Tag: Current Affairs

Usually it’s obvious who is going to be the next president of the United States. First, the media decides for us who will be the nominees for each party. Then the voters elect the one who makes the most outrageous promises. That’s called leadership, and we like it. This next…

One of the curses of wedding planning is the whole gift-giving dilemma. This is especially acute for people like my fiancée and me because for us, all material goods fall into one of these categories. 1. Already have it2. Don’t need it3. Too expensive for a gift4. What the hell…

Did you hear about the German cannibal? It sounds like the beginning of a joke but it’s not. A German guy had a lifelong fantasy of eating someone. So he ran an online ad for a volunteer. This is the funny part: A guy volunteered. So the cannibal and the…

I keep hearing pundits whining about the growing gap between the rich and the poor. I have difficulty empathizing with that viewpoint for two reasons: 1. Poor people can vote.2. There are more poor people than rich people. In theory, those unhappy poor people could vote to tax the living…

I remember years ago when the “three strikes” law was being debated in California. For you out-of-towners, the proposed law would put repeat criminals (those convicted three times) in jail for exceptionally long sentences. The statistics showed that the repeat offenders committed a huge chunk of the overall crimes. Here’s…

Tunnel Vision Did you hear about the guy who decided to watch his brother play in the Super Bowl instead of reporting to prison as scheduled? His sentence was increased from 6 months to 5 years for reporting late. That’s not the funny part. The funny part is that he…

Maybe you heard that the comic strip Boondocks is taking a six month hiatus. The creator, Aaron McGruder apparently doesn’t have enough time because he’s working on his animated TV show. The interesting part is that he hasn’t drawn the strip himself for years. According to an interview I read,…

While I don’t condone stealing from work, I often admire the ingenuity that goes into doing it. I got this letter from a Dilbert reader: “I found this office behavior extreme enough to share with you. A co-worker of mine is so cheap that he bought one of the portable…

I realize I’m supposed to be watching the Olympics and thinking about the wonderful achievements of those hard-working athletes. I should be enjoying their glorious victories. But I’m not. Apparently I am defective. All I see are the losers – because there are so many – who spent their entire…

Let me begin by saying there are lots of good reasons for conserving energy. It saves money, it’s good for the planet, and that’s good enough for me. I drive a small car. But I keep hearing the argument that we can combat terrorism by using less energy. I can’t…

I cleverly bought some flowers a day early in order to beat the Valentines Day rush, and also so I could get the “good stuff” before it was gone. What I learned is that smarter guys bought all of the “good stuff” at least TWO days ago. I couldn’t go…

My favorite comment in this blog about Cheney shooting Whittington is that the victim is a “big shot lawyer.” Thanks to Marc. I think it’s the worst kind of pandering to shoot a lawyer just because your popularity is low. But I’ll bet it works.

Recently I predicted in this blog that Hamas’ election victory would cause them to soften their stance on Israel. I based that prediction on the fact that it’s hard to reconcile “destroy Israel” with “we’ll all be meeting at the parliament building at noon to talk about it.” There are…

Perhaps you’ve heard about the Danish editorial cartoon that sparked riots all over the world. According to the news, the comic featured some disrespectful images of The Prophet, so believers burned Danish embassies and whatnot. Let me go on record as saying I don’t approve of the burning of embassies….