In upmarket restaurants one wouldn’t know the world is suffering from a food crisis. As I observed young executives and professionals slurping oysters and chasing them with martinis at a downtown San Francisco watering house last month without glancing at the prices of such items, less affluent mortals around the world had to overreach their budgets to buy bread, tortillas and oil to cook their food. But those who routinely pay $25.95 for seared ahi tuna hardly blink when the menu lists the same dish for $28.95 -- certainly not after three martinis.

Masters of the Universe celebrate their success, (large salaries and bonuses) by using OPM – other people’s money. Nostalgia for Ronald Reagan among older members of this set runs rampant – days of no taxes when sleeping with the President meant attending a cabinet meeting and environmental problems came from trees. (“Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do,” Reagan said in 1981 and "A tree is a tree. How many more do you have to look at?" the California Governor snorted in 1966, opposing expansion of Redwood National Park.)

“This is Ground-Zero, D-Day for worker rights in Ohio,” said Firefighter John Anthony. “It really is one for all & all for one, now! We all need to stand together for the rights to bargain, or we’ll all loss our rights!”

Anthony stated that his family had been part of this struggle their entire lives. His family had been fired from the railroad for standing up for worker rights during the Rhodes administration in the ‘70’s.

“I’d like to think we’re fighting for him, also,” he said!

He was part of the massive crowds of workers that crammed into the Ohio Statehouse this past week, protesting the anti-labor SB-5, which would strip Ohio’s public workers of the hard-won bargaining rights. The crowds of angry workers are growing, as a series of mobilizations gripped Ohio’s Capital. Crowds of 800, then 2,000, and over 4,000 this past Thursday have packed the Capital building in Columbus. Another, much larger mobilization is expected on Tuesday, the 22nd.

OK, all you leprechauns.

Here's a Riverdance quiz for you:

What's to love about two hours of joyous dancing, singing and hypnotically upbeat music of the highest quality?

Answer: Everything!!

The absolutely lovely production of Riverdance at the Palace tonight (Saturday) and tomorrow afternoon is worth every bit of the financial and geographical inconvenience it might cost you.

I admit to an intense passion for all things Irish. I've been there twice and recommend How the Irish Saved Civilization to all who'll will listen.

But there's a reason: the Emerald Isle has intense magic, especially when it comes to music and dance.

Riverdance has been around for a while. I did see the famous Michael Flately perform Lord of the Dance at the Ohio a few years ago. That was an awesome show, but this one is actually more enjoyable.

There is no more gorgeous theater on Earth than the Ohio. But the Palace offers a bit more intimacy.

A standard zigzag of political rhetoric went for a jaunt along Pennsylvania Avenue on Tuesday (Feb. 15) with a speech by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at George Washington University. “Iran is awful because it is a government that routinely violates the rights of its people,” she declared. During the last few weeks, much has changed in the politics of the Middle East -- but not much has changed in the politics of Washington, where policymakers turn phrases on a dime.

The currency is doublespeak, antithetical to a single standard of human rights.

And so, the secretary of state condemns awful Iran, invoking “our sense of human dignity, the rights that flow from it and the principles that ground it.” But don’t hold your breath for any such condemnation of, say, Saudi Arabia -- surely an “awful” government that “routinely violates the rights of its people.”

It wasn’t long ago that Hosni Mubarak’s regime -- with all its repression and torture -- enjoyed high esteem and lavish praise in Washington. For Egyptians, the repression and torture went on; for the bipartisan savants running U.S. foreign policy, the suppression was good geopolitics.

In this age of supposedly fighting against rulers and on behalf of oppressed peoples, the Vietnam War offers an interesting case in which the U.S. policy was to avoid overthrowing the enemy government but to work hard to kill its people. To overthrow the government in Hanoi, it was feared, would draw China or Russia into the war, something the United States hoped to avoid. But destroying the nation ruled by Hanoi was expected to cause it to submit to U.S. rule.

The Afghanistan War, already the longest war in U.S. history, is another interesting case in that the demonic figure used to justify it, terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, was not the ruler of the country. He was someone who had spent time in the country, and in fact had been supported there by the United States in a war against the Soviet Union. He had allegedly planned the crimes of September 11, 2001, in part in Afghanistan. Other planning, we knew, had gone on in Europe and the United States. But it was Afghanistan that apparently needed to be punished for its role as host to this criminal.