• Welcome to my running commentary on the Republican Candidates' Debate in Tampa #FLdebate #
• As president, how will you give us CHOICE over our Medicaid/Medicare funding so the disabled aren't trapped in nursing homes? #FLdebate #
• Newt & Romney believe that Obama, commanding drone-headshots around the world to any al-Qaida suspect, is soft on defense??? #FLdebate #
• Ha ha! The audience groans at Romney's statement that illegal immigrants should be unable to work here and deport themselves #FLdebate #
• Romney's "tough on crime" stance on immigration goes over like a lead balloon with Florida audience. #FLdebate #

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• Been sick a couple of months, now have IV in my typing hand for pneumonia antibiotics. Hard to communicate, but still here & love you all. #

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• I wrote this article for Wikipedia about 1890s Cuban intellectual http://t.co/PPUw1ja It made the Main Page Did You Know section #
• In my essay "The History of U.S.-Latin American Relations" I explore inter-hemispheric relationships from 1800: http://t.co/5WT4h46 #

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• Wikipedia and academia don't have to be enemies! With public policy Wikiproject, top colleges assign article creation – http://t.co/1Uzb5qK #

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• Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell on #MeetThePress saying "doing nothing is not an option" on Medicare, debt is our worst threat #MTP #
• Republicans, including Mitch McConnell, constantly are saying "Medicare has to be on the table," they're meaning the execution table? #MTP #
• On #MeetThePress @ChuckSchumer saying "want to preserve the current system" of Medicare. I don't know if I like that, system is so corrupt #
• On #MeetThePress roundtable, GOP strategist Alex Castellanos says Sarah Palin is out of the 2012 race, Michele Bachmann is in #MTP #
• David Brooks doesn't like @SarahPalinUSA says she isn't ready to have the US red phone & is not a team player #MTP #
• Harold Ford is saying it's "hard to run on TARP" (giving banksters welfare blank checks) but TARP "was necessary" I'm not a fan of Ford #MTP #
• LOL I can't believe Alex Castellanos just said "not for the general election, but doom & gloom sells VERY well in Republican primaries" #MTP #
• On #MeetThePress Harold Ford says the recent NY 26th district Democratic victory wasnt just abt Medicare but resentment of high unemployment #

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• Bat girl-ears hear all… @superaleja saved the day again, hearing an air leak from the other room… #

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• YAY! Our 1000versary! RT @superaleja Oh, hey, it's 1000 days of @NickDupree living in New York (first in hospital, then home) today… #

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• Though Chinese people are divided by 7 different major spoken languages, they're united by a single written language #DiscoveryAtlas #
• At the start of every day, 140 million schoolchildren sing the Chinese national anthem and salute the flag #DiscoveryAtlas #
• The Chinese national anthem is about revolution, reminded me of the French anthem, "La Marseillaise" #DiscoveryAtlas #
• Beijing's Forbidden City is made up of 800 palaces, temples and grand halls #DiscoveryAtlas #
• One last Imperial bowmaker (ancient Chinese art of archery) survives, the rest were purged by Mao's Cultural Revolution #DiscoveryAtlas #
• "A nightmare" The bowmaker hid one bow in the chimney that Red guard couldn't find, "it was like everyone had gone insane" #DiscoveryAtlas #
• To my eye, the Mongolians in this film have the facial type (not to mention culture/customs of horse-life & economy) of U.S. plains Indians #
• Disturbing scenes of Chinese 12-year old girl Olympic gymnast working 7 days/week, hands covered in blisters & oozing blood #DiscoveryAtlas #

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• Watching "Discovery Atlas: China Revealed" to learn about China & tweet about it. Look under #DiscoveryAtlas for my comments. #
• Only in China do you have thousands of 5-year olds doing synchronized kicks in a single public square #DiscoveryAtlas #
• Workers on Long Shen's ancient mountain-side rice terraces spend 12-13 hours a day on rice cultivation #DiscoveryAtlas #
• After the Communist Party gave up direct control of farmlands in 1978, peasant income has increased over 1500%! #DiscoveryAtlas #
• $10 billion USD foreign investment is pouring into Shanghai per year, Shanghai's grown to 8x the size of New York City #DiscoveryAtlas #
• These numbers are from 2006, the statistics for today would be on an even greater scale #DiscoveryAtlas #

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• Watching documentary series "Wild China" about China's eye-popping geography, incredible regional diversity and natural history. #
• This series focuses more on the beauty and majesty of the species, and 8,000 years of rice culture… streaming from Netflix now. #WildChina #
• With every inch of possible land used for rice cultivation, the Miao minority build their homes on jagged hillsides #WildChina #
• In China, animals are valued much for their symbolic value. Return of swallows means good luck, indicate planting season begins #WildChina #
• But a burgeoning egret colony was blamed for bad luck and illness, and the locals nearly destroyed it before gov't intervened #WildChina #
• Only a fraction of China's caves have been explored. In Guizhou province, Chinese spelunkers rappel down horizontal cave walls. #WildChina #
• in the most inaccessible caverns and streams of Guizhou province, very rare endangered primates called "Francois' langur" #WildChina #
• "Francois' langur" are spry, spritely monkeys. The adults have black fur, but the infants have red fur #WildChina #
• The Li river is one of the cleanest, fishermen in their 80s and 90s use cormorant birds to catch fish #WildChina #
• The fishermen tie a noose around the cormorant birds' necks so when they find fish they spit it out on boat http://t.co/sZHDX3q #WildChina #
• Southwest China seems to breathe, steam rising from the forests, streams, mountains and villages #WildChina #
• China is home to the "baby fish," the giant salamander, the world's largest amphibian at 5ft long. Severely endangered. #WildChina #
• Elsewhere, on the Yangtze flood plain, Chinese alligators with neon orange stripes are like mythic dragons #WildChina #
• Chinese alligators are nearly extinct in the wild, and would be long gone without women like Chur, who protect her "babies" #WildChina #
• The jungles of Yunnan represent China's (and the world's) greatest natural wealth #WildChina #
• in the gorgeous river valleys of Yunnan province, the Dai people have beautiful http://t.co/xXbf4Nn #WildChina #
• the Dai people's water festival is about giving thanks for the river water that sustains their bodies & culture, & about epic water fights! #
• On the other side of Yunnan province is not jungle but snowy Himalayas, where the red panda & slope-nosed monkey live #WildChina #
• The locals consider the slope-nose monkey their ancestor. No need for evolution drama & monkey trial like crazy Americans #WildChina #
• Locals still use sling and rope to swing across giant Yunnan river gorges. Elderly woman seen sliding across rope, simultaneously smoking #
• Lost world in real life: weird tropical rainforest where Himalayas should be! Yunnan province is such a strange and magical place #WildChina #
• Bamboo sprouts can be roasted for a soft, nutritious meal, but mature bamboo plants have a higher tensile strength than steel #WildChina #
• China's severely endangered Asian elephants number perhaps 250 in the wild, hiding in the remote valleys of Yunnan province #WildChina #
• Examining the lives of the few remaining black-crested gibbon (rare primates) in China; they often have 2 or 3 wife monkeys #WildChina #
• Since Mao's Cultural Revolution banned most imports, rubber plants needed for tires, destroying Yunnan habitats for rubber #WildChina #
• Rubber plantations have choked off once-sprawling habitats, pinning in the elephant & gibbon populations #WildChina #
• Episode 2 of #WildChina ends with a disturbing scene, elephants trying to get to the river for water birth and human activity is in the way #
• a road was in the elephants' way filled with trucks and bicycles and obnoxious tourists clowning around with camcorders and cameras #
• one elephant shook his head NO very explicitly at tourists. then, giving them the trunk, as close as he can get to giving them the finger #
• The elephants did eventually get to the river to give birth, just sounded SO angry at human encroachment on their habitat & life cycle #
• like the elephants desperately wanted to gore and murder some tourists and SO FRUSTRATED & despairing that they cannot #WildChina #
• This concludes my twitter coverage tonight of the #WildChina documentary series. Could do more in future if there's popular demand for it #
• More information about the documentary series Wild China on @GetGlue http://bit.ly/lbaHGr #
• Anybody out there want me to tweet detailed analysis and ridicule of @meetthepress? Anyone? anyone? no…? Bueller? #MTP #
• A big focus on whether Newt Gingrich hates #Medicare enough to win Republican support #MeetThePress #MTP #
• I really don't understand @RepPaulRyan's Medicare ending plan; since when will insurance companies cover the elderly??? #MeetThePress #MTP #
• #MeetThePress is always obsessed with who's "serious," which plan to eliminate Medicare is "serious" #MTP #
• Again, how is it "serious" to expect insurers to accept any amount of vouchers & take care of elderly with preexisting conditions? #MTP #
• GOP #Medicare plan is crazy because NO insurer will touch elderly & disabled, WHY IS #GINGRICH DESTROYED for reticence to embrace insanity? #
• Conventional wisdom is near unanimous, #Gingrich is an embarrassment to the GOP for reticence re: @RepPaulRyan's Medicare ending plan #MTP #
• Republican nomination litmus test for 2012: you must have an unwavering commitment to balance the budget on backs of elderly & disabled #MTP #
• I think people want leadership, people want solutions, but won't accept an America of such wealth that puts majority of the pain on elderly #
• Reticence, consideration, criticizing party line, on Medicare, means Gingrich's campaign is OVER, #MeetThePress panelists unanimously say #
• On yesterday morning's #MeetThePress @andrewrsorkin saying politics kinda irrelevant because election will be swung by gas prices #MTP #
• #MeetThePress panelists ponder @DavidGregory question: is #JonHuntsman fascist, "gun-toting" enough to be "viable" in the GOP primary? #MTP #
• #AndreaMitchell on #MeetThePress says that if @MittRomney can "address" sordid past helping MA poor get health care, he could be frontrunner #
• #AndreaMitchell on #MeetThePress says that if @MittRomney is frontrunner, that "opens up space" for family values candidate to challenge. #
• WTF, #AndreaMitchell doesn't think @MittRomney is a sufficiently hard-right social conservative? i don't get it. #MeetThePress #MTP #
• I love twittering my analysis & ridicule of wankers on @meetthepress but nobody parodies the self-parodying Sunday talkers like @Bobblespeak #
• Don't miss the hilarious translations of Meet The Press and This Week by @Bobblespeak at http://tinyurl.com/Bobblespeak #MeetThePress #MTP #
• via @TheOnion – Mitt Romney Haunted By Past Of Trying To Help Uninsured Sick People http://t.co/JR4iZE8 #

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