JOHN MCCAIN: A MATTER OF CHARACTER John Chuckman McCain does a good job with the appearance of a boyishly honest man. He puts on his quiet voice and uses his boyish (albeit now partially fossilized) expressions and, reminding me of Richard Nixon during his Checkers speech, sometimes glances down at his well-shined shoes, as though […]

John Chuckman REFLECTIONS ON PUTIN AS A LEADER AND ON THE WORLD SITUATION IN WHICH HE WORKS   There is an immense amount of criticism of Putin, especially coming from America, most of it empty criticism which ignores realities and genuine analysis. For the more thoughtful, it represents only the stink and noise of propaganda, […]

  THE INSANE CIRCUS NOW GOING ON IN WASHINGTON – A SAD PARODY OF JOSEPH MCCARTHY WAVING FISTFULS OF BLANK PAPER IN THE EARLY 1950s, INSISTING THEY WERE LISTS OF RUSSIAN SPIES John Chuckman   The single most important point to keep in mind about the “Russians did it” three-ring circus underway in Washington – […]

  TRYING TO IMAGINE HELL John Chuckman   Christians have always had it wrong. Hell is not a place loaded with terrifyingly dramatic scenes and flaming Hollywood special effects. That not only seems improbable, it actually is rather unimaginative. Hell must be a place where all the people you would hate spending five minutes with […]

  FOREIGN AFFAIRS AS OPERA BUFFA: THE GLOBAL FIGHT AGAINST ISIS John Chuckman   There is a forgotten 1933 movie serial called The Three Musketeers in which three members of the French Foreign Legion are rescued by an American, a young John Wayne, using the machine gun on his biplane to mow down Arab bad […]

  MODERN CIVILIZATION AND RELIGION “I, at any rate, am convinced that He [God] does not throw dice.” Albert Einstein   John Chuckman Even the greatest minds sometimes are befuddled by emotional preconceptions, as this famous quote shows Einstein was by his rejection of randomness implicit in quantum mechanics. Ironically, Einstein himself was one of […]

VLADIMIR PUTIN, THE WORLD’S LAST TRUE STATESMAN John Chuckman Everywhere you look in the West, you find political pygmies rather than statesmen. In France, we see a pathetic man whose own people intensely dislike him, François Hollande, attempt to speak as though he were something other than a dry, pompous school teacher-like purveyor of American […]

WE HAVE HOPE, BUT REAL CHANGE IN AMERICA REPRESENTS AN IMMENSE TASK John Chuckman Already in the press there have been stories of plans to dampen the public’s expectations of Obama. The expectations are undoubtedly beyond being satisfied by any human being. Obama’s bright face, a keen intelligence at work in every expression, represents the […]

AS ROME BURNS, HOPES FOR A WEDDING IN WHITE John Chuckman It is reliably reported (The Times, London) that the McCain camp is expecting a miracle, its expectations rather resembling those of a millenarianist group camping on a hillside awaiting The Second Coming. The anticipated miracle is the shotgun marriage of Sarah Palin’s pregnant seventeen-year […]

POLITICAL BITS AND PIECES Occasional Collection of Observations on the American Presidential Primaries and Related Matters John Chuckman _________________________________________________ SUPER TUESDAY McCain has no real competition. His opponents are both relatively weak candidates and poor campaigners. Romney is insipid, but rich enough to carry on. Huckabee is simply an idiot, but an idiot with some […]

THE FIGHTER PILOT AND THE PRINCESS IN AMERICA’S PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARIES John Chuckman The fighter pilot of this story is, of course, John McCain, but the princess is not Hillary Clinton as some readers might have guessed. The princess in the story is Britain’s late Princess Diana. What possible connection is there between the late Princess […]

HANOI JANE AND THE CITY OF GOD John Chuckman A while back Jane Fonda found a new ally in her battle with being a decaying cutie-pie. Injections, face lifts, dye, flaky philosophy, and many hours a day of aerobics were no longer enough to hang on to even an out-of-focus resemblance to the poochy-lipped mannequin […]

THE GOVERNMENT YOU DESERVE John Chuckman It has been said that people pretty much get the government they deserve. There is more than a little justice in the observation. Pat Buchanan, long my choice as symbol for all that is wrong with America, has given a last-minute endorsement to George Bush’s re-election. One is tempted […]

STRANGE VICTORY John Chuckman Nothing tells us more about the odd political state of America than the recent presidential debate and reactions to it. The American debates, of course, are not debates at all. They are more a set of joint press conferences, a staged opportunity for both candidates to repeat memorized lines in a […]

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY An Interpretation of Bush’s Character John Chuckman While I find those images on the Internet of a blunt little mustache digitally-scribbled onto President Bush’s upper lip feeble and unhelpful, still, there are parts of Bush’s character and behavior that strikingly resemble at least one major biographer’s interpretation of Hitler. Ian Kershaw’s […]

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/index-of-all-posts-on-this-site/ JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR FOR HILLARY’S CAMPAIGN MAKES RATHER ASININE STATEMENT ABOUT WHY SHE LOST – AMERICANS REALLY DO BELIEVE IF JUST USE THE RIGHT MUMBO-JUMBO YOU CAN SELL MANURE AS PATE JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: ARTICLE ON ISRAELI INFLUENCE ON INTERNET SITES – MY OBSERVATIONS OF THE SAME THING IN OUR MAINLINE PRESS – […]