Delicious for Channukah

Those marketing people, like TV news reporters, really are from another planet. Perhaps Uranus or Pluto. Remember when ham and pork was cheap?

Retailing help tends to be young. When people get older, they acquire kids, and don't want to work nights and weekends. And as you get older, you learn more about people unlike yourself. Unless, of course, you're Mitt Romney, who thinks people worry that he's a Mormon. The fact that he's overly-slick by half, changes his platform hourly, and is completely out of touch with the electorate seems to have escaped him.

Growing up in rural Ohio, I didn't know anyone Jewish until I was a teenager, and a relatively old teenager at that. I knew that pork wasn't kosher, but I was in my late 20s when I found that cheeseburgers were forbidden; someone pointed out a pizza shop menu that listed "kosher salami" as a topping, and laughed at it, then had to explain it to me.

What if the sign had been on a display of round steak? Until Hebrew National started running their latest series of ads, about six months ago, I was unaware that meat from the hind quarter was prohibited. And even more recently, I found that lobster is prohibited. Am I the only ignorant person in North America?

The history of lobster is kinda funny. Apparently, it used to be food that only the poor ate. I recently read that a legislator introduced a prison reform bill in the 19th century prohibiting cruelty to prisoners in general, and in specific, prohibiting the state pen from serving lobster to their prisoners more than three times a week.

I'm not fond of lobster. Shrimp are the only insect I really enjoy much.

Prices have gone crazy. The consumer price index figures when prices go up, people switch from expensive cuts to cheaper cuts of meat, among other things, so it doesn't really show inflation, but it occurs to me that when people switch to cheaper cuts, there is less demand for the more expensive cuts, so inflation hurts poor folks more and hurts rich folks less. It's not like you can start raising pigs that have more pork chops and fewer hams, when prices go up, and start raising pigs that have fewer pork chops and more hams, when the country is prosperous.

Prices have actually gone up about 10% over the last year, and wages have gone up 3.2%. Wall Street was expecting a half-point dip in the interest rate yesterday, in order to prevent a serious recession, but they only lowered rates a quarter-percent.

If John Edwards went back to his original campaign theme - Two Americas - he might just win the nomination, and the election. None of the candidates seem to notice that many people are hurting. "It's the economy, stupid." When stores have extra-large post-Christmas layoffs, maybe they'll notice. But probably not.

I wish I were insane

Sanity is just so boring