I'm feeling pretty hopeless too. I went on a long exercise walk with some friends tonight, guys who are big on owing guns amongst other things that make them not "pansy liberals", hippies, etc., and they were venting frustrations about the paths the US is on and not on, and most of it was pretty disheartening, some of it brutal: the no-bid contract stuff you've all surely heard about (when this war supposedly has "nothing!" to do with oil), the sinkhole of debt the US is plummeting into, the steady stream of murder and rapes happening everyday in Darfur (with the perpetrators bragging about it to the world and little being done to stop it), and much more that is way f**ked up right now and seemingly getting worse in ways that Obama or anyone else likely cannot/will not do anything to make better. :(
I guess I'm just glad now that I never had kids. :(