Being a sanctimonious cretin never harmed anyone's musical or political career, as the careers of the Grateful Dead, Bono and Kofi Annan all attest, but it's never done a damn thing to feed the world. The Live 8 lose-a-thon promises to be yet another tune-free festival full of far-out sanctimony and flatulent pieties and — like its 'Live Aid' little brother — a dead loss as far as its stated aim of helping starving Africans. (Read more...)
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Scott: "But doesn't artificially supporting people in an inhospitable. . . land, encourage them to stay there and wait for the next round of aid."
And that is precisely why our government should stop bailing out those people in Florida who choose to live where floods are inevitable. Some natural disasters that overtake people cannot be avoided; that one can be.
Of course. And the same goes for people who choose to live in flammable forests, or on steep hillsides near active geological faults. But their subsidies are politically sacred, because many of them are Persons of Influence.
Scott and Barbara, your comments remind me of something the late comedian Sam Kinison said in one of his stand-up routines about the famine in Ethiopia. Stripped of profanity, he said, "You're living in a desert! No wonder you're starving!"
