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?

The Cartagena "Scandal"

I don't understand why soldiers patronizing prostitutes is so scandalous. Haven't soldiers always patronized prostitutes? Back in what many Republicans seem to regard as the "good old days" of the 19th century, prostitutes ("camp followers") followed armies around, presumably with the tacit or not so tacit approval of those armies' officers. I think the whole affair is even less scandalous because prostitution is both legal and acceptable in Cartagena. What's the big deal?

As for the Secret Service agents, let's face it — really they're nothing but paramilitaries in pinstripes, no matter how nobly they've been portrayed in the movies. Unless their escapades were being financed by the GAO, I don't see a real problem — assuming they got the job of preparing for the President's visit to the Summit of the Americas done before they began exploring the local culture.

As for the likes of Congressional "investigators" like Peter King and Darryl Issa, it's totally clear that their main goal is to make the "scandal" somehow rub off on the president. The real scandal at the Summit was the unsuccessful attempt by the United States to formally exclude Cuba from future meetings. We're ready to talk to the Taliban, but not to the Castros? (insert Bronx cheer)