNBC has apparently gone and silenced him for his views. Sure, they can quote 'policy' all they want, but it's pretty obvious out here what has happened. We expected this would happen under "President" Bush. The fact that it happened with Obama in the White House makes it all the more disturbing.

So for the next few weeks at least, I've given up on politics. I ditched a number of podcasts that I have been listening to for the last 5 years, and have gone back to actually studying music. I remember after the Democrats took back the House in 2006; it was a great relief and I felt I could 'lighten up' a little bit. Truth be told, I never did, and was as politically hardcore as I ever was. Given that I feel crushed and bitter these past few days...music is now a refuge from it all.

2011 is a new year. Whether it's a good one, or the last year of our existence as we know it is yet to be determined.