NOT YOUR STEREOTYPICAL SUNDAY DRIVERS

The headline this morning careens across the Yahoo! homepage, Fleet of Ferraris ruined in Japan sportscar pileup

What an example of the One Percenters' obsession with instant gratification and possessions and the sensationalism of consumerism news.  Shocker!  That the loss Italian sportscars worth a lot of dosh is the tragedy in this story.  Only in the seventh, next to the last, paragraph do we learn that no one died and people were "treated for bruises and cuts."

UPDATED - The Japanese Earthquake & Tsunami

UPDATE @ 10:59 a.m.:

Maggie Gunderson on Green Mountain Daily: The Fukushima nuclear plant lost containment integrity and is leaking radiation.

ORIGINAL POST:

Richard Estes/American Leftist yesterday had commentary and news links on the quake and aftermath, but also added a rather telling (ironic) comment at the bottom of his post,

On a more mundane note, the New York Times can't resist exploiting the situation as an opportunity to cast the US military presence in Japan, disliked by many people there, in a favorable light. The US military is, after all, first and foremost, a humanitarian institution.

A RESPONSE TO TODAY'S DEVASTATING EARTHQUAKE IN JAPAN

Tonight we heard Marketplace's litany, "Let's do the numbers": "The earthquake didn't rattle the investors." That's a relief for NPR/VPR's listeners.

JAPAN ELECTS A ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIME MINISTER

Religion doesn't have to barge into secular politics, whatever the US electorate may think. Last week Japan installed its first ever Roman Catholic prime minister and hardly anyone there seems to have noticed.