Debate, round two
SYRIA is a nightmare, much of it a charnel house. Civilians are being bombed, gassed and starved. Four of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council are militarily involved, not all of them on the same side. Millions of refugees are besieging Europe. Much of the rest of the Middle East is a tinderbox … North Korea is developing nuclear weapons and missile capability … the South China Sea is becoming a region of contention … global warming threatens the future of the entire planet …
Yet in St Louis, Missouri, the two US presidential candidates were debating derogatory locker-room conversations about women and the pecadilloes of an incumbent president 20-odd years ago.
Hoo Boy!
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump did in time get on to more substantive issues but to describe the debate as in any way elevated would be an exaggeration as bad as anything Trump said.
He wound up by promising that if he became president he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary and send her to jail.
Hillary complained she was unable to properly set out her own position and programme because she had to continually rebut Trump's avalanche of falsehoods.
One of these two will become de facto leader of the Western democratic world and will have to address the questions listed above. In an opinion poll immediately after, CNN gave the debate to Hillary – 57% to 34%. Yougov made it a narrower margin 47% to 42%.
But all of this is too close to call. There's nothing to say the people who support Trump – who possibly share his rumbustious disregard for facts and argument – would be swayed in any way, no matter what happened in the debate.
Overall, the polls so far give it about 45% to Hillary, 42% to Trump. It's too close to call.
Hoo boy!
Slogan
AMERICAN baseball cap slogan (based on a Trump slogan): "Make America Great Britain Again!"
Out cold
MORE political drama, this time in Ukip (Britain's United Kingdom Independence Party – the only one with hysteria built into its very name).
Leader Nigel Farage steps down. Diane James is elected leader. Eighteen days later she steps down. Stephen Woolfe, a member of the European parliament, puts himself forward for the leadership.
Then, at the parliament in Strasbourg, he and fellow MEP Mike Hookem (Hey, Hookem – geddit!) get into a brawl and Woolfe is laid out cold. Photos on the internet show him sprawled face-down, out for the count. He is admitted to hospital.
Two inquiries are ordered – one by Ukip, the other by the European Parliament.
Hookem goes on TV, denying that a punch was so much as thrown. Later he posts a photograph of his hands – unskinned, no bleeding knuckles – proving he's punched nobody.
Complete mystery. Maybe Hookem hit him with a cosh.
Real question
AM I missing something in this row over the R671 000 funeral for a local businessman that was paid for by the metrol council?
Suggestions are made that the thing was not properly procured; that the invoice produced is a bit dodgy; that somebody might have creamed off a bit.
But surely the real question is this: Why should a single cent of ratepayers' money be spent on anyone's funeral?
Cites upbeat
WE WERE all of us cheered, I'm sure, by the upbeat messages that emerged from the international Cites conference that ended in Johannesburg last week.
Among the endangered species which are to receive energised special attention are totuaba and vaquita.
Er, what are totuaba? What are vaquita?
Totuaba, it seems, are a fish species to be found in the Gulf of California. They've been over-fished to a point where they're in danger of extinction.
Vaquita are a species of porpoise, also found in the Gulf of California. They have been illegally hunted, almost to the point of extinction.
But Cites is stepping in big-time. Things are looking up - so long as it doesn't turn out that the few remaining vaquita are eating the few remaining totuaba.
Tailpiece
DOG thought: "I'm done with chasing people who aren't prepared do the same for me. From now on the ice cream man can go jump in the lake!"
Last word
Today you can go to a gas station and find the cash register open and the toilets locked. They must think toilet paper is worth more than money.
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