Bob Ford's crack attack

I LIKE the Mayor of Toronto, as do 44% of Torontonians; in fact, his approval rating is up five points since he was exposed as a crackhead. Bob Ford's got spunk. I know that the old-line, traditional Toronto Blue Bloods find his conduct sho...cking - after all, this is a city where one has to buy beer at the provincial government outlet, or at least that was the case last time I visited. Anyway, the (WASP) Toronto country-club elite's not used to (American) politicians a la Marion Berry. OK, OK, I know Mayor Ford is a herculean hypocrite. And a criminal, technically speaking. But he's an elected official, so what else is new? I guess Toronto folk better get accustomed to all things American - they're "too far from God and too close to the United States" to emerge from the 21st Century unscathed. I admire his drunken stupors, too. Things will return to ostensible Dullsville when he's forced to resign. It's just a matter of time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsjlNNsChZ4

Greed is good, need is shameful

Republicans make it pretty evident that they opposes providing a pittance in nutritional assistance to the truly needy. They emphasizes the need for self-reliance and responsibility. I wonder, would they favor getting rid of multi-billion dollar, taxpayer-funded assistance to agribusiness? How about a reduction, if not the outright elimination of hundreds of billions of dollars in annual tax breaks to the big oil companies? Or the elimination of grotesquely unfair tax loopholes enjoyed by various other billionaires? Or doing away with the very lucrative incentives given large corporations to move American jobs overseas Republicans and their Blue Dog pals only consider poor people as sponges, never mind that the poor receive a tiny amount in subsidies, compared to the enormous gifts bestowed upon American plutocrats through US taxation policy. That's the standard Republican attitude: use government as an instrument to give massively to those who already have much, and take away as much as possible from those who are struggling to survive. http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/news/2013/03/12/56240/meet-the-new-oil-tax-breaks-same-as-the-old-oil-tax-breaks/

Questions of Chinese

With only 400 discrete syllables, Mandarin manages, through the adroit use of syntax and its four tones, to express all those concepts every modern language needs to articulate. At least I'm pretty sure it does... http://books.google.com/books?id=ChyVgZMAiUoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=questions+of+chinese+language&hl=en&sa=X&ei=WV95Uq2wCaWGyAGVooDoCw&ved=0CGEQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=questions%20of%20chinese%20language&f=false

All Hail Human Selection

Natural Selection has been irrevocably replaced with "Human Selection." This arrogant, suicidal new alignment of Homo Sapiens' priorities has led to Global Warming, widespread toxic waste Superfund sites, and enough radioisotopes being emitted from Fukushima Dai'ichi to kill all the life in the Pacific Ocean, if not on the globe. In the Long Run, it hardly matters much what we humanoids do anymore - it's too late to change the shape of things to come. You can see I'm overly optimistic today. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/02/science/earth/science-panel-warns-of-risks-to-food-supply-from-climate-change.html?partner=rss&%3Bemc=rss

Ever seen a kid with rickets?

My dad, who did a lot of civil rights work and humanitarian activities in Mississippi during the late '60s and early '70s, remembers a time when little kids in the Delta region displayed the distended bellies and listless attitude symptomatic of rickets, a syndrome caused by malnutrition. Is this what we're headed towards again in this land of plenty? Once thing that's certain: Starvation in America is a wholly preventable disease! http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-republicans-war-on-the-poor-20131024