Thursday, October 27, 2011

27 October 2011 Why Do They Hate Us?



          “The original French is 'Qu'ils mangent de la brioche', i.e. 'Let them eat brioche' 
          Brioche, Challah, Na’an, Sourdough, Batard, Baguete, Blini, Pita, or any one of a thousand different names for that most basic of foods; if priced too dearly is worth more than those who have it can understand.
          People are less likely to march in the streets if their bellies are full.  Hungry people have nothing in common with those who know that they won’t be missing meals.  People who can’t afford to buy their next meal have a lot in common with each other even if they speak different languages.  The mother tongue (mame- loschn) of poverty, worldwide, is hunger. 
          We are beginning to see more reports of parents refusing to eat in order to feed their children.  For many U.S. schoolchildren, meals at school are all that keep them from malnutrition.  Not content with St. Ronnie’s conversion of ketchup into a vegetable, the teavangelists are now eager to cut school nutrition programs and WIC supplemental food programs along with cutting teacher positions. 
          The most certain way to improve the learning curve of U.S. students is to pack them into overly full classrooms, reduce the number of teachers, and keep both students and teachers hungry. 
          There is such a gap between teavangelists and the reality of the rest of the world that it is impossible to bridge it.  Of course, if teavangelists can pack enough hungry marchers onto a crumbling bridge, they can hope for the elimination of an infrastructure and a population/education problem in one demonstration of structural strength and gravity – neither of which teavangelists believe in.  If a bridge falls into the water without benefit of formal begging for divine intercession, is it magic or science?
          

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