Amused Cynic

Just received my take-home mid-term exam, and that, along with another essay for an old-fashioned (i.e. demanding) professor will be occupying my time for the next three days and nights. No time for any distractions….no TV (not even the Phillies in the NL Championship opener tomorrow night), no talk radio, no internet surfing, certainly no blogging. The only possible distraction will be the ailing pooch, although I think he may be turning the corner.

He started refusing his meds on Monday morning, which was upsetting at first, but he seems to be doing just fine without them, so maybe he knows best. He ate well last night for the first time in a while, and when we came back from our own dinner, he was standing at the top of the stairs with his head peeking through the railing, barking at us and wagging his tail, just like the old days. He hasn’t done that since his surgery.

Nevertheless, I dropped him off at Penn first thing this morning for what we hope will be a final and conclusive exam, and after last night I’m feeling pretty optimistic.

With “Health Care Reform” in the news, I thought I’d link to a piece I wrote at the end of August, when the only sensible plan out there (the one used by the Whole Foods organic supermarket chain) was being pilloried in the MSM. My agreement with that approach hasn’t changed in many years, and there are some good links for re-reading as the Obamacare boondoggle continues apace.

Haven’t had time to do more than a cursory spin through the latest news, but did come across this excellent latest piece by Camille Paglia, in which she responds to some really excellent reader letters touching on the Administration, war on terror, wacky college professors, the “moving spectacle” of the Tea Parties, Sarah Palin’s college experience, “hate crime” legislation, and more. Really good stuff, read it all. A sampling:

From a reader:
I see Obama and his presidency as the crowning of the ideas of that northeastern liberal aristocracy you so much criticize. He appears to me as a cliché of all their pathologies, and yet you seem infatuated with him. You continually praise his speech and demeanor while to me it seems like a mask for his lack of substance. I find him to be a man of an oversized ego, with a messianic complex and a cult-like following, which would not be so scary if he didn’t wear the media as his own personal lap dog.

As a person born and raised in Latin America who studies history as a hobby, I can’t help but see President Obama as the closest thing we have had in this country to the long line of populist leaders who have been the scourge of Latin America for decades and sent many of us here into exile. He is not a Chavez-like figure who uses vulgarity and threats as a weapon but a more sophisticated version of a young Peron.

On some gobble-de-gook writing by a post-structuralist Rice University professor:
Oh my lord, what a fly-flecked pile of horse manure! It’s hard to believe that such empty palaver is still being peddled by major universities in the U.S. And this guy has a Yale PhD! (When I got mine, it still meant one could write coherent English.) One can only pity the parents bankrupting themselves for their children to be “educated” by such chicanery.

Anyway, I’m off to immerse myself in 17th-Century thought…hopefully back Friday night.