Bartholemew

Bartholemew, there's an old saying from some place that says, "May you live in interesting times." I been bored for quite a while but I gotta say, so far this year looks promising, in the interesting category.

You might have heard something about a bit of a brouhaha in Egypt. It seems the trigger for all this current stuff was what the Guardian newspaper called the "small incident" of a feller setting himself on fire in Tunisia back in December. Here's what they said about that:

"The riots and demonstrations that have swept through Tunisia during the past 10 days also began with a small incident. Twenty-six-year-old Mohamed Bouazizi, living in the provincial town of Sidi Bouzid, had a university degree but no work. To earn some money he took to selling fruit and vegetables in the street without a licence [sic]. When the authorities stopped him and confiscated his produce, he was so angry that he set himself on fire." Source.

Then there was all that stuff in Egypt. What was that all about?

"Some of the protesters' targets were similar to some of those in Tunisia: high unemployment, skyrocketing food prices, pervasive poverty. But Egyptian protesters expressed their most vehement anger at government corruption, torture and police brutality,..." Source.

Oh, so a big part of it was about unemployment. Well, how high WAS their unemployment?

"Egypt's unemployment rate is 9.4 percent as of the last quarter of 2009, according to a report released in February 2010 by the country's Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics. Approximately 2.3 million Egyptian workers are unemployed, the report found. Over a million of the unemployed held high school diplomas, while almost 900,000 had college degrees."

The list of coutries where there are protests is getting longer. Lessee, there's (alphabetically) Algeria, Bahrain, Iran,Jordan, Lebanon,Syria, Yemen,...

You might notice that all those are in the Middle East, North Africa, area. Aside from wanting whichever "leader" they currently have out, nearly all mention something about unemployment, poverty, excessively high prices for food, gas, etc.

Well, you can just never tell what all them ragheaded sand monkeys gonna do, but we don't have no sich here in God's Country, the Grand Ol' USA.

Well, hang on Bartholemew, let's put our specs on and take a closer gander at it. They had protests in London too...and THAT was about stuff costing too much too and that was a Western country.

Yeah, but still wasn't here...

Hang on... up there in Madison, Wisconsin there are thousands of people protesting the way the governor there is acting, about cutting wages, threatening unions and even talking about calling out the national guard...Source, and NY and NJ are threatening really big cuts in all kinds of programs...

Well, them Yankees are always bitchin' about somethin'...

Well it ain't jist Yankees, Bartholemew, they want to cut out a buncha stuff in Texas too, Source, and you know right across from El Paso, they been sayin' for a few years now that Ciudad, Jaurez is the most violent and dangerous city in the world, and before you say that's just crazy Mexicans, sometimes that warring spills over into the US too, and, even though most of that is about heroin and other drugs, a lot of it is about the terrible economic conditions in Mexico.

You remember that thing about unemployment being 9 percent or something like in Egypt....you know what it is here? It fell to "only" 9% in January, down from 9.4% in December. Source. But that don't mean there were suddenly more jobs, just means a buncha folk fell off the "official" unemployment rolls. These folk say the "real" US unemployment rate might be closer to 25%. Source.

I keep hearing talk about gas prices getting up around $4 a gallon again, maybe $5 by the end of the year, and maybe even more than that soon after. Source. Not just gas either, last time we went to the discount store, the hamburger was $2.29 a pound. Last month it was only $1.79 a pound. They say food prices all over the world are really going up fast, and that means here too. Source. Part of that is because of gas prices going up and part is because of things like droughts in China and Argentina.

Yessir, Bartholemew, this year has possibilities... [crickets]

TRB