Monday Blues

We all know that prices for everything, including food, have gone up a lot in the past few months. We're all checking our monthly budgets more closely these days. But in several countries around the world, there are already food riots breaking out as prices send bread and grain out of the reach of the most at-risk families in the world. Food donations from the US and other countries are also being undermined by shortages and a weak US dollar.
Zain Verjee explains more on Issue #1: 

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There have been a lot of airline scares in the past couple of months, and thanks to Miles O'Brien, here's one you had no idea was a possibility. (The good news: a fully-loaded aircraft can glide for twelve minutes after losing all four engines! Yup, I feel better already!)

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There was quite an uproar last week over some comments that Jack Cafferty made regarding China recently. I have honestly been amazed by the virulent protests in reaction, because I am completely at a loss as to what he said that was wrong, let alone offensive. Here's the original quote, in response to Wolf Blitzer's comment that we now have a lot at stake because of our current economic relationship with China:

I don't know if China's any different, but our relationship with China is certainly different. We're in hock to the Chinese up to our eyeballs because of the war in Iraq for one thing. They're holding hundreds of billions of dollars worth of our paper. We also are running hundreds of billions of dollars of trade deficits with them as we continue to import their junk with the lead paint on them and poisoned pet food, and export jobs to places where you can pay workers a dollar a month to turn out the stuff that we're buying from Walmart. So I think our relationship with China has certainly changed. I think they're basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last 50 years.

There's nothing there that hasn't been said over and over on news programs for the past year, as all the toy and pet food recalls went on and on. (As for those who think "goons" is a racial/ethnic slur, you have the wrong word.)

At any rate, Jack issued a clarification that it was the government of China he was referring to, not the ordinary citizens, a sentiment most Americans appreciate (thanks to our own current administration). 

Just imagine the furor if Jack had brought up Tibet...!

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Last Friday, The New York Times reported that CNN's Richard Quest was arrested in New York City on a misdemeanor charge of possession of methamphetamine. We at ATC wish him the best, including (hopefully) a successful rehab and continued tenure with CNN.

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