Man , I don't how much more bad news I can take. Scary stuff

[blues90]

I scroll though the posts in GD and LBN and it is endless horror. More and more jobs going away. All the soldier suicides. States out of money. More troops into Afghanistan. People like 14,000 a day losing their health insurance.

Then the is Octo mom and the sex change man to women dragging her 73 year old husband to his death in a pool and the talking heads acting like trial lawyers. The plane crash into the house. A chimp who for some reason goes nuts and ends up shot.

Then who knows what's next . I get to the point where I don;t want to see it or read it or hear it so I can just breath some what normally.

This entire world has gone mad or this is just long nightmare and I'm not really here and this is not happening.

You can't get away from it all unless you unplug everthing and tune out.

I see people moving about like there is nothing wrong at all and many times think it must just be me freaking out. That is to say from what I see where I live.

My wife watches TV and I can hear the commercials since they turn the sound way up and hear ad's for ask your doctor pills, sell your old jewelry, buy life insurance , AARP ad's for power chairs , cell phones and deals, ITT tech school ad's for jobs that don't even exist. Military ad's, buy repo homes cheap , it has no end and it's all horror. And the energy company ad's telling you how much better our world will be.

[dkf]

1. Even all the escapist TV is about murder.

I think that is why the "clueless" people don't know what is up. Maybe they have the right idea.

[Joe Chi Minh]

25. Yep, and my wife is the sweetest, gentlest person and she can't get enough of them,

though for my sake she goes easy on the worst of them.

But to add to it all, she will make constant negative comments about everyone and everything. Perhaps she caught some of her malcontedness from me, but I kind of don't like to actually wallow in the horrors and outrages that seems to be the normal fare in our society today, you know? Bad headlines and/or scanning occasional concluding paragraphs are more than enough for my liking. I just don't want to hear the details.

I was on about it this evening again, as she was really into here stride, in the "zone" as the sportsmen say. All good humoured and she kindly stifled the torrent for me!

A second Valentine! Thank you. Usually my poor wife doesn't even get greeting cards from me, and she knows I can't bring myself to tell her I love her, because it seems so utterly foolish to me: like saying, "Trees are made of wood". I'd be inclined to expect her to at least think, "So what? I'd be very upset indeed if you didn't." But I seem to be in a minority in this matter; and a rather wretched and pathetic minority by the sound of things. Still, I'm always thanking her unreservedly for the great meals she cooks.

[cobalt1999]

2. Go back and read the news from 100 years ago.

We humans have always been mad.

[monmouth]

3. I hear you and agree. I turn the TV off until 8 pm. Music of your choice

is a wonderful relaxer, if you must have the news put on Headline News and mute it. You can see the stream and you won't miss a thing. I know Keith will give me the news straight so why would I bother filtering through the bobbleheads who should be working at Macy's jewelry counter??

[Tangerine LaBamba]

4. Bad, bad, bad, and getting worse

Those commercials exist in a parallel universe where nothing is real and nothing ever changes. Don't you wish you could climb into that world, where your biggest problem is whether or not there's high fructose corn syrup on your cereal?

I don't know about you, but this isn't the world I thought I was promised, the one I lived my long life expecting to drink up right to the final moment. This is someone else's nightmare and not my world.

And then the phone rings, and I hear about two more old friends who just lost jobs they've had since we all graduated together that fine May day that seems like just a heartbeat ago.

The widow of a long-gone old friend who found out her teaching job will disappear at the end of this school year. Sure, she can come back as a substitute if they need her. So can all the other out-of-work teachers.

There's a good man in the White House now, and I truly believe he'll do good things. I don't know if my friends and I will be around to see them, because those good things are going to take a long, long time, and he has as much guarantee of failure as he does of success. There are no guarantees in this life.

I count my blessings every day, I really do, but that doesn't do a thing to change what is going on out there. Sometimes I think it's better to look away and not take notice. That's what I wanted to say to blues90 when I read his post, but that would have been worthless and cruel, because looking away is the same as saying to someone whose heart has just been ripped out, "Go on, cry, but you'll get over it."

Some things, I have learned, you just never get over. Now, I think, is one of those times.

[pinto]

5. A lot of it is sensationalism to fill a 24/7 period. And repetitive, as well.

I limit the talking head stuff, the hyperbole, go to the original source as much as possible and develop my own take and try to avoid the latest shiny tidbit getting played and replayed.

And I get outside, everyday, do some local stuff. It helps keep a perspective.

:hi:

[Deja Q]

9. Agreed. I went out for lunch today -- jam packed by noon. I agree,

the media is hyping this up for ratings. Ratings equates to money. Sleaze sells and they loooooooooove selling it.

The media also happens to be a disease; genital herpes and gonorrhoea all rolled into one. And like any loser, they'll cheat given any opportunity.

[rvablue]

14. I've noticed this too....out on a Fri or Sat night and every restaurant parking lot is packed.

Makes one wonder?

[blues90]

17. I don't even watch TV , none of it . I over hear it.

I hear one story and tune out , I don't want to know the continuing octo mom breaking news.

I only listen to Bob Kincaid and Mike Malloy and get the news off that.

But here to go outside is like walking into surreal world here in Hollywood. People move about in their own world connected to a cell phone.

[pinto]

19. Ah, there's that. I live in a *much* smaller town - 45,000, with a walkable downtown.

So I have the luxury of a walk to shop or for coffee or whatever.

[blues90]

22. we can walk to anything here but it has changed

So much and people are closed off now and it's so crowded. They have sterilized it here. I can't imagine who would come to Hollywood as a tourist anymore.

[Deja Q]

6. Can you do anything about it? You, personally? I can't. Except do what I can about my own life.

I'm going back to school. If the world collapses, can't do shit about it. May as well not sit around anymore and bleat like an old goat. Things might just turn around despite DU's lust for everything negative too. (And to think some on here tell me I need medical help? That's their problem, forgive me for lacking compassion under those conditions. For one thing, they aren't medically qualified to diagnose others... and for "proessives", those particular individuals acted more like freepers because I wasn't agreeing with them 104% on their opinions.)

But I digress.

Do what you can in your life. That's all you can do.

Incidentally, the media hypes up everything for cheap ratings. Don't believe everything you think. Don't believe everything the media hypes things up to be. Self-fulfilling prophecies and all that.

[bvar22]

23. !

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=246x7979

[The Straight Story]

7. Well, if you would like to hear some news to make you feel better:

http://www.usnpl.com

All the newspapers that are online by state then city.

I find a lot of cool small town papers with feel good stories of people helping each other.

Yeah, still see some negative things, but is nice to see people helping each other and top news stories where a widow spends her time making mittens for homeless kids.

Take a tour of a state and check out all their papers (only takes a little time) - really neat stuff out there.

[Vinca]

8. I hear you. It makes you want to trek into the wilderness,

build a cabin and never see another human being again.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

10. "There is no safety in the Cosmos" - Alan Watts

[earth mom]

11. Misery & fear SELLS. * & Co knew that very very well.

:puke:

[GentryDixon]

12. My son's Company downsized 90 yesterday.

More to follow. This was only the distribution center where he works. Scary does not even touch it.

[Morning Dew]

13. What's the bad news about the "sex change man"?

If you mean Thomas Beatie, I don't get it. Unusual, sure. Bad news, not so sure. Seems like a nice guy.

[rvablue]

15. No, that's not the story. Earlier this week, a transgendered woman dragged her elderly husband

around in their pool for hours until he died of a heart attack.

Surveillance video captured it. He tried to get out many times, was struggling for breath, and she wouldn't let him leave.

She exercized him to death and on purpose.

[Morning Dew]

16. OMG, that's awful. I missed that story completely and misread the OP.

I was mentally inserting puctuation in the wrong place, I guess.

[annabanana]

18. Rx: . . "Scrubs" marathon. . . .n/t

[SoCalDem]

20. "News" is always the "unexpected/unwanted/unusual"

"3,457 planes take off and land at their destination, safely"...well..that's not news.. it;s the expected result..

[Silent3]

21. I suppose it's a matter of expectations and perspective

All said, no matter how bad things are now, things have been and can be much, much worse.

Even the poorest of us today often live better in many ways than royalty a did a few hundred years ago. A person without health insurance today can still get better health care in an emergency room than a king with a retinue of court physicians would have received in the recent past.

The world might seem like it's going to hell because of salmonella in peanut butter or melamine in dog food, but we still have a far safer and more plentiful food supply than people could have dreamed of 150 years ago.

For a bunch of primates who crawled out a jungle just a few hundred thousand years ago, leaving behind the far more brutal competition of the completely natural world, I'd say we're doing pretty damned well for ourselves, maybe better than should be expected.

Even the mess we humans are making of the environment is nothing compared to what nature herself occasionally lets go with, like asteroids and mantle plumes and globally-enveloping sheathes of crushingly thick ice.

I'm not recommending blissful contentment with the status quo -- that doesn't help us progress at all. But before you write off current life on this planet as some sort of unfathomable, unremitting nightmare, think a little about just how far we've come and how, in many ways, we're living in a comparative Golden Age, both over the history of mankind and the history of the planet.

[rug]

24. You left out Hannah Montana going to the White House.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x8204827

[Thickasabrick]

26. I think you need a break. Swear off all news crap for at least a couple

of months. Turn all your focus towards something that can help; like a garden. Even if you don't have a back yard, start doing research on stuff you can grow inside that's edible. Or...something else. Just try to think of something that you can do with the time you are saving by turning off all this "noise".

Just my thoughts but it really sounds like you need a break.

[steelmania75]

27. Maybe we should fullfill John Lennon's idea and "Give Peace a Chance"

[OneBlueSky]

28. desperate times require desperate measures . . .

and since times are indeed desperate, the only question remaining is which direction the change will take . . .

to the hard right, and a surveillance society characterized by violence, martial law, prison camps, and all the rest? . . .

or to the hard left, and a cooperative society where everyone pitches in and shares, where the unconscionable disparities in wealth are trimmed way back, and where every American is guaranteed a job, a place to live, food, education, and healthcare . . .

either approach will have to be radical -- either radical right, or radical left . . . "more of the same" won't do, nor will tinkering around at the edges . . .

real change is desperately needed, and real change we will most assuredly get -- one way or the other . . . far better to anticipate what's coming and manage the change than to allow it to overtake us and force change that we do not want . . .