Sorry for the short diary, but just want to keep this at the top of people's minds...the scale of this disaster in Sichuan and elsewhere in China is only now beginning to unfold.  The latest headline on Sina.com (Chinese language site) is that across 8 provinces/municipalities there are over 9200 confirmed dead and an estimated 500,000 structures collapsed.  

Hopefully this diary will become moot in a 24-48 hours as either Hillary or the superdelegates come to their collective senses and do the right thing.  But hey, if she wants to keep going, then she wants to keep going, and the least Barack can do is give her the best run for her money possible in WV.  So what's going on in WV with the Obama campaign, you ask?   Stop whining and get in the car...

I travel a reasonable amount in China for business, and I speak Mandarin.  Some of my most enjoyable recent conversations have been with local taxi drivers ferrying me to/from airports in Beijing or Shanghai.  But last week I had a conversation that reminded me just how incredibly vast is the chasm between the haves and the have nots in the second largest economy in the world.

Ok, in the interest of full disclosure let me say that I've seen this subject covered here in part but not exactly with the point that I want to make.  Which is simply this:  Hillary's election strategy hasn't ever cared about 50 states, heck she hasn't even cared about the majority of the states.  She also frankly doesn't care about proportional awarding of delegates during the primary process within most states.  

In fact, it seems that Hillary has never cared about anything other than winning the majority of the popular vote in the big ticket electoral vote states so as to take all in November.  That's it.  That's why she was so unprepared for the battle she's fighting now, but given her continued insistence on 'significant' states vs. 'boutique' states, it may still be the argument she inevitably uses to swing superdelegates in her direction should this primary season go all the way to the convention.

On CNN...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Al Qaeda terrorists may be plotting more urgently to attack the United States to maintain their credibility and ability to recruit followers, the U.S. military commander in charge of domestic defense said Thursday.

Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, chief of the U.S. Northern Command, also told reporters he has not seen any direct threats tied to the U.S. presidential elections. But he said it would be rash to think that such threats are not there.

Now just to be clear, General Renuart "has not seen any direct threats tied" to the elections, but he wants to make damn sure that the US electorate is beginning to absorb the idea that there could be threats...

Follow me over the side!

I'm a recent expatriate to Hong Kong from the US, and given that the city is one of the most expensive in the world to live in, we do a lot of our grocery shopping at the "wet markets", the traditional street vegetable, fruit and meat markets that dot Hong Kong and make it such a colorful place to live.

Here's a little visual taste of what one of our local fruit stands has to offer:

Since our arrival a year ago we've been dismayed to notice steady and significant increases in the prices of meat, particularly pork, chicken and duck.  Hong Kong has not avoided the the broad inflationary trends sweeping across China.  But this week all of the vegetables, even ubiquitous Chinese greens like bok choi and choi sum, have essentially doubled in price.

Follow me over the jump to the second course...