Unfiltered with Josh Cohen

I had a few people asking me about my thoughts on Stacey Abrams' speech. Here you go... I was unforgivably bored the first few minutes when she was talking about her family. That's not her fault, it's just whenever politicians go on in that vein, I very immediately lose interest.  She took a long time to get to the point about unity and hard work. After that, I think she came across eloquent and genuine enough. I don't see her speech as especially original but as I say she seemed to ,at least, mean it. I was mildly confused when she brought up public education as, unless I missed it, Trump didn't bring it up at all. Her speech seemed to me to be an attempt at a reply/retort to Trump's address and if so, I'm not sure why she brought the issue up, important though it is. My only real contention is her statement about the administration "putting children in cages" during her bit about border security. It has surfaced and has since become well ...

Ah, my first polemic. You, know they say you never forget your first love but I think for me, being the lovable curmudgeon that I am, it may be the first hate. Perhaps, the first "extreme dislike" is more apropo, but that isn't quite as catchy. I think that hatred, though it often provides rather junky energy can, in fact, be tremendous cause to spring out of bed in the morning. Further, the cleverest of this breed of curmudgeon may attempt to canalize this energy into writing. This is what happens on a given evening when I have had three beers instead of two. In my defense, I was left without adult supervision. Here goes... I have recently developed a quiet obsession with the YouTube skeptic community. These include such luminaries as Sargon of Akkad (who very recently had his Patreon membership withdrawn and he has a new account for his supporters which is here: https://www.subscribestar.com/sargon; please give) and Bearing (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCw...

On a sightly less serious or perhaps esoteric note than the tribulations of Brett Kavanaugh (http://theunfilteredpodcast.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-strange-case-of-brett-kavanaugh.html) and Vaclav Havel (http://theunfilteredpodcast.blogspot.com/2018/10/a-romanticists-revolution.html), I want to regale you with the story of how my otherwise placid Saturday burst with surprise and new experiences. A few weeks ago, I was at Pizza Luce in Hopkins,MN doing some writing. I believe it was the "Love Letter To Literature" piece (http://theunfilteredpodcast.blogspot.com/2018/09/a-love-letter-on-literature-and-poetry.html) . Writing is never quite so joyous as when accompanied by an evening libation. Hemingway said to "write drunk and edit sober", so, following this injunction, I had the obligatory beer in hand. Being the compulsively social person I am, I struck up a conversation with two lovely people who later introduced themselves as Mike and Maggie. "M&M",...

 I suppose I would, generally, describe my stance as an observer of life as that of the "witty cynic". That is I can, at times, take a rather alarmist and reactionary (note that I didn't say wrongheaded) approach to the great political and socioeconomic strife we all find ourselves in. Further, I am able to use my immense faculty of sarcasm to comment on these deformities in ways that are not entirely uninteresting. However, there are some events that occur that awaken my secondary impulse as a "cautious optimist". Unless I am much mistaken, that is an impulse that resides within all us, even if only dormant.  Submitted for your consideration and as an appeal to that fledgling spirit of optimism... Mr. Vaclav Havel. Here was someone whom, armed with nothing but the ink of his pen and the wit of his mind, ridiculed and ultimately abolished, that is to say, overthrew the edifice of totalitarianism in his native Czechoslovakia. This was culminated with the expuls...

Well, this has been quite the circus, hasn't it? And for all the wrong reasons. The one thing that hasn't been discussed in any noteworthy measure over the course of the nomination hearings has been the one thing that should have been the focus... Mr. Kavanaugh's politics. "Will he overturn Roe v. Wade?", was the only topic that was even tangentially or peripherally covered in all this mess. I know that there are many who will read this that won't be exhilarated by this prospect, but I will say that I am. I think it would be a long overdue act of justice from a legal standpoint and mercy from a moral standpoint. Perhaps, that's best reserved for another article. Alas, amidst unsubstantiated (and uncorroborated) claims of sexual assault by former High School alum Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford   , all pertinent discussions have been regarding how many beers were consumed by whom over 30 years ago and what may or may not have occurred. Oh, and no one seems to...

My own acquaintance and relationship with poetry is bound up with acquisition, memorization, and recital. That is: I realized when I was quite young that I could learn poems "by heart," as the saying goes.  It was no great hardship for me to commit poems and verses of literary accretions to memory. As  Gwendolen  remarked in "The Importance Of Being Earnest", it was less a duty than it was a pleasure . Furthermore, I found that this fairly simple attainment could, as well as grant me satisfaction and purpose, win me praise. Seldom a week goes by where I am not complimented in one form or another after demonstrating  this trait. This helped make up for my almost feckless inability in the areas of mathematics and mechanics (traits that oddly enough, both of my brothers have remarkable talents for). And, when it came to poetry, I would squirm at the embarrassed clumsiness with which my classmates "read" beautiful lines that they obviously felt were onerous ...

T urning Point's mission is defined in its website as follows:   The organization’s mission is to  identify, educate, train, and organize  students to promote the principles of  freedom, free markets , and  limited government .   In my view, I believe that Turning Point is an organization dedicated, quite simply, to the promulgation of Conservatism on campus and elsewhere. I n reviewing Turning Point, I've decided that given the proliferation of the leftist influence on campus (to say nothing of the media) it is a "necessary evil". I say evil because if we were to observe through the lens of the ideal (or perhaps, Utopian) perspective, it would be that there would be no bias practiced from any college professor to any given student. This is because of the "Professor Watchlist" ( https://www.professorwatchlis t.org/ ) which is one of Turning Points's more salient and controversial projects.  The Professor Watchlist monitors an...