$25,000 bicycles in Indonesia

Although their headline writers are the worst in any newsroom, I find Bloomberg News to be required reading for anyone interested in business. For example, here is their lede on the coming elections in Indonesia:

Tedi Kumaedi earns about $87 a month selling instant coffee from his rusty bicycle near Jakarta’s stock exchange. At nearby TechnoBike, they’ve sold out of $25,000 Lamborghini-branded bicycles. Narrowing the gulf between workers like Kumaedi, who toils for 14 hours a day outside a luxury hotel operated by Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co., and TechnoBike’s increasingly affluent customers will be among the biggest challenges facing the winner of Indonesia’s presidential election in July.

I didn't know Lamborghini made bicycles, but maybe I will have to revise my opinion that there are not -- and never will be -- any Muslim countries that are democracies. I hope so.

Some other stuff in the news:

I am totally unsurprised that the racist and faux-Jesusian Phil Robertson endorsed a totally phony Jesusian congressperson who was caught on his own office's surveillance tape canoodling with the wife of one of his (supposedly) best friends.

At least McAllister hasn't claimed that God has forgiven him, the way Senator David Vitter did. I'd give a purty to be near the Throne of Judgment when God goes over Vitter's record and gets to the part about "how I forgave you." I imagine God looking over the top of his gold-rimmed spectacles:

"And how did you know that, David?"

I would also give another purty to be within earshot of St. Peter when he greets the Greens of Hobby Lobby for their preliminary screening at Heaven's Gate.

"What did y'all do on Earth?" asks Peter, riffling through a file folder of reports.

"We were in retail," say the Greens.

Peter looks concerned. "And did you sell shot glasses?"

"No, never," reply the Greens, slightly aggrieved."We were Bible-believing Christians."

St. Peter is visibly relieved. "Thank Goodness. You'll get your chance to do that personally shortly. And may I say it is a pleasure to meet such transparently moral people. We see so many of the other kind."

You know how Wayne LaPierre is always saying the only way to stop a bad man with a gun is a good man with a gun? Crap, like everything that comes out of Wayne LaPierre.

After shooting three people he thought were Jews, Frazier Miller was not stopped by an armed citizen, even though it was in Missouri where gun-totin' extends even to the men's rooms of the state Capitol. Nor did he die in a thunder of police bullets in a suicide-by-cop finale.

In fact, firearms were not involved in stopping him at all. He stopped after, presumably, he had killed enough Jews. Police found him sitting in his car, holding a shotgun, but not using it.