It's cool by the Pool - right? [COLUMN]

Iraqi citizens are cheering, faceslit by fireworks erupting in the sky. US troops are pulling out. So where is George Bush now, where is the aircraft carrier, why no MISSION ACCOMPLISHED? And as they pulled out, a handful of US troops were killed. Imagine that. Doing your time, and dying on the way out, another war lost (well, did anyone win?).

The veneer of normalcy is starting to peel off the wood grain of everyday life. Slowly, but surely, and now, less slowly.

As usual, this year, it's Wimbledon. Except that it's Wimbledon with ball boys and girls suffering from swine flu. And there was the Confederations Cup in South Africa. South Africa claims to be ready for 2010, yet it's doctors are striking, minibus taxi operators (who ferry people to stadiums) threatened the same. Was there a problem with crime? If you don't count the money stolen from the Egyptians, out of there hotel rooms, nah, there wasn't any crime. 2010 here we come.

Psst. Let's just imagine that swine flu doesn't exist, and that if it does, tens of millions of infections won't matter in June 2010. [Er...they will matter.]

You know there is trouble when mainstream media open up their articles like so:

Armageddon. Apocalypse. Disaster: These are the words being used to describe California's staggering $24 billion budget deficit. With a midnight deadline to balance the budget, state lawmakers are facing a daunting task: Find a way to bridge the gap or start issuing $3 billion in IOUs this week to cover the bills.

Almost every state is suffering from the effects of the recession, but not every state accounts for 12 percent of the national gross domestic product. According to AP, if California goes down, so goes the nation: California's annual $1.7 trillion economy is the world's eighth-largest economy and provides a significant chunk of tax revenue for the government; California alone funds many social programs for the entire nation.

Like the Big Three automakers, California may be "too big to fail." If the state implodes, the ripple effect could slow the entire nation's recovery from the recession. Burt P. Flickinger, a retail consultant, tells AP:

"California is the key catalyst for U.S. retail sales, and if California falls further you will see the U.S. economy suffer significantly."

It is of course perfectly appropriate that the governor of California is a movie star, and a muscle man. He has famously portrayed a robot sent to hasten the end of the world, in Terminator and the sequel, Judgement Day. Let's see Mr. Arnold Schwarzenegger slay some real dragons for a change. The recession, hyperinflation. Drought.

If the political wrangling over the budget isn't resolved by midnight tonight, Californians will be feeling the pain on every level, big and small. Just a few of the proposed spending cuts:

— State employees will be forced to take another day of unpaid leave a month, in addition to the two days leave they were forced to take starting in December. (NYT)

— Funding for the Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement will be slashed by $20 million. The "little-known unit" has played a key role in several of the state's high-profile cases: The bureau's agents helped arrest Scott Petersen for the murder of his wife and unborn child, and their investigation led to charges in Anna Nicole Smith's overdose death. (AP)

If the above is gibberish to you, here's the takeout. When a state or country starts to run out of money, systems slow and then break down. One such system is law enforcement, but there are many others besides.

Right now, we really can't afford an international crisis. Literally. There's no money to fight a pandemic. And right now H1N1 has officially, in 2 months, surpassed the H5N 1death toll over the past 4 years. H5N1 was a real killer. 262 died out of
433 confirmed infections. That's 60% kill rate. That means 2/3 people infected, died. H5N1 never disappeared. We now have a clever exotic strain that is a hybrid of swine, avian and human flu. Woe betide us when it recombines with virulent H5N1. There is absolutely no reason to believe that it won't.

And while the bleak scenario of pandemic flu unfolds, and the dark tides of global recession and depression swim further and further ashore, there is more to worry about. The climate for one, and energy for another. These last two may seem the least important, until you ask yourself this question: Is it important to eat? And if so, is it important to cook the food you eat. Climate change and an energy crunch will conspire, like evil twins, to create a scenario even less solvable, less easy for clever individuals to extricate themselves from. Have you noticed the salvos, the flack, filling the sky. Harmless seeming pockets of black smoke. But then the pilots of that fateful Air France plane probably thought the columns of cloud hulking off the coast of South America, somewhere in the darkness above the Atlantic, were no match for 'superior technology'. Things soon feel apart after that. As they are for us. But don't panic.