Back in the days when Hitler comparisons were verboten, that is, when we had a far-right President whose social, military, and civil liberties policies looked a lot like Der Fuhrer, I often got a laugh out of them. Hitler, after all, in addition to making the trains run on time, hosted a successful Olympics, built [...]
Probably the dumbest act in American political history was Al Gore’s choosing Holy Joe Lieberman as his running mate in 2000. If I were Tipper, I would still be withholding sex for that one. Why, pray tell, would anyone choose a corrupt, midget slimeball for a running mate whose sole qualification was his prim, Defense [...]
Republicans seem never to tire of gazing at their own reflections, but often disliking the beady eyes and fleshy face menacingly staring back at them, suddenly see their own glaring flaws writ larger than ever in others, and are unduly fond of pointing this out. The bible makes early mention of this phenomenon, about motes [...]
A hundred thousand protesters are at work in Copenhagen to attack a problem that no amount of science will cure. Only a small percentage of the crowd is American. As protesters look for morale support, they see few Americans not only because the COP15 Summit is in Europe. The US is the world’s largest consumer [...]
I have been, and likely always shall be, a public golfer. I’ve played since my father took me out when I was about ten. During my teen years, I worked at what in those days were called “caddy camps,” summer programs organized with elite private golf clubs on Cape Cod, where boys from the greater [...]
UPDATED BELOW: A few years ago, I noticed that actually selling something that could be quantified, like a shoe or a car wash, had become hopelessly anachronistic in the “new” economy; we were told to pay good money for something far less tangible, “solutions.” To what, pray tell? Everything, as it turned out. Any [...]
I confess I expected to like Jonathan Safran Foer’s book, Eating Animals, better than I did. First of all, the New York Times book reviewer dismissed it, always a good sign, and his two previous novels had received wide acclaim. Secondly, books like “Fast Food Nation” had already permanently changed my eating habits for the [...]
I have a new Hag Theory about why the economy collapsed, and it might, in an odd and assuredly unintended way, validate that old nympho battle-ax Ayn Rand. I think that sometime around 2001-2, the political, economic, and media elite in the country all essentially “went Galt,” and, and it seems that none of them [...]
Bruce Levine a clinical psychologist in his latest book Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy asked a question that has been on Hag’s and my mind a lot lately, Can people become so broken that truths of how they are being screwed do not “set [...]
Each day lately that I look around at the news pouring forth, I see less to write about, since the miasma of unreality that obscures every discussion makes any comment seem both untimely and unnecessary. Great matters of past and future, war and peace, and everything else, are decided from above and merely served up [...]