Ebola

I don't get it.  I don't get the panic, and I don't get the politicization.

Personally, I don't go around touching other people's bodily fluids, so I feel pretty safe.  I mean, if you see a pool of blood or vomit or diarrhea, are you going to stick your finger in?  Granted, the health care workers working with the infected are under greater threat, but as far as I know, none of the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) workers in West Africa have been infected so far, and they've been the most aggressive health providers in the affected regions so far.

I've been giving twenty bucks a month to MSF for years, now.  I feel very virtuous, of course, but I'm still pissed off that the USofA is not directing money to MSF, which knows what the hell it's doing.

Panic Attacks!

Ebola
Well, Dallas kind of screwed up, but I'm still not too terrified of an epidemic on this side of the Atlantic.  Now that the idiots have figured out that doctors and nurses really should talk to each other, and the CDC (not always perfect, but still pretty good) is involved, the USofA will get it worked out.  Getting it worked out in West Africa will be more difficult.

Beheadings
The latest terminology is "the group calling itself the Islamic State, also called ISIS or ISIL."  I guess we don't want to offend the Saudis, whose state supported the Salafist, Wahabi ideology which was mainly responsible for the growth and financing of IS.  Now that we're producing more oil than the Saudis, though, maybe we could step on them a little harder.

Secret Service
I gather that a lot of black Americans think the SS (yes, the same acronym) is less committed to protecting their allegedly black president than they might have been to John McCain.  Personally, I think that assholes will be assholes, and that race is not a factor.  They're just incompetents.

Hong Kong
I am so afraid that those "Occupy" kids who are too young to remember Tiananmen will find themselves lying among the dead.  State Capitalism, I am inclined to believe, has to be worse than State Socialism — but, then again, maybe it's all just plutocracy.  It's always plutocracy.  Isn't It?