Francis W. Porretto
Mount Sinai, NY USA
Author's posts
May 18 2024
To Prevent November Surprise
Read the following two articles. They’ll provide you with all you need to know: Biden’s “campaign.” The federal government and “voter turnout.” Joseph R. Biden could not win an honest election for dogcatcher. (Watch for “revelations” that he was elected dogcatcher in his hometown at a record early age, and with the highest …
May 18 2024
The Grinding Of The Axes
If you enjoy theological and spiritual reading, as I do, you’re likely to run across the occasional dubious statement in the work of some writer overly ardent for his Cause. Religious writers have their agendas, as do we all. Occasionally their eagerness to advance those agendas moves them to say something that’s not quite …
May 17 2024
When You Cannot Argue
“The fascists cannot argue, so they kill.” – Victor Marguerite The Left discovered some time ago that its ideas are incapable of prevailing against the evidence. Of course, an idea that requires us to dismiss or deny the evidence is always going to have a few little problems in debate. But that doesn’t …
May 17 2024
Power Positions
Whether you’re writing exposition, opinion, or fiction, you want your prose to have power. There are a number of maxims about this, for example the dictum to prefer the active voice and strong, active verbs. Another is the advice to avoid overdecorating your sentences with modifiers and subordinate clauses – i.e., to let your …
May 16 2024
Of Suppositions And Purple
[I’m very tired, and the news is so monochromatically bleak that I can see no point in commenting on it. I did find one interesting article from Roger Kimball a few days back, but it’s long, dense, and deserves more time and thought than I’ve had available, so for now please read it and …
May 15 2024
Tolerable Diversity, Mandatory Unity
That shibboleth word “diversity” just might have had its day. The myriad examples of what happens when a government attempts to compel “diversity” upon an institution or a society make it fairly plain that the notion is toxic. Resistance to such compulsion is mounting and will soon become insuperable. It’s been the case …
May 14 2024
The Catastrophists Ride Again
Say, does anyone else remember Eric Pianka? On March 2, 3, and 4 of this year, the Texas Academy of Sciences held its annual conclave, at which it awarded a certain Eric Pianka, a biologist at the University of Texas, with its Distinguished Texas Scientist Award. Whatever Dr. Pianka’s achievements as a researcher …
May 13 2024
Motherhood
As virtually everyone in the Western Hemisphere knows by now, yesterday was Mothers’ Day, a holiday celebrated by mothers, grandmothers, greeting-card vendors, and Hallmark stockholders throughout the land. Why Mom gets only a single day, while Negroes and sexual deviants get a month each and governments get all of us year after year, I …
May 13 2024
Sensitive Single Men Of America…(UPDATED)
…your quest for undying love has ended! [Applause to Concerned American at WRSA, whose quest for a new blog-home has ended, too.] UPDATE: The C.S.O. just reminded me about an earlier competitor for the title of “perfect woman:” I detect a certain similarity in Rebecca’s and Laurel’s claims. I wonder what …
May 13 2024
How It’s Done Dept.
Some fiction writers consciously strive to keep their readers off-balance, groping for a purchase on what’s really happening in the story. This can be boiled down to an actual technique. The key, of course, is surprise. There are several kinds of surprise in fiction. There are plot surprises, where an event that seems …
May 11 2024
Quirks Part 2
I’d hoped to stir up a little mud with yesterday’s piece, but it seems ‘twas not to be. Ah, well. My evening provided additional fodder: an object lesson in the importance of being wary around people who don’t know about your quirks. Among the topics that I’m personally sensitive about is the Christian …
May 11 2024
Insight Of The Day
There is no class of jobs that is not essential to this country. – Buck Throckmorton at Ace of Spades HQ Not even Vice Presidents for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Buck? I was hoping we could do without them. But if you’re sure…
May 10 2024
Quirks
A few days ago, retired SEAL and writer Matt Bracken posted this on Gab: I assented vigorously, which triggered this query: What morals do the 96% agree on? It’s not a trivial question. The use of the word morals, with its sexual overtones, clouds the subject somewhat, so in this context …
May 09 2024
Insight Of The Day
There are many elaborate theories about paranoia, but we can’t sincerely claim that we’ve cracked it yet. We need more data. If we really want to understand the genesis of the paranoid mentality, we should be making lists of known paranoids and compiling detailed dossiers about them. Researchers should be following them around, watching …
May 08 2024
Profiles In Unconsciousness
Now and then, something will come down the pike that’s both puzzling and fascinating. I have such a phenomenon at hand today: a series of tweets from former CNN contributor Michelle Kosinski. Here it is: Now, I know better than to expect a leftist to entertain a suggestion that she might be under-informed. …
May 08 2024
Trends
I spend very little time with other people – the C.S.O. excepted – and none in groups larger than four persons. (Willingly, that is.) So I tend to be late-to-press with social trends. In the main, that doesn’t trouble me. What use has an isolate for social trends? He’s not terribly likely to adopt …
May 08 2024
So You Think Pas And I Are Kidding About The Death Cults?
I assure you, we aren’t: For nearly 30 years — since Oregon became the first state to legalize physician-assisted death — Congress has prevented federal funding such as Medicare from being used by patients to pay for the practice. A bill proposed by Democratic lawmakers seeks to change that. In 1997, Congress …
May 07 2024
Betrayal By Ballot
Kurt Schlichter’s column of today makes a couple of penetrating observations, some of them rather sad. Here’s the bit that’s uppermost in my thoughts: Some groups vote as a bloc. Black Americans almost always vote Democrat – something like 90%, though this time Donald Trump seems to be earning a better percentage. Similarly, …
May 07 2024
Whose Side Are We On
I can’t help but wonder: The Biden administration’s intensive public and private campaign to forestall Israel’s assault on Rafah has become its toughest test to date with its Middle East ally. Hours after President Biden on Monday warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against a full-scale assault on Rafah, Israel’s military conducted …
Fran’s Recent Novels
Margaret’s Recent Novels
