As the tired old chestnut goes, this is the first year of the rest of your life. And, if you can enjoy it, you are a certifiable lunatic, utterly concentrated on your own good fortune and completely indifferent to the rest of the world. If you wish, I will send you a certificate suitable for…
CURMUDGEON
A PROBLEM FOR CAPITALISTS
The followng is reprinted from CommonDreams.org. My question, after reading this, is this: Must it not be true that every member of what Professor Michael Green calls the “Predatory overclass” is an atheist? Professor Green makes it clear that the awfulness of it all is not a mere accidental coalescence of many thoughtless raids on…
GET THAT CALIGULA, SON OF A BITCH
Yes, his bones have long ago rotted but so what? A criminal is a criminal and we should hound him until the end of time. That’s what learned judges in Spain think and who am I, a poor philosopher with only 40 years training in philosophy of law, to disagree? Spain claims the right to…
COLLEGE? WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY
According to this weekend’s edition of the Washington Post, good deals are available for those who know how to shop for financial aid. It seems you don’t have to be a genius or poor to get solid low cost loans. I’ve got a much better idea. DON’T GO! There is not a damn college on…
ON NOT GETTING THEIR ACTS TOGETHER
Joe Biden wants fewer troops in Afghanistan, thinking we may need to send them elsewhere. Bobby Gates wants to keep the forces down around 450000 because that is a nice round number. Hillary C thinks more is always better. As things stand, 57% of our forces are not our forces but those $100,000 men in…
ILLITERACY IN AMERICA
I thank Dr. Ted Drange for calling my attention to this article published in truthdig.com and written by Chris Hedges. This is only an excerpt. For the full article, please CLICK HERE. “There are over 42 million American adults, 20 percent of whom hold high school diplomas, who cannot read, as well as the 50…
A CAREER FOR LUNATICS
Los Angeles Times, June 10, 2009, Pg. 1 Two Maryland high schools are offering courses in homeland security, in an initiative being watched closely by schools in other states. Meade High School, which lies just inside the Army’s Ft. Meade, home of the National Security Agency, was one of the first in the nation to…
BARGAIN BASEMENT COLLEGES/$40,000 BUCKS
The Christian Science Monitor carries a story this week about the Advantage Program offered by Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) at its Salem campus. The cost for the program is a mere $10,000 per year and that is one-third of what the main campus in Manchester costs. In return for this bargain basement price, you…
THE BORING SIDE OF NEWS COVERAGE
Here at Watching Politics we find the daily doings in the Beltway excruciatingly boring. If you suffer from insomnia, we recommend you tune in to MSNBC, Fox, or CNBC and listen to the squabbles of the guests interrupting one another and then being interrupted in their turn by someone saying, “I didn’t interrupt you; let…
HANK THE K LIKES SOCCER
THE CURMUDGEON IN ME LETS LOOSE. Soccer is one of the most depraved of human activities, especially as practiced in South America and Europe. North America, Africa, and Asia have not yet caught on to the purpose of the game. The idea seems to be to burn down stadiums when the team you are rooting…
TRUE GENIUS/ROGER AND CLIVE
Once upon a time -maybe 90 or so years ago – Roger Fry told his brother-in-law Clive Bell (or maybe it was the other way around) that he wasn’t a bit sad when he thinks of the sufferings and deaths of tens of thousands of Jewish slaves who helped build the Egyptian pyramids. Simple: By…
SURPRISE, SURPRISE. THERE ARE CORPORATE CROOKS
Senior White House officials said this morning that President Obama did not learn that bonuses worth $165 million were to be paid to executives of American International Group until Thursday, one day before they were issued and two days after his Treasury secretary was informed that the payments were going forward. ***************************** Obama speaks: “Now,…
WHERE OH WHERE HAS THE TRIBUNE BEEN?
In a hopelessly ridiculous article, the International Herald Tribune ponders the fate of the American university. It begs all the obvious questions by assuming that once upon a time American colleges had ambitions and purposes. Of course, colleges have never been anything but storage bins for people who refuse to find honest work. It also…
DECLINE AND FALL OF THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION
The Obama administration continues its drive to hell and it hasn’t taken very long. If nothing else, Bush had the excuse that our country had been attacked before he introduced all the measures he did introduce in his campaign to be the worst president we have ever hand. After a series of appointments that were…
I HATE POLITICS
One good reason I hate politics is that politicians and those journalists who cover what we may quaintly call “their activities” are illiterate morons, and their abuse of language weighs heavily on me. Take the word “crisis”. Obama and others of his ilk like the word. So what? I like the words “black hole” but…
JOB WORRIES AND SOME COMMONSENSE ADVICE
We have a puzzling phenomenon that cries out for sociological and perhaps psychological explanation. It is this: the less money people have the less they are worrying about the diminishing supply of jobs. Here are some statistics, courtesy of the Pew Research Center. Percentage of workers who say job or benefit cuts are likely: Persons…
PARTISAN POLITICS
Hack politicians like President Obama call for bipartisanship. He wants peace and harmony and agreement among Republicans and Democrats. When a president can get a solid majority of congressional support thanks to a crossover of a handful of pols from “the other side of the aisle”, he is thrilled out of his cotton-pickin’ mind. He…
TIDBITS
Someone named Jennifer Aniston is getting lots of coverage in gossip columns and TV. I think she is either a singer or actess or both and presumably very pretty. Just thought I’d tell you.*****Alex Rodriguez turns out to be a better person than I thought. It seems he uses or used to use steroids. It…
A MODEST PROPOSAL
The Nazi hunters are still hounding John Demjanjuk, the alleged Ivan the Terrible, who helped send thousands of Jews to gas chambers. Jake is now 88 years old and doesn’t remember how to spell his last name. They also want to hang Josef Scheungraber who is 90 years old and, for good measure, are mad…
BATTLE OF THE FAT CATS – AIRLINES VS. FREQUENT FLIERS
September 8, 2008 THE CURMUDGEON RAVES. The Washington Post National Weekly Edition contains an exceedingly dreadful and tedious story about how badly airlines are treating their frequent fliers. Now, that puts you in a quandary, right? Just whom are you supposed to root for? Villain 1 or Villain 2? Airlines are cutting way back on…
TIDBITS AND A FINAL WORD ABOUT YOU
September 7, 2008 JetBlue, the friendly airline that champions economy flights, is planning to charge $7 for those little pillows you take for granted. It will also charge $2.50 per minute to make phone calls.*****Suppose going to Harvard made you a more knowledgeable football fan than high school dropouts are. What of it? Suppose cannibals…
BULL!
September 6, 2008 Red Bull, that is. Red Bull is that stuff you can buy in any grocery, grocerÃa, market, super market, or supermercardo. It’s unadulterated, 100% pure garbage and tastes bad, too. Now, health food guru, “Doctor” Joseph Mercola is cracking down on it in his blog. [P.S. He is a real physician.] Doc…
SOLONIC WISDOM
September 5, 2008 I don’t care what the evolutionary biologists think. It is a plain, observable fact that the human species has been undergoing a rapid brain drain since about 558 B.C. when the greatest genius who ever lived, Solon The Wise, called it quits and died. At any age, his death would have been…
HOGWASH
September 3, 2008 TV political gurus spout the following bit of wisdom as if they took surveys and know what they are talking about: “The American public is demanding change.” What public is that? Does the public at last want to know who the Secretary of State is? What “change” will help them find out?…
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