I got a library card yesterday, and registered to vote. I felt like a real person, but I also felt a strange awe at the ability to have a card to borrow books, and the ability to vote. It got me thinking.

I remember the Watergate scandal, and how distressing it was to know that integrity, honour, and common decency had just jumped out of the car barreling down the freeway. I named a stray cat I rescued after the chief prosecutor, and when Nixon resigned, I naively thought things would get back to normal.

In spite of all that came after, I hung onto that until Bush II ham fisted his way into the White House back in '00. I told my son that G.W. would get us into a Vietnam like war in Iraq-I really do hate being right-and I tried to find some hope.

However, when bullies are successful, the success encourages the escalation of incivilities. Life, already unpleasant with all of the uncivil liberties being taken by wanna be robber barons, took a turn for the worse when Bush was able to bully his way into 'power' and things are not getting any better any time soon I don't think.

It's scary. Scary to watch, scary to know from past experience how all of this mess is going to resolve it's self, and scary to be going through it alone.

Yesterday was the anniversary of a number of historically important days-Lexington/Waco/OK City...While I did not go searching for commemorations intentionally, I looked out from the corner of my eye-the only mention of any of the events was a blurb at the bottom of one of the dailies about OK City, and a small piece at a couple of news feeds remarking on the upcoming release of some of the Branch Davidians.

13 (Waco) and 11 years (OK City) went by and many people died, and for what? How does an ultimately insignificant little no-body boot-licker spin doctor like Scott McClellan (spelling probably incorrect, not to be rude, but his name is less important to me than mine is to him, and I'm not in the mood to bother looking up the spelling of someone I feel so much disdain for-is he going to chase ME down and punish me for having an opinion? Probably, some land of the free-hey, thanks Georgie!) manage to knock the importance of recalling what happened to our country on the 19th of April off the front page??

I've tried not to buy into the conspiracy theory mess-I prefer optimism. But all of this is looking rather like a smoke screen to me, and it makes me wonder at the inaptitude of the so-called majour players, that a displaced homemaker can see it.

Gas prices are incredible, and will get much worse; nothing any of us regular folks can do about it, and I hate thinking that this is part of the 'plan' to disenfranchise those of us barely hanging on to the merest vestiges of the middle class 'splendor' we'd manage to attain.

I spent so much on groceries yesterday that I am now overdrawn at the bank. And no, I didn't buy fancy cuts of meat, or frivolities-unless you count milk and butter, ground chuck, and some bananas as frivolities.

Hell, from what Mrs. Bush-former First lady-said after Katrina, maybe my audacity at wanting fresh fruit is just that, an outrageous display of my audacity to presume that I should have so much as the merest scrap of a decent life. Gods, I really woke up pissed this morning!

I think what put me over the edge was the gas I put on my debit card @ a whopping $2.91 a gallon, going into the grocery and putting only the bare necessities into the cart, and then getting to the check-out counter only to find that walking out of the store was going to cost me extra by invoking overdraft protection.

DAMMIT! I am not the only one, and trust me that doesn't make me feel a damn bit better.