All the News . . .

Opening the newspaper lately practically requires one to be either stoned, or equipped with a large flagon of wine, preferably red. This morning, for example: Joe Paterno and his partner in crime, the President of Penn State, have been fired.  Well good, I thought. They most closely resemble those Catholic Bishops and Cardinals, and their Nazi Pope, who thought it Ok to ignore the sexual abuse of young, vulnerable kids.

Then there was Italy. Turns out that Mister Sarkozy and Ms. Merkel have been discussing Europe without the Italians. Yeah, Mr. Berlusconi and his buddies in Rome are getting to be, well, hmmm . . . unaffordable. Italy seems to be going the way of Greece . . . and Ireland . . . and Portugal . . . Except that Italy’s too big, so they could well bring down the whole show. So, maybe Europe could be a Northern thing, without the pizza and spaghetti.

Oh, and then there’s that little notice that the Dover Mortuary—that’s the place where our dead serviceman arrive back into the US, after having been killed defending the US of A.—well that mortuary has been dumping remains of our  dead loved ones in a landfill. Yeah . . . a landfill. Oh and they forgot to tell anyone about their little practice. Nice huh? Nothing like the military honoring its fallen heroes.

On the environmental front, China is at it again: In the run-up to the international climate negotiations in Durban later this month, China has responded to efforts to ban the trading of widely discredited HFC-23 offsets by threatening to release huge amounts of the potent industrial chemical into the atmosphere unless other nations pay what amounts to a climate ransom.  In a shocking attempt to blackmail the international community, Xie Fei, revenue management director at the China Clean Development Mechanism Fund, threatened: "If there's no trading of [HFC-23] credits, they'll stop incinerating the gases" and vent them directly into the atmosphere. Speaking at the Carbon Forum Asia in Singapore last week, Xie Fei claimed he spoke for "almost all the big Chinese producers of HFCs who "can't bear the cost" and maintain that "they'll lose competitiveness".  Wow, what great guys. Walmart, aren’t you proud to be one of their biggest sponsors??

And then there’s that one about Rick Perry who had three major points to make about Federal agencies he would immediately eliminate, except he could only remember two of them. Yeah, Texans must be so proud of their guy. And that one makes me wonder whether it’s true that someone has invented a new game. Remember that one called, “Are you smarter than a fifth grader?” Well, the new game will be called, “Are you smarter than a republican presidential candidate?” The game has been designed for third-fifth grade reading levels.

But I digress . . . maybe a big pull on the flagon will make all the day's stories blend together into  some nice foggy short story - - - you know of the fiction variety . . . .
PS
Oh, but I neglected to include one of the biggest ones. You know how Pat Roberts and others of his ilk are always saying that God is displaying his displeasure at some part of America by tossing  hurricanes, or an earthquake at us?? Well, I'm thinking that God must be really pissed at Alaskans, because she has now tossed one of the biggest storms on memory at Alaska . . . just to send them a message about their support for Sarah Barbie . . . Wonder whether Juneau will just sink into the sea like one of their glaciers???