Several points.

No-one should be surprised that when you cut tax rates for the wealthy and fight trillion dollar foreign wars that subsidies for education will go down, resulting in corresponding increases in tuition.

Big college sports franchises pay for themselves, and then some, so stop bitching about the coach's salary.

There are many good ways to take advantage of a liberal arts education, but for many, college is little more than a four year abdication of responsibility. It is all too easy to waltz through even the most elite institutions without acquiring anything more than an appreciation for trips to France and a privileged attitude. The main benefit many of these institutions offer is the brief opportunity to blur class distinctions, by mixing kids from all walks of life in the same classrooms and living quarters. If you think this results in any significant class mobility however, you would be wrong.

We should really be concerning ourselves much less with the fortunes of the well endowed elite institutions, and instead focus our attention on the trades. We need to hold our trade schools and their graduates in higher regard. These graduates are the ones who build and run the very complicated machinery used to build cars, for example. When such skills are only accorded the underachievers in our society, we get predictable results. Our infrastructure is crumbling. Bridges are falling. We don't know how to manufacture anything anymore. Unless and until we revalue skilled labor, our trade deficits will continue to mount, and our global standing will continue to diminish.

More and better higher education is not the answer to our problems. We have a surfeit of MBA's, PhD's, and MA's - and quite frankly, these are the very folks who are largely responsible for getting us into our present predicament. We need to change the national mindset. You don't _need_ to go to a college, any more than you _need_ to buy a house you can't afford. The problem, of course, is that almost all hiring managers themselves went to college, and you're not going to easily convince them that they need to adopt a new worldview.

I saw the same preview, and I didn't see the movie condoning Rogen's behavior at all. The movie is a morality play about the irony of empty headed do-gooders being at least as bad as the evils they imagine themselves fighting. The whole movie could easily be a parable about the Bush administration, for example.

Come to think of it, any movie involving vomit and drunken stupidity could be about the Bush administration.

If the establishment is less fond of Geithner than they used to be, then maybe he's not so bad after all. Why would we want someone in that position who was beloved by Wall Street scallywags and their business news strumpets, anyway?

This article about the My ElBaradei prompted me to check out Der Speigel. What struck me was the number of front page articles about contemporary right wing extremism and Nazis in Germany. They are universally detested. They were virtually annihilated in WWII. Yet they still exist and their sick dreams persist. The Germans seem to understand the futility of eradicating insanity. Instead, they have structured their constitution, laws, and government such that the insane cannot easily access the levers needed to facilitate their destructive ends. They have not forgotten, and so it should be no surprise that their front page today also mentions their resistance to Google street view, for example.

The ever-pompous US, however, the great country that won WWII single-handedly **cough**, refuses to even acknowledge how dangerous the level of contemporary right wing rhetoric has become. Dark times lie ahead, unless we are collectively able to confront the powerful fascist undercurrents swirling all around us. The Germans know that not even a great war can eliminate the insanity, and have structured their society in response. We're missing those checks, and we should be more than a little worried.

Sanford and his mistress seem to have concluded that it "doesn't make sense" that their affair should continue. Why? Because having an affair would be ruinous to his political career and family. Guess what, it's too late. The political career is over, and as for the family life ... lessee .. (1) it wasn't so hot to start with (happily married men don't have affairs), and (2) it sure as hell isn't happy now, nor will it ever be.

Sanford, this is your ticket out. Get out. Get out of your lifeless marriage to your shrew of a wife. Get out of your shitty job. Go to Argentina and be happy for the rest of your days. You can do that. Be a good example to your children. Be a good example to the rest of America. Righties and Lefties alike stand on their moralizing soap boxes and besmirch your reputation. Be true to yourself; don't pander to pompous media fucktards. Get the girl. Love life. Leave the miserable moralizing finger wagging gaggle of liars and pretenders to wallow in their pithy pretentiousness. Fuck 'em all. Resign today. Go to Argentina. You will be an inspiration to millions, and of course an enemy to all of the scolding needy insecure hangers-on in this world who have no recourse or ambition but to cling to the talent, ambition, and hard work of their betters. Don't be a patsy. Pursue happiness. Nothing in this world compels you to serve at the mercy of anyone or anything. Everyone is watching to see which fork you take. Being a good example means just the opposite of what your wife and every other moralizing hypocrite is telling you right now. Be a man, and go go go to Argentina!!!

Without a kid, there might not be puke stories, but child or no child, a bore is a bore is a bore. A fellow named Mark Edmundson recently wrote a really excellent riff on the subject of bores titled "Enough Already". I highly recommend it.

http://www.theamericanscholar.org/enough-already/