Nightly News Pundit Takes on Development Expert

Jeffrey Sachs: This idea that the poorest of the poor are our enemies, this is the biggest lie of all time, and you are repeating it.

John Stossel: That they're our enemy??

Sachs: Well yeah, that all they want to do is shake you down.

Stossel: The poor people don't want to shake me down, the rich leaders of poor countries want to shake me down.

Sachs: Our government can find practical ways to ensure that the money that we're actually giving for real things there reach the real people.

Stossel: We're going to do that in Africa?? We can barely do it in America!

Sachs: Audit what's happening and those things have been shown repeatedly to work.

Watch the clip.

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=1957412

Omens

The warning signs for the impending Cape Epic mountain bike race are swelling together into a dark cloud of discontent on the horizon of the new year.

For instance, there was the route profile that was recently announced, promising a more difficult beginning than any previous year:

Day 1: Distance: 101km. Ascent: 2425m.
Day 2: Distance: 132km. Ascent: 2245m.
Day 3: Distance: 128km. Ascent: 2425m.

Day 1: Gosh, look at all the flat parts!

The good news is if you can still move by Day 4, you'll probably finish the race.

I've also noticed that the Cape Epic web site currently is headlining the question, Do you want to transfer your 2007 Cape Epic team entry into the 2008 race? We are currently offering a free transfer...

Or to paraphrase, You sorry bastard, what were you thinking signing up for this? Take a look at yourself, there is NO WAY you are going to be prepared for this race in three months time. We will be charitable and pretend that if you trained until 2008 you might stand a chance. But don't even THINK about trying to get a refund...

It's great to see this kind of inspirational message on the web site that is ostensibly promoting this race. Maybe this is South African humor.

This question on the registration form is the icing on the cake:

Just a few things we'll probably need to know

What have I gotten myself into?