Business World Living on Cloud Cuckoo

There are some serious Amerikan Dreamzters working at the New York Sun, for example this crackpot Alicia Colon, who reminds me my birthday is African Malaria Day. Frankly? I would have guessed that. I remember Jessica's exhortation on Soap, "Oh, Chester, they've named a horrible disease after me." Check out the Colon link, if only for her photo, which seems to have stripped the attractiveness from Vin Diesel's racial ambiguity. She's pro-DDT and glosses over Bill Gates' (okeh, Bill and Melinda Gates') massive donations to the cause. You've got to love columnists who use the formulation "why on earth" without providing the obvious answers. The last paragraph is classic:

Frankly, I'd rather let the planet flame out than stand by and have millions of fellow human beings die unnecessarily from bug bites.

Now, since I know you so well I'll speak for you: "Alicia -- can I call you Alicia? -- you moron, if the planet 'flames out' billions of people will die. Is your point that death's okeh if it's not from insect bites? You're an idiot." Well, I'm proud of you reader, for your harsh but fair sentiment.

But, I'm still glad to be a Sun subscriber. Because once you get away from the editorial page, and to some extent the headline writers on the front page, it's a pretty solidly written newspaper. On April 17, Dan Dorfman's column discussed this guy, Burt Manning, who makes the rather obvious point that if the world's going down the shitter, the economy won't do well. Their threatdown has ten agenda, twice Stephen Colbert's tendency.

• Terrorism
• Pension Plans
• Unsecured and mortgage debt
• The, uh, possibility that 11 million illegal immigrants won't be able to pay their back taxes. You'll have to ask Burt. Not my issue.
• Foreign treasury bond buyers wising up
• Interest rates popping
• Merger mania's attendant debt
• The occupation of Iraq, estimated at $118 Billion and untold lives this year
• Further Bush military adventurism
• Massive impending mortgage foreclosures.

Sucky, right? But, these are the issues any honest perceiver of the economy stares in the face every day. All right, I'd never thought about immigrant back taxes. I can't even take it seriously as an issue. But, the other nine loom pretty large, and don't even consider climate changes' crop decimation and killer storms, nor the end of oil.

We really are on the cusp of a stark realization that our way of life is ending. It's nice to see the Sun give it some lip service.

On the other hand, I'm thinking of cancelling "The Observer." Do I really need a ten-dollar-bill-colored opinion rag? I think not.