A Little Different For A Saturday

Biden predicted that Obama would be "tested" by events in his first year (or maybe his first 6 months) in office. Apparently, Joe was a little off (that's a surprise) on the timeframe.

I looked at the news on Thursday and saw more than a few things:

That rancher Bundy in Nevada says he's no racist after suggesting blacks might have been better off under slavery. No racist I ever met thought he was one. But the issue he's fighting has little to nothing to do with his personal bigotry. It has to do with the federal government and its control of natural resources. And how it enforces that control. Maybe they should, maybe they shouldn't. We should all contemplate it and we should be careful not to get side-tracked by red herrings.

In the Ukraine problem, it seems Russia has blamed us (the US) for the unrest. Maybe they're right. After all, we took the position that taking over a large portion of Ukraine (the Crimea region) and threatening the rest was a "bad thing."

In the Sudan, we see the developing civil war igniting, complete with massacres, and the UN pretty pretty much useless.

The FDA is working on regulating E-cigs (battery powered nicotine delivery systems). That's probably a good thing but maybe they should follow state and local policies and not try to be the Big Dog.

Finally, there was something about the tsetse fly... which kills thousands of people and millions of cattle (and, I assume, other animals) every year. Much of this has been due to the banning of DDT way back when. We banned it due to Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" and much of the movement that sprung up behind it.  Another case of unexpected consequences.

A lot of tests, a lot.

Sometimes we move too fast, sometimes we move too slow.