Truth of the matter, I've been very lucky so far. My job allows me to freelance, and I've managed to string together almost non-stop work since my old company let me go. Ironically, my old company is one of the places I've managed to keep some work going since the end of June.
I know people first-hand who lost their jobs that didn't have the same opportunities I've had so far, and I always have to remind myself that there's no guarantee my current string of luck will continue past my next booking. But I'm always grateful that I had full-time employment through the worst of the economic mess now that we've passed through those tough times. The country is firing on all cylinders, President Obama and Congress have worked out their differences to get these United States moving the way it should, and we're finally heading in the right direction.
Maybe I did go through that unemployment tailspin and got permanently lost on some crazy cheap hallucinogens cut with bleach and bath salts.
So here we are, a little over two years since I started writing here, and not much has changed. Here's a quote from the very first post on July 25th, 2011:
...lets get to where we currently stand. It's July 25th, eight days away from the August 2nd deadline. The upside is that America loves countdowns, and this one is no different. Bloomberg TV has a countdown graphic. I expected the graphics to draw inspiration from the Times Square Ball that counts down the last ten seconds before the arrival of a new year - or course, replacing the ball with something phallic and having it move toward some orifice connected to American dignity and common sense. But alas, it's just a clock.You can swap out little details here and there (we're past one stupid deadline and speeding junk first toward another... everyone has countdown clocks), but the jackassery remains the same. The highlights started with Texas Senator Ted Cruz, covered with the usual laughs by Jon Stewart over at the Daily Show:
Then came the inevitably-stupid-republican-perpetrated shutdown which led to the transparent and clumsy republican outrage at Obama for what they did. And since the only thing this Congress can get done are photo ops, we got this ridiculous picture from Team Cantor:
Well shucks, I guess we have nothing better to do than sit across from empty symbolism and look constipated while Rome burns. Truth of the matter is that even if every one of those empty chairs were filled with Democrats trying their damndest not to laugh, nothing would change, thanks to the brand of self-immolation today's Republican base pass off as governance.
So here we are, in our latest government "slimdown" as Fox News calls it, while they smile and contemplate that since no really feels the effects of this shut down, why all the fuss? The Wonkblog over at Washington Post has a nice breakdown of the "fat" getting trimmed:
So the CDC, the NIH, Immigration, Housing and Urban Development, the EPA, the Justice Department, the VA, the DOD, the Department of Energy, WIC - holy shit, is this going to be pervasive. While Fox News takes the "well, it's been fourteen minutes since the deadline passed and everything's fine!" angle on this story, they do a genuine disservice to all those who will be affected as this self-inflicted political dutch-oven marches on.
But then again, the poor, the sick, veterans, kids, the environment, disenfranchised voters... these are groups the Republicans shit on anyway, so maybe the total shutdown furthers their agenda more than we realize. There's a special place in hell waiting for some of these people, but until then, we have to suffer their actions. Right now, I think we're at the place where a lot of the more civilized nations of the world pity our bumbling ineptitude. At some point, though, they're going to realize we're actually acting like assholes, and that pity will morph into disdain.
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