What's gonna happen next? We have early, extensive wildfires in California; a devastating earthquake in China -- the area still is quivering, check the usgs.gov earthquake site; thousands dead in Myanmar from Cyclone Nargis; Typhoon Fengshen in the Philippines; the drought continues in Southeast US; the Mississippi River Valley floods like it did in the early 90s -- thousands homeless, farmlands devastated.

That's just the natural disasters so far this year.

Oil, this world's main energy source (currently), is up to $145USD a barrel -- putting the cost of transportation up. Food being one of the most necessary items being shipped, food prices are up (and what effect will the flooding in the corn/wheat basket do to prices?). People here in America are curtailing their driving, airlines are raising prices, this affects a LOT of industries. This summer -- the travel, tourism & recreation industries are suffering -- people are just not traveling as much. It's too expensive! This is an industry which provides a LOT of summer/seasonal jobs -- not necessarily well-paid, but jobs none-the-less. The Iraq War is taking wa-a-a-y too many resources -- $162 BILLION USD for a useless war.

This morning, the radio said we'd lost 62,000 jobs this year; due to the recession we're skirting the edges of? And temp jobs are not picking up the slack -- they're down too.

So, higher food prices, higher energy costs, fewer jobs.

Y'know, even a country which has husbanded it's resources well would be hard-pressed to deal with several disasters at once. Look what happened when we had the Stock Market Crash in '29 and the Dust Bowl in the 30s. Too much at one time will take us under.

What's next? Where will it take us? Will we collapse, tighten our belts yet another notch & huddle by the fire -- or rise to the occasion?

Personally, I don't think we have the resources to throw behind another major blow -- or two. I'm afraid for the future.