I’m back, after a rough week in which I had to grade term papers and say goodbye to my cat Jewel, who came out of her own room over the past year or two and socialized normally with us and with other cats, often sleeping on the bed next to me. We miss her.
There are lots of things I’ve wanted to blog about. Here’s the most fun. Women in the Czech parliament have put out a pin-up calendar. Some see this as confirming the decline of Western civilization. I think it could serve as a model for campaign finance reform. You want to get money and corruption out of politics? Make this the only way parties and candidates can raise money. The Republicans would have a big advantage over the Democrats, that’s for sure.
More seriously: Thanks to mass media, the popular election of Senators, the expansion of the franchise, and other factors, politics is increasingly an unserious profession pursued by unserious people. Better to face that head-on that to pretend otherwise.
I don’t think either American party could match the Czech Public Affairs party:
I see the convergence of the first and second oldest professions.