I'm hoping it isn't just me or that -- if it isn't -- it continues, but I'm getting this odd feeling that something might have shifted in the country. That the press woke up from a long sleep and started doing their job. That the people who are outraged now are not only the people who have been outraged for years. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I keep hearing about how little it took to turn a First World American city into a Third World scene. I think that is because we have been fooling ourselves that the underclass we have created in the US is anything but Third World already. We don't provide the basic services that other First World countries provide (health care in particular) and so the safety nets that the Third World lacks and that cause such horrible humanitarian crises don't exist here either. Now the call is for private donations and charity. Not that there is anything wrong with such generosity, just that those things now lacking are what the most powerful and richest government in the world should supply as a matter of course.

On a completely unrelated note: the weather here this weekend is absolutely beautiful.