Update

I don't know if it's the late winter blahs, or getting worn out by waiting to see what happens in North Africa and Wisconsin and with a friend's hospital tests. But I am out of energy, feeling achy and run down.

And I am tired beyond belief of watching the Republicans in action, attacking workers' rights and women's rights and gay rights and minority rights and the planet.

I should feel good, because people are fighting back, and politicians in the US -- Republican governors and the president -- seem to backing away from their most retrograde positions. (Would Obama have abandoned DOMA, if there were no massive labor demonstrations? He's got to be nice to at least part of his support.)

Gaddafi is fighting to the end, but what else can he do? His foreign assets have been frozen and his family is not welcome anywhere, except maybe Venezuela.

I suppose the cheerful way to look at this is -- things are happening, people are protesting in Africa and the Middle East and America and Europe. The right wing cannot win, because the planet is against them. The resources that capitalism needs -- raw materials, new markets, new sources of labor and a clean environment to dump waste in -- are mostly gone. There are no more externalities. There are only predators going around and around within a narrowing circle, biting and chewing what is left within their reach.

But they can do a lot of harm before they are done circling. And the stars wait for us. We could rebuild this planet and then go up and out. Why our we wasting so much on the tail end of an era?